Such great news! I'm proud of Biden and the Democratic Party. It's sometimes hard to see because of all the extraneous noise in our ears these days, but Joe Biden is the most effective Democratic president of my lifetime (he's like a stealth bipartisan drone) and I'm 57. I'm loud every day over at NRO about all this, but I don't think they appreciate me!!
Simon, great news. But how about the messaging? The messaging does not come close to being as good as the news. Will that change? When will that change?
I've concluded that the one message for all issues is: "VOTE THEM ALL OUT!" Just go to the polls between now and November, and in November, and vote against all Rebuplicans as obstructionist regressionists. And un-American. Just vote all of them out as antithetical to the American way of life. Tax cuts for corporations: VOTE THEM OUT. Dobbs decision: VOTE THEM OUT. Immigration hypocracy: VOTE THEM OUT. Economy: VOTE THEM OUT. Culture wars: VOTE THEM OUT. Voter suppression: VOTE THEM OUT. MAGA: VOTE THEM OUT. Trumpism: VOTE THEM OUT. Voting against allies abroad: VOTE THEM OUT. Cutting and running from Ukraine: VOTE THEM OUT. Siding with Putin: VOTE THEM OUT. Denying climate change: VOTE THEM OUT. Voting against infrastructure , then taking credit: VOTE THEM OUT. Voting against sustainable energy: VOTE THEM OUT. Voting against the child tax credit: VOTE THEM OUT. Voting against Medicaid expansion: VOTE THEM OUT. Voting against summer food programs: VOTE THEM OUT. Voting against Obamacare: VOTE THEM OUT. RNC shenanigans: VOTE THEM OUT. Packing SCOTUS: VOTE THEM OUT. Supporting secession: VOTE THEM OUT. Defying SCOTUS orders: VOTE THEM OUT. Obstructing justice: VOTE THEM OUT. Undermining trust in American governmental institutions: VOTE THEM OUT. Racist attacks on education: VOTE THEM OUT. Rooting for failure for all Americans: VOTE THEM OUT.
(Don't get me started.) (But please add your own reasons.)
We can add lower prescription drug prices to the list of Biden’s achievements with a direct impact on the well being of America’s middle class. Insulin is already capped and negotiations have begun to lower prices for 10 popular medications. A goal for over 40 years is finally achieved!!
I missed the one where Simon was the guest, but I enjoyed the two that I attended so far.
Also if you want to get pumped up for activism, I recommend checking out this week's PoliticsGirl podcast where her guest is the Executive Director of Swing Left. Hear about how Swing Left got started and their 2024 Super State Strategy (https://swingleft.org/p/strategy):
In addition, I attended a Zoom call earlier this week with Indivisible Marin with guest speaker Heather Booth. The meeting was recorded and they posted the link to the recording here: https://youtu.be/xmrHcUgErcM. They also posted a link tree with ideas for action in the 6 winnable (5 flippable) house races in CA. I don't remember who put me on to their meeting, but if it was someone on Hopium, I say thank you!
As a law professor in 1982, I attended the Association of American Law Schools convention, where I heard a presentation on Supply Side Eonomics, called Law and Economics in our profession. My dean was also listening to the presentation, and he asked me what I thought about it. I said that it was very impressive, but based on wrong premises. Economic growth is obtained through increased circulation of currency, which requires that spenders, i.e. consumers, actually have money to spend. Supply side economics presumes that corporations and wealthy people will build businesses and thus create jobs. But businesses won't do that if they don't perceive that there is a market for what they want to sell. Duh!
What I saw was lower taxes and overhead (deregulation) for corporations and wealthy people. My first thought was stock market growth without additional production. My second was that our law school should add a class in mergers and acquisitions. I didn't see higher credit card charges, privatized student loans (with no bankruptcy recourse), and the myriad ways that financiers would think up schemes to get money from other rich people (and homeowners) while hiding the risks.
You can add the destruction of pensions to that list, and the rise of the 401k failure. Finally I am seeing Theresa Ghilarducci of the New School being recognized. Our next big initiative needs to be a Grey New Deal. But first we have to defeat fascism.
Well, according to the Heritage Foundation Project 2025, they will be bringing Milton Friedman back from the grave. This is the 'how to' guide to establish and build an Autocratic government
I am a business school graduate - graduated in 1991. We were taught in our finance class - had world class, really great professors - that you could create “riskless” portfolio of stocks You just had to use “Betas” (basically risk factors) and then you could balance out the stocks (e.g., get one with a negative 5 Beta and pair it with a positive 5 beta - voila, no risk). Finance was a science. Then, 2008 came and it turned out it was just fantasy because none of the balanced portfolios anticipated the crash. All the predictions were wrong (guy/economist named Burton Malkiel was right, pricing is random). Anyway, here’s the point of the story, U of Chicago - home to supply side and Milton Friedman - just decided they were still right and ignored 2008 and that finance was still a science because they said so. They are ideologues, not economists.
Here is a comment from Andrew Grunwald of The States Project that reminds us of the power of state legislatures to undo democracy:
Friends,
Last week, The New York Times published this piece which says what we’ve been saying since 2020: rightwing-controlled state legislatures are a massive threat to voters’ right to select the next president.
The authors say that a 2020 ruling from the Supreme Court gives state legislatures the power to direct electors how to cast their electoral votes — which means rightwing state lawmakers could claim the ability to award electors to their preferred candidate, no matter who voters choose.
This is only one way that anti-democratic rightwing power in state legislatures is a legitimate threat to the upcoming presidential election. In the coming weeks, we’ll take a closer look at why state legislative power in our 2024 states is critical to protecting the free and fair presidential election — and our democracy.
The good news? Together in 2022, we won enough new governing power in state legislatures to make this kind of anti-democratic power grab much more difficult! But the risk from state legislatures persists – and the results in key states in 2024 could be the difference.
Simon, I listened to the Ezra Kline "counter argument" to your episode, with Ruy Teixeira. Ruy's argument is just so anchored in his own politics. When pressed his argument seems removed from facts and I see little real strategic merit in his argument. I think your episode/argument holds up to scrutiny much better.
His whole argument seems to be "It would sure be nice if there wasn't a multibillion dollar right wing media operation distorting our positions, I guess we should change our positions so they don't lie about us."
Ruy predicted an enduring blue wave that didn't happen. Now he is twisting himself into a pretzel to explain why. And IIRC, Biden won the working class vote by some 13 points, I think I read that right here.
My thought is that the Dems are building a language and coalition that includes the poor, working class, and professional class. A coalition that truly encompasses the poor and middle class is potent force especially in our era of wealth disparity. It is how you make change.
The reason we see erosion of White working class, and working class men of color, is because the republicans have no standing to make a unity message so they are appealing to the worst of our desires. You will always find people vulnerable to those messages. The Clarence Thomas mindset is not that uncommon, life is hard, I got mine, fuck you, can be appealing and if you can offer an unequal paternalistic dream to some of them.
The last piece of the puzzle the Dems have to figure out is how to appeal to the pre-incel boys/young men. They have to figure out a message to keep them from going down that lonely path where hate lies.
They need to see themselves as potentially part of society and having political say and input. The party can offer a message that address that. If we do not the republicans will and are doing so. The Republicans are looking at pre-incel young men and aggressively pushing their message to them. Republicans do not care if they remain unhappy if they can associate the Dems with women, and guys not like them.
If we can find a way for our politics to be a place of hope, fun, and acceptance to those pre-incel boys/young men the party and the country will be better off
While I agree that these young people need to feel a part of the bigger picture, I don't see this as the Democratic party's job. This is the job of social workers and psychologists.We'd be better off funding more school counselors and training them in how to work with young men. I'm a retired social worker who spent my career working with problem students, so I would say the best thing we could do is elect Dems who will fund more counselors. Nj has done this. We have social workers, psychologists and counselors in the schools. But we need more.
Perhaps you have a different definition of pre-incel young men and boys than I. I am specifically referring to those who feel disaffected but are not lost. The republicans and rightwing media is building a pipeline to attract and tunnel them to either disaffected cynicism or the republican ballot. They are proving to be very efficient. It is a growing problem for the party.
I have a hard time seeing why it should not even be an aspiration to develop and incorporate language or a style that can provide an off ramp from what the Rightwing media is developing for them. Personally I think it is a relatively low hanging fruit. I think there is an easy model to look at it just takes some creativity and probably levity. Comedy and laughter is a great tool to fight the kind of cynicism and loneliness. You also have left leaning Comics who do it well. I think it is something the party should look at.
The right wing/anti liberal trend of young men is a global, not US issue (see recent research). I have a teenage son and I see it happening even to him (and he’s a liberal kid raised in the most pro-Dem town and environment possible). He tells me about how Taylor Swift if ruining football (he’s repeating what he’s hearing online). It’s related to the media young men consume (games, YouTube, sports). I don’ know how the democratic party can reverse this trend (maybe mitigate it) Joe Rogan acolytes have taken over young men’s brains. I think it is a media issue. It’ll be interesting because young women are the opposite. I think we have to focus on registering young women instead for now (we can get them).
I don't have kids and am long past that age of angst myself, but what Climate Change? That should be an issue that all young people can get behind - they are the ones that will have to live with the results of our current policies.
I would add gun violence prevention, but the gaming culture seems to glorify gun violence.
My biggest objection to what you are suggesting is that it's a narrow view of politics. I often think to the book, Politics is For Power, by Ethan Hersh. I think the Democratic Party thinks of politics too narrowly. The party organization should operate in a manner that reflects their goals. The Democratic party and its affiliates will probably spend close to 10 Billion dollars in the next nine months.
I can never understand why a few hundred million of that is not spent on thing that help average people, or help average people have a positive image of the party. A few hundred tickets to Major league baseball game in most cities would cost under 10 thousand dollars. If I was one of these Senate candidates I would go to colleges and highschools young Dems clubs and tell them there is a city/county wide contest to register the most new voters. The club that registers the most gets 20 tickets. But surprise all the clubs get tickets. I have to think that is more bang for your buck than a bunch of youtube ads where people are paying more attention to the count down.
It would be worth mentioning two things along with the economic data—
1. That the good news is due to the Biden administration and Congressional Democrats investing in PEOPLE, not billionaires, through four major acts passed in 2021-2022.
And 2. That the big uptick in insured
People owes a good deal to several states coming to their senses and enrolling in the ACA, thus ticing their residents the chance yo get coverage. And it appears that 3 additional southern holdouts may be ready to join too—to the good of their people rather than their ideology.
My wife went through a layoff and her colleagues are finding they don't have to spend thousands on COBRA because they can immediately qualify for the ACA or Medicaid. What a lessening of the burden for the unemployed, who had to risk going without insurance because COBRA cost thousands per month. Thank Democrats. I'd prefer universal coverage, but it's clear with this current iteration of Rs we won't get to it. Also, I was reading a piece on just how far the Rs have gone right...it's uncharted territory, making normal political calculations useless. There's a real possibility the R party can fragment. Myself, I'm not one who thinks we need a viable conservative party.
I've been curious about patterns within the polling data we've seeing lately. Because I'm a data nerd, I pulled all 47 of the Biden vs. Trump results from the month of January from 538. I coded each poll by pollster, day of the month, a numerical value based on 538's pollster "grade", and pollster partisan lean (neutral vs. conservative vs. liberal). Then I ran a statistical model in RStudio testing the effect of day, pollster grade, partisan lean, sample size, and population (adults vs. registered voters vs. likely voters) on the difference between Biden and Trump's vote share, nested within each pollster.
The results were pretty interesting: 1) conservative pollster lean predicted a 5-point advantage for Trump compared to neutral or liberal, 2) Biden had a 5-point advantage on polls including registered voters compared to any adults, and 3) Trump's advantage grew about .1% per day over the month of January. Pollster grade, 538 transparency score, and sample size weren't statistically significant.
This suggests that polls from conservative-leaning pollsters find significantly stronger support for Trump than neutral ones, and we should continue to be skeptical of polls that include all adults instead of at least registered voters. If the recent bump in Biden's poll numbers holds, I'd expect the trend of an increasing Trump advantage will dissipate -- will be interesting to see if that pans out. I'm also very curious to see if the effect of partisan lean changes in the coming months because there were only two liberal-leaning pollsters in the data set.
One final bit of info and a caveat related to partisan lean in the spirit of transparency. I coded Harris/HarrisX, Cygnal, Rasmussen, and Nobel Predictive Insights polls as conservative leaning because they either self-identify as GOP polling firms, the polls were sponsored by a conservative leaning group, or they are led by someone with a well-known reputation for being conservative. Other people may have coded them differently and gotten different results. Daily Kos and Clarity Campaign Labs were the only liberal pollsters in the group, but I imagine we'll see more jump in as the year progresses. All told, I counted 11 neutral pollsters, 5 conservative pollsters, and 2 liberal pollsters.
You're welcome! I hope it's useful. At the very least it's a good reminder that it's very important to consider the source when it comes to polling.
Moving forward, I want to see if this approach might help figure out why different pollsters are getting such different results when it comes to characterizing the youth vote. A lot of pollsters (like the CNN polls yesterday) are finding implausibly large shifts in preferences for 18-44 yo voters compared to previous cycles, but many others don't (e.g., the Quinnipiac poll from 1/31 showing Biden ahead) and it's pretty internally consistent within pollsters. Very curious what's going on there methodologically, but it bothers me as a scientist that the articles about them just take the shift at face value and invent a story explaining why or how it could happen, instead of questioning whether it's really likely in the first place.
Exactly my thoughts. The authenticity is not present in these polls. Say if one was done in my town, which voted 80% for Agent Orange. This would not represent the majority. I ignore the polls.
John Della Volpe's polls find that Biden's numbers with youth are on target with what you'd expect. Some of these polls, incredibly, are still landline only. I have two millennials in the house and they couldn't tell you where our landline is ( tucked away in the corner of the dining room behind the wine case ). And it never even rings.....so what sort of youth is at home and answering landlines? A high school dropout with no money for a cell phone? Because I know a lot of kids who don't even look away from their mobiles at dinner or at a doctor visit, let alone when they are at home. Hell, disturbingly, I often see them driving on the roads with the phone in their hands, texting away. And have you met ANY young people who have anything good to say about trump? I have not.....in fact, outside of a few older White dudes who are retired and hang out smoking weed and drinking all day down at the local boat ramp, I haven't met ANYONE who has a kind word about trump in years.....
I agree with Della Volpe's assessment that cell- and landline-based polling methods that don't use random digit dialing seem especially likely to show these weird youth results, which seem to be new to the 2024 cycle. But some pollsters who use online panels also find it, so it's probably not the only explanation. I just don't know enough about how online panel-based polling works to really speculate about what's going on. If anyone does, I'm very interested to hear it.
This is great work. The folks at Daily Kos daily have diarists and commenters wetting the bed and preaching gloom and doom over the polls, because they have not accepted the fact that there are a lot of shit pollsters out there gaming the system or working the refs. Part of it is because of the Rs attempting to "unskew the polls" in the 2012 elections because they couldn't believe Obama could win again, and they don't want to make that same mistake, but that was 12 years ago and polling has changed; we now have data about polling and can see it's many, and growing deficiencies. Are we really to believe people think things are so horrid we must return power to a convicted rapist? Is it a nostalgia for a pre-pandemic era. while forgetting the horror of trump's last year if office, where he committed stochastic terrorism against blue states? I think not. I think we are being massively trolled by bullshit pollsters who are not playing with a straight deck, and are being scared shitless by a media which enjoys a bleeding headline ( "Biden trailing the worst person ever to run for president, a convicted fraudster and rapist! What the hell is wrong? Why is Biden trailing this maniac?" As opposed to, oh, Biden is probably gonna win.) Of course I could be wrong and people think Biden is a crap president and murderer so we are toast. That could be true. And the moon could be made of green cheese.
I sent an email to the NYT and shared my thoughts with them. I backed it up with a study done by Columbia Journalism Review done in November 2023, titled, The Warped Front Pages. They responded with a pissy defensive comment. They also posted 10 links to their stories supporting Biden's polices. I found 20 that said the opposite.
The Times has been dreadful, from their cheering Ws Iraq war to drumming on about HRC's emails to downplaying, almost immediately, the trump Russia alliance first revealed in Oct 2016, they are shamefully remiss. I get better reporting and commentary from my local town weekly that is self-published.
MAGA: “ Hey, they’re taking away our jobs!”
Such great news! I'm proud of Biden and the Democratic Party. It's sometimes hard to see because of all the extraneous noise in our ears these days, but Joe Biden is the most effective Democratic president of my lifetime (he's like a stealth bipartisan drone) and I'm 57. I'm loud every day over at NRO about all this, but I don't think they appreciate me!!
Simon,
Thanks for yesterday's newsletter updating us on Biden's growing success across the country. Good points to use on my jittery Dem friends.
Four more years! Four more years!
The strong monthly report is the economic equivalent of Groundhog Day, appropriately enough.
The GDP now is predicting another +4% quarter for Q1. It would truly be amazing if we see another.
Simon, great news. But how about the messaging? The messaging does not come close to being as good as the news. Will that change? When will that change?
I've concluded that the one message for all issues is: "VOTE THEM ALL OUT!" Just go to the polls between now and November, and in November, and vote against all Rebuplicans as obstructionist regressionists. And un-American. Just vote all of them out as antithetical to the American way of life. Tax cuts for corporations: VOTE THEM OUT. Dobbs decision: VOTE THEM OUT. Immigration hypocracy: VOTE THEM OUT. Economy: VOTE THEM OUT. Culture wars: VOTE THEM OUT. Voter suppression: VOTE THEM OUT. MAGA: VOTE THEM OUT. Trumpism: VOTE THEM OUT. Voting against allies abroad: VOTE THEM OUT. Cutting and running from Ukraine: VOTE THEM OUT. Siding with Putin: VOTE THEM OUT. Denying climate change: VOTE THEM OUT. Voting against infrastructure , then taking credit: VOTE THEM OUT. Voting against sustainable energy: VOTE THEM OUT. Voting against the child tax credit: VOTE THEM OUT. Voting against Medicaid expansion: VOTE THEM OUT. Voting against summer food programs: VOTE THEM OUT. Voting against Obamacare: VOTE THEM OUT. RNC shenanigans: VOTE THEM OUT. Packing SCOTUS: VOTE THEM OUT. Supporting secession: VOTE THEM OUT. Defying SCOTUS orders: VOTE THEM OUT. Obstructing justice: VOTE THEM OUT. Undermining trust in American governmental institutions: VOTE THEM OUT. Racist attacks on education: VOTE THEM OUT. Rooting for failure for all Americans: VOTE THEM OUT.
(Don't get me started.) (But please add your own reasons.)
We can add lower prescription drug prices to the list of Biden’s achievements with a direct impact on the well being of America’s middle class. Insulin is already capped and negotiations have begun to lower prices for 10 popular medications. A goal for over 40 years is finally achieved!!
PLUS Reining in big Pharma was another of Trump’s 2016 promises unkept. Trump promised —- Biden delivered!
Just a reminder that the final Sunday for Suozzi postcard is this Sunday and you can sign up here:
https://www.mobilize.us/suozziforcongress/event/596053/
I missed the one where Simon was the guest, but I enjoyed the two that I attended so far.
Also if you want to get pumped up for activism, I recommend checking out this week's PoliticsGirl podcast where her guest is the Executive Director of Swing Left. Hear about how Swing Left got started and their 2024 Super State Strategy (https://swingleft.org/p/strategy):
How to Win 2024: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFYeEQAMrbA
In addition, I attended a Zoom call earlier this week with Indivisible Marin with guest speaker Heather Booth. The meeting was recorded and they posted the link to the recording here: https://youtu.be/xmrHcUgErcM. They also posted a link tree with ideas for action in the 6 winnable (5 flippable) house races in CA. I don't remember who put me on to their meeting, but if it was someone on Hopium, I say thank you!
As a law professor in 1982, I attended the Association of American Law Schools convention, where I heard a presentation on Supply Side Eonomics, called Law and Economics in our profession. My dean was also listening to the presentation, and he asked me what I thought about it. I said that it was very impressive, but based on wrong premises. Economic growth is obtained through increased circulation of currency, which requires that spenders, i.e. consumers, actually have money to spend. Supply side economics presumes that corporations and wealthy people will build businesses and thus create jobs. But businesses won't do that if they don't perceive that there is a market for what they want to sell. Duh!
What I saw was lower taxes and overhead (deregulation) for corporations and wealthy people. My first thought was stock market growth without additional production. My second was that our law school should add a class in mergers and acquisitions. I didn't see higher credit card charges, privatized student loans (with no bankruptcy recourse), and the myriad ways that financiers would think up schemes to get money from other rich people (and homeowners) while hiding the risks.
You can add the destruction of pensions to that list, and the rise of the 401k failure. Finally I am seeing Theresa Ghilarducci of the New School being recognized. Our next big initiative needs to be a Grey New Deal. But first we have to defeat fascism.
Well, according to the Heritage Foundation Project 2025, they will be bringing Milton Friedman back from the grave. This is the 'how to' guide to establish and build an Autocratic government
I am a business school graduate - graduated in 1991. We were taught in our finance class - had world class, really great professors - that you could create “riskless” portfolio of stocks You just had to use “Betas” (basically risk factors) and then you could balance out the stocks (e.g., get one with a negative 5 Beta and pair it with a positive 5 beta - voila, no risk). Finance was a science. Then, 2008 came and it turned out it was just fantasy because none of the balanced portfolios anticipated the crash. All the predictions were wrong (guy/economist named Burton Malkiel was right, pricing is random). Anyway, here’s the point of the story, U of Chicago - home to supply side and Milton Friedman - just decided they were still right and ignored 2008 and that finance was still a science because they said so. They are ideologues, not economists.
Here is a comment from Andrew Grunwald of The States Project that reminds us of the power of state legislatures to undo democracy:
Friends,
Last week, The New York Times published this piece which says what we’ve been saying since 2020: rightwing-controlled state legislatures are a massive threat to voters’ right to select the next president.
The authors say that a 2020 ruling from the Supreme Court gives state legislatures the power to direct electors how to cast their electoral votes — which means rightwing state lawmakers could claim the ability to award electors to their preferred candidate, no matter who voters choose.
This is only one way that anti-democratic rightwing power in state legislatures is a legitimate threat to the upcoming presidential election. In the coming weeks, we’ll take a closer look at why state legislative power in our 2024 states is critical to protecting the free and fair presidential election — and our democracy.
The good news? Together in 2022, we won enough new governing power in state legislatures to make this kind of anti-democratic power grab much more difficult! But the risk from state legislatures persists – and the results in key states in 2024 could be the difference.
.
Andrew
To donate: https://statesproject.org
--
Andrew Grunwald
The States Project
This article from Politico may be useful to help communicate what Biden has done so far during his presidency:
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/02/02/joe-biden-30-policy-things-you-might-have-missed-00139046
Jessica Craven had a link in her Chop Wood, Carry Water 2/2 post (https://chopwoodcarrywaterdailyactions.substack.com/p/chop-wood-carry-water-22-693) for a webinar next week about what is in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Find it in the section labeled "Get Smart".
Thanks!. Great resource for accessing fairly comprehensive items not discussed often or at all in the media
Simon, I listened to the Ezra Kline "counter argument" to your episode, with Ruy Teixeira. Ruy's argument is just so anchored in his own politics. When pressed his argument seems removed from facts and I see little real strategic merit in his argument. I think your episode/argument holds up to scrutiny much better.
His whole argument seems to be "It would sure be nice if there wasn't a multibillion dollar right wing media operation distorting our positions, I guess we should change our positions so they don't lie about us."
Ruy predicted an enduring blue wave that didn't happen. Now he is twisting himself into a pretzel to explain why. And IIRC, Biden won the working class vote by some 13 points, I think I read that right here.
My thought is that the Dems are building a language and coalition that includes the poor, working class, and professional class. A coalition that truly encompasses the poor and middle class is potent force especially in our era of wealth disparity. It is how you make change.
The reason we see erosion of White working class, and working class men of color, is because the republicans have no standing to make a unity message so they are appealing to the worst of our desires. You will always find people vulnerable to those messages. The Clarence Thomas mindset is not that uncommon, life is hard, I got mine, fuck you, can be appealing and if you can offer an unequal paternalistic dream to some of them.
The last piece of the puzzle the Dems have to figure out is how to appeal to the pre-incel boys/young men. They have to figure out a message to keep them from going down that lonely path where hate lies.
The incels don't need a message, they need social skills training. Then young women might consider dating them.
They need to see themselves as potentially part of society and having political say and input. The party can offer a message that address that. If we do not the republicans will and are doing so. The Republicans are looking at pre-incel young men and aggressively pushing their message to them. Republicans do not care if they remain unhappy if they can associate the Dems with women, and guys not like them.
If we can find a way for our politics to be a place of hope, fun, and acceptance to those pre-incel boys/young men the party and the country will be better off
While I agree that these young people need to feel a part of the bigger picture, I don't see this as the Democratic party's job. This is the job of social workers and psychologists.We'd be better off funding more school counselors and training them in how to work with young men. I'm a retired social worker who spent my career working with problem students, so I would say the best thing we could do is elect Dems who will fund more counselors. Nj has done this. We have social workers, psychologists and counselors in the schools. But we need more.
Perhaps you have a different definition of pre-incel young men and boys than I. I am specifically referring to those who feel disaffected but are not lost. The republicans and rightwing media is building a pipeline to attract and tunnel them to either disaffected cynicism or the republican ballot. They are proving to be very efficient. It is a growing problem for the party.
I have a hard time seeing why it should not even be an aspiration to develop and incorporate language or a style that can provide an off ramp from what the Rightwing media is developing for them. Personally I think it is a relatively low hanging fruit. I think there is an easy model to look at it just takes some creativity and probably levity. Comedy and laughter is a great tool to fight the kind of cynicism and loneliness. You also have left leaning Comics who do it well. I think it is something the party should look at.
The right wing/anti liberal trend of young men is a global, not US issue (see recent research). I have a teenage son and I see it happening even to him (and he’s a liberal kid raised in the most pro-Dem town and environment possible). He tells me about how Taylor Swift if ruining football (he’s repeating what he’s hearing online). It’s related to the media young men consume (games, YouTube, sports). I don’ know how the democratic party can reverse this trend (maybe mitigate it) Joe Rogan acolytes have taken over young men’s brains. I think it is a media issue. It’ll be interesting because young women are the opposite. I think we have to focus on registering young women instead for now (we can get them).
I don't have kids and am long past that age of angst myself, but what Climate Change? That should be an issue that all young people can get behind - they are the ones that will have to live with the results of our current policies.
I would add gun violence prevention, but the gaming culture seems to glorify gun violence.
My biggest objection to what you are suggesting is that it's a narrow view of politics. I often think to the book, Politics is For Power, by Ethan Hersh. I think the Democratic Party thinks of politics too narrowly. The party organization should operate in a manner that reflects their goals. The Democratic party and its affiliates will probably spend close to 10 Billion dollars in the next nine months.
I can never understand why a few hundred million of that is not spent on thing that help average people, or help average people have a positive image of the party. A few hundred tickets to Major league baseball game in most cities would cost under 10 thousand dollars. If I was one of these Senate candidates I would go to colleges and highschools young Dems clubs and tell them there is a city/county wide contest to register the most new voters. The club that registers the most gets 20 tickets. But surprise all the clubs get tickets. I have to think that is more bang for your buck than a bunch of youtube ads where people are paying more attention to the count down.
Look forward to your email everyday. It calms my nerves. I'm just perplexed at these polling numbers.How can I make a difference?
It would be worth mentioning two things along with the economic data—
1. That the good news is due to the Biden administration and Congressional Democrats investing in PEOPLE, not billionaires, through four major acts passed in 2021-2022.
And 2. That the big uptick in insured
People owes a good deal to several states coming to their senses and enrolling in the ACA, thus ticing their residents the chance yo get coverage. And it appears that 3 additional southern holdouts may be ready to join too—to the good of their people rather than their ideology.
My wife went through a layoff and her colleagues are finding they don't have to spend thousands on COBRA because they can immediately qualify for the ACA or Medicaid. What a lessening of the burden for the unemployed, who had to risk going without insurance because COBRA cost thousands per month. Thank Democrats. I'd prefer universal coverage, but it's clear with this current iteration of Rs we won't get to it. Also, I was reading a piece on just how far the Rs have gone right...it's uncharted territory, making normal political calculations useless. There's a real possibility the R party can fragment. Myself, I'm not one who thinks we need a viable conservative party.
I've been curious about patterns within the polling data we've seeing lately. Because I'm a data nerd, I pulled all 47 of the Biden vs. Trump results from the month of January from 538. I coded each poll by pollster, day of the month, a numerical value based on 538's pollster "grade", and pollster partisan lean (neutral vs. conservative vs. liberal). Then I ran a statistical model in RStudio testing the effect of day, pollster grade, partisan lean, sample size, and population (adults vs. registered voters vs. likely voters) on the difference between Biden and Trump's vote share, nested within each pollster.
The results were pretty interesting: 1) conservative pollster lean predicted a 5-point advantage for Trump compared to neutral or liberal, 2) Biden had a 5-point advantage on polls including registered voters compared to any adults, and 3) Trump's advantage grew about .1% per day over the month of January. Pollster grade, 538 transparency score, and sample size weren't statistically significant.
This suggests that polls from conservative-leaning pollsters find significantly stronger support for Trump than neutral ones, and we should continue to be skeptical of polls that include all adults instead of at least registered voters. If the recent bump in Biden's poll numbers holds, I'd expect the trend of an increasing Trump advantage will dissipate -- will be interesting to see if that pans out. I'm also very curious to see if the effect of partisan lean changes in the coming months because there were only two liberal-leaning pollsters in the data set.
One final bit of info and a caveat related to partisan lean in the spirit of transparency. I coded Harris/HarrisX, Cygnal, Rasmussen, and Nobel Predictive Insights polls as conservative leaning because they either self-identify as GOP polling firms, the polls were sponsored by a conservative leaning group, or they are led by someone with a well-known reputation for being conservative. Other people may have coded them differently and gotten different results. Daily Kos and Clarity Campaign Labs were the only liberal pollsters in the group, but I imagine we'll see more jump in as the year progresses. All told, I counted 11 neutral pollsters, 5 conservative pollsters, and 2 liberal pollsters.
That you for validating my thoughts that polls suck. Good job there.
You're welcome! I hope it's useful. At the very least it's a good reminder that it's very important to consider the source when it comes to polling.
Moving forward, I want to see if this approach might help figure out why different pollsters are getting such different results when it comes to characterizing the youth vote. A lot of pollsters (like the CNN polls yesterday) are finding implausibly large shifts in preferences for 18-44 yo voters compared to previous cycles, but many others don't (e.g., the Quinnipiac poll from 1/31 showing Biden ahead) and it's pretty internally consistent within pollsters. Very curious what's going on there methodologically, but it bothers me as a scientist that the articles about them just take the shift at face value and invent a story explaining why or how it could happen, instead of questioning whether it's really likely in the first place.
Exactly my thoughts. The authenticity is not present in these polls. Say if one was done in my town, which voted 80% for Agent Orange. This would not represent the majority. I ignore the polls.
I think that's a good instinct. And if you can't ignore the polls, then at least avoid the cross-tabs.
Thank you, I will :).
John Della Volpe's polls find that Biden's numbers with youth are on target with what you'd expect. Some of these polls, incredibly, are still landline only. I have two millennials in the house and they couldn't tell you where our landline is ( tucked away in the corner of the dining room behind the wine case ). And it never even rings.....so what sort of youth is at home and answering landlines? A high school dropout with no money for a cell phone? Because I know a lot of kids who don't even look away from their mobiles at dinner or at a doctor visit, let alone when they are at home. Hell, disturbingly, I often see them driving on the roads with the phone in their hands, texting away. And have you met ANY young people who have anything good to say about trump? I have not.....in fact, outside of a few older White dudes who are retired and hang out smoking weed and drinking all day down at the local boat ramp, I haven't met ANYONE who has a kind word about trump in years.....
I agree with Della Volpe's assessment that cell- and landline-based polling methods that don't use random digit dialing seem especially likely to show these weird youth results, which seem to be new to the 2024 cycle. But some pollsters who use online panels also find it, so it's probably not the only explanation. I just don't know enough about how online panel-based polling works to really speculate about what's going on. If anyone does, I'm very interested to hear it.
Don't quote me, but IIRC Della Volpe also looked at panels and they were much more realistic. Not sure if they were his or others.
This is great work. The folks at Daily Kos daily have diarists and commenters wetting the bed and preaching gloom and doom over the polls, because they have not accepted the fact that there are a lot of shit pollsters out there gaming the system or working the refs. Part of it is because of the Rs attempting to "unskew the polls" in the 2012 elections because they couldn't believe Obama could win again, and they don't want to make that same mistake, but that was 12 years ago and polling has changed; we now have data about polling and can see it's many, and growing deficiencies. Are we really to believe people think things are so horrid we must return power to a convicted rapist? Is it a nostalgia for a pre-pandemic era. while forgetting the horror of trump's last year if office, where he committed stochastic terrorism against blue states? I think not. I think we are being massively trolled by bullshit pollsters who are not playing with a straight deck, and are being scared shitless by a media which enjoys a bleeding headline ( "Biden trailing the worst person ever to run for president, a convicted fraudster and rapist! What the hell is wrong? Why is Biden trailing this maniac?" As opposed to, oh, Biden is probably gonna win.) Of course I could be wrong and people think Biden is a crap president and murderer so we are toast. That could be true. And the moon could be made of green cheese.
It think polls are clickbait that sells the news. Manipulating the masses for profits.
It has been found that negative Biden headlines get clicks, from both haters and worriers.
I sent an email to the NYT and shared my thoughts with them. I backed it up with a study done by Columbia Journalism Review done in November 2023, titled, The Warped Front Pages. They responded with a pissy defensive comment. They also posted 10 links to their stories supporting Biden's polices. I found 20 that said the opposite.
The Times has been dreadful, from their cheering Ws Iraq war to drumming on about HRC's emails to downplaying, almost immediately, the trump Russia alliance first revealed in Oct 2016, they are shamefully remiss. I get better reporting and commentary from my local town weekly that is self-published.
Off topic, but as a fellow data nerd, I thought you might enjoy this website: https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
I find it really helpful in getting the point across that correlation is NOT causation.