Saturday, November 05, 2022
Friday, November 04, 2022
American Attitudes Toward Poll Workers
These charts are from a YouGov Poll -- done between October 19th and 24th of a nationwide sample of 1,000 adults, with a 3 point margin of error.
About 217,000 Workers Filed For Unemployment Last Week
The Labor Department released its weekly statistics on Thursday. Those stats showed that about 217,000 workers filed for unemployment benefits in the week ending on October 29th. Here is the official Labor Department statement:
In the week ending October 29, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 217,000, a decrease of 1,000 from the previous week's revised level. The previous week's level was revised up by 1,000 from 217,000 to 218,000. The 4-week moving average was 218,750, a decrease of 500 from the previous week's revised average. The previous week's average was revised up by 250 from 219,000 to 219,250.
Most Important Thing In This Election Is Saving Democracy
Coming into the home stretch before the 2022 midterm elections, I feel different than I’ve felt in the days before every election I’ve witnessed or participated in over the last three-quarters of a century.
Before, I’ve worried about Republicans taking over and implementing their policy preferences — against political rights in the dark days of Joe McCarthy’s communist witch hunt in the early 1950s, against civil rights in the late 1950s and early 1960s, against Medicare in the mid-1960s, for smaller government in the 1970s, for tax cuts for the rich in the 1980s, for a balanced budget in the early 1990s, against universal health care in the late 1990s and early 2000s, against LGBTQ rights in the 2010s.
Today I’m not worried about Republicans’ policy preferences. Today I’m worried about the survival of our democracy.
I’m worried that a majority of Republican candidates are telling voters, without any basis in fact, that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.
I’m worried that if elected, many of these Republicans will make it harder to conduct elections, allow or encourage endless audits of election results, and even refuse to sign off on them.
I’m worried that Republicans have been spending millions to recruit partisan poll workers and watchers who could disrupt the counting process or raise false claims about it. (Michigan Republican secretary of state nominee Kristina Karamo rose to prominence as a Detroit poll watcher who made false claims about election fraud.)
I’m worried that thousands of Trump supporters have been calling their local election offices requesting all kinds of public records, often using suspiciously similar wording, leading election officials to believe this is a coordinated effort to prevent them from holding an election.
I’m worried that violent thugs are on the prowl, and that Republican leaders — starting with Trump — have been quietly encouraging them. (Speaking on a conservative radio talk show on Tuesday, Trump amplified a conspiracy theory about the grisly attack on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, saying “Weird things going on in that household in the last couple of weeks.” Other Republican candidates are joining in this cruel, baseless, disgusting taunt.
Most of all, I’m worried that Americans are losing the trust that a democracy needs in order to function — trust that even though we may not like the outcomes of particular elections, we feel bound by them because we trust the democratic process.
The biggest question hanging over the 2022 midterm election is not a policy. It’s not even an issue.
It is analogous to the question we as a nation faced in 1860, as we slid into a tragic Civil War.
It is whether our democracy can endure.
The extraordinary, abominable challenge we now face — one that I frankly never imagined we would face — is that the Republican Party and its enablers in the media and among the monied interests appear not to want American democracy to endure.
As Joe Biden said last night, “Democracy itself” is at stake in the upcoming election, and he appealed “to all Americans, regardless of party, to meet this moment of national and generational importance.”
Indeed.
My friends, we owe it to generations before us who fought and died for democracy and the rule of law, and to generations after us who will live with the legacy we leave them — to get out the vote next Tuesday, to vote out the traitors and liars, to renounce the party that has forsaken the precious ideal of self-government, and to vote in people who are dedicated to making our democracy stronger and better.
Thursday, November 03, 2022
Early Voting Is Up Over Previous Midterm Elections
The charts above are from a Gallup Poll -- done between October 3rd and 20th of a nationwide sample of 897 registered voters, with a 4 point margin of error.
Musk Is Making Twitter A Bastion Of Hate - Don't Participate
The following op-ed is by Jennifer Rubin in The Washington Post:
For a time, many democracy defenders and civil rights groups thought the worst thing about Elon Musk’s $44 billion takeover of Twitter was the potential re-platforming of former president Donald Trump, disseminator of endless insults and right-wing conspiracies. It turns out Trump might not return, but Musk might be no better.
Musk got off to an inauspicious start. He took issue with Hillary Clinton’s observation that the suspect in the break-in at Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s home was linked to right-wingers. “There is a tiny possibility there might be more to the story than meets the eye,” he tweeted, linking to a right-wing outlet that posted utter falsehoods about the attack. Musk deleted the post, then denied he had.
He wasn’t done. Word leaked out that Musk planned to charge $20 per month to widely known Twitter posters to keep their “blue check,” a tool to prevent copycat accounts. To that, the blue-check universe resoundingly responded: You must be joking.
Meanwhile, the incidence of hate speech went up dramatically after he took ownership. General Motors has “paused” advertising on the platform, and speculation is rampant that other major companies will follow suit, fearing their brands might be associated with a cesspool of hate speech, incitement and right-wing provocation.
None of this should be surprising. When the sale concluded, the Anti-Defamation League expressed concern that Musk would re-platform provocateurs, refuse to crack down on election disinformation and embolden people to post hateful content. And, lo and behold, much of that is already happening.
The New York Times reported: “A coordinated campaign to spread antisemitic memes and images on Twitter resulted in more than 1,200 tweets and retweets featuring the offensive content, according to an analysis by the Anti-Defamation League. The tweets identified by the A.D.L. added to a flurry of racist, transphobic and rule-breaking content that coursed through Twitter on Friday after Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla, had officially taken control of the platform.”
What is Musk trying to accomplish here? Is he trying to chase away sane and respectful users, turning the platform into a giant Parler? Is he trying to become the next Trump, the darling of the MAGA mob?
The explanation might be far simpler: An electric car mogul might simply know little about what it takes to run a broad-based social network. In fact, the qualities that afflict many billionaires — utter lack of self-awareness and out-of-touchness — might make him uniquely unfit to turn his purchase into a moneymaking operation.
It is true that Musk can do whatever he pleases with Twitter. He can apply whatever rules and post any garbage he likes. But if he’s not careful, he risks setting the company on a death spiral.
Consider what might occur: More major advertisers might leave Twitter. The blue-check posters with the largest followings might decamp for other platforms. (Maybe he should pay them to stay.) Experiments such as Bluesky and subscription platforms such as Substack might pick up steam.
And while Musk remains a darling of the right wing in America, European regulators are watching closely. NPR reports that “The European Union’s competition czar has a message for Twitter’s new boss Elon Musk: We are watching you.” The report quotes Margrethe Vestager, the European Commission’s executive vice president overseeing digital policy, who warned: “There is a European rulebook, and you should live by it. Otherwise, we have the penalties. We have the fines. We have all the assessments and all the decisions that will come to haunt you.” She doesn’t sound like someone Musk wants to mess with.
MAGA Republicans in the United States might be celebrating Musk’s takeover as a triumph of “one of their own,” but Democrats might be in power in the years to come. They might be tempted to repeal Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the federal provision that protects social media platforms from liability for content published on their sites. (Even eliminating such protections for the owners of the platform could bring the curtain down on the Musk show.)
So while Twitter might become as horrible as you feared, the good news is that Musk is severely limited by the operation of the free market and government regulators. (And if he drives the company into the ground, think of the hours that heavy users will get back in their lives!) Musk can trash his sandbox, but the rest of us don’t have to play in it.
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