Election 2024

I again served as an “election judge” (AKA poll worker) on Tuesday. We serve in pairs, one Republican and one Democrat, each needing to initial the request for a ballot on a poll pad and then to initial the ballot. The system is designed to make it difficult if not impossible to cheat. My Republican partner seemed to refute a lot of MAGA rhetoric when he told one voter that people who think there is cheating in voting have not seen how the system works.

Still, there is some oddity in the system. In Taiwan, there is a ritual of showing everyone that the ballot box is empty before they shut the box and seal it with paper seals to prove there is no tampering. In our case, we just set the scanners and ballot boxes up, and no one made a point of showing everyone that the ballot boxes were empty before they were set up. We locked the ballot box but there was no seal on the box (but the boxes were never left alone). Seals were placed on the ballot bags after the voting was done. And even though we put our initials on every poll pad request and every ballot, sometimes my initials were unrecognizable, the result of doing it over 400 times, sometimes reaching over at an odd angle.

Missouri started requiring a photo ID to vote in the 2022 mid-term elections. This election, I would estimate we turned away about 2-3% of voters because they did not have a photo ID. We still bent the rules; when people said that they had moved out of the county and into St Louis City but were still registered in St Louis County, we pretended we did not know they had moved and let them vote with the ballot from their old address. Several of them came to us frustrated because they had tried to vote in the City but, of course, they were not registered there, so were sent to the county to vote. So they came to us, sometimes with a photo ID that had their new St Louis City address, and we found them still in the county’s registration system. I was pleased to see that the two Republicans near me allowed these people to vote. They seemed to feel it was more important that people should be allowed to vote than to stick to the rule that you must vote where you currently live. And because most of these voters were Black, and so most probably Democrats, I found it significant that the Republican election judges, who were white, were not being strict and preventing people from voting, because though Republican legislators justified the photo ID requirement as a way to assure the integrity of voting, Democrats argued it was a way to suppress the vote of poor people. 

And indeed, not everyone has a driver’s license. At my polling place in Normandy, MO, we saw many people, perhaps 15%, who used a learner’s permit or nondriver identification cards as an ID. We also had to turn away people who said they were registered to vote in St Louis County but who had an out of state ID. Sometimes we were able to allow them to fill a “Provisional Ballot”, but we know most of those will not be counted. (On top of everything, the form is long and at least one person forgot to sign at the very bottom, assuring that their vote will not be counted.) Altogether, I would estimate about 4% of people we saw were not able to vote.

The strange thing is that though the requirement is for a photo ID, we are NOT required to, or instructed to, check the picture to make sure the person is indeed who they say they are. It is enough for the voter to click “accept” that the name and address is correct, and then sign on the poll pad. The system is still based on trust that the voter is who they say they are, and the picture is not used.

Among the weird cases I saw was a Vietnamese-American immigrant who came to vote, but the database showed he’d already voted by absentee ballot. We told him this, and he looked puzzled, and said, smiling, “Oh, yes, so I can’t vote now?” He was elderly (but not obviously demented), so perhaps just a bit confused, and maybe forgot he'd voted. Another case was a young man who turned 18 on October 14 and had registered, to vote, but the database said he was ineligible. He and his mother were not clear exactly when he registered to vote; apparently he registered on or after his birthday, but voters needed to be registered by October 9^th.

The only good thing about the results, from my point of view, is that the results were clear, and we did not have a close result or a Harris victory that would have resulted in attacks on the democratic process itself. Nevertheless, based on what Trump has said, I fully expect many challenges to the democratic process over the next four years, and am not sure our democratic republic will survive.

The voters have crossed the Rubicon. This phrase refers to Caesar’s crossing the river in Italy that marked the boundary between southern Gaul and Italy proper. The Roman senate had told him to disband his army and return to Rome, but he crossed the boundary with his army, which meant he was leading an insurrection. Entering Italy proper with his army was a capital offence, and Caesar’s officers also committed a capital offence by following his orders even though he did not have legal authority in Italy. Caesar won the resulting civil war with Pompey, thereby becoming dictator for life and making the charges of treason moot. Voters in 2024 may have wanted change, despite a felony conviction and many other serious charges, despite his leading an insurrection on January 6, 2021, and despite warnings from many who served in the previous Trump administration that he is unfit for the office. The voters have elected him the 47^th president and thereby wiped away all charges against him.

Let me be clear: I do not want Trump assassinated like Caesar. I want him to live so he and the public see the chaos and problems that his policies will cause.

In 2021, Trump’s insurrection failed. He has famously said he will be dictator for a day; we shall see if it lasts just one day. Especially worrying are the arguments for an “Imperial Presidency”  made by some Republicans and Project 2025. In any case, it is astonishing that a people who proudly claim to be free voted for someone promising to be dictator, even for a day. Octavian was known as “Augustus” and not dictator or emperor; he was smart enough to keep the names and appearances of a republic, even as he ruled as an emperor. Will the USA turn into a dictatorship, in fact if not in name?

There is much that is puzzling in this election. It is puzzling that while the economy is in good shape according to economists ("The Envy of the World" according to The Economist) and official figures, voters in polls said they think the economy is poor and was better under Trump. It is puzzling that voters blame Biden for the 2021 inflation, even though inflation was worldwide, is now gone, and it is the Federal Reserve not the Biden administration that was probably slow in responding to inflationary pressures. In addition, wages have risen more than inflation.

It is puzzling that despite Missouri voting overwhelmingly for Republicans (58% to 40% for Trump, and 56% to 42% for Hawley), voters approved several progressive referenda, one a proposition to raise the minimum wage and to require sick leave (58% in favor) and another a constitutional amendment (Number 3) to protect abortion rights (52% in favor).

Misleading lawn signs on Proposition 3

It is tempting to blame money for election outcomes one doesn't like, but it is not that simple. Republicans who are upset at the Missouri abortion vote blame their loss on the out-of-state money spent to support that vote, even though public opinion polls show abortion rights to enjoy majority support (one pre-election polls had shown 52% in favor and 14% undecided). In fact, Josh Hawley and the Republicans tried to muddy the issue by claiming in their ads and lawn signs (see photo) that the amendment would pay for child sex change surgery, which is a red herring. It will be interesting to see what the supermajority in the state legislature decides to do to go against the will of the voters.

The fact that Trump’s contradictory promises, violent speech, and bombastic persona managed to attract a majority of votes is very depressing. We live in such a siloed media environments that most voters believed the economy was bad (when it was not) and that the Biden administration did not do anything for them (despite his major infrastructure bills). True, part of the problem was poor messaging from the Biden administration, but our media environment, without the fairness doctrine, makes it hard for voters to understand issues with any depth or nuance.

"Politically incorrect" door in Grafton IL inspired by Trump

This election has revealed a hateful, narrowminded aspect of American society that I thought we had left behind. This is the America that massacred Native Americans, that enslaved Africans, that invaded and colonized Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines, that put Japanese-Americans in internment camps, and that turned away the German ocean liner St. Louis that had sailed from Hanover in 1939 (254 of the 937 passengers ultimately died in the Holocaust). We have returned to the America hostile towards immigration, foreign trade and foreign entanglements, and as The Economist notes, “In the 1920s and 1930s that led to dark times. It could do so again.” In the context of the fracturing of the neoliberal order  (see 2022 book by Gary Gertle), this election has led voters to “throw the rascals out.” This is perhaps understandable, since neoliberal policies screwed them, but the rascals they have voted in are just venting, and not offering real solutions. As The Economist notes, Trump is not even a conservative in the old sense: “He has completely reshaped American conservatism, forcibly converting it to nativism, mercantilism, welfare-statism and isolationism.” But Trump is not new; he has simply awakened an ugly side of America.

Working with the other election judges, half Democrats and half Republicans, was actually very smooth and pleasant. There was no hateful speech, no partisan posturing or argument, no conflict. My Republican partner made every voter smile a bit when he showed each voter their name and information on the database and asked them, “Is this who you’ve always wanted to be?” or “Is this who you think you are today?” Most people smiled at this. He also commented that at least after the polls closed, we would not have to watch all the political ads, which everyone could agree with, even if it meant something different for people of different political persuasions. Face to face, there was none of the demonization that we saw on TV and at Trump rallies. All the Republican election judges at my center where white (though their Republican supervising election judge was Black), and all of them were very respectful and kind to the majority Black voters, so there was no overt racism.

I think back to my fieldwork in Taiwan in the 1980s, when some of my interlocutors told me that the Taiwanese only had conflict during elections. This was under martial law, so I was a bit skeptical of this statement that seemed to simply justify one party rule and authoritarianism. But there is some truth to it. Face to face, the Republicans and Democrats were able to get along and work together. Granted, we did not have to draft a law on abortion or set the minimum wage. But the Republicans seemed to be decent people. I just cannot understand how they, and so many others, could vote for a person like Trump.

The 2024 Election in the US

I write one week before the 2024 general election. This election seems the most consequential of my life, and makes my feeling that earlier elections were important seem naïve. I write these comments because after we know the result, it will be hard to remember the emotions, fear and foreboding that we feel today; the results will seem pre-determined.

I actually do not have anyone who will vote for Trump in my social circles. I know of some Trump supporters third hand, and I’m sure some people I know are voting for Trump, but among urban and college-educated Americans, Trump supporters are a small minority. In the university environment, it is almost shocking how strong the consensus is that Trump is a demagogue. But of course, in other social circles, people are surrounded by Trump supporters, so that they can honestly find it hard to believe that he lost the 2020 election. I just drove through Grafton, IL, and many houses had Trump signs and flags, and some had multiple signs.

Friends have different ways of coping with the stress of this election. One friend tells himself that Trump is going to win, that way he will not be surprised and depressed if this comes to pass. Another says he believes many Republicans will not actually vote, or at least not vote for Trump; I think he is deluding himself. Heather Cox Richardson writes daily letters on Substack that make the rational argument for Harris and highlight the success of Biden administration policies, but her encouraging tone does not match the news I get from the NY Times and NPR.

In this election, I find it difficult to understand how close to half of US voters will vote for Trump. Here is a short list of what I consider unforgivable Trump behaviors that disqualify him for the presidency:

• His fomenting the January 6 insurrection;
• His repeated ludicrous statements that foreign countries will pay tariffs;
• His sending Covid-19 testing machines to Putin, and then keeping it secret, at Putin’s recommendation;
• His rally at Madison Square Guarden, harking back to the American Nazi Party rally of 1939, where he rehashed his fascist lines about immigrants weakening the nation’s blood, about opponents being “enemies within” and threats to use the military against them;
• His constant lies (i.e. that Kamala Harris only recently claimed to be Black, and that he had tried to improved the Affordable Care Act, not end it);
• And his biggest lie, The Big Lie that he won in 2020, and his continuing refusal to admit that Biden won the election.

Regardless of what policies he is proposing, these factors should make him toxic to voters. It is unsettling that people can look past these offenses. Sixteen Nobel Prize-winning economists and 13 former Trump administration official signed letters warning against electing Trump. It is even more upsetting that many people say they don’t believe he’ll do the things he says he’ll do. (I hate to make comparisons with Hitler, but it is notable that when he published Mein Kampf in 1925, he was very explicit about what he was going to do, but people did not take him seriously, even German Jews.) And it is also worrying that newspapers like the LA Times and Washington Post seek to avoid offending him, in case he is elected. This reminds me of elite self-censoring behavior in China and Hong Kong.

While I know that voting is not entirely a rational choice, I find it disturbing that so many poor and disadvantaged people are going to vote for Trump, who is going to do very little for them. Raising tariffs will make products they buy more expensive, and lower taxes will primarily benefit the rich. Recent ads I’ve seen on TV focus on attacking migrants and transgender children, emotionally charged issues that require nuance and careful consideration to come to shared solutions. I’m trying to stand back and observe the election as if I were an outsider, but it is difficult when at stake are your values and ideals.

Recently I’ve been reading books about the history of Ancient Rome, and about Paris, and in both places we can see that bad leaders, even evil people, have occasionally risen to power and brought ruin to their people. We had thought that this was less likely to happen in a democracy, especially since the Founding Fathers had established institutions precisely to prevent a demagogue from taking power. 

In any case, damage has already been done. The Republican Party, an important conservative perspective and counterweight, has been replaced with a personality cult. Courts have become politicized and have lost the prestige they once had. And it is sad and dangerous that both Trumpers and Democrats say their country is being stolen by the other side.

The election is, according to polls, too close to call. As Nate Silver notes in a recent column, the problem is that the response rates for polls are in single digits, so polls need to find other ways to try to weigh their results to fit the population of voters. It is not clear that they can do that accurately. Even asking people who they voted for in the last election can be inaccurate, as people tend to "remember" that they voted for whoever won--some voters listed as "2020 Biden 2024 will-vote-for-Trump" voters may actually be "2020 Trump" voters. Plus, a lot will depend on who turns out to vote. 

It all depends on who comes out to vote.

Observations on Working as an Election Judge on the Aug. 2nd Primary

The people who serve as election judges work part time, only on election days. Most are retired; a few are elderly, some are stay-at-home moms. I worked with a woman, who I’ll call Pam, who has lived over 50 years in the neighborhood, and knew many of the people who came to vote. She herself was a Republican, but many who came to vote requested the Democratic ballto. They would say they wanted to go to Pam, so would wait until her position was open. Neighbors, fellow church members, and even her daughter came to vote at her station. Later, while fellow election judges were teasing her about knowing so many voters, she mentioned she also knew the man who had just come in. Pam said to him, “Your wife came earlier.” Him: “Yes, I heard.” I later figured out he was her son-in-law! My colleague was the nicest, kindest person, and wore a perpetual smile. I’m sure she made a good impression on most voters.

Earlier, while we waited for polls to open, I spoke with another judge I had met working the local election last April. He told me that he once worked in polling a place where everyone was very nasty. He said if the manager saw a voter lingering “too long” at a check-in station, he would yell, “What’s going on there!” That is ridiculous because it is not uncommon for there to be an issue with the voter’s ID or registration. He said another station was staffed by two older and very short ladies who were not visible to voters in line, because they were so short and hidden behind the poll-pad and printers. They would yell, “NEXT!” and get angry that voters did not step forward, but he said people could not even tell where the voice was coming from. He says he told the Election Board that he would not serve if he had to go back there. That is how he’s ended up at my location.

We ourselves had one new election judge who was described by a voter as “alarmingly perky.” She said “HELLO!” and “WELCOME!” to everyone who entered as if they were long-lost friends, and was always laughing and smiling. She was very pro-active and helpful, but sometimes intervened where she was not needed and thus complicated matters (like causing a queue for us to print out ballots, which can cause problems if we’re not careful to give the right ballot to the right voter, because every voter’s ballot can be different, since the county allows voters to vote at any polling place in the county.) But Miss Perky was very organized and pro-active, and got us packed and ready to go home just 30 minutes after polls closed, by starting the tear-down process early and assigning everyone tasks (though technically that was not really her job). It takes informal leaders to make individualistic Americans work as a team.

Early in the morning, while I was managing the scanner (standing aside so I could not see the ballot, but giving voters instructions on how to scan their ballot: “Insert it in any direction, except sideways!”), a woman stood in front of the scanner and called out, “How do I know that this machine is not going to change my vote? Is it connected to the Internet?” I explained that it was not connected, that we had to take a USB drive out and bring it to election headquarters at the end of voting, and that the original ballots would be available for checking. She continued on, saying that she knew that votes had been changed by machines in other states, though not in Missouri. The Republican judge working with me looked at me with her eyes open wide in shock, and also added a few reassuring words to the voter, but after the voter left, she commented, “Oh my goodness, some people….” She did not have to finish the sentence.

I was surprised by the number of people who complained that we did not offer computer voting (that is, voting on a touch screen). Sometimes, if I was not busy, I explained that this system was more secure, because each voter marked the paper ballot which remained as a record, and a machine scanned and counted the ballots, whereas the other system was viewed as less secure because you voted on a machine which created a paper record that you could not see. About five voters complained that we were going backwards, that this was not modern, and at least two of them were registering for Republican ballots, which surprised me since I would have thought Republicans would be in favor of more ballot security. The most vociferous complainer was a man with a police shield hanging on a chain around his neck, and a gun (looked like a Glock, but I don’t really know guns) in his holster on his right side. He was not in uniform; in fact, he was wearing an irreverent T-shirt that read “Breaking News: I Don’t Care” which I found a bit disconcerting on a police officer with a gun. Guns are not allowed in the polling area, but my Democratic manager claimed officers wearing a badge were allowed to carry a gun at all times and everywhere. He said that in any case, he does not argue with police. I told him I was not arguing with the police, but that was why I raised it with him.

Very few people tried to vote with anything but a driver’s license. I saw one woman vote with a Wisconsin driver’s license; I don’t really understand why that is legal, since to get a Wisconsin license, you need to be a Wisconsin resident, but to vote in Missouri you need to be a resident of Missouri. That issue is above my pay grade. Nobody tried to vote with a bank or utility statement, which is still allowed. I saw two people vote with a paper “Board of Elections ID” which did not have a photo on it; we had to tell them that in the November election, they would not be allowed to use that as a form of ID. Both of them knew that already, suggesting they were choosing not to use their driver’s licenses, for whatever reason. The state legislature has made voting “safer” according to Republicans, or “more difficult” according to Democrats, by requiring a photo ID.

One woman very apologetically said she was going to cause us trouble, and pulled out a “safe voter” ID. She said she did not know how it would work since this was the first time she tried to vote with it. This is for voters who need to hide their residence from stalkers or estranged partners. I had actually just learned how to handle this type of voter by reviewing the training video the day before, and it was no problem. The video said that there were less than 100 such IDs in St Louis County, but that it was good to know about it just in case. That turned out to be true. I was glad to be able to tell—and show—this voter that it was not a problem.

One of the more disappointing cases was of an elegant African-American woman, perhaps 25-30 years of age, first said she wanted a Democratic ballot, which we printed for her. Most minorities picked the Democratic ballot (except the Vietnamese, who all chose Republican), so thus far, she fit a stereotype. But then before she had even left our desk, said, “Wait, I want to vote for Vicky, because she is the only candidate I know, but I don’t know what party she is in.” She also did not know Vicky’s full name. We established that she meant a senate candidate, and so it must have been Vicky Hartzler. So we spoiled the Democratic ballot, and printed a Republican ballot for her. She brought to mind the criticisms of people like Walter Lippman that most people are not smart enough to know how to vote. I wonder what made her want to vote for “Vicky,” and how well informed she was of Vicky’s extremely conservative views, given that she did not even know what party she belonged to. Ignorant voters like this make decisions based on media images rather than policies, and can tip election results in our closely balanced and very polarized electorate.

Voters are also not allowed to wear clothes or hats that promote a candidate or party. At one point, while we were putting up a sign on our door and could see outside, we saw a man approaching with a t-shirt that said “Trump Lost” in large bold letters. We had a quick discussion and decided that since Trump was not on the ballot, that shirt was not a form of prohibited electioneering.

Voters have to sign on an electronic screen with a soft tip on a pen, and use the other end of the pen—a black ball-point—to mark the ballot. Nearly everyone finds this confusing. They use the wrong end to try to sign, and then they can’t figure out that you need to twist the pen to get the ball-point to come out. And nearly everyone feels foolish for being confused. It is a classic example of something that is easy once you know it, but can fluster you the first time. Fortunately, all of us judges were patient with the voters; I suppose we’ve also been there, done that. Nearly everyone leaves the process embarrassed.

The county results for both parties mirrored results across the state. No major surprises. The beer heiress Trudy Busch Valentine won the Democratic nomination for senator, despite not debating her main opponent or taking any press interviews. St Louis Public Radio made the Democratic primary look like a three-way race between Valentine, Kunce and Toder, but Spencer Toder did not raise much money and ended up getting less than 5% of the vote. It is clear that the Democratic Party establishment mostly was alarmed by Lucas Kunce’s populism and thus got behind Valentine, even though many commentators noted that only someone like Kunce has a chance in Missouri. Now, no one thinks the Missouri senate seat is in play.

In the Republican Senate primary, the establishment also worried that Eric Greitens (who is always described as “the disgraced governor”) would win the primary but be unable to win what should be a safe Republican seat. A PAC was formed to attack him, and polling showed that within one week of the PAC starting to show TV ads highlighting his ex-wife’s claims of physical and mental abuse, his numbers tanked. Eric Schmitt, who filed aquixotic suit against China for causing COVID (in case you were wondering, it did not work), and sued school districts who tried require students to wear masks, was able to get a plurality of votes in a crowded field. People who knew him 10 years ago say he is a good man, but to win the Republican nomination he has had to veer far to the right, as can be seen from his victory statement, where he still harps on fighting socialism and "Critical Race Theory." One of the more dispiriting criticisms against him is that he tried to create a logistics hub at the St Louis airport for trade with China--that is being portrayed as somehow being pro-China and disloyal. 

Screenshot from KMOV news broadcast

The only odd result on the Republican side was the loss by veteran politician Shamed Dogan in the race for the nomination for St Louis County Executive. He was defeated 44%-56% by a candidate who did not raise any money or campaign, and who even Republican officials say they don’t know and have never met. This news report expresses the surprise and mystery over her victory, and notes that her blog indicates she believes there are microchips in vaccines, and believes QAnon and global conspiracy theories. The obvious reason for the surprise result is race: Dogan is Black, and Pinner is White. Amazingly, KMOV and other news reports fail to note this—maybe they don’t have to; everyone already knows.

The best news from Missouri is that there are efforts to change the primary system from a party primary to non-partisan primary, as has been introduced in California and Washington state. That would make it less necessary for candidates in each party to appeal to their vocal and most committed fringe. In heavily Democratic areas like St Louis, the primary effectively decides the winner. A non-partisan primary would take the two most popular candidates of any party, and have them run against each other in the general election. It would make both the primaries and the general elections more interesting, more fair, and more representative of public opinion. In Election Judge training, they told us not to ask voters which ballot they want, but to turn the poll pad around so they can see the choice of parties, and they mark the poll pad with the stylus. They recommended doing this because many people don't like to have to announce what party they belong to. That suggests that a non-partisan primary would be popular with the public. 

Covid and Anti-vaxxers

A friend of mine who is a doctor lamented the fact that the Covid vaccine, which was developed in under one year and that works with astonishing 95% efficacy and thus should be viewed as one of the crowning achievements of scientific medicine, has become mired in political controversy. He wondered if it had to be this way. Could different leadership have led more people to accept the vaccine? 

Ezra Klein, in one of his recent podcasts, also asks what would have happened in the counterfactual world where Mitt Romney was approaching the end of his second term as president (having defeated Obama in 2012) when Covid-19 broke out: if he had promoted masks and vaccines, would opposition to the vaccine and to masks have still appeared?

 Tara Haelle, a science journalist who covers the anti-vaccine movement, has an opinion piece in the NY Times that I think clearly shows that Romney would not have been able to prevent the anti-vaxxers.

She shows that anti-vaxxers have been organizing since the early 2010s, and that they had adopted the strategy of arguing for their misinformed opinion with the argument of “freedom” since at least 2015. In that year, California pass a bill to eliminate nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine requirements, in response to the growing number of children not vaccinated and the resulting outbreaks of measles. Republican Texas state representative Jason Villalba proposed a similar bill, but his proposal led to an uproar and the bill was never taken up for a vote. Just for proposing such a bill, Villalba was primaried from the right and lost the primary. Even though his primary challenger went on to lose the general election, it became clear to Republicans that supporting vaccines was politically dangerous. After reading Haelle’s article, I suspect that Romney lost in part because he was not able to motivate the anti-science anti-vaxxers. (As an aside, people seem to forget that the election was actually fairly close; Romney is now widely viewed as a “loser” and people have all sorts of reasons for why he lost. Someone just told me yesterday that he lost because he did not campaign hard enough. Oof!)

 Still, looking at other countries’ reactions to Covid, one can’t help but feel that with different leadership, the current disaster in the US did not have to be like this. Further evidence that leadership is important comes from how Republicans have flipped on vaccine mandates in Missouri in just a few years. In mid-August, our local newspaper reported that Missouri’s legislature in 2014 unanimously passed a bill requiring all college students who live on campus to be vaccinated for meningitis. Meningitis is not that common; its incidence peaked at 1.5 per 100,000 in 1981, and in part thanks to vaccines, has declined to 0.11 per 100,000 in 2017. But it is a serious illness; the CDC says “About 10 to 15 in 100 people infected with meningococcal disease will die. Up to 1 in 5 survivors will have long-term disabilities,” including brain damage.

 It's astonishing that in just 6 or 7 years, Republicans in Missouri have gone from pro-vaccine to anti-vaccine, from agreeing to a vaccine requirement to arguing that vaccines mandates are an attack on civil liberties. 

Missouri’s current Republican governor, Mike Parson, in 2014 was a state senator, and he voted for the meningitis vaccine requirement. Now is against requiring a Covid vaccine, saying “The Government doesn't have a place to play in mandates of the vaccine.” (The ACLU has argued, correctly in my opinion, that vaccine mandates or requirements are not a violation of civil rights but actually protect everyone's civil rights. You can see a clear Opinion piece on this here.)

 Eric Schmitt, Missouri’s current Republican Attorney General, was then a state senator and voted for the vaccine mandate. Now he’s against masks and vaccine mandates, calling them part of the “dystopian biomedical securitystate.”  (See video here.) It is not irrelevant that Schmitt is campaigning for the Republican nomination to run for the open senate seat next year.

 Most surprising, some Missouri Republicans even want to passa law making it illegal for businesses to require their employees to getvaccinated for Covid-19.  Usually Republicans are against regulating businesses; now, over the issue of Covid, they are reversing their usual stance. This is especially surprising in Missouri, which is an “at will” employee state, meaning that unless an employee has a contract, they can be fired for any reason (the only exceptions are termination based on “race, religion, national origin, sex, ancestry, age, or disability.”) 

It is astonishing that we are in such a polarized country that even viral infections and deaths do not change the minds of people who insist on individual “freedom.” Alabama and Mississippi have run out of ICU beds, repeating the tragedy we saw early in the pandemic in Italy and New York City. But this time it was entirely preventable. Yet people persist in their arguments that vaccine mandates are oppression.

As one doctor on the radio commented, the truly sad aspect of this current phase of the pandemic is not only how unnecessary all this suffering is, but also how we in the general public have become used to these high numbers of deaths. 

AHARON SARELI: ... one of the challenges of this last delta wave compared to the last summer, when we were hit by a massive surge as well, is that last summer everyone seemed to be in the battle against COVID together. It's almost like the world was holding its breath.

And I think one of the challenges with this surge is that if you're in the hospital, if you're a physician, if you're a health care giver or if you're a patient that is seriously ill or dying from COVID, you're in it and you're faced by what we've been talking about. But for the rest of the community, if you step outside of even Florida hospitals, life goes on. People are driving around. People are in the streets. People are going on about their lives. And I think that we've almost become numb as a community to what COVID is doing to those patients that chose not to become vaccinated and are now paying the price. 

The Biden-Harris Inauguration: "And the Flag Was Still There"

I have never paid much attention to presidential inaugurations before. In fact, I remember more than one person in rural Taiwan in January 1985 asking me if I was going back to the US for Reagan's 2nd inauguration, and I thought it was the most ridiculous question I'd ever been asked. First of all, I never even watched the news coverage of past inaugurations; it seemed like meaningless pomp. Secondly, I was not some sort of VIP who could actually attend the inauguration. 

But after four years of norm-breaking and two months of lies about the election being "stolen," and then most importantly, after the mob insurrection at the capitol building, I found myself unable to concentrate on anything but the transition, and ended up watching at least five hours of TV coverage of the inauguration.

Mostly I just felt relief that what to me has been a nightmare of stoked divisions, pettiness and hate is over. I was surprised that I also found several moments moving. I don't believe in rah-rah jingoism, but had to smile when Lady Gaga pointed to the flag over the capitol building when she sang the part of the national anthem that goes, "And the flag was still there" (CNN missed the moment, but you can see her turn around and point to the flag in the video here; start at about the 2:00 point). 

And I was moved by the young poet Amanda Gorman (video here), which is surprising because I don't normally care much for poetry. But the way she spoke, and the way she moved her hands, as well as the words she chose, spoke for many. 

In part, she said:

We've seen a force that would shatter our nation
rather than share it.
Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy.
And this effort very nearly succeeded.
But while democracy can be periodically delayed,
it can never be permanently defeated.
In this truth,
in this faith we trust.
For while we have our eyes on the future,
history has its eyes on us.

Biden's inauguration speech also focused on how democracy has survived but takes constant effort. Here is what he said, along with the annotation from the Washington Post:

We’ve learned again that democracy is precious. Democracy is fragile. At this hour, my friends, democracy has prevailed¹.

¹ Throughout the speech, Biden intersperses the idea that democracy and our system of government have triumphed over threats, while acknowledging that victory isn't final. — Aaron Blake 

By 9:24 pm when I took this screenshot of my phone, the New York Times expressed many Americans' sense of relief that we had survived Trump with democracy intact. The Russian commentators who gleefully said the US was falling apart and that American democracy was a sham were shown to be wrong (at least for now).

The January 6th insurrection has changed a lot. A number of commentators on TV said that Americans took their institutions for granted, but seeing them at risk, and seeing how vulnerable institutions are to violence and "the big lie," has made people realize that democratic institutions need to be fostered and constantly rebuilt, and cannot be taken for granted. 

I have to admit that I always took for granted the peaceful transfer of power, and did not fully understand until this year how important and significant it is (though I remember my father saying so). Even when Al Gore conceded in 2000, I saw it as necessary once his legal remedies had been exhausted. I tended to see it more as Gore accepting the inevitable, rather than sacrificing for the good of the country, even though the sacrifice narrative was widely used in the press. 

We studied "The big lie" of the Nazis in school, but I thought that applied to other times and other places; I never would have imagined that it would apply to the United States today. Gore could have continued to contest the election; he had justifiable complaints that the Brooks Brothers Riot by Bush supporters, the bias of Republican Secretary of State Kathleen Harris, and the partisan 5-4 Supreme Court ruling that stopped the recount had essentially stolen the election, an election in which he had a majority of votes and only lost the Electoral College vote because of Florida's messy and disputed 537 margin of votes. But Trump created (with the help of Fox News) "the big lie" that he had actually won the election in a landslide and that it was stolen from him, simply by saying it over and over, and attacking anyone in his party who disagreed and dared to admit the truth. And as of mid-January, a CNN poll found three quarters of Republicans still did not believe Biden won the election legitimately.

The "bully pulpit" describes the power that a president's words have. Yet, sometimes presidents are able to use it, while other times they are not. Reading Obama's recent book, I'm struck at how often he was not able to convince people that what he viewed as thoughtful and balanced policies were reasonable, and yet Trump, by repeating "the big lie" that there was fraud in the election (indeed, he started saying this even before the 2016 election), managed to have most Republicans believe it. That this was possible in an open society with a free press, and over 200 years of institutionalized democracy, still surprises and worries me. 

Basically, this shows the plasticity of culture; people often think of culture as fixed, as rails along which the train of society moves, but it is actually more changeable that that. A democratic culture needs to be constantly reproduced. This means that everyone has a responsibility to support and renew democratic institutions if they are to last. Yes, for now, the flag is still there. But everyone needs to re-focus their attention on core democratic values. A recent study showed that only 3.5% of respondents would change their vote if their preferred ideal candidate did something blatantly undemocratic. That has to change; voters have to care more about the democratic process itself. And if they do, the polarization of society will also decrease. Hopefully the members of the evenly divided Senate will be forced to re-learn the art of compromise, and the dysfunctional polarization can be reduced. 

This is in everyone's favor, since Democrats may control all three branches of government for now, but they won't forever. In fact, if tradition holds, they will lose seats, and control of congress, in the mid-term 2022 elections. And hopefully the flag will still be there.

The Cynical Opportunism of Josh Hawley

Sometimes politicians take positions just to advance their career and gain more power, even if it goes against their moral conviction or their constituents’ desires. Dramatic examples are Boris Yeltsin, who championed “Russia” when he was president of the Russian Soviet Republic and thereby undermined Gorbachev's power and led to the dissolution of the USSR, and Boris Johnson, who was widely accused of taking the “leave” position on Brexit because it was the only apparent way he could become prime minister. They seem to view this as their shot at power, and decide to seize it.

Hawley signals to protesters on the way to the Capitol Wednesday

Josh Hawley, who is the junior senator of my current state of Missouri, took a similar shot, but it has failed spectacularly. It has long been clear that he was not going to settle for being a senator. He was going to be running for president. While there is nothing wrong with ambition, Hawley stands out for his cynical dishonesty. Even before the Capitol insurrection, commentators were noting that his gambit of challenging the certification of electors was rash and dangerous, and that he certainly knows better, having gone to Stanford and Yale Law School and clerked for Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.

When he ran for senator against the Democratic incumbent Claire McCaskill in 2018, he was accused of opportunism (see this NY Times article, which includes the ad he had run two years earlier accusing politicians of climbing ladders, which people were saying now applied to him). As a candidate, he claimed that he was in favor of forcing insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions (a policy that had been part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), AKA “Obamacare”), but at the same time, as attorney general of Missouri, he joined a Texas lawsuit that would have eliminated the ACA. He had joined the suit to prove his Republican credentials, and yet claimed that because his eldest son had a rare degenerative bone disease (a pre-existing condition), he would not risk coverage on pre-existing conditions (see ad in the article). Yet that is exactly what his lawsuit was doing. He was widely criticized for that at the time (see article that refers to his ad as "a national joke"), but in the polarized environment of 2018 Missouri, he still handily defeated McCaskill, and became the youngest member of the senate (then at 39 years of age) after only 2 years as attorney general.

In the argument over certification of votes, Hawley saw a chance to stand out from the pack. He was the first senator to announce that he would challenge the results. He did this even though McConnel had strongly urged his fellow-senators not to join in the objections of representatives. If no senator had joined, the objections would not be debated.

It is worth remembering that back on Nov. 10, a GOP official was quoted as saying of Trump’s claims that the election had been stolen, “What’s the downside for humoring him?” At the time, many assumed that the truth would ultimately come out and Biden would take office. But as Trump persisted with his lies about election fraud, and his followers overwhelmingly believed him despite no evidence being presented and over 60 court challenges being turned away, the cost to the nation became clear. Hawley’s challenge was therefore much more serious than merely a procedural or legal issue, even though it was clear it would fail, because it fed into the Trump argument that the election was unfair and stolen. And as many commentators noted, he surely knew better, which made his position even more cynical. Furthermore, he was putting other Republicans in the awkward position of having to choose between certifying the election (a mainly ceremonial task that is legally required) or joining in Trump’s fantasy.

Many representatives voted for the challenges because they fear being primaried from the right. Josh Hawley does not have that excuse. He did this to stand out, to try to inherit the Trump vote.

Hawley did not actually say that there had been fraud or cheating in the polls. He said he was objecting to the Pennsylvania legislature allowing mail-in ballots, saying that would require a constitutional amendment. Setting aside the fact that the legislature was Republican-controlled and that the US Supreme Court had already ruled and disagreed with his argument, he was being very clever: he did not join Trump in saying the election was stolen, but he left the impression that he agreed with Trump. He could claim that he was making a point of law, while most Trump supporters (voters he was courting for his run for president) would interpret it as saying the election was stolen and see him as loyal to the president.

He also was clever in saying that he was doing this on behalf of constituents who had concerns about election fairness. He argued that further investigation would reassure the public. In fact, as the Trump mob marched from the Trump rally to the Capital, Hawley’s office sent out a fundraising appeal that said, “But this is not about me! It is about the people I serve, and it is about ensuring confidence in our elections....That’s why I am standing up on behalf of the people I serve to relay their concerns to Washington. For conviction. For principle. For our country. For YOUR VOTE.”

This argument is specious, however, because he himself did nothing to correct his constituents’ false impression that the election had been unfair. As Romney said, the solution was to tell the truth. Instead, Hawley tried to take advantage of the situation to get more visibility and publicity, and to get the Trump vote when he ran for president.

Instead, he’s being pilloried. The AP has now run a story headlined “‘Great damage’: Republicans recoil from Missouri Sen. Hawley.” Former three term MO Senator John Danforth, his mentor and someone who had promoted his career, has been quoted in multiple sources as saying that supporting Josh Hawley’s career was the biggest mistake of his life.

As an aside, John Danforth is a senator from a different era. Already in 2000, he was not willing to join Bush’s legal team in fighting to win Florida, arguing that it was unseemly and unlikely to succeed. And on Nov. 18, he wrote in an op-ed in the St Louis Post-Dispatch that Trump’s attempts to delegitimize Biden’s victory was not conservative but radical. And just on Jan. 4^th, he wrote an op-ed in the NY Times along with three other former senators calling for a return to civility and bipartisanship in the senate. Hawley's behavior was the exact opposite.

Even after the occupation of the Capitol building, Hawley persisted in making his case; his only concession was to decline to make a speech in favor of the motion to decertify the Pennsylvania electors, since he had already spoken in support of the Arizona motion. 

The repercussions keep coming. Simon & Schuster has cancelled the contract for the publication of his book criticizing big tech. Predictably, he makes himself the victim and claims it is a violation of his First Amendment rights. Though I’m not a lawyer and he is, he should know that the First Amendment prevents government censorship; it does not require publishers to publish anything. One of his biggest Missouri donors, David Humphreys, disowned him and called him a “political opportunist,” and has been quoted as saying “Hawley’s irresponsible, inflammatory, and dangerous tactics have incited violence and further discord across America.”  He is being shunned.

In addition to the occupation, one more thing changed that undermined Hawley’s calculation. With the loss of both run-off senate races in Georgia, it became clear that Trump was not helping Republicans get elected. People started to blame Trump for the Georgia defeats and distancing themselves from him, and the insurrection in the Capitol added to the sense that Trump is a spent force. Hawley missed his cue and continued holding on to Trump.

David Von Drehle, in what now looks like a prescient commentary published Jan. 5^th, notes that Hawley’s elite background makes him an unlikely successor to Trump, and that Trump voters are not likely to follow him anyway, though they may enjoy the show he creates as a highly educated elite trying to sidle up to Trump. Trump himself used and spit out all those who tried to use him to advance their careers, from Jeff Sessions to all the other presidential primary candidates who hoped to inherit Trump’s followers and thus held their tongue only to be mocked as “Lyi’n Ted Cruz” and “Li’l Marco Rubio.”

It is not clear what the future is for Josh Hawley. His career certainly seems in tatters now. It is not likely he will have to resign, and I doubt a Republican could win a primary against him in four years when he is up for re-election, but certainly his plans to run for president in 2024 are over. But it is still a bit sad to see someone take their shot and fail so spectacularly. Except that his shot was so cynical and undemocratic that the result is probably what he deserved.

Are Paved Roads "Unnecessary Government Spending"? What is Government in a Democracy?

Yesterday we went out into the countryside to visit a friend who lives on a farm. It was a beautiful sunny day, and the leaves are just starting to turn colors. On the drive back home, we saw a Jeep Wrangler (a large 4 by 4) with a spare wheel cover like on the right. It says, "PAVED ROADS: Another Fine Example of Unnecessary Government Spending."

This struck me as peculiarly American. Of course, I understand that this is partly in jest; the website where this spare wheel cover is sold sells other humorous tire covers (see below) and notes that with this cover you can "and enjoy the stares when the guys behind you read it." (I'm actually not sure how you're supposed to see the faces of people behind you without crashing into the people in front of you, but that's another issue.)

The website where this is sold is called Extreme Terrain Off-Road Outfitters, and they have a smaller sticker for $5, about which they say: "Does your rig rarely see the road? Happier on the trail? Government annoy you? (You're not alone!) Get a few grins with this decal."  So they think it is funny. But at the same time, it is not. It is serious political propaganda.

The notion that the government is an oppressor is not new in the US, and it goes back to the 1776 Revolution, as exemplified by the famous Gadsden Flag with the coiled snake and the words "Don't Tread On Me" and the anti-tax Whiskey Rebellion of 1794. Anthropologists also view states as fundamentally oppressive and exploitative institutions. Most people view the rise of states as the beginning of "civilization," but in fact, they are just created when a minority (a priesthood, an oligopoly, a nobility, elites, etc.) take control, organize armies and food deliveries, and maintain their superior power, usually through some sort of force (think military, or police, or praetorian guard). Since the first state, leaders have controlled the state to their own advantage. They may claim they need to do so to organize production or for defense, but the fact is the leaders of states have benefited at the expense of the majority of people (the peons).

But it seems a bit Luddite to believe that we can live, in our current world, "independently," "free" of any government constraint. That Jeep Wrangler was, after all, driving on I-64, a 6-lane interstate paid for by the federal and state governments. We would not be able to travel 30 miles to have lunch with friends if we did not have paved roads--which are paid for by the government!

The genius of American politics in the past was the combination of a belief in small government, to avoid bureaucracy and high taxes, along with the belief that science and technical progress supported by the government could solve human and social problems. From the battles between the two approaches, or rather, compromises between the two, progress could be made. But in the past few decades, a Libertarian ethos has arisen that holds that all government programs are evil: they waste money, undermine people's freedom, and don't work to boot. The fact is, this is sometimes true, but not always. The trick is to know when to use government programs, and when they do not work. The assumption that all government programs are bad is an ideological position promoted by a few super-wealthy Americans like the Kochs and Mercers, and it has grown in influence over recent decades.

Now the US electorate is again debating healthcare: progressive Democrats are proposing "Medicare for All." How this will be funded is not clear, and this is making many centrist voters nervous, especially those who have good health insurance and who worry that it will be taken away and that they will be forced to go into a bureaucratic government-funded health system. And yet, it is incredible that there are still millions of Americans who have no health insurance.

Two days ago, I went to a "Gala" (a fundraiser) for a local charity called "Gateway to Hope." They support low-income women who have cancer by helping them maintain their insurance payments, or helping them pay their mortgage and food bills, so they can concentrate on their treatment. Fact: 36% of women with breast cancer cannot work. If they lose their job, they can lose their insurance! It is shocking that people who get cancer risk losing their job and their house, or that they have to scrimp on food while they are trying to recover from chemotherapy. So it is shocking that such a charity is actually necessary, in one of the richest countries in the world. Why does this charity have to solicit from private donors? Everyone should be contributing, through their taxes, to spread the burden evenly. One would think that everyone would receive this kind of support as a matter of course, but that is not the case.

Hong Kong has also long been governed by the principle of limited government, but Hong Kong has a good public health care system that is very inexpensive to the patient. It is true that there are long waits for some specialties (especially for psychiatric care--suicidal patients have to wait many months to see a psychiatrist), but patients with money can pay out of pocket or buy insurance to get private treatment. Emergency treatment is available to all; the registration fee is HK$100 (US$13). Hong Kong also has many NGOs providing social services, but their funding does not totally come from private sources; many receive all or nearly all their funds from the government. The government audits them and makes sure the money is well spent, but the services are provided in a less bureaucratic form by NGOs. Even many private schools in Hong Kong get significant portions of their funds from the government.

I find that when people in Taiwan, China and even Hong Kong find that there is something wrong in society, they expect the government to step in and address the problem. That is not true for many Americans; Reagan famously said that the nine most terrifying words are "I'm from the government and I'm here to help." The odd thing is that in a democracy, "the government" should be "we, the people." It is a sign of how much more democratization we need in America that people still see the government as an oppressor, even though they supposedly elect it every election.

So a wheel cover claiming that public roads are a waste of taxpayers' money is not funny. I wish it was, that we could agree that it was absurd. But as long as extreme individualist libertarians proclaim their notions of very limited government, it is not a joke but an example of an anti-social and selfish ideology.

Racism and individualism

I heard a very interesting NPR Fresh Air interview withRichard Rothstein yesterday on the podcast while doing errands (transcript here). He has just published a book that shows how US federal government policies during the New Deal (1933-1941) had systematically discriminated against Blacks. He noted, for example, that the term “redlining” referred to government maps that had neighborhoods marked with a red line where government loans were not allowed because residents of those neighborhoods were Black. I thought I had heard him on Fresh Air before, so I googled his name. Sure enough, I found that he was a guest on Fresh Air almost two years ago.

In my google search, I stumbled across a right wing blog by Jack Coleman of the Media Research Center’s “News Busters” (which claims to expose "liberal bias") that has a severely distorted take on Rothstein’s argument, and it—and especially the comments section—show serious lack of understanding of social forces.

First the distortions. Coleman begins by implying that though FDR is an iconic leader for liberals, his record with the New Deal is problematic. He then includes a transcript of sections of the Fresh Air interview, with key parts in bold, to highlight the facts raised by Rothstein. These facts (accurately reported) include:

• The Public Works Administration of the New Deal had explicit segregation policy, “So public housing policy created racial segregation where none existed before.”
• The Federal Housing Administration would not give loans to Blacks, so the suburbs that sprang up after WWII were all white.
• “Public housing became all-black in the inner city. And these two policies -- of public housing and Federal Housing Administration subsidization of suburbs -- are the two major factors that have created the segregation that we know today.”

 Coleman also highlights a part of the interview where Rothstein mentions that George Romney (Mitt’s father and former governor of Michigan) had tried, as Nixon’s Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, to only offer federal funds to communities that desegregated, but was blocked by the Nixon administration. He somehow thinks this exonerates Republicans from being charged with racism; seems to me it only exonerates Romney the Elder. Coleman also notes that unions prevented Blacks from joining, and that this discrimination was endorsed by the National Labor Relations Board, so was not merely a local action. Only after 1964 was this reversed. Again, this is supposed to indict all labor unions (American conservatives hate unions), but my take is that racism was deep-seated and made worse by state action, not that racism was somehow inherent in labor unions.

Rothstein’s point is made clear when he notes that for most Americans, homeownership is the main way that wealth was created and accumulated, and since subsidized home ownership was not possible for Blacks, it resulted in much lower levels of wealth for Blacks. While Blacks earn 60% as much as whites, they own only 5% as much wealth as whites. This provides Blacks with less of a buffer, which is why Blacks suffered more than whites from the Great Recession of 2008.

(As an aside, Rothstein repeats many of these points in his 2017 interview, including these 60% and 5% numbers. I checked the transcripts to see if the 2017 interview was not a repeat of the 2015 interview, but it is a new interview, albeit with some repetition. A good interviewee knows how to tell a story and focus on the core message, even if he/she is repeating himself. If I had been interviewed, I might have assumed listeners had heard me the first time, or would be annoyed by my repetition. As it happens, I only vaguely remembered the first interview, so he was right to repeat himself.)

Coleman’s take on all this is to imply that liberals have suppressed this information because it conveniently “perpetuates the myth that the Republicans are solely responsible for racism in this country.” This “myth” is, in fact, a surprise to me. A myth of a myth. While the Republicans are indeed the party of racism today, they were clearly the opposite from Lincoln through to Eisenhower. Coleman displays fake surprise that a Berkeley professor would do such research, and that such a story would end up on “liberal media.” This is rather disingenuous, since it is liberals in general who are concerned with questions of inequality (conservatives assume a free market would reduce inequality; they do not believe Picketty). Coleman likes the story only because he thinks it undermines the ideals and practices of the New Deal, which conservatives love to hate.

Implicit in Coleman’s critique is also the idea that if it had not been for “government interference,” there would not have been any discrimination. That is not how most liberals will take this story. They will see it as a case of how despite the liberal intentions of the FDR administration, Black interests were sacrificed because of racist notions at the time. Liberals will not see this story as undermining the New Deal. But conservatives are right that “good intentions” and government programs have the potential to cause great harm. Of course, not acting can also cause or perpetuate great harm.

The most up-voted comments to Coleman’s blog shows that right wing Americans are intensely individualistic. One comment is a resentful attack against “victimhood”, particularly of “blaming conservatives and Republicans, and whites in general.” Addressing Blacks, he/she says:

Stop blaming whites, stop blaming slavery, stop blaming Jim Crow and segragation [sic] and start taking an independent initiative to make a better life for yourself and your family. Continue to blame whites and don't be surprised to find your children and grandchildren still living in ghettos for generations to come.

 A comment to this comment says:

Until a spotlight is turned on black inner city culture...nothing will change. It's not about race...but it's always been about culture. Getting an education, being married, and bringing up your children to do the same is a large part of the answer. Why can't anyone say that in public today?

Because it is simplistic and wrong?

That writer falls back on the common “blame the victim” argument: Blacks are poor because of their individual behavior, because of their (implicitly) dysfunctional culture. Americans are intensely individualist and ahistorical. These commentators are not interested in how the past affects the present. Interestingly, they are not even following the logic of the blog (and the book), which is that federal government intervention made poverty worse for Blacks. These readers assume that by getting an education, being married, etc., one can single-handedly pull oneself up by the bootstraps, as the expression goes. The institutional factors like redlining that disadvantaged Blacks are completely ignored. While Rothstein is making institutional racism even more dramatically clear with his research, these commentators insist on individuals being Horatio Alger. They are saying, OK, racism happened, but get over it! Move on! If only it were so easy.

There are important individual choices that each person makes that affect their lifecourse. But any basic social science course (by which I mean sociology, anthropology, political science; not economics) will also teach us that we do not make these choices entirely freely. Interestingly, conservatives in Europe are more aware of the importance of institutions and historical forces in shaping our individual choices. American conservatives have perhaps studied too much economics, and reduce everything to the individual. We need better ways of integrating the structural forces of society with individual choices. This has, in fact, been one of the main issues in anthropology over the past 40 years. But there is little hope for the US politically if many people cannot see structural forces, and even misread research like Rothstein’s and think it only means individuals need to make better choices.

Democracy and the Press

Many people in democratic countries have this quaint notion in the back of our mind of how democracy works. Politicians give speeches and the press reports on them, and the voters decide whose policies they support and elect the best politician for the job.  How naive that view seems today.  The flow of money in US politics is not new, but the amounts today are staggering.  An article in New York Magazine by Joe Hagan (who was interviewed on Fresh Air on 31 Jan.) describes the effects of Super-Pacs and other "independent" money on the current presidential campaigns, and it is disturbing. Most interesting are how this fits with the decline in journalism: as new media decline, the few remaining journalists have no time for investigation and come to rely more and more on "information" from campaign operatives, who of course have their own agendas.

An Obama ally working for a super-PAC told me that NBC News’s Chuck Todd “doesn’t necessarily have time to sit there and Lexis-Nexis Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital personnel records. In some ways, reporters become traffic cops for information.”

“Research from campaigns has essentially replaced investigative reporting,” says Devorah Adler, a former research director for Obama’s 2008 campaign. “The free press is where people are going to get their information from, so that becomes your missile-delivery system.”

As we learn more and more how to influence (deceive? manipulate?) the public, the idea that democracy is based on the selection of an informed public becomes ever more tenuous.  The article does have some interesting observations on the limits of sleaze, noting that Bush senior had to be careful in running against Clinton in 1992 because his Willie Horton ad that helped him get elected in 1988 (against Dukakis) had become notorious for its half-truths, leaving Bush unable to run strong, negative ads against Clinton.  But the overall lesson of the article is how important negative advertizing is going to be in the coming election.

It makes me think of some Chinese I meet who are not convinced that "Western democracy" (as they call it) is really all it's cracked up to be.  They say their way of selecting leaders is more reliable, and delivers better, more talented leaders.  Problem is, of course, that they've only had one peaceful transfer of power so far, that from Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao.  This year, we're to have the second. It is not clear if this is really an institutionalized mechanism for choosing leaders. But how can we disagree with the woman how asked re Sarah Palin, "How is it possible that the US would nominate a woman like that to be Vice-President?!" And the role of money now seems to fit the old Marxist saw that it is all about money, and that the rich control everything. The "Citizens United" decision is increasingly looking like not just a bad legal decision, but like a decision that will seriously undermine the legitimacy of politics, politicians, and even the government in the US.