Im-Politic: On Racial Preferences, the Case for Just Keeping Quiet

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affirmative action, African American women, African Americans, Biden, discrimination, diversity, election 2020, equity, gender, identity politics, Im-Politic, quotas, race relations, racism, Supreme Court, women

It’s easy to understand why President Biden has decided not only to make his upcoming Supreme Court appointee the first African American woman nominated for this position, but to announce this decision in public. The African American South Carolina political leader whose support he desperately needed to keep alive his badly floundering 2020 Democatic presidential primary campaign “suggested” he do so. So Mr. Biden clearly had no choice politically speaking.

But the then-candidate’s promise, and his equally public move as President to keep that promise, raise questions about how identity politics considerations should influence these kinds of personnel decisions, and especially whether they can be handled in less controversial and even more unifying ways.

My answers: At least when it comes to big population/identity groups that are significantly under-represented in U.S. institutions of government, I see strong reasons to make sure that they become better represented, but also for the appointers simply to keep quiet about checking off race and ethnicity and gender and similar boxes.

Regarding the “affirmative action” issues involved here, as I’ve mentioned here, I’m generally supportive of (the wide variety of) such programs for African Americans. But for other major ethnic groups, who simply haven’t suffered comparable official and unofficial racism and discrimination for anywhere near as long, I regard the case as significantly weaker (though not entirely invalid for every single group).

For the purposes of this post, I’m not thinking of all the legitimate legal and historical complications involved. And race isn’t the only group of categories that need to be considered. Certainly women have been greatly under-represented in these positions for the entirety of American history (though they’ve certainly achieved great catch-up in politics and in lucrative, powerful professions like medicine and law).

Instead, I’m thinking this way: In 2021, would it really be acceptable if all Supreme Court Justices or the leadership of other government agencies or U.S. Senators or members of the House of Representatives were white men, even if they were all superbly qualified? It’s hard to imagine that any fair-minded person would be happy about that situation. It’s equally hard to imagine that such a person could have real confidence that bullet-proof considerations of merit (as opposed to reliance on credentialism, which is often very different) were 100 percent responsible for this kind of racial and gender monopoly. And there’s abundant evidence (as presented in the RealityChek post linked above) that the wide range of preferences created at the federal and state levels of government, and in academe and private business, deserve much credit for that racial monopoly fading to the impressive extent that it has.

So if it’s legitimate to want these important positions to be at least somewhat representative of the population at large in terms of major demographic groups, there shouldn’t be anything intrinsically wrong for an appointer to decide to give a preference to under-represented groups, especially as long as he or she makes clear (as Mr. Biden has), when he promised to name someone “with extraordinary qualifications, character, experience, and integrity….”

But that’s where the President ideally would have stopped, and simply proceeded to identify those (in this case) African American women (of whom of course there is no shortage) who fit this description. Naturally, because he made the pledge during the campaign, the President had to repeat it. But it’s also where all future appointers should stop – with the possible exception of declaring an intent to make “an historic choice.”

Because stopping short of specifying the identity traits being sought would prevent any fair-minded person from reasonably and convincingly accusing an appointer of prioritizing race over merit. For challengers would be put in a position of insisting that, say, Leondra Kruger – and her service on the Supreme Court of the country’s largest state, and seven years as in senior U.S. Justice Department positions, and topflight education and judicial clerkships – lacks any qualifications to serve on the highest court in the land. In fact, these challengers would be put in the position of arguing that she’s less qualified than virtually everyone else who has sat on the Supreme Court of the United States, and especially all its white male members.

Clearly, some would still maintain that this kind of resume simply proves adroit use of racial preferences to rise through the nation’s legal ranks literally for decades, and that a (really) wide variety of individuals and institutions enabled her literally for decades. Let’s just say that I’m grateful that I don’t have to make that argument.

By having made and then repeating his African American women promise, however, the President has inevitably directed the spotlight toward race and given “reverse racism” ammunition to those looking for excuses to curb the place and role of minorities in American life – and who rarely expressed much concern about discrimination when the racial shoe was on the other foot. It also seems credible to me that, as some believe, Mr. Biden’s has unwittingly undermined public confidence in this and all of his future non-white male nominees.

But for politicians who don’t paint themselves into identity politics corners as Mr. Biden did, and who want to foster more progress for major demographic groups in places where they have been denied adequate opportunity, the best course of action is clear: Choose highly qualified members of these groups (as with African American women, they won’t be hard to find) and let their qualifications speak for themselves. And if asked whether identity affected the decision, they could reply something to the effect that “It’s great that past mindfulness to identity issues has done so much to bring such an unquestionably able and qualified individual to the fore.”

Now does this mean that firm quotas and targets should be set for appointing or hiring members of these groups? No – because nowadays, and especially for job and position categories that are relatively small (like “Supreme Court Justice”) such policies would deny appointers and hirers the flexibility and the consequent opportunity to exercise judgment upon which so many – even most – good decisions depend. Nor am I saying that whatever formal preferences have existed should be kept in place indefinitely, regardless of progress. When conditions change, policy and practice should, too.

And as implied by my references to “major demographic groups,” preferences simply can’t be extended sweepingly to every single category to which Americans belong or with which they identify. The numbers of these small groups are simply too high to enable them all to be accommodated – and again, especially for positions themselves that are relatively few in number.

Worse, trying to run such a system would inevitably ignite a fierce and unforgivably absurd competition among groups laying claims. Unless we really want to sponsor debates and fights (is this a forerunner?) over Muslim seats on the Supreme Court or Hindu seats or Tibetan seats or Venezuelan seats or LGBTQ seats or atheist seats? (For the record, this American Jew never supported the notion that there should be a “Jewish seat.”) When any such groups become big chunks of the U.S. population, and can credibly point to current or only recently ended discrimination, taking their members as such into account should become a significant (background) element of the process of choosing leaders.  But not until then.

If the above thinking and recommendations sound kind of muddled and fuzzy, that’s because in a sense they are. As known with anyone with any management experience, and as suggested above, sound personnel decisions can’t simply rely on hard-and-fast systems or formulae. When evaluating human beings, too many intangibles and other subjective factors that can’t readily be quantified – if at all – need to be assessed, too,

The same goes for expectations of decision-makers and efforts to judge them with neat and clean scorecards. Supporters of further progress toward more representation in top government and other leaders should therefore realize that these matters should be governed by the “less said, the better” principle, and that rather than impose on politicians and others involved in high profile appointments and hirings rigid identity politics-based standards, they should focus on ensuring that these decision-making slots are occupied by figures with long, proven records of expanding opportunity, and trust them to do the right thing.

Just as important, the less commotion raised about race, ethnicity, gender, and the like in these appointment and hiring episodes, the more confidence fair-minded Americans will be that sound judgments about merit really are in the driver’s seat. And isn’t that what most of even the staunchest backers of greater identity equity, along with their compatriots in general, have ultimately sought from the beginning?        

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Im-Politic: Aftershocks

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abortion, African Americans, America First, CCP Virus, China, climate change, coronavirus, COVID 19, Democrats, election 2020, election 2022, election interference, establishment Republicans, Green New Deal, Hispanics, Hong Kong, House of Representatives, human rights, Im-Politic, Immigration, Joe Biden, mail-in ballots, mail-in voting, Mainstream Media, nationalism, polls, Populism, recession, redistricting, regulations, Republicans, Senate, social issues, state legislatures, tariffs, Trade, traditional values, Trump, Uighurs, women, Wuhan virus

I’m calling this post “aftershocks” because, like those geological events, it’s still not clear whether the kind of political upheaval Americans are likely to see in the near future are simply the death rattles of the initial quake or signs of worse to come.

All the same, at the time of this writing, assuming that the final results of Election 2020 will see Democratic nominee Joe Biden win the Presidency, the Republicans keep the Senate, and the Democrats retain control of the House, the following observations and predictions seem reasonable.

First, whatever the outcome, President Trump’s campaign performance and likely vote percentages were still remarkable. In the middle of a re-spreading pandemic, a deep CCP Virus-led economic slump that’s left unemployment at still punishing levels, and, as mentioned before, unremitting hostility from the very beginning on the part of most and possibly all powerful private sector institutions in this country as well as much of Washington’s permanent government, he gave his opponents a monumental scare. If not for the virus, the President could well have won in a near landslide. And will be made clear below, this isn’t just “moral victory” talk.

Second, at the same time, the kinds of needlessly self-inflicted wounds I’ve also discussed seem to have cost him many important advantages of incumbency by combining with pandemic effects to alienate many independents and moderate Republicans who backed him four years ago.

Third, the stronger-than-generally expected Trump showing means that, all else equal, the prospects for a nationalist populist presidential candidate in 2024 look bright. After all, how difficult is it going to be for the Republican Party (whence this candidate is most likely to come) to find a standard-bearer (or six) who champions the basics of the Trump synthesis – major curbs on trade and immigration, low taxes and regulations but more a more generous economic and social safety net, a genuine America First-type foreign policy emphasizing amassing of national power in all its dimensions but using it very cautiously, and a fundamentally commonsense view on social issues (e.g., recognizing the broad support of substantial abortion rights but strongly resisting identify politics) – without regular involvement in Twitter fights with the likes of Rosie O’Donnell?

Fourth, these prospects that what might be called Trump-ism will outlast Mr. Trump means that any hopes for the establishment wing to recapture the Republican Party are worse than dead. Ironically, an outsized nail-in-the-coffin could be produced by the gains the President appears to have made with African Americans and especially Hispanics. After Utah Senator Mitt Romney’s defeat at the hands of Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election, the Republican conventional wisdom seemed to be that the party needed to adopt markedly more tolerant positions on social issues like gay rights (less so on abortion), and on immigration to become competitive with major elements of the former President’s winning coalition – notably younger voters, women, and Hispanics. The main rationale was that these constituencies were becoming dominant in the U.S. population.

The establishment Republicans pushing this transformation got the raw demographics right – although the short run political impact of these changes was exaggerated, as the Trump victory in 2016 should have made clear. But it looks like they’ve gotten some of the political responses wrong, with immigration the outstanding example. However many Hispanic Americans overall may sympathize with more lenient stances toward newcomers, a notable percentage apparently valued Mr. Trump’s so-called traditional values and pro-business and pro free enterprise positions more highly.

If the current election returns hold, the results will put the GOP – and right-of-center politics in America as a whole – in a completely weird position. Because the party’s establishment wing still figures prominently in its Senate ranks, a wide, deep disconnect seems plausible between the only branch of the federal government still controlled by Republicans on the one hand, and the party’s Trumpist/populist base on the other – at least until the 2022 mid-term vote.

Fifth, as a result, predictions of divided government stemming from Election 2020’s results need some major qualifications. These establishment Senate Republicans could well have the numbers and the backbone to block a Biden administration’s ambitious plans on taxing and spending (including on climate change).

But will they continue supporting Trumpist/populist lines on trade and immigration? That’s much less certain, especially on the former front. Indeed, it’s all too easy to imagine many Senate Republicans acquiescing in the Democratic claims that, notably, the United States needs to “stand up to China,” but that the best strategy is to act in concert with allies – which, as I’ve explained repeatedly, is a recipe for paralysis and even backsliding, given how conflicted economically so many of these allies are. As suggested above, the reactions of the overwhelmingly Trumpist Republican base will be vital to follow.

One reason for optimism (from a populist standpoint) on China in particular – Senate Republican opposition to anything smacking of the Green New Deal should put the kibosh on any Biden/Democratic notions of granting China trade concessions in exchange for promises on climate change that would likely be completely phony. Similar (and similarly dubious) quid pro quos involving China’s repression of Hong Kong and its Uighur Muslim minority could well be off the table, too.

Sixth, their failure to flip the Senate, their apparently small losses in the House, and disappointments at the state level (where they seem likely to wind up remaining a minority party) means that the Democrats’ hoped for Blue Wave was a genuine mirage – and looks more doubtful in future national contests as well. For state governments are the ones that control the process of redrawing Congressional district lines in (very rough) accordance with the results of the latest national Census — like the one that’s winding up. So this is a huge lost opportunity for the Democrats, and a major source of relief for Republicans.

Meanwhile, on a symbolic but nonethless important level, the aforementioned better-than-anyone-had-a-right-to-expect Trump showing means that the desire of many Democrats, most progessives, and other establishmentarians to crush the President (and other Republicans), and therefore consign his brand of politics and policy to oblivion, have been sort of crushed themselves. So it’s an open question as to whether they’ll respond with even more vilification of the President and his supporters, or whether they’ll finally display some ability to learn and seriously address legitimate Trumper grievances.

Seventh, as for Trump Nation and its reaction to defeat, the (so far) closeness of the presidential vote is already aggravating the nation’s continued polarization for one particularly troubling reason: A Biden victory aided by the widespread use of mail-in voting inevitably will raise charges of tampering by Democratic state governments in places like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. Call it domestic election interference, and the allegations will be just as angry as those of foreign interference that dogged the previous presidential election. As a result, I hope that all Americans of good will agree that, once the pandemic passes, maximizing in-person voting at a polling place needs to return as the norm.

Finally, for now – those polls. What a near-complete botch! And the general consensus that Biden held a strong national lead throughout, and comparable edges in key battleground states may indeed have depressed some Republican turnout. Just as important – a nation that genuinely values accountability will demand convincing explanations from the polling outfits concerned, and ignore their products until their methodologies are totally overhauled. Ditto for a Mainstream Media that put so much stock in their data, in part because so many big news organizations had teamed up with so many pollsters. P.S. – if some of these companies are fired outright, and/or heads roll (including those of some political reporters), so much the better.

Im-Politic: Have Americans Got Family Policy All Wrong?

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David Brooks, education, extended family, families, globalization, Im-Politic, Immigration, nuclear family, social policy, The Atlantic, women

David Brooks has scored a four-bagger with his new Atlantic article on whether the recent American focus on maintaining and fortifying the nuclear family has been such a hot idea. He’s powerfully challenged the conventional wisdom about a long-time social and cultural institution and public policy goal. He’s taught readers fascinating and important lessons about American social history. He’s spotlighted a host of recent developments and trends on this crucial front. And (I guess this is just my own personal bag) in the process, he’s reminded me of what a clueless snob I can be in jumping to conclusions.

To continue momentarily on a personal note, I was staring in disbelief as I wrote most of the above, for Brooks, a New York Times columnist, has never struck me as much more than the kind of establishment conservative who long dominated the Republican Party and the right half of the mainstream media, and who’s spent the last three years bitterly inveighing against the rise of Trump-ian populism – without offering any useful suggestions as to what might replace it.

It’s true that Brooks had also made quite a name for himself as a social and cultural commentator, but I never paid much attention to these writings. If his new Atlantic article is any indication, that was a major mistake.

I’m not entirely sure I agree with Brooks’ main policy argument – that it’s no longer possible to restore the nuclear family’s primacy in American society, because that prominence only emerged because of overall national conditions in the post-World War II United States that simply can’t be replicated. In particular, I still strongly doubt that the developments that have weakened the nuclear family were inevitable, or were all inevitable, and are therefore irreversible.

I’m thinking of indiscriminate economic globalization and Open Borders-friendly mass immigration policies that have destroyed generations of middle class jobs and the incomes and economic opportunity they create; welfare policies that surely discouraged to some degree the maintenance, especially in the African-American community, of traditional two-parent families; the ever-mounting incompetence of the nation’s public primary and secondary schools; and a values transition that (thankfully) fostered greater social and cultural freedom and diversity, but that also unmistakably encouraged individualism, pointless exhibitionism, and the insistence on instant gratification to run riot, and all but scorned the idea of commonly accepted norms, self-restraint, and short-term sacrifice for long-term gain.

In other words, maybe the dominance of the nuclear family nurtured much of the economic progress and prosperity in particular that characterized the 1950s and 1960s, rather than the other way around.

But what I’m thinking mainly about today aren’t those big policy and (inevitably politicized) questions, but about some of the forms of extended families that Brooks mentioned prominently, and that I had completely forgotten about. Not that I’m the only one. But this blind spot recently led me in particular to ridicule someone and his outlook on life (not to his face, but to friends and relatives) who deserved much better.

It came at a wedding during which at one point, the father of the groom stood up to give his toast to the happy couple, and began waxing nostalgic (as parents at these moments understandably do) about the good old days of his son’s youth. He was anything but silver-tongued, but one point he made struck me at the time as especially absurd and revealingly parochial. Back then, he pointed out, so many of the aunts and uncles and cousins lived on the same block, and we saw each other all the time. But now, most of the family has spread out as far as – and he named a town a whole two towns, and only a few miles, away.

I found this hilariously small-minded, and missed few opportunities to bring up his remarks and what the volumes they allegedly and unflatteringly spoke about this kind of crimped perspective (which also characterized many attendees at the affair).

But as Brooks’ article pointed out, these types of extended families have been the norm for much of American history, and boasted and nurtured many virtues that sadly are in short supply today – like community and mutual support and the spread of constructive social and personal norms and values.

So as I was reading his piece, I began to think that yes, there’s a big difference between being able to spontaneously run into relatives just by stepping out the front door and seeing them on the front porch across the street, or at the supermarket, and needing to take a short drive two towns over in order to visit.

And I began thinking about the history of both sides of my own childhood nuclear family. My father’s father came to America from Lithuania and was aided almost as soon as he stepped off the boat not only by various Jewish-American charities, but by relatives that preceded him and by an organization comprised of other immigrants from the same town. He remained active in their affairs for the next five or six decades.

My mother’s parents lived in a small apartment building in the south-ish Bronx that was full of related families. I spent the first nine years of my own life in a small apartment building in Flushing, Queens (New York City) that was dominated by two or three closely-related families. They not only socialized constantly; they took summer vacations with each other at the same bungalow colony a little ways upstate.

So most of my playmates were each other’s cousins. Moreover, I also went to grade school with and hung out with a bunch of Irish-American kids from across the street who were related as well. Meanwhile, when we were very young, the various mothers took their turns walking us the six blocks to and from P.S. 20. And at about the same time, when my brother was born, we moved upstairs to a larger apartment in the same building and my mother’s mother moved into our old place. I.e., instant babysitter!

These networks, by the way, didn’t vanish even in the suburban north shore of Long Island to which my family moved in the early 1960s. Even though single family houses had replaced apartment buildings, lots of our neighbors in our community were very chummy, and have remained so. Ditto for their kids. (My father was kind of standoffish for various reasons, but the sheer number of chuldren for my brother and I to play with and the advantages of car-pooling kept us at least in the outer reaches of these circles.)

Nor, apparently, was this community unique. I was very moved about a year ago to read a Facebook post from an alum of my high school (who I didn’t know but have connected with since) to another alum (who I didn’t know either and haven’t connected with) fondly remembering the days when all the families on their block held cookouts and other backyard parties together and went on outings and looked after each other’s kids.

And according to Brooks, these patterns and structures were common during the 1950s and 1960s:

“[N]uclear families in this era were much more connected to other nuclear families than they are today—constituting a “modified extended family,” as the sociologist Eugene Litwak calls it, ‘a coalition of nuclear families in a state of mutual dependence.’ Even as late as the 1950s, before television and air-conditioning had fully caught on, people continued to live on one another’s front porches and were part of one another’s lives. Friends felt free to discipline one another’s children.”

Brooks isn’t indiscriminately nostalgic for extended families, and rightly notes major drawbacks:

“[T]hey can…be exhausting and stifling. They allow little privacy; you are forced to be in daily intimate contact with people you didn’t choose. There’s more stability but less mobility. Family bonds are thicker, but individual choice is diminished. You have less space to make your own way in life.”

And no small matter: “[M]ost women were relegated to the home. Many corporations, well into the mid-20th century, barred married women from employment: Companies would hire single women, but if those women got married, they would have to quit. Demeaning and disempowering treatment of women was rampant. Women spent enormous numbers of hours trapped inside the home under the headship of their husband, raising children.”

Further, these extended families do tend to encourage parochialism that can too easily degenerate into outright ignorance of, indifference to, and even hostility toward the outside world, or certain major portions of it.

Is some kind of middle ground possible? Brooks insists that that train has left the station:

“Today, only a minority of American households are traditional two-parent nuclear families and only one-third of American individuals live in this kind of family. That 1950–65 window was not normal.”

Again, I’m skeptical about abject pessimism – just as I am about Brooks’ (cautious) optimism about the possibility of building a healthy society with many more non-nuclear families and many fewer nuclear families than even exist today. More important for now, though, is recognizing Brooks’ stunning achievement – which will force any but the completely closed-minded to start thinking.

Im-Politic: The Biggest Media Clinton Cover-Up?

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2016 election, Bill Clinton, chattering class, democracy, Donald Trump, Establishment Media, Gennifer Flowers, George Stephanopoulos, Hillary Clinton, Im-Politic, journalism, Juanita Broaddrick, Kathleen Willey, Mainstream Media, Monica Lewinsky, Paula Jones, sexual assault, videotape, women

What does George Stephanopoulos know and why isn’t he talking? Those to me are two of the most important and clearly the most inexcusably neglected, questions that have been raised in the last 36 hours of the Donald Trump video firestorm. I say inexcusable because the answers could produce major evidence that the establishment media are becoming ever less capable of playing their historic and indispensable role of American democracy’s watchdog.

As must be obvious to anyone following this latest twist of the 2016 American election cycle, one of the leading issues being raised is whether the Republican presidential nominee is being held to a standard fundamentally different from that applied to his Democratic rival’s husband, Bill Clinton, both throughout his presidential years and, reportedly, for decades before.

“Reportedly” is of course the key here. The most disturbing parts of the Trump video clearly are those passages in which he suggests he committed sexual assault. If true, that would of course eliminate the “locker room banter” defense put up by his surrogates and other backers. Indeed, it’s entirely conceivable and understandable that a critical mass of American voters will view even that possibility as a disqualification for any public office. 

I wrote yesterday, there’s no shortage of hypocrisy over the Trump-Clinton comparison on either side. But so far, the Clinton supporters would seem to have the advantage because, as I understand their position, the only Bill Clinton offense that’s been proven has been the former president’s affair during his administration with then White House intern Monica Lewinsky – and that this affair was consensual.

That’s true enough. But for many years, serious charges of far worse behavior by Bill Clinton have been circulating. In connection with one of those instances, a sexual harassment lawsuit filed by former Arkansas state employee Paula Jones was settled, with Clinton paying her $850,000. (He admitted no wrongdoing.) At least one other woman, Juanita Broaddrick, has accused the former president of raping her. At least one other woman, Kathleen Willey, has charged him with sexual assault. Neither woman took her claims to legal authorities at the time – which is a common feature of such episodes.

My purpose here isn’t to litigate or even debate the merits of these real and alleged scandals. Instead, it’s to point out that one of America’s most prominent journalists is and has been throughout the campaign in a position to shed considerable light both on Bill Clinton’s behavior and on Hillary Clinton’s treatment of the women claiming to be his victims. That’s George Stephanopoulos. He was a top adviser to the former president’s first election campaign, and then served as his White House press secretary for Clinton’s entire first term.

As a result, it’s inconceivable that Stephanopoulos didn’t participate in high-level meetings with both Bill and Hillary Clinton on handling these controversies both during the campaign and during the first term. (Jones filed her complaint in 1994, and an imbroglio involving an alleged Clinton affair with Gennifer Flowers roiled the 1992 White House race.) That is, he surely has first-hand knowledge that bears directly on the most sensational issue before the nation today – about the veracity of the various sexual misconduct-related charges against both Clintons.

But on Stephanopoulos’ own Sunday morning talk show, on the very day of a potentially monumental presidential debate in which these questions are sure to come up, the host said nothing even hinting at his former employment by the Clintons. None of the other journalists or political figures on the show’s panel of commentators did either. Nor can I find any instance of an establishment journalist asking Stephanopoulos about his nearly unmatched access to the Clintons in those years.

Could the reason be that Stephanopoulos is thinking about passing through an increasingly busy revolving door yet again and returning to government from his media perch? Or is he still simply a Clinton partisan? And what of the rest of the Mainstream Media and political chattering class members that owe so much of their public profile, and therefore incomes, to shows like Stephanopoulos’? Are some of them having the same thoughts, or holding the same views? Are they worried about getting blackballed from “This Week” – and possibly from the rest of the broadcast and cable networks if they put one the industry’s leading lights on the hot seat? Or are they above all concerned that they’ll be informally ostracized from one of America’s most glamorous social sets for displaying bad form?

Until these questions start getting asked, Americans will have more and more reason to suspect that their country’s news industry can’t be trusted to hold their public figures accountable not simply because of political bias, but because the industry keeps steadily merging with those it’s supposed to be covering. How a democracy can retain its fundamental health under those circumstances isn’t easy to see at all.

Im-Politic: Hillary Clinton Could Have a 1950s and 1960s Problem

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1950s, 1960s, 2016 elections, America First, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Im-Politic, Immigration, minorities, Obama, Robert B. Reich, shared prosperity, The New York Times, Trade, women

Should the 1950s and 1960s in America be mainly remembered as a halcyon economic era of growth that was strong and whose benefits were widely shared? Or an age when increased prosperity was confined mainly to white males?

Whatever your own view, and whatever the merits, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s so-called victory speech last week revealed – no doubt unwittingly – that her party could be deeply divided on the question. In turn, this split could create major confusion about a campaign theme she’s apparently become taken with, and about what economic policies she genuinely supports.

In the June 7 speech declaring her historic victory in this year’s Democratic presidential campaign, Clinton clearly painted the early post-World War II decades in dark tones. In her view, her likely GOP rival Donald Trump’s call to “Make America Great Again” is “code for, ‘Let’s take America backwards.’ Back to a time when opportunity and dignity were reserved for some, not all, promising his supporters an economy he cannot recreate.”

Nor has this been a one-off remark. At a Planned Parenthood event yesterday, Clinton repeated “When Donald Trump says, ‘Let’s make America great again,’ that is code for ‘let’s take America backward.’ Back to a time when opportunity and dignity were reserved for some, not all.”

What Clinton doesn’t appear to recognize is that many of her fellow Democrats have portrayed these years much more positively. Here’s one example: “In the decades after World War II there was a general consensus that the market couldn’t solve all of our problems on its own. …This consensus, this shared vision led to the strongest economic growth and the largest middle class that the world has ever known. It led to a shared prosperity. “ The speaker? President Obama.

Robert B. Reich stands further to the left than Mr. Obama on the political spectrum – and was also Labor Secretary during the presidency of Clinton’s husband. He’s even more all-in for the early post-war decades, terming the period, “The Great Prosperity” that was fueled by “what might be called a basic bargain with American workers. Employers paid them enough to buy what they produced. Mass production and mass consumption proved perfect complements. Almost everyone who wanted a job could find one with good wages, or at least wages that were trending upward.”

The New York Times Editorial Board is also pretty keen on these decades:

“Economic growth and rising productivity are needed for broadly shared prosperity, but rising living standards require policies that ensure regular increases in the minimum wage, which peaked in 1968; greater investment in the social safety net; full employment as a government priority; progressive taxation; and effective financial regulation to avoid overgrowth followed by collapse.

“These kinds of policies dominated from the late-1940s to the 1970s, a time of broadly shared prosperity and a strong middle class.”

In fairness, Clinton is absolutely right in contending that women and minorities didn’t generally prosper along with the rest of the population. And no knowledgeable liberals would disagree. Yet what’s the evidence that Trump wants to reserve all future gains made by the American economy to white males? Indeed, he’s repeatedly condemned numerous recent economic policies for leaving minorities behind, most recently in yesterday’s call to take federal funds currently targeted for refugee relief programs and use them instead to foster employment in inner cities.

This last point spotlights what might be the most politically important difference between Clinton and Trump on the legacy and lessons of the 1950s and 1960s. When the former Secretary of State accuses her Republican counterpart of “promising his supporters an economy he cannot recreate,” she’s focused most tightly on his opposition to highly permissive immigration policies and amnesty for the nation’s current illegal population.

Clinton has recently voiced criticisms of current U.S. trade policies.  Yet her past record and – as I’ve noted – some of her recent rhetoric indicates that she’s also fundamentally OK with the great and overwhelmingly one-sided opening of the American economy to import competition that almost immediately followed the early post-war years. Interestingly, it’s a critique of Trump-ian views on immigration and trade that’s identical with that of America’s donor class and its hired guns in the Republican party’s establishment wing.

If Clinton keeps repeating her charge about Trump’s supposedly unrealistic and retrograde nostalgia, it would be relatively easy for his campaign to counter with the kind of “America First” response he outlined in his own “victory speech“. The argument? Clinton’s endorsement of the trade and immigration status quo amounts to a program of aiding workers abroad and foreigners living illegally in the United States at the expense of the nation’s legal residents – of all genders, races, and heritages.

And if the Republican candidate can stay on this message (an awfully big “if”), he’ll be able to show that prominent Democrats, including President Obama share this economic nostalgia, too – along with the confidence that restoring this kind of economic greatness (albeit with a somewhat different policy mix) is eminently realistic.

Im-Politic: Is the Conventional Wisdom Wrong on Trump and Women Voters, Too?

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2016 election, Chris Cillizza, Donald Trump, Im-Politic, John Kasich, Republicans, Ted Cruz, Walmart, Walmart moms, Washington Post, women

I normally don’t consider WalMart a reliable purveyor or sponsor of polling data, and I normally wouldn’t make a big deal out of a single focus group. But new Walmart-financed findings by Democratic pollster Margie Omero and Republican counterpart Neil Newhouse – and reported in the Washington Post – are so potentially game-changing for this year’s presidential election that they deserve at least some attention.

In short, they indicate that if Donald Trump wins the Republican presidential nomination, he won’t have nearly as much of a problem with female voters as held by the conventional wisdom. And these results seem at least reasonably credible since you wouldn’t think that outspoken trade critic Trump is import-happy WalMart’s favorite politician these days.

The focus group was held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and zeroed in on “WalMart moms” – a demographic “defined as women who have children younger than 18 at home and have gone to the store at least once in the past month.” And participants were split evenly between Trump supporters on the one hand, and backers of the two other remaining active Republican candidates on the other.

According to a summary of these Republican women from Omero and Newhouse, “Characterizing Donald Trump as a type of car or animal resulted in some fascinating descriptions …women depicted him as a Porsche, a Ferrari, a muscle car, a boxer who stands his ground, a bulldog, an Escalade, a lion (fierce and king of the jungle) and as an unpredictable cat. These Moms praised him as someone who speaks his mind, stands his ground, and is refreshingly politically incorrect.”

Newhouse added in an interview with Post reporter Chris Cillizza, “These GOP Walmart moms seem to want no part of the #NeverTrump movement. In fact, they respect his strength and his straight talk and believe he is the party’s best shot to beat Hillary.”

And what about the numerous degrading comments the Republican front-runner has made throughout his career about women? “When these GOP Moms were pushed about Trump’s gender issues,” the two pollsters wrote, “there was some acknowledgment that he may be a ‘sexist,’ but general agreement among these women was that ‘I don’t really care, I’ve seen worse.’”

Given these attitudes, it’s not surprising that this focus group seemed unenthusiastic – at best – about Trump’s Republican rivals Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Ohio Governor John Kasich. But the terms used to describe them are worth quoting:

“Voters were generally unable to tell us much about either Cruz or Kasich, [The Walmart moms] seemed to dislike Cruz perhaps more than the swing Moms [from suburban Philadelphia and questioned in a separate focus group]; he was generally described in both groups as ‘religious,’ ‘gorilla — almost human,’ or ‘like a neighbor’s dog — you don’t know if they’re going to bite.’  Kasich’s image was even thinner, ‘I think they like him in Ohio,’ said one, ‘too sane,’ or ‘Mild, like a kitten,’ said others.”

And how would the Walmart moms react if Trump was denied the GOP crown? “Terribly misled” and “cheated” were representative reactions.

National polls still show Trump with high negatives with American women overall (70 percent, according to a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal survey), and even with Republican women (50 percent.) But pollsters and the rest of the U.S. political establishment never saw the Trump challenge coming and have underestimated him from the get-go. (Ditto for analyses of Democratic challenger Bernie Sanders.) Who’s to say that the supposed experts won’t be just as wrong in doubting that his relationship with women is just as “amazing” as he’s claimed it is with other key voting blocs?

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: More Crucial Details on the U.S. (and Heavily Female) White Die-Off

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2016 election, Angus Deaton, Anne Case, cities, coal, death rates, Donald Trump, health, Jobs, manufacturing, mortality, mortality crisis, Populism, rural areas, small towns, Trade, wages, whites, women, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Everyone should be grateful to the Washington Post for following up – in heart-breaking detail – on one of the most tragic and important stories of our time: the mounting mortality crisis among working- and middle-class middle-aged white Americans. At the same time, the Post‘s findings raise as many questions as they answer, significantly complicating the story – and the challenge of reversing these dismaying trends.

This white mortality crisis, you’ll recall, first broke into the news last fall, when Princeton University economists Angus Deaton (the latest Nobel prize winner) and Anne Case published a report solidly documenting the trend and linking it to growing economic insecurity combined with ever more paltry pension plans. Deaton and Case noted pointedly that, although other high-income countries, especially in Europe, had also experienced financial crises, productivity slowdowns, and widening inequality, the worsening white death rates in the United States, which provides fewer social and retirement protections, were unique. The authors also suggested that declining economic expectations hit white Americans’ psyches especially hard, and that non-whites, whose expectations were never as high to start with, found harder times easier to cope with.

As observers – like yours truly – noted, the implications for American politics seemed profound. In particular, I wrote, the Deaton-Case results indicated that outsider Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was more on-target than even he suspected when he kept complaining that America was getting “killed” by job- and wage-killing trade policies. And in fact, a strong relationship between rising white mortality and resurgent U.S. populism was made clear by the Post last month, when it found a high correlation between concentrations of the mortality problem and support for Trump.

Today’s report, however, adds crucial details indicating that other factors may be at work as well. One such finding: that “the most extreme changes in mortality have occurred among white women….” Women, after all, haven’t suffered nearly as much manufacturing job loss as men – whether it stems from trade policy mistakes or other causes (like factory automation). At the same time, since so many women have entered the U.S. workforce in recent decades – as manufacturing employment has faced more trade and technology pressure – they could well be affected indirectly by industrial job loss, as laid off manufacturing workers had to start competing for jobs in service sectors where women were more numerous.

Also muddying the picture is the big (and overlapping) rural-urban white health divide found by the Post (with “rural” including “small-town America”). In important ways, this geography of the white mortality crisis is consistent with the trade and manufacturing-centered interpretation. As is known by anyone who has traveled extensively around the “rust belt” or the American South, lots of factories have been and still are located in small towns and semi-rural areas, in part because land is cheap.

And reinforcement for this view is found on this map accompanying the Post article.

So many of the orange-brown and dark grey areas in the map on left — which signify counties and regions with the fastest rising white female mortality rates — are places like southern Michigan (think “auto industry”), northern Ohio (autos, steel, and industrial machinery), northwestern Indiana (steel), north central and western New York State (industrial machinery, heating and cooling equipment, railroad equipment, steel), and the Carolinas (where the plunge in textile and furniture jobs hasn’t nearly been offset by newer – often foreign – investments in sectors like aerospace, automotive, appliances, and electronics assembly). (The map on the right shows counties and region where white female mortality is falling.)

Nonetheless, so many of the biggest orange-brown stretches are regions dominated by other parts of the economy. Clearly, the coal industry’s woes bear lots of blame for the mortality crisis in Kentucky, southern Ohio, and West Virginia. And Nebraska, the eastern half of Utah, and the western half of Kansas have never been manufacturing strongholds (though Wichita has long been a major aerospace center).

The variety of local and regional economies involved shouldn’t be surprising. Anything as big as a mortality crisis in such a large segment of the population is bound to have multiple causes – and to resist talking-point-deep explanations and slapdash remedies. But that doesn’t mean the mainstreams of the two major parties shouldn’t be addressing the rapidly deteriorating health of so many Americans much more comprehensively and energetically.