Jonathan Ladd

One of the things I took away from the 60s and Richard Nixon, first mentioned by Hunter Thompson, but I believe to be true, is the fact that we believed, at time, that all our protesting, marching and sign waving was futile and pointless when in fact, it drove Richard Nixon to alcohol fueled madness

About 1 in 4 U.S. adults worry they or someone close to them could be deported About four-in-ten immigrants (43%) say they worry a lot or some, up from 33% in March.

About 1 in 4 U.S. adults worry they or someone close to them could be deported, according to a June @pewresearch.org survey.

Starting in Obama's first term and continuing through the presidencies of Obama, Trump, and Biden, the relationship between income and presidential vote has switched.
Connected to this, the relationship of education and racial resentment with Democratic voting has become much stronger.

Trust in Media at New Low of 28% in U.S. Americans' trust in newspapers, television and radio to report the news fully, accurately and fairly is at a new low of 28%.

Source: news.gallup.com/poll/695762/...

At the time, scholars of this topic noted that, in Trump's first term, the independence of institutional media orgs from him went with a surge in trust in the media from Democrats. Major media org's cooption and capitulation in Trump's second term has gone with a drop in Democrats' media trust.

The Declaration of Independence says the foundation of US government is the idea that all people are created equal by God. Their rights are “inalienable.” Our Constitution gives, at a minimum, all humans born on US soil citizenship. No person needs to express gratitude. Their rights are not a favor.

It also illustrates why Democrats are often disadvantaged in competition for massive donations by billionaires. But in "small" donations (from people wealthy enough to spend politically but not super wealthy) Democrats have an advantage.

Starting in Obama's first term and continuing through the presidencies of Obama, Trump, and Biden, the relationship between income and presidential vote has switched.
Connected to this, the relationship of education and racial resentment with Democratic voting has become much stronger.

Two things can be true: 1) Universities are not perfectly run. There are many problems that we should try to fix. 2) It's actually very hard to run a college or university. It's much much easier to perform worse than the status quo than better. www.insidehighered.com/news/governa...

/3 Because, if you didn’t know, prosecutors CAN obtain summonses to tell people to come to court to face charges, and who gets those and who gets arrested is a story of privilege, race, petty vindictiveness, and everything else bad about the system. But I digress.

Many have noted that the behavior of Roberts and Kavanaugh changed around 2020-21 from very conservative but indifferent to Trumpism per se, to reactionary anti-anti-Trumpism. The simplest answer is that they are just like so many other politicians and pundits who were radicalized in 2020-21.

People talk about the software and the chips, sure whatever. But the real secret of LLMs is that people have posted this immense amount of useful text on the web, for free. Or if not for free - a lot of it isn't - then without payment from the LLM companies - it is free to them.

The behavior of SCOTSU justices is so much more understandable if you view them as replacement-level national politicians, who consume the same news sources as the rest of us.

Many have noted that the behavior of Roberts and Kavanaugh changed around 2020-21 from very conservative but indifferent to Trumpism per se, to reactionary anti-anti-Trumpism. The simplest answer is that they are just like so many other politicians and pundits who were radicalized in 2020-21.

🥳 Our new paper is out at the British Journal of Political Science. We find a strong link between the ideology of candidate messaging and the perceived ideology of these candidates among voters.
Evidence that voters can differentiate between candidates and are attuned to what candidates say.

Very cool. My great-great-grandfather fought in the Massachusetts 45th Infantry.

Two things can be true: 1) Universities are not perfectly run. There are many problems that we should try to fix. 2) It's actually very hard to run a college or university. It's much much easier to perform worse than the status quo than better. www.insidehighered.com/news/governa...

So much flows from this core mistake to not prosecute Trump for insurrection in spring 2021. By the time they changed course it was too late. Media and public attention had moved on from Jan 6. And Trump had begun to reassemble Republican support.

We knew very soon after the election that the shift toward Trump in 2020 to 2024 numbers was relatively widespread and consistent (compared to other historical election shifts), with lots of circumstantial evidence showing it was driven primarily by real wages being driven down by inflation.

As Adam Przeworski and Juan Linz wrote, in a healthy democracy, the current government is always the government pro tempore. You are temporary. A situation that gives the governing party the right incentives. You will be in the minority. www.cambridge.org/core/books/d...

Agencies are established by federal law, passed through the constitutional lawmaking process. Federal money can also only be spent as directed by law. Congress has the right to refuse to agree to spending bills. If they refuse, the president doesn't get the right to violate the laws and Constitution

Whataboutism.

Who Goes Nazi?, by Dorothy Thompson

Every few months now I re-read this "Who Goes Nazi?" piece from 1941 and am blown away by how it captures the people we are dealing with 80 years later.

harpers.org/archive/1941...

I think this is the best piece I've read so far about the large number of elites who basically can't deal with the situation we are in. it doesn't compute and they keep hunting for an exit that doesn't exist

Ideology of candidates surely has an effect of some size. So when it varies, it matters. It is a smart strategy to run congressional candidates who fit their states/districts. But for president, people perceive all Repub and all Dem nominees essentially the same, except for Trump in 2016.

When Trump tried to remove FTC Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter, SCOTUS set the case for arguments—but kept Slaughter fired in the meantime.

When Trump tried to remove the Fed's Lisa Cook, SCOTUS set the case for argument—but *let Cook keep serving* in the meantime.

That difference says a lot.

Yes, Trump's capture of the Repub nomination did seem to accelerate the sorting by education and by racial resentment attitudes that had been going on since Obama's nomination in 2008. These unidimensional ideological perceptions have limited usefulness. They can also be subject to projection.

Indeed. Huge consequences. I'm just unsure what consequences there are for understanding pres elections in the future. Trump's background as a reality star playing a successful businessman is pretty unique. And by 2020, people perceived his overall ideology as not that different from Romney's.

Chart made with the CES tool: cooperativeelectionstudy.shinyapps.io/Ideology/

People seem to assume party presidential nominees have the same ideology they associate with the national party. Trump in 2016 was the exception because many people believed he was an apolitical self-made businessman.

Ideology of candidates surely has an effect of some size. So when it varies, it matters. It is a smart strategy to run congressional candidates who fit their states/districts. But for president, people perceive all Repub and all Dem nominees essentially the same, except for Trump in 2016.