Politics from the Civil Rights Act to Trump

Even if Donald Trump is defeated in November, the Republican Party is likely to continue on his path for a while. The reason why goes into the history of the parties, and how the Civil Rights Act remade them.

Before the Civil Rights Act, Republicans were the educated wealthy party, and Democrats were the FDR coalition of Northern labor folks (often ethnic minorities) and poor white Southerners. Gruesome vote suppression made black Southerners a political nonentity.

Angered by a Democratic President ending segregation, white Southerners left and became the core of today's Republican Party. The northern labor folks plus newly enfranchised black voters became the core of today's Democratic Party. The old Republicans chose between the new parties depending on whether their values were more shaped by education or wealth. These changes took decades to play out, but they accumulated steadily over 55 years.

The Republican Party came to represent wealth and white Christianity, and then with the decline of religiosity, wealth and white nationalism. The wealth of white America means that these forces often come together in the same people.

The Democratic Party represents the interests threatened by the wealthy and by white nationalism. Of course, wealthy and white interests are strong in the Democratic Party too, as they're powerful interests. But this difference between the parties is significant, and it explains why the Democratic Party contains the groups it does.

It explains why labor and environmentalist groups are Democratic despite their very different interests. They're both threatened by concentrated corporate wealth. It also explains why black and Jewish voters are both heavily Democratic despite many demographic differences. They both feel the threat of white nationalism.

It also makes the current party system more stable than the old one. The North-South Democratic alliance was always unsteady, especially as it required depriving a whole race of the right to vote. The parties of today have much more coherence as interest-group coalitions. It's hard to see how they'll change.

This polarization of the parties began before me. It's been going on all my life. And I don't see how it'll stop, now that the parties are more stable coalitions than we had before. What the Republican Party has been becoming for decades, as a combination of wealthy and white nationalist interests, expresses itself clearly in Trump. You could say he was its destiny.

Senate outlook, May 2020

Democrats are on track for a 50-50 Senate, up from the current 53-47, and have a decent chance at doing better. Even under a Democratic President, Mitch McConnell can obstruct executive appointments, the budget, and other ordinary business with a majority. So let's hope we get at least 50-50. Here's a rundown of the seats that are likely to flip.

Colorado is the most likely Democratic pickup, with John Hickenlooper having double-digit leads over Cory Gardner. I'd look into voting for the possibly more progressive Andrew Romanoff in the primary. But former Governor Hickenlooper will probably win the nomination and the general election.

Second is Arizona. Both candidates used to get very high before entering politics: Republican fighter pilot Martha McSally and Democratic astronaut Mark Kelly. Kelly got higher, and is higher in all 8 polls this year.

Third is Maine, where the only 2 polls from this year have Sara Gideon leading Susan Collins by slim margins. Trump's impeachment trial was a trap laid for Collins, whose moderate brand took serious damage from voting to acquit him.

Fourth is my old home state of North Carolina, where the last 3 polls have Cal Cunningham slightly leading Thom Tillis. NC is known for Republican dirty tricks, and I consider this at present the tightest race. I've given Cunningham $250 (which makes me eligible for a virtual fundraiser; let me know if you want in).

Doug Jones has been valiant as the Democratic Senator from Alabama. But he won't get to run against Roy Moore again, so he probably loses to either former Senator Jeff Sessions or Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville.

There are a few more races that could go Democratic with luck. Republicans think they have chances in Michigan, but the public polling doesn't really bear it out. Here are a few additional seats that could go Democratic:

In Kansas, moderate Democratic lady Governors have a history of beating extreme Republican guys. We'll see if that works at the Senate level, where Barbara Bollier has 2% leads in two recent polls over immigrant-hating vote suppressor Kris Kobach.

In Montana, popular Democratic Governor Steve Bullock finally ended his silly run for President (did anyone notice?) and entered the Senate race on the last legal day. Dem-aligned pollsters have him maybe with a tiny lead, but I'd still consider him a slight underdog against incumbent Steve Daines.

Georgia has two Senate races, which still have to have their primaries. If Republican appointee Kelly Loeffler, famous for insider trading on the virus, wins her primary, I expect she loses the general election. Republican Senator David Perdue isn't the strongest either. But I don't know how good our Democratic candidates will be. It might've been better for Stacey Abrams to run in one of those races. Anyway, Georgia has been trending towards Democrats this decade and we'll see what happens.

It remains to be seen whether MJ Hegar can be like Beto or better in Texas against boring Republican John Cornyn. I would've liked Beto or Julian Castro in that race, but maybe MJ can do it. Polls don't show Cornyn to be strong, but MJ is behind with little name recognition at present.

Finally, there are two tough races with Democratic challengers against hated Republicans. Jaime Harrison is challenging Lindsay Graham in South Carolina and Amy McGrath is up against Mitch McConnell himself in Kentucky. Dem-aligned pollsters sometimes find the Democrats close behind in these races. But Trump won SC by 14% and KY by 30% in 2016, and this is a Presidential year, so his voters will come out. On the upside, the Democrats have fundraised well on their opponents' notoriety. They'll need something very unusual to win -- the kind of unusual that happens in like one Senate race in the average cycle.

If you're donating to individual races, my top two picks right now are probably Cal Cunningham in NC and Barbara Bollier in Kansas. It's best to donate to races that are as close to even as possible, because then your money stands a better chance of tipping the balance. Donating to candidates who will win big or lose big anyway is usually a waste. The Wikipedia page for 2020 Senate races is pretty good for keeping track of things, and links to the individual races with polling.

Bernie Sanders' campaign ends

Bernie is principled and honorable. He plays by the rules that should be, not the rules that are.

He's perfect for starting a movement. He'll clearly express his principles. People who share the principles will gather around him. He lives his principles, which makes him easy to follow.

He was a good Senator. Disdaining deals, he operated by amendments on the open floor. This kept him from determining the shape of major legislation, because that's a business of deals. He found a good place as a source of inspired small-bore improvements and a reliable Democratic team player who wore a funny jersey for his own reasons. The system accommodates Senators' quirks, and Bernie's quirk was his principles.

He's not good at running a large organization like a campaign. He often chooses personnel who are better at expressing his worldview than winning him an election. His surrogates drew the media spotlight, but sowed conflict with the DC media as well as the black establishment in the South, both of which operated on rules alien to them.

Recently his press secretary complained on Twitter about a podcast on Vox not paying attention to Bernie. The podcaster replied that he had emailed her inviting Bernie for a long interview on the podcast months ago, and he was still waiting for her reply.

This campaign's MVP staffer, Lis Smith, had the opposite approach. She made Mayor Pete a contender by putting him on all media at all times. Team Pete thought its job was to spread Pete's message. Team Bernie thought its job was to complain about others not spreading Bernie's message.

We'll learn more about what went wrong with the campaign in the next few days. But the picture of Bernie I'm left with is that of a simple and straightforward kind of very good person. He wasn't made to make deals, much less command armies.

He's made to express and live his principles, clearly and directly. They're good principles, and good people are drawn to his side. If that were all it took to achieve power, this would be a lovely world.

Bernie 2020: the right principles + dumb anti-establishment orientation

Last year Bernie Sanders convinced me that prisoners should be allowed to vote. The issue hadn't crossed my mind until he raised it, but I quickly realized he was right. Politicians neglect and mistreat groups who are denied the vote, and the horrific cruelties of the US prison system are a result.

Fresh new ideas like this were the best thing about the Sanders campaign. Polls showed that most Democrats agreed with him on issues like Medicare for All [M4A], even as they voted for Joe Biden. With Sanders underperforming his 2016 numbers, his inner circle is now deciding whether to end the campaign. It's a good time to consider why he performed so badly despite the popularity of his biggest ideas.

His campaign combined good policy directions with a dumb political idea: that progress on issues like M4A would require overthrowing the Democratic establishment. As far as I can tell, this idea came from staff and allies who didn't really understand the Democratic Party and didn't understand how to engage constructively with people in it.

Things started well in 2017. Bernie got 16 Senate co-sponsors for M4A. The stage was set for a campaign that could absorb reformist elements of the establishment and thus become a majority of the party. What you'd want is a hopeful and optimistic message, embracing establishment figures who came reasonably close to Bernie's position. The establishment itself hadn't coalesced around a single candidate like Hillary, making it possible for Bernie to win a majority by incorporating enough of its leftward fragments.

Having spent time on Twitter during this primary, I can tell you that this isn't the Sanders campaign we got. One avoided conflict with Sanders' supporters more by taking positions far from him, as Biden and Klobuchar did, than by coming closer like Warren. Buttigieg, ever the political calculator, saw what was happening and abandoned his support for M4A. Obama was presented more as a centrist enemy than as a Democratic friend. The message of the campaign was enmity between it and the party, to the point that top Sanders activists like Shaun King don't realize that lefty Senators like Brian Schatz agree with them.

Bernie's campaign could've instead advertised M4A as building on the coverage expansions of Obamacare. Knowing that Congress would drastically revise the details of any Presidential proposal, every co-sponsor could've been treated as an ally, with attacks reserved mainly for those opposed to the general idea of Medicare for All.

The anti-establishment message itself seems to have caused Sanders trouble with the black political establishment in the South. Biden defeated Sanders 81-15 in Mississippi, where the only Congressional Democrat and the Senate nominee are both black. Jim Clyburn explained his decisive endorsement of Biden partly as a response to Sanders' anti-establishment message, which he took as an attack on himself. And an unfriendly attitude towards Obama was not going to help.

There are all kinds of problems with the Democratic Party as a whole, as with any large institution. American politics is full of legalized corruption, and politics everywhere is full of self-serving people. But if you need corrupt people's votes to pass something like M4A, the first thing to do is to figure out what currency they accept. If they need time, give them time until you actually need their votes.

With the right strategy, Bernie could have won this primary. His ideas are largely popular within the party. But attacking Democratic establishment figures isn't the way to win over Democratic primary voters. I suppose that's what one should expect.

The deadly power of bats' immune systems

Why do bats carry so many viruses? They're vectors for Covid-19 and Ebola as well as old terrors like rabies.

Bat immune systems are unusually strong. Their cells emit very high levels of interferon, which slows down protein synthesis. So when a virus takes over a cell and starts making new copies of itself, it can't assemble all the proteins to make new viruses.

Bat immune systems may also be stronger because bats fly. Flying requires a lot of energy, keeping them in a hot and fever-like body state. This can cook viruses to death.

Creatures with strong immune systems tend to have the most dangerous pathogens. Anything that survives in them will be hard for others to beat. If you get a virus, your body will fight it by running a fever and emitting interferon. This stops many viruses. But making your insides more batlike isn't going to stop a bat virus.

There's a human version of this in European settlers having diseases that killed most of the native Americans and Australians, rather than the other way around. Having lived in dense cities and traded goods and diseases with the rest of Eurasia, Europeans' immune systems had evolved to be strong. So they were sources of strong diseases, especially smallpox, that killed most of the local folks.

The bat immune system might have given us our idea of vampirism, via rabies. The symptoms of both conditions overlap quite a bit. You get rabies from being bitten by a bat or an infected human. You become a vampire from being bitten by a nocturnal creature between bat and human.

It's really a shame about bats, because they're amazing. If bats didn't exist, the idea of a mammal that flies, uses sonar, sleeps upside-down all day, eats mosquitos, and poops super-fertilizer would seem batshit crazy. Unfortunately, their strong immune systems give them a viral dark side that lives up to vampirical legend.

How the Sanders campaign fell back into 2016

It wasn't hard to foresee that Bernie would do badly one-on-one against a moderate. You just had to remember 2016, when he got about 43% of the vote. He ran the same campaign this time, and we're looking down the barrel of a similar result.

To dispense with the stupid idea that's been consuming the internet, Elizabeth Warren's endorsement wouldn't have changed anything significant. Progressive Warren voters have moved to Sanders already -- there just aren't enough of them for him to win. Polls about counterfactuals aren't always reliable, but it's worth noting that the one poll to ask people how they'd vote if Warren endorsed Sanders had him gaining only 2%. The progressive movement is better served by Warren playing for influence within a future Biden Administration -- the same way she negotiated with Hillary four years before.

In fairness to the Sanders campaign, things could've turned out better. If Democrats had been completely ineffective in resisting Trump, disgusted mainstream partisans might have gone over to him, pushing him over 50%. But things generally went well enough to keep the Democratic faithful satisfied.

Obamacare survived by the skin of John McCain's thumb, Democrats won a House landslide in 2018, the new Congress began with Pelosi defeating Trump in a government shutdown, impeachment was handled skillfully, and it seems to have helped purple-state Democratic Senate challengers as intended. There were defeats too, but that's not a bad list of legislative and electoral successes.

So by October 2019, it should've been obvious that the Sanders campaign would need to do something new to get over 50% one-on-one. They didn't realize this. Some accounts have them being confident that centrists would divide the vote all the way through the primary. They didn't see Jim Clyburn coming, or even expect some shadowy insider force from Bernie Twitter ghost stories to unify the field against them. And that leaves us here.

Barring a miracle, the path to progressive reform in the next administration will involve maneuvering Biden into it. The inside game begins with whatever concessions Warren can squeeze from him. Then we need strong Congressional majorities, and victory in internal White House power struggles. Old Joe is a party man more than an ideologue, and his positions can move if you set things up right around him.

When there are no more moves in the outside game, you don't give up. You switch to the inside game. I'll have more on that in the weeks to come.

Electability in the time of coronavirus

My friends are discussing electability. I'm thinking about it in light of the coronavirus pandemic, and I expect either Biden or Sanders to win if nominated.

Both candidates have about a 5% lead over Trump in current head-to-head polling. Democratic consolidation around a nominee will push up on those numbers as Republican general-election attacks push down. Maybe the net effect pushes both down to 4% or so, where they need a ~3% lead to win because of Electoral College imbalances.

The likely levels of illness, economic damage, and loss of life from the coronavirus will make things harder for an already embattled Trump. He's been awful in many ways before, but it usually doesn't come back to bite his own voters. Most of them will find some way to blame Democrats. But not all will. Mismanaging a recession-causing pandemic might push him say 3% down, making the Democratic lead insurmountable.

Fox News and GOP media as a whole are in their early stages of attacking both Sanders and Biden. With Sanders, the attacks will probably concern socialism. With Biden, it's probably corruption attacks connected to Ukraine conspiracy theories. I expect both attacks to have less effect amidst a pandemic.

Biden will promise a return to Obama-era normalcy. Sanders will pitch policies like Medicare for All. Both messages are likely to play well under pandemic conditions.

If Trump's mismanagement leads to a major Democratic victory, it will likely help us in the Senate too. That's more likely to cause the passage of major Democratic legislation under Sanders than Biden, since Sanders is on board from the beginning. But there are still ways that Biden can be maneuvered into passing policies coded as progressive this primary, especially with an unexpectedly good Senate.

At this point, it's very unlikely that Sanders will win the nomination. But I think his policy ideas are much better, and if my vote were coming soon, I'd vote for him.

The campaign ends, the plans continue

Elizabeth Warren's campaign of plans has ended.

She proposed a wealth tax, and Bernie followed. She had the best-developed plans on universal child care, rebuilding the State Department, catching tax evaders, and a litany of other issues.

Plans outlive campaigns. They sometimes get passed into law by politicians who opposed them. Obviously, it's best for a plan when an ideologically aligned campaign wins.

That's why I hope Bernie Sanders can defeat Joe Biden. The Warren plans are a natural outcome of negotiations between Sanders and Democratic centrists in a good Senate situation (if Sanders sees that Warren was right about the filibuster). I'll tell you a story.

Obama's health care plan during the 2008 primary didn't include the individual mandate that Obamacare is famous for. When John Edwards had introduced a plan with a mandate in February 2007, unions celebrated it. Lefty policy types taught everyone how mandates prevent adverse selection from messing up insurance. Hillary Clinton took up Edwards' plan and argued its merits against Obama.

Though Obama won the election, the mandate supporters won the argument. After the November victory, Senate committee chairs suggested that they'd be open to passing something like the Edwards / Clinton plans. After an epic legislative struggle, the mandate Obama opposed became part of what we now call Obamacare.

(The mandate got converted into a tax by the Supreme Court, but it's still there. The public option was less lucky. It was part of everyone's plan at first and Pelosi got it through the House on first passage, but it was sacrificed to Joe Lieberman for his filibuster-breaking 60th vote. Warren was right to push for eliminating the filibuster.)

When plans win the debate, the planners gain power. James Kvaal, the staffer who built the party-driving policy shop of 2007-2008 for Edwards, became policy director for Obama. I expect the same for Warren's staffers, which creates useful inside pressure for the plans.

Things as big as Medicare for All could pass even under Biden if everything breaks right: Biden's public option 2021, 4-5 new Democrats from the very favorable 2022 Senate map, M4A in 2023. That was Warren's plan to pass the plan, and with good work on the inside it's not impossible to walk Biden into it. Everything is easier with Bernie, but it wouldn't be the first time old Joe has changed a position.

Warren contributed a lot more than ideas. The destruction of Michael Bloomberg's campaign was huge. Bloomberg must have been very interested in buying the Clyburn endorsement and taking the place Biden has now. I doubt Clyburn would sell, but I wouldn't want democracy to face that risk. Warren devastated Bloomberg in the Nevada debate, and democracy was saved.

But I'll return to the ideas, because that's what we academics do. And Warren is one of us. The big point I've been making here is something obvious to us: the success of an idea is distinct from the fortunes of its creator, let alone its creator's Presidential campaign. And for some of us, the ideas matter most. We're just here to help them along and find others who will.

The campaign ends here. But for the plans, it's just another day. Elizabeth Warren will still be fighting for them, and we will too.

Why Jim Clyburn endorsed Joe Biden

Jim Clyburn's endorsement seems to have been the decisive event of the primary. 27% of South Carolina voters called it the most important factor in driving their vote, and Biden won with 48% to Sanders' 20%. This was the signal moderates needed to consolidate around Biden, leading to his Super Tuesday victory.

South Carolina is usually won by an establishment Democrat, though a sufficiently impressive black candidate can win voters over. Hillary Clinton won 73% of the vote against Bernie in 2016, with Clyburn's endorsement. In the 2008 campaign, polling favored Hillary until Obama won other primaries and then won SC 55-27. Clyburn didn't officially endorse that year, but voted for Obama. This got him an angry phone call from Bill Clinton. Clyburn told him, "How could I ever look in the faces of our children and grandchildren had I not voted for Barack Obama?"

The last black candidate to win SC before Obama was Jesse Jackson in 1988. He supported Medicare for All, had Bernie's endorsement, and was the great left-wing predecessor to Bernie in my lifetime. Perhaps a candidate who shares Bernie's policies and can win SC will have to be black.

Clyburn is more typical of top Democrats who win elections for candidates like Biden than anyone at the DNC. He's highly placed in the House leadership, and has the unofficial responsibility of representing black community interests to powerful Democrats. When they use their power as he asks, they win favor with him, and that translates into presidential endorsements. This is how a lot of the DC economy of politics operates. It makes things hard for less powerful candidates who haven't built up a bank of favors with people like Clyburn.

Sanders' campaign messaging appears to have irritated Clyburn too: "I find it very interesting that someone is referring to African American voters in South Carolina as the establishment," Clyburn told The Daily Beast, referring to Sanders' claims that the Democratic establishment is coalescing around Biden in order to stop his campaign. "I don’t understand how that vote can be dismissed."

Broad anti-establishment messages resonate with many who recognize the party's past failures. But Clyburn heard these messages as an attack on him. He responded by throwing black support decisively behind Biden. It's a problem that I don't think the Sanders campaign recognized, and that progressives will have to solve in future primaries.

Sanders' ideals, Pelosi's deals, and how the system moves left

Yesterday, Alex Moe of NBC News asked Nancy Pelosi, "Will you be okay if Bernie Sanders is the nominee?" Pelosi said "Yes."

Then Moe asked, "Do you have any concerns that you could lose the majority?" Pelosi said "No."

Sanders' supporters often fear that the Democratic establishment will stop him from winning the nomination. Establishment Democrats often try to stop him by expressing grave predictions about what will happen downticket. But Pelosi is the center of the establishment, and she's refusing to do that.

As far as I can tell, Pelosi and Sanders have basically the same goals. It doesn't look like that because they act in fundamentally different ways. Sanders expresses ideals; Pelosi makes deals. But achieving their goals takes both kinds, as well as a number of Elizabeth Warren figures in between.

Sanders stands on the fringes of the system, where he can express his ideals with utter clarity. He's a powerful voice for humane views on all sorts of domestic and foreign issues. He wields less official power, because taking power constrains your ability to act so as to express ideals. But ideals attract followers, and a movement formed around him.

Between ideals and deals are plans -- how to set up universal child care; how to pass Medicare for All. That's the level where a President mostly has to operate in today's media environment and legislative landscape. Warren excels there, which is why I voted for her.

Pelosi is a central node in the system. Every deal belongs to her, and she to it. That includes good deals and evil ones; honest compromises and corrupt bargains. Playing her role in the system requires respecting all her deals, which deeply constrains what positions she can take. But it also means that when she moves left, that's the system moving left.