Young Evangelicals Aren’t Stupid— It’s Just That Their Parents Abhor Education And, Tragically, Instill Ignorance Into Their Worldview

I come from a secular Jewish home. My parents and grandparents taught me about latkes and gefilte fish, a sense of social justice and the importance of education. My school report cards were always very weighty moments in our household. "College" was the most crucial of goals on the horizon even when I was in elementary school. A "B" was a shonda, even worse than being a bigot and not treating everyone with respect... or not saving money.

Recently the author and filmmaker Frank Schaeffer, who grew up in a very different-- evangelical-- household, told me that it’s “no coincidence that the Trump/GOP tax bill is anti-college and anti-university. Trump owes his power to the white evangelical vote. And white evangelicals are hostile to so-called worldly education. That’s why there are evangelical colleges-- to protect young minds. That’s why even when evangelicals do go to secular colleges they try and arm themselves against secular knowledge. Evangelicals devalue the expertise of ‘secular elites.’ Since these ‘elites’ are ‘wrong’ about evolution, it’s easy for Evangelicals to believe they are also wrong about climate change, and, indeed, to believe anything our increasingly radical American conservative movement-- radicalized in large part thanks precisely to the Christian Right-- wants to believe.” A little over a year ago, the Pew Research Center published a poll-based essay by Caryle Murphy about educational attainment based on religious affinity. You could probably guess that evangelicals rank towards the bottom and have poor prospects for success in life.

Attainment of a four-year college degree in the United States, often regarded as a key asset for economic success, varies by race and gender. But the share of people completing a college education also differs by religion, with members of some faith groups much more educated, on average, than others.

By far, Hindus and Unitarian Universalists have among the largest share of those with a college degree-- 77% and 67% respectively. Roughly six-in-ten Jews (59%) have college degrees, as do similar shares in both the Anglican church (59%) and the Episcopal Church (56%).

These groups are among the top of a list of 30 U.S. religious groups ranked by educational attainment based on data from our 2014 Religious Landscape Study.

Given the strong correlation between educational attainment and economic success, it is not surprising that Jews and Hindus, on average, have high household incomes, with four-in-ten Jews (44%) and roughly a third of Hindus (36%) living in households with annual incomes of at least $100,000, according to the 2014 study.

Other religious groups also have a higher percentage of college graduates than the full sample of more than 35,000 U.S. adults surveyed in the 2014 Religious Landscape Study, among whom 27% completed university. They include Buddhists and members of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)-- both at 47%-- as well as Orthodox Christians (40%), Muslims (39%) and Mormons (33%).

Since Catholics make up one-in-five adults, it is not surprising that their share of members with a college degree (26%) roughly mirrors that of the general public.

One-in-five members of historically black Protestant denominations- the National Baptist Convention (19%) and the African Methodist Episcopal Church (21%)-- have a college degree, as do members of the Southern Baptist Convention (19%).

Our study also looked at educational attainment in three categories of religiously unaffiliated people. About four-in-ten atheists (43%) and agnostics (42%) have earned college degrees, as have nearly a quarter (24%) of those who say their religion is “nothing in particular.”

Evangelicals also tend to be Trump supporters. They are immune to reality and, in general, have nothing to live for. Their lives are bleak and they basically look towards an apocalypse and “The Rapture” to transport them to “heaven” and a life worth living. These are the most miserable and most hopeless Americans. They tend to hate life itself. White evangelicals account for about 17% of the population. Their leaders look at them as “marks” and they spend their lives being fleeced and lied to. Should they even be voting on what impacts normal people?

Would You Trust Trump With National Security Secrets? Should Obama?

There are a lot of Americans nervous about the prospect of the Trumpanzee getting national security briefings. Harry Reid even suggested that the intelligence services prepare "fake" briefings for him so that if he sells them to the Russians or whomever else, it doesn't endanger the country's security. Carl Bildt, the former Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Sweden, a country Trump used to routinely-- and falsely-- claim as part of his ancestry, tweeted last week that he "never thought a serious candidate for US President could be a serious threat against the security of the West. But that’s where we are." He wasn't referring to Hillary.

David Cicilline (D-RI), a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, wrote President Obama a letter urging him to deny the briefings to Trump, who, he wrote "urged Russian intelligence services to conduct cyber espionage operations into the correspondence of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton... [a] call for hostile foreign action represents a step beyond mere partisan politics and represents a threat to the Republic itself... With this in mind, I respectfully ask that you withhold the intelligence briefing to Mr. Trump in the interests of national security."



Trump is due to start receiving briefings as soon as today. His campaign manager-- or whatever title Paul Manafort holds-- was a longtime political operative for Ukraine's bandit-preseident (and Putin puppet) Victor Yanukovych, and several close Trump associates, as well as his own Trump Organization, are heavily in financial hock to Putin.

Is it feasible to prevent Trump from getting the briefings from James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence? Technically, yes. It's just a courtesy and a tradition started by Harry Truman, not a law or rule. It would, however, be exceedingly awkward for Obama and there's no reason to think Obama has the stomach for a fight with the Trumpanzee over this. Reid's idea of "fake" briefings are patently absurd but there's no reason Clapper couldn't give intelligence-lite briefings that don't compromise national security or give Trump access to any sensitive national secrets. Remember, we're talking about this guy:



A newly released Pew survey from May of 10 European countries, Canada and 4 Asia-Pacific powers, shows Obama and Clinton with high ratings and Trump with extremely low ratings across the board.

European attitudes toward President Barack Obama remain very positive. Across the 10 EU nations polled, a median of 77% have confidence in Obama to do the right thing in world affairs, including more than eight-in-ten in Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany and France.

Europeans are somewhat less enthusiastic about Hillary Clinton, although her ratings are still mostly positive: A median of 59% have confidence in her. In contrast, ratings for Donald Trump are overwhelmingly negative. A median of just 9% trust the wealthy real estate developer to do the right thing in world affairs; 85% lack confidence in him.

In the four Asia-Pacific nations surveyed-- Australia, China, India and Japan-- Obama also receives relatively positive marks. Most Australians and Japanese give Clinton a positive rating and Trump a negative one. The major party nominees are less well-known in China and India.

...People surveyed in Europe and Asia generally have a negative opinion of Russian President Vladimir Putin. This includes more than eight-in-ten in Spain (88%), Sweden (87%), Poland (86%) and the Netherlands (84%), which have little or no confidence in the Russian leader’s handling of international affairs. Likewise, Putin is mistrusted by most in Australia (70% no confidence), Japan and Canada (both 65%).

Only in Greece and China (both 53%) do more than half have a positive impression of Putin’s role on the world stage.

...Having served as secretary of state from 2009 to early 2013, U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton receives positive support in most of the countries surveyed in Europe and Asia. This includes 83% in Sweden who have confidence in her ability to deal with world affairs and 79% who say this in Germany. Overall, half or more in seven of the 10 EU countries surveyed have confidence in Clinton, although many in Hungary and Poland express no opinion. Clinton receives her worst marks from Greece, where 78% have little or no confidence in her ability to handle world affairs.

Clinton also gets positive marks from Canadians (60% confidence) and Australians (70%), as well as from the Japanese (70%). Views of her among the Chinese are mixed, with 37% saying they have confidence in her, 35% saying they do not have confidence and 28% with no opinion. And in India, a majority (56%) has no opinion of the former secretary of state.

...Less than a quarter of people across all 15 countries surveyed express confidence in Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for U.S. president. In fact, overwhelming majorities in most of the countries surveyed have little or no confidence in his ability to handle international affairs. This includes 92% of Swedes, 89% of Germans, 88% of Dutch and 85% of both the French and British. This distaste is especially strong in Sweden, where 82% have no confidence at all in him.

Among people in Poland and Hungary, views of Trump also tend to be negative, although many people do not offer an opinion in these countries.

Most Australians (87%), Canadians (80%) and Japanese (82%) also lack confidence in Trump. In China, there is a split between those who have no confidence in Trump (40%) and those who do not offer an opinion (39%). And in India, 67% do not offer an opinion.

In Europe, positive opinions about Trump vary by political party support in many nations. For example, in Italy, supporters of Forza Italia, a center-right party founded by former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi (who, like Trump, is independently wealthy), show more confidence in Trump (31% confidence) than do followers of the country’s Democratic Party (15%). Trump also receives greater support among those Italians who have a favorable view of the anti-immigrant and Euroskeptic Lega Nord party.

And in the UK, followers of the Euroskeptic, anti-immigrant party UKIP are also much more likely to voice confidence in Trump (30%) than those who follow the Conservative (13%) or Labour (8%) parties. However, it should be noted that while confidence for Trump is higher among these groups, it still represents very low levels of confidence in the presumptive GOP candidate.

Higher levels of confidence in Trump among Euroskeptic and anti-immigrant parties extend to other countries as well. In Germany, for example, people who have a favorable view of Alternative for Germany (AfD), a right-wing and increasingly anti-immigrant party, are more likely to have confidence in Trump (19%), compared with those Germans with an unfavorable view of AfD (3%). And in Hungary, people who have a favorable view of Jobbik, a far-right nationalist party, are more likely to have confidence in Trump (28%) compared with those who have an unfavorable opinion of Jobbik (17%).

Additionally, positive views of Trump are tied to confidence in another international leader tested: Russian President Vladimir Putin. In all the countries surveyed with a large enough sample size to permit analysis, people who have confidence in Putin are more likely to express confidence in Trump. For instance, among those in Italy who have confidence in Putin to handle world affairs, 44% express confidence in Donald Trump. Meanwhile, among Italians who express little or no confidence in Putin, only 12% have confidence in Trump.

Will You Allow Yourself To Be Forced Into Voting For The Lesser Of Two Evils Next Year?

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Last week the Pew Research Center released a fascinating survey of voters that doesn't just inform us that Republicans' favorite and most hated candidate is Donald Trump. This one gets down into what makes voters tick. For example, 60% of Democrats say they are more likely to vote for a candidate willing to compromise with Republicans and 14% say that they are less likely to vote for a candidate willing to compromise. On the other hand, significantly fewer Republicans want their political leaders to compromise with Democrats. 41% say they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who works towards compromise and fully 27% say they would be less likely to vote for a candidate who is willing to compromise with Democrats.

Pew also points out: "There are significant differences between Republican and Democratic voters over the importance of all eight issues included in the survey. By far the biggest partisan gap is over the importance of the environment as a voting issue-- 74% of Democratic and Democratic-leaning registered voters say the environment will be very important; only half as many Republican and Republican leaning-voters (37%) say the same."

Majorities of both Republican voters (67%) and Democratic voters (65%) say it is more important to pick a candidate who comes closest to their views on the issues. Just 27% in both parties say it is more important to choose a candidate who has the best chance of winning next November.

But for an increasing number of progressives, the establishment insider game of forcing voters to choose between two horrible establishment alternatives-- 2016 was "supposed to be" another wretched Clinton v Bush redux-- is no longer viable. Yes, Hillary is better than Bush (or any of the other Republicans running), but is she really the best we can do? Not many progressives I know think so. H.A. Goodman outlined 25 reasons why Bernie would make a better president than Hillary. Do these reasons disappear after the primary as we devolve into what the Democratic careerists want: "She's better than [fill in the blank]"? Even if it means the Democratic Party becomes more corporate, more of a shill for the military-industrial complex, more beholden to predatory Wall Street banksters and more, in the true sense of the word, "rightist"?

1. President Hillary Clinton will have a neoconservative foreign policy. Bernie Sanders says "I'll be damned" if Americans lead the fight against ISIS.

Jacob Heilbrunn, in a New York Times article titled The Next Act of the Neocons, writes, "It's easy to imagine Mrs. Clinton's making room for the neocons in her administration." Also quoted in the New York Times, conservative historian Robert Kagan says, "If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue, it's something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that; they are going to call it something else."

In addition to voting for the Iraq War (and pushing for the disastrous bombing of Libya) while calling this decision a "mistake," her quotes in an Atlantic interview with Jeffrey Goldberg confirm that President Hillary Clinton could be a liberal Dick Cheney in the White House:

This is what Clinton said about Obama's slogan: "Great nations need organizing principles, and 'Don't do stupid stuff' is not an organizing principle."

"You know, when you're down on yourself, and when you are hunkering down and pulling back, you're not going to make any better decisions than when you were aggressively, belligerently putting yourself forward," she said. "One issue is that we don't even tell our own story very well these days."

"The failure to help build up a credible fighting force of the people who were the originators of the protests against Assad--," Clinton said.

As if the lessons of bombing Libya during Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State weren't enough, Clinton would have armed the Syrian rebels had she been president. The problem with this is not only that half the Syrian rebels are jihadists, but also that it would have pushed the U.S. into the Syrian civil war, while we were still embroiled in Iraq and Afghanistan.

If anyone wonders why I wrote an article last year on a certain GOP Senator, saying that I'd vote for that person (I'm, of course, voting for Bernie and that piece was written from a purely anti-perpetual war standpoint), the fact that Vox says Clinton's words on foreign policy sound "super hawkish," is one of the main reasons I wrote that piece.

America has suffered enough from a neoconservative foreign policy and one look at icasualties.org highlights this reality.

In contrast, Bernie says, "I'll be damned" if America leads the fight against ISIS (calling for others to put ground troops in the region, not us) and puts American soldiers and veterans first, as evident by his recent Congressional Award from the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

2. Bernie Sanders has always been against Keystone XL. Clinton once supported the controversial pipeline and now won't answer questions.

3. Bernie Sanders has always been against the Trans Pacific Partnership. Hillary Clinton supported the trade deal 45 separate times according to CNN.

Unions that back Hillary Clinton should remember Reason # 10 as well.

4. The Vermont Senator voted against the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996 and stood up for gay rights when polls were against this issue. Hillary Clinton, a Democrat, opposed gay marriage up until 2013.

Don't claim to be outraged by Kentucky's Kim Davis if you're voting for Hillary Clinton. Both had the same views on gay marriage, only Davis didn't "evolve." Like The Guardian says, Hillary Clinton's views evolve on gay marriage, just in time for presidential campaign.

5. Bernie Sanders has a Racial Justice Platform. Hillary Clinton ran a 3 AM ad with a "racist sub-message" in 2008. South Carolina Congressman James E. Clyburn denounced Bill Clinton's remarks about Obama in 2008 and stated the Clinton's were "committed to doing everything they possibly can to damage Obama to a point that he could never win."

6. Clinton's encounter with Black Lives Matter exemplifies her outlook on race. In an interview with NPR, Daunasia Yancey, the founder of Black Lives Matter Boston, called Hillary Clinton's racial justice record "abysmal."

As for commentary on Clinton's meeting with Black Lives Matter, Benjamin Dixon and Yvette Carnell explain how Clinton politicized her meeting (and in effect, hurt the movement's momentum) with Black Lives Matter representatives.

7. Bernie Sanders has advocated breaking up the banks and reinstating a Glass-Steagall Act. Clinton does not advocate either policy objective. [She claimed today that Glass-Steagall dealt with the problems of the past and that she's about the future which is, alas, pre bullshit and could even be a separated reason to not vote for her.]

It's no secret that Wall Street is in Hillary Clinton's corner and few believe the populist rhetoric from the former Secretary of State. Bernie Sanders, however, is a genuine reformer who eagerly takes on the "billionaire class."

8. Hillary Clinton is constantly involved in scandal and either the victim of a "surreal witch hunt" according to James Carville, a conspiracy among intelligence agencies (a Clinton spokesman says the government has "competing views" on what is classified, apparently making it alright for a retroactively classified email to be on a private server), or controversy.

Bernie Sanders can type an email without a nationwide scandal.

9. Bernie Sanders will not take money from billionaires. Hillary Clinton accepted $100,000 from Donald Trump in donations for her foundation and Senate runs in New York.

It's difficult to debate the potential GOP nominee and tell the country you're different, when you've accepted $100,000 from the billionaire.

10. Four of Clinton's top five donors since 1999 are Wall Street firms. Bernie Sanders is running a grass roots campaign.

11. Hillary Clinton is against the decriminalization of marijuana. Bernie Sanders supports the decriminalization of marijuana.

12. It's true that Republicans have an irrational hatred of Clinton and that the Benghazi attacks have been unfairly leveled at Clinton. However, most of Clinton's scandals are based on her own decisions, not the irrational behavior of others. Not everything is Benghazi.

13. Hillary Clinton hasn't explained the political utility in owning a private server as Secretary of State.

14. I want a female president; however, I want her to be Elizabeth Warren.

15. I don't want my president to have an ongoing FBI investigation during her first term.

16. Hillary Clinton hasn't explained whether or not her server was safer or better protected than the U.S. government's server.

17. It is a fact that Clinton had classified and "Top Secret" emails flowing through her server.

18. Many of Clinton's classified emails were "born classified," meaning they weren't classified retroactively.

19. Five intelligence agencies thus far are now a part of the email saga. They can't all be part of a right-wing conspiracy.

20. Economically, Bernie is more progressive in tackling wealth inequality while Clinton addresses the issue, but continues raking in Wall Street money.

21. Bernie Sanders was active in the Civil Rights movement and also endorsed Jesse Jackson's 1984 and 1988 presidential campaigns.

22. Edward Snowden says it's "ridiculous" to think Clinton's email setup was secure. Freedom of Information Act expert Dan Metcalfe calls Clinton's email defense "laughable." Neither one is a part of a right-wing conspiracy.

23. Swing states do not trust Hillary Clinton and 55 percent of Americans, according to CNN, have an "unfavorable" view of Clinton.

24. I want a true progressive as president, especially in terms of the greatest powers of a president: getting America into wars and shaping foreign policy.

25. I trust Bernie Sanders. I do not trust Hillary Clinton or the GOP.

I'm not on board with every single point Goodman makes, but I am on board with many of them, enough for me to have decided that I will continue my decision in 2012 to never again vote for the lesser of two evils. If you want to help Bernie build his momentum and win this race, you can do that here... for a better America, not just for a less evil one.

No Inevitability? Are You Sure?

Yesterday we talked about why Wall Street loves Hillary Clinton. The obvious corollary to that is that Hillary is "inevitable." (In the low key campaign for the DCCC Chair-- with an electorate of one, Nancy Pelosi-- former Golman Sachs executive Jim Himes is the Wall Street favorite and he is also considered "inevitable," although the MoveOn petition for progressive Donna Edwards keeps growing bigger and bigger. Maybe Himes isn't as inevitable as the Beltway pundits think he is.) Is Hillary? Ryan Lizza points to her being caught in what he calls The Inevitability Trap.

Clinton’s support among Democrats has been as high as seventy-three per cent. That makes her the most dominant front-runner at this stage of a Presidential contest in the Party’s modern history. Media pundits and political strategists agree overwhelmingly that Hillary’s lead within the Party is unassailable. Tuesday’s results, which gave Republicans control of both the House and the Senate, may solidify her standing, as Democrats close ranks around her in an effort to hang on to the White House, their last foothold on power in Washington. But the election results could also lead to an entirely different outcome: a Republican Party that overinterprets its mandate in Congress and pushes its Presidential candidates far to the right, freeing Democrats to gamble on someone younger or more progressive than Clinton.

...Many liberals are frustrated with Obama’s inability to enact more progressive change, such as assertive policies against global warming and income inequality, comprehensive immigration reform, or a less hawkish foreign policy. Democratic-primary voters are always eager to see a fresh potential candidate. “Seventy or eighty per cent of people want to hear from a new perspective before they make a decision about whether to go with what they know,” [Maryland Gov. Martin] O’Malley told me. “A person becomes very famous in this country very quickly.”

...The history of Democratic primaries suggests that an insurgent can’t expect to gain recognition with only a fresh face and a superior organization. Inevitably, the candidate must attack the front-runner from the left. O’Malley is not necessarily a natural candidate to pursue this strategy, but he is trying... Until recently, he hasn’t offered much to Democrats who are worried that Hillary is too centrist on economics and foreign policy. But in the past two years he has won approval of gun-control legislation, a new state immigration law, the repeal of the death penalty, and an increase in the minimum wage. There was only one warning sign for O’Malley as he canvassed Iowa. His lieutenant governor, Anthony Brown, who was running to succeed him as governor, was in a close race against a local businessman and political upstart, Larry Hogan, who attacked the O’Malley administration for raising taxes.

O’Malley’s strategy so far suggests that the 2016 primaries may turn into a debate not so much about Clinton’s record as about Obama’s effectiveness as a leader—an issue that Republicans used to win races last week, and which they would almost certainly raise in a general election against Clinton. O’Malley told me that Obama’s response to the 2008 financial crisis was too timid: “When the Recovery and Reinvestment Act was introduced, it was probably half of what it needed to be, and the congressional parts of our own party watered it down to a half of that, which meant it was about a quarter of what it needed to be.” And Obama was too soft on Wall Street, O’Malley said. “The moment was ripe for much more aggressive action. If an institution is too big to fail, too big to jail, too big to prosecute, then it’s probably too damn big.” O’Malley also talks about inequality, in terms that more populist Democrats, like Elizabeth Warren, who insists she isn’t running for President, have embraced, but which Obama and Clinton have generally avoided.

Clinton has said little about economic policy in recent years and could co-opt some of the same arguments without seeming overly disloyal to the President. Many liberals, though, will want concrete promises on policy rather than mere sound bites. Michael Podhorzer, the political director at the A.F.L.-C.I.O., said, “What we learned from the Obama Administration is that if the Presidential candidate surrounds themself with the usual Wall Street suspects, then, whatever the populist rhetoric is, that’s not going to be good enough.”

...Democratic strategists like to divide the Party’s electorate into “wine track” and “beer track” voters. Insurgents typically have done well with the wine track-- college-educated liberals-- and although that portion of the electorate has grown, it’s still not enough to win. (Hart once told me that he did well in all the states that were benefitting from globalization; Mondale, who had union support, did well in all the states where workers were feeling economically squeezed.) It’s not clear what major demographic group O’Malley could steal from Clinton; for now, he seems like a classic wine-track insurgent. On Tuesday, the Republican victory in Maryland was fuelled by working-class and suburban voters, who revolted against higher taxes.

Former Virginia Senator Jim Webb, who served one term, from 2007 to 2013, and then retired, has the potential to win the beer-track vote.

...“Because of the way that the financial sector dominates both parties, the distinctions that can be made on truly troubling issues are very minor,” he said. He told a story of an effort he led in the Senate in 2010 to try to pass a windfall-profits tax that would have targeted executives at banks and firms which were rescued by the government after the 2008 financial crisis. He said that when he was debating whether to vote for the original bailout package, the Troubled Asset Relief Program, he relied on the advice of an analyst on Wall Street, who told him, “No. 1, you have to do this, because otherwise the world economy will go into cataclysmic free fall. But, No. 2, you have to punish these guys. It is outrageous what they did.”

After the rescue, when Webb pushed for what he saw as a reasonable punishment, his own party blocked the legislation. “The Democrats wouldn’t let me vote on it,” he said. “Because either way you voted on that, you’re making somebody mad. And the financial sector was furious.” He added that one Northeastern senator-- Webb wouldn’t say who-- “was literally screaming at me on the Senate floor.”

When Clinton was a New York senator, from 2001 to 2009, she fiercely defended the financial industry, which was a crucial source of campaign contributions and of jobs in her state. “If you don’t have stock, and a lot of people in this country don’t have stock, you’re not doing very well,” Webb said. Webb is a populist, but a cautious one, especially on taxes, the issue that seems to have backfired against O’Malley’s administration. As a senator, Webb frustrated some Democrats because he refused to raise individual income-tax rates. But as President, he says, he would be aggressive about taxing income from investments: “Fairness says if you’re a hedge-fund manager or making deals where you’re making hundreds of millions of dollars and you’re paying capital-gains tax on that, rather than ordinary income tax, something’s wrong, and people know something’s wrong.”

The Clintons and Obama have championed policies that help the poor by strengthening the safety net, but they have shown relatively little interest in structural changes that would reverse runaway income inequality. “There is a big tendency among a lot of Democratic leaders to feed some raw meat to the public on smaller issues that excite them, like the minimum wage, but don’t really address the larger problem,” Webb said. “A lot of the Democratic leaders who don’t want to scare away their financial supporters will say we’re going to raise the minimum wage, we’re going do these little things, when in reality we need to say we’re going to fundamentally change the tax code so that you will believe our system is fair.”

...Senator Bernie Sanders, a socialist and the longest-serving independent in Congress, is seventy-three; he speaks with a Brooklyn accent that is slightly tempered by more than two decades of living in Vermont, where he was previously the mayor of Burlington and then the state’s representative in the U.S. House. One evening in mid-October, he was hunched over a lectern addressing students at the University of New Hampshire in Durham. Supporters selling “Run, Bernie, Run!” bumper stickers milled around the edges of the crowd, along with a local labor leader, Kurt Ehrenberg, who is a regular volunteer with Sanders’s potential Presidential team in the state. Long wisps of Sanders’s white hair levitated above his head, as if he were conducting electricity.

“The great crisis, politically, facing our nation is that we are not discussing the great crises facing our nation,” he told the students. He launched several attacks on billionaires, each one to cheers. “We look at the United Kingdom and their queens, their dukes, and whatever else they have, and say, ‘Well, that is a class society, that’s not America.’ Well, guess what? We have more income and wealth inequality in this country than the U.K. and any other major country on earth.” It was time “for a political revolution.”

Earlier in the day, Sanders had told me that he was thinking about running for President. If he does, he will be the Democratic Party’s Ron Paul: his chance of winning would be infinitesimal, but his presence in the race and his passion about a few key issues would expose vulnerabilities in the front-runner’s record and policies, as Paul did with John McCain and Mitt Romney. Sanders recited for me a list of grievances that progressives still harbor about the Clinton Presidency and made it clear that he would exploit them in his campaign.

“The Clinton Administration worked arm in arm with Alan Greenspan-- who is, on economic matters, obviously, an extreme right-wing libertarian-- on deregulating Wall Street, and that was a total disaster,” Sanders said. “And then you had the welfare issue, trade policies. You had the Defense of Marriage Act.”

He said that the George W. Bush Presidency “will go down in history as certainly the worst Administration in the modern history of America.” But he has also been disappointed by Obama. “I have been the most vocal opponent of him in the Democratic Caucus,” he told me. In his view, Obama should have kept the grass roots of his 2008 campaign involved after he was elected, and he should have gone aggressively after Wall Street. “His weakness is that either he is too much tied to the big-money interests, or too quote-unquote nice a guy to be taking on the ruling class.”

Sanders, like Paul, has a loyal national following that finances his campaigns. He made life difficult for Democrats in Vermont for many years. In 1988, when he was the mayor of Burlington, he went to the Democratic caucus in the city to support Jesse Jackson’s Presidential campaign. One woman, angry with Sanders for his attacks on local Democrats, slapped him in the face. Soon after he won a seat in the House of Representatives, in 1990, some Democrats tried to exclude him from caucusing with them. At a meeting to decide the matter, his opponents humiliated him by reading aloud his previous statements criticizing the Democratic Party.

“I didn’t know that they could track back everything you had ever said,” Sanders told me. “That did not use to be the case. You could certainly get away with a lot of stuff-- not anymore!”

The Democrats eventually welcomed him back as a collaborator. In 2006, when he ran for the Senate, the Party supported his candidacy. He now campaigns for those Democrats who are comfortable having an avowed socialist stumping for them, and raises money for others. But he has never been a member of the Democratic Party, and if he decides to run against Hillary in the primary, he will have to join. The alternative would be to run as a third-party candidate in the general election. “It’s a very difficult decision,” he said. “If I was a billionaire, if I was a Ross Perot type, absolutely, I’d run as an independent. Because there is now profound anger at both political parties. But it takes a huge amount of money and organizational time to even get on the ballot in fifty states.”

Most likely, he said, he will run in the Democratic primaries, if he runs at all. I asked him if he thought there was deep dissatisfaction with Hillary on the left. “I don’t think it’s just with Hillary,” he replied. “I think it’s a very deep dissatisfaction with the political establishment.” He insisted that he would run a serious campaign against her, not just “an educational campaign” about his pet issues. “If I run, I certainly would run to win.”

A Pew Research survey right after the GOP sweep last week couldn't be very inspiring for Republicans since most Americans seem nonplussed by the whole thing. They found that "about half of Americans (48%) are happy the Republican Party won control of the Senate, while 38% are unhappy. That is almost a carbon copy of the public’s reactions to the 2010 election: 48% were happy the GOP won control of the House, while 34% were unhappy. There was much greater public enthusiasm after the Democrats gained control of Congress in 2006, and after the GOP swept to victory in both the House and Senate in the 1994 midterm election... About as many approve (44%) as disapprove (43%) of Republican congressional leaders’ policies and plans for the future. Following the 2010 election, 41% approved and 37% disapproved of Republican leaders’ plans. The public by wide margins approved of Democratic leaders’ future plans and policies in 2006 (50% to 21%) and Republican leaders’ proposals in 1994 (52% to 28%)."

While victorious Republicans do not engender a great deal of public confidence, neither does President Obama. His overall job rating is virtually unchanged since just prior to the election: 43% approve of his job performance while 52% disapprove.

Obama’s job rating is higher than Bush’s was following the 2006 midterm election (43% vs. 32%), but there is as much skepticism about Obama’s ability to get things done over the remainder of his term as there was about Bush’s in 2006. Just 6% think Obama will accomplish a great deal of what he would like to do in the remaining two years of his presidency, while 33% say he will accomplish some of it. Most (59%) say he will be able to accomplish not much or nothing of what he wants to get done. After the 2006 midterm election, 57% thought Bush would get little or nothing done.

On several specific issues, more prefer the approach offered by congressional Republicans than President Obama, although a sizable share sees little difference between the two sides. On jobs and economic growth, for instance, 35% say Republicans in Congress have a better approach compared with 29% who say Obama’s approach is better; but nearly a third (32%) think there will not be much difference. Across nine issues tested, Obama has a clear advantage over congressional Republicans on only one: 35% say he has the better approach on the environment, while just 20% prefer the Republican approach; 41% think there is not much difference between the two.

And now for some good news. Chris Ladd-- GOPlifer-- is a right-wing blogger. His perspective on the midterms was pretty dire... for a partisan who had just seen his party win so many seats. "Few things," he posits, "are as dangerous to a long term strategy as a short-term victory. Republicans this week scored the kind of win that sets one up for spectacular, catastrophic failure and no one is talking about it." He doesn't see the Republicans taking the lead in building a nationally relevant governing agenda. Here's why:

• Republican Senate candidates lost every single race behind the Blue Wall. Every one.

• Behind the Blue Wall there were some new Republican Governors, but their success was very specific and did not translate down the ballot. None of these candidates ran on social issues, Obama, or opposition the ACA. Rauner stands out as a particular bright spot in Illinois, but Democrats in Illinois retained their supermajority in the State Assembly, similar to other northern states, without losing a single seat.

• Republicans in 2014 were the most popular girl at a party no one attended. Voter turnout was awful.

• Democrats have consolidated their power behind the sections of the country that generate the overwhelming bulk of America’s wealth outside the energy industry. That’s only ironic if you buy into far-right propaganda, but it’s interesting none the less.

• Vote suppression is working remarkably well, but that won’t last. Eventually Democrats will help people get the documentation they need to meet the ridiculous and confusing new requirements. The whole “voter integrity” sham may have given Republicans a one or maybe two-election boost in low-turnout races. Meanwhile we kissed off minority votes for the foreseeable future.

• Across the country, every major Democratic ballot initiative was successful, including every minimum wage increase, even in the red states.

• Every personhood amendment failed.

• For only the second time in fifty years Nebraska is sending a Democrat to Congress. Former Republican, Brad Ashford, defeated one of the GOP’s most stubborn climate deniers to take the seat.

• Almost half of the Republican Congressional delegation now comes from the former Confederacy. Total coincidence, just pointing that out.

• In Congress, there are no more white Democrats from the South. The long flight of the Dixiecrats has concluded.

• Democrats in 2014 were up against a particularly tough climate because they had to defend 13 Senate seats in red or purple states. In 2016 Republicans will be defending 24 Senate seats and at least 18 of them are likely to be competitive based on geography and demographics. Democrats will be defending precisely one seat that could possibly be competitive. One.

• And that “Republican wave?” In Congressional elections this year it amounted to a total of 52% of the vote. That’s it.

• Republican support grew deeper in 2014, not broader. For example, new Texas Governor Greg Abbott won a whopping victory in the Republic of Baptistan. That’s great, but that’s a race no one ever thought would be competitive and hardly anyone showed up to vote in. Texas not only had the lowest voter turnout in the country (less than 30%), a position it has consistently held across decades, but that electorate is more militantly out of step with every national trend then any other major Republican bloc. Texas now holds a tenth of the GOP majority in the House.

• Keep an eye on oil prices. Texas, which is at the core of GOP dysfunction, is a petro-state with an economy roughly as diverse and modern as Nigeria, Iran or Venezuela. It was been relatively untouched by the economic collapse because it is relatively dislocated from the US economy in general. Watch what happens if the decline in oil prices lasts more than a year.

• For all the talk about economic problems, for the past year the US economy has been running at ’90’s levels. Watch Republicans start touting a booming economy as the result of their 2014 “mandate.”

• McConnell’s conciliatory statements are encouraging, but he’s about to discover that he cannot persuade Republican Senators and Congressmen to cooperate on anything constructive. We’re about to get two years of intense, horrifying stupidity. If you thought Benghazi was a legitimate scandal that reveals Obama’s real plans for America then you’re an idiot, but these next two years will be a (briefly) happy period for you.

Steve Israel's Greatest Accomplishment Of 2014: The 2 Bluest Districts Without Democratic Candidates, Both In Florida

¿dónde está Steve?

We've made the case that Debbie Wasserman Schultz has, over the last decade, moved-- at times openly and at times stealthily-- to offer political protection to her old comrade, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. Back in 2008, when Wasserman Schultz was in charge of the DCCC's Red-to-Blue program and publicly endorsing Ros-Lehtinen (and two other Miami-Dade Republicans) against Democrats, Ileana's 18th CD had a PVI of R+4. Since they, Florida has undergone some significant changes demographically (which we'll get to in a moment) and also in terms of cartology. FL-18 was redrawn into FL-27, a district evenly divided, registration-wise, between Democrats and Republicans. The last reported PVI was R+2 but by now the district is either even or D+1. In 2008 Obama lost the district (the current boundary lines) to McCain 123,543 (51%) but in 2012 won it against Romney 130,020 (53%) to 114,096 (47%).

The district is 74% Hispanic but the Cuban dominance isn't what it once was. Venezuelans, Colombians, Nicaraguans, Hondurans and Peruvians haven;'t tended to vote Republican-- and younger Cubans don't either. Little Havana itself, once the heartland of the Cuban exile community and the political base for right-wing refugees isn't nearly as Cuban-- nor nearly as Republican-- as it once was.

A vaguely competent DCCC Chairman would have told Wasserman Schultz to pipe down and targeted FL-27 as one of the easiest Red-to-Blue switches in America. Instead, Steve Israel has allowed Wasserman Schultz to recruit a ghost candidate in 2012 (Manny Yevancey, virtually all of whose ballot signatures came from the Tampa Bay area) and to frighten off all Democrats this year. FL-27 is the second bluest district in the country without a Democratic challenger. The bluest, also in Florida (FL-13), has no Democrat because Israel chased the head of the local NAACP out of the race on behalf of a Republican party switcher who was immediately caught lying about his résumé and withdrew, although not until Israel had managed to completely alienate African-Americans and progressives. And, no, Nancy Pelosi didn't fire him-- not for the screw up in FL-13 or the even worse screw up in FL-27. Who needs two seats in Florida anyway?

Between Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, South Americans and Central Americans, Cubans no longer call the shots for Spanish-speaking Floridians. At the time when Wasserman Schultz was openly calling for the reelections of Mario Diaz-Balart, Lincoln Diaz-Balart and, most strenuously, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, she was a major funnel for both right-wing Cuban political money and corrupt sugar baron into the Democratic Party. From the August 15, 2007 Hill:

When Democrats gained control of Congress, hopes were high that Cuba travel and trade restrictions would be eased by a party historically opposed to a so-called hard line on Cuba.

So far, however, the Democratic-led House has been tougher on Cuba than when Republicans controlled the lower chamber.

Sixty-six House Democrats-- including 20 members of the freshman class-- recently voted against a farm bill amendment offered by Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) that would have made it easier for U.S. farmers to sell agricultural goods to Cuba.

...Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) was instrumental in winning Democratic votes against the Rangel amendment. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) told the Miami Herald that Wasserman Schultz was “a tiger” on the Rangel vote, while Antonio Zamora of the U.S.-Cuba Legal Forum described her as a key party in building Democratic opposition.

“I was about as active as you could be,” said Wasserman Schultz, a second-termer who serves as a deputy chief whip for Democrats. At the same time, she said other members such as Reps. Albio Sires (D-N.J.) and Robert Andrews (D-N.J.) also worked hard to whip opposition.

...Wasserman Schultz’s position on Cuba puts her at odds with some Democratic leaders, but she said she has no worries that this might affect her if she seeks a higher leadership position in the future.

In 2007, two state House seats inside Ros-Lehtinen's congressional district flipped from Republican to Democrat and Democratic Senator Bill Nelson ran up significant majorities there in 2006 and 2012. This has been swept under the carpet by Wasserman Schultz and Israel. This week, Pew released another report verifying what the DCCC should have been working on all decade-- that Cubans are shifting towards the Democratic Party. Steve Israel is a monkey that will not see, will not speak, will not hear. So when the DCCC asks you for money, tell them it would be more usefully spent feeding monkeys at the zoo.

Cubans in the U.S. have long identified with or leaned toward the Republican Party, even as Hispanics overall have tilted Democrat. But the party affiliation of Cubans has undergone a shift over the past decade, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of survey data.

Less than half (47%) of Cuban registered voters nationwide now say they identify with or lean toward the Republican Party-- down from the 64% who said the same about the GOP a decade ago, according to 2013 survey data. Meanwhile, the share of Cubans who identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party has doubled from 22% to 44% over the same time period, according to the survey of Hispanics.

The Cuban population in the U.S. is centered in Florida, home to seven-in-ten of the nation’s 2 million Cuban-origin Hispanics. In the 1960s, the state’s Cuban immigrant population boomed as many left the island after Fidel Castro’s rise to power. The concentration of Cuban voters subsequently helped push the overall Hispanic vote toward the Republican Party in the Sunshine State. In 2004, for example, Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush won 78% of the Cuban vote in Florida, compared with 56% of the state’s Hispanics overall.

The shift is partly explained by the coming of age of U.S.-born Cubans, who have somewhat different political affiliations than their elders. Today, 44% of Cubans in the U.S. are native-born. Some 48% of Cubans ages 18 to 49 were born in the U.S., compared with 11% of Cubans who are 50 years and older.

…Looking at all Cubans, including those not registered to vote, only a third say they identify with or lean toward the Republican Party, according to the 2013 survey of Hispanics. On the other side of the aisle, some 48% of Cubans today say they identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party.

The impact of younger Cubans is reflected in those figures. Over half (56%) of Cubans ages 18 to 49 identified with or leaned toward the Democratic Party compared with 39% of those 50 years and older. Conversely, older Cubans tend to identify with or lean toward the Republican Party more than younger Cubans, by 44% to 23%. Even so, the share of older Cubans who are Republican has declined over time. In 2002, among all Cubans, some 68% who were 50 and older said they identified with or leaned toward the Republican Party.

Israel would rather waste donor money going after impossible red districts with his ridiculous Blue Dog candidates, districts he will lose… every single one of them. But what does he care? It's not his money.

Fiscal Cliff/Grand Bargain... Americans Are Wary Of Our Corrupted Political Elites

The now completely discredited Gallup poll-- which consistently botched the election predictions this cycle-- is out with another survey: Americans Urge Congress, the President to Avoid Fiscal Cliff: Most Americans want both sides to compromise. Maybe it was the inherently deceptive and ominously threatening way Gallup asked the question about the ginned up "fiscal cliff," but their survey comes to slightly different conclusions than less biased, less hyperbolic, more accurate polls.

Pew's poll was far more useful and looking at the problem instead of the fantasy. First of all, most Americans predict (51-38%) Obama and the Republicans will fail to reach a compromise-- and they know just who to blame.

The public is sharpening its focus on the issue, but Republicans are paying more attention than others and are more worried about the fallout of failed negotiations. Nearly half of Republicans are following the issue “very closely,” and more than seven in 10 Republicans anticipate negative consequences for their finances and the overall economy.

Only about half of Democrats see a mostly negative outcome for either the economy or their finances, and 31 percent say passing the cliff will actually help the economy. Economists predict inaction will throw the economy into recession.

But Republicans in Congress may face more public pressure to make concessions. Should negotiations break down to avoid the $500 billion rash of automatic tax hikes and spending cuts, 53 percent are inclined to blame Republicans in Congress while 29 percent single out Obama. 

Yesterday we heard what progressive congressional leaders Raúl Grijalva and Bernie Sanders had to say about the rational position to protect working families from the deprecations of predatory Wall Street and corporate forces and the politicians they've bought. Today's we're turning to a former Blue America candidate from Florida, Nick Ruiz, for a look at this from the perspective of someone able to look at the problems and solutions with a head unclouded by corrupted Inside-the-Beltway mores.



The Secret World of Modern Democrats
-by Nick Ruiz

Now that the lesser evil has been done, shall we take pride in the bipartisan destruction of the Great Society? Perhaps it never was. Maybe Social Security is a bad idea, after all. So few people truly vote to protect it. Minimum wages, I suspect, just a historical fluke. Progressive taxation, where the rich contribute to society according to their means, not extract wealth according to their greed-- a quaint provincial flash in the pan of past Americana? Probably so.

These are the days of the Modern Democrats, and their gilded secret world. What can we say of them? Once there were great Democrats, that did great things. But the Moderns, these tiny Democrats, how small they've become. Oh, but they boom, and bellow so; they orate, they fancy deals as 'ideal.' The tiny Modern Democrats speak grandiosely, in bogus terms of 'messaging.' Oh, they shine it in 1970s liberal populist gloss, so they and liberal boomers feel good about themselves, and the lesser evil. Yes, spectacular grandstanding, presiding over grotesquely corporate 'Grand' Bargains, rather than gigantic progressive actions predicated on a 'big, big love' for American brothers and sisters, marks the moment.

If I were there now, in Washington, DC representing my district in Congress, instead of the Republican King Midas named John Mica, that curious chamber maiden for those that wish to pay to play 'deal-maker'-- I would shut down the whole complicity circus with a thud.

Critique cannot be complicit-- or it's not critique; it's cheerleading. Like Susan Sontag in Somalia, or Barack Obama's 'peace' prize. They all mean well, the vanden Heuvels say. It's not enough.

Yes, it's the idolatry of the lesser evil that brings us to this place. A Grand Bargain of a higher retirement age, since we're all so much healthier than the rest of the world, a weakened cost-of-living formula, so the payout upon retirement is less, 'cause we're all so well off and a reduction of benefits for “higher-income” people, so we can erode widespread support of the Social Security system? What next? Free labor, in the name of 'freedom?'

Since the King Midas of my district voted against the minimum wage, not once, but twice; we can only imagine what great things, he and they all have in store for the children of the lesser evil.

Progressives too, want to join the secret world of the Modern Democrats. And that's just too bad for America. Because complicity cannot critique, let alone repair, or reform. Take it as an axiom. You know the type, and that almost surgically safe critique they offer around the policy edges, like a child pushing yucky food around on a dinner plate.

Of course, we challenge King Midas's everywhere. But that's only part of the reform equation. Don't forget those Modern Democrats at our backs, the salesmen and women foxes in the hen house. They should all be primaried-- every last one of them. And from that position in Congress, that is exactly what I would help to achieve. True reform, by categorical replacement therapy. Because if they won't do the job they were hired (elected) to do, but lied their way into-- they should be removed from office, and replaced with people who truly possess the will to progressive politics, rather than King Midas' will to power.

I don't belong to the secret world of the Modern Democrats. I belong to a community of people that know the difference, and are willing to do the work of progressive reformation.

That difference is the fuel that drives us.

Imagine poor Chris Cillizza's surprise at learning that GOP primary voters are low-information

"The average voter is a low-information decider, making his or her choices about candidates based on often times incomplete or just plain wrong facts. The analysis of political races -- from the presidential race on down -- often assumes a level of involvement and information that the average voter simply lacks."

-- washingtonpost.com "Fix"-er Chris Cillizza, today in
"What do voters know about the GOP field? Very little"

by Ken

Well, it's nice to see Chris Cillizza so excited. I worry sometimes that he may become jaded, even burn out, in the face of the career he's made obfuscating American politics. In a general way, of course, I'm sympathetic, and share his general consternation at the information level of the average voter, though I have to wonder why it comes as such a surprise. And with the overall conclusion I've quoted above I can't muster any serious quarrel.

But when it comes to what it all means, or might mean if we had better information, Chris doesn't seem to have gotten much beyond the "Oh, those stupes!" level.

A new Pew Research Center poll suggests that most voters have little idea about even the most basic facts regarding the backgrounds of the men seeking the Republican presidential nomination this year.

Pew asked registered voters four questions: 1) "Which candidate served as the speaker of the House" 2) "Mitt Romney was the governor of ___" 3) "After Iowa and New Hampshire, the next primary is in ____" 4) "Which GOP candidate opposes U.S. involvement in Afghanistan"

Pretty basic stuff right? Um, no.

Just 43 percent of all registered voters -- these people are actually registered to vote -- got at least three of those questions right. Forty eight percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning voters got three right -- not surprising given that the questions were GOP-focused -- while 41 percent of Democrats and Democratic leaning independents knew the answers to at least three questions.

The data for individual questions is no less revealing/depressing. Just 59 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning voters were aware that Romney had served as governor of Massachusetts. (Come on people!) Half of Republicans didn’t know that South Carolina is the next state to vote after Iowa and New Hampshire (Shedding a tear...); a bare majority (51 percent) knew that Texas Rep. Ron Paul was the candidate in the field who opposes U.S. involvement in Afghanistan (Slightly more understandable).
Young people -- stunner! -- were the least informed about the candidates. Just 40 percent of registered voters aged 18-29 knew that Newt Gingrich was the speaker of the House -- and that was the best that age group did on any of the four questions! Only 32 percent knew Romney had served as governor of Massachusetts and less than one in four (24 percent) knew South Carolina was the next state to vote after Iowa and New Hampshire.

Sigh. (Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised given how Jay Leno has built an entire segment around how little the American public knows about, well, anything.) . . .

Well, I've looked at Pew's own report ("Many Voters Unaware of Basic Facts about GOP Candidates") -- quite hurriedly, I should say, and the data as presented strikes me as both more and less informative than Chris found it.

"Less" informative, most obviously, in terms of the four questions chosen to test respondents' "basic information" awareness. Huh? I suppose it can be useful for a prospective voter to know (1) and (2), though you'll note that the question doesn't give us any clue as to what information "yes" respondents might possess about either candidate. I don't see why it's important at all for the average voter to know (3). Which leaves (4), about which the level of caring is depressingly low -- and of depressingly little concern to the punditocratic and campaign-consulting classes.


"More" informative in that the data on which respondents have this so-called "basic information" isn't really any more encouraging..

Tea Party Republicans are far more knowledgeable about the candidates and the campaign than GOP voters who disagree or have no opinion of the Tea Party. Fully 73% of Republican and Republican-leaning independent voters who agree with the Tea Party correctly answered at least three questions and 53% correctly answered all four. Among non-Tea Party Republican voters, just 31% know the correct answers to at least three of the questions (18% answered all four correctly).

And yet these supposedly higher-information are perhaps the most dangerously deluded and misinformed segment of the present-day electorate. Functionally speaking, what they know about the functioning of the world around them is essentially nil.

Which disturbs me in the same way that I'm saddened by that You must have encountered that widely disseminated Thomas Jefferson quote about how as long as people read books he was hopeful (or did he actually say something more like "confident"? I'll have to dig the quote out, even though it depresses me) for the health of the republic. I think he believed this, and both he and James Madison believed strongly in education, believed that it would be both the underpinning and salvation of the healthy democracy they hoped they were hatching. I guess I might once have shared Jefferson's optimism.

But what none of us were factoring in was the power and threat of mis-education. Many far-right-wingers read voraciously. And with every word they read, they become more hopelessly clueless about what's going on around them. I guess you might say that there's "information" and "information."

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Governor Rick finds a different loon for the Texas Board of Ed but affirms his support for "The Republican War on Science"

Gail Lowe, an "outspoken creationist" with no visible

educational credentials, is Texas Gov. Rick Perry's

choice to head the State Board of Education.

"The scientists identify poor media coverage of science as a key problem. And, journalistic analyses of media reporting on global warming agree with that. Thus, the challenge isn’t expert knowledge, but communicating that knowledge to the general public with a thick and confusing media filter while dealing with determined disinformation campaigns."

-- A Siegel, in a Get Energy Smart Now blogpost,
"Republicans reject Science; Scientists reject Republicans"

by Ken

This is what comes of setting the bar low. All laughingstock Texas Gov. Rick Perry had to do was get out the word that he was thinking of appointing a fugitive mental patient to chair the State Board of Education, and his actual designation of a merely unqualified intellectual hooligan becomes a sort of act of "moderation." At the same time, since there's nothing remotely moderate about the designee, it seems unlikely that he's risking fallout from the neanderthals whose hearts and minds he's wooing in his struggle to win renomination against the challenge of Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison.

As our Capitol Annex colleague Vince Leibowitz noted in connection with the reports that certifiable wingnut loon Cynthia Dunbar was being considered for the job: "If Perry does this, it is part of his ongoing campaign to govern Texas solely for the amusement of one million Republican Primary voters who will likely decide between Perry and U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison next March. Perry’s got to shore up his rightwing base, and a Cynthia Dunbar appointment would no doubt earn him a lot of points in that camp."

Rachel Weiner reported yesterday on the Huffington Post:

Gail Lowe: Perry Picks Creationist To Run State Education Board

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) has chosen Gail Lowe, an outspoken creationist, to run the state's Board of Education.

It was actually the less controversial choice. Cynthia Dunbar, reportedly under consideration for the post, believed government should be guided by a "biblical litmus test" and thought public education was a "subtly deceptive tool of perversion." (She home-schooled her own children.) She has also endorsed conspiracy theories suggesting President Obama is not a natural-born citizen.

Lowe, on the other hand, thinks evolution should be taught and "kids ought to be able to hold religious beliefs and still study science without any conflict." But in 2008, she took the position that "biology textbooks which do not teach both the scientific strengths and weaknesses of the theory of evolution must be rejected by the board." She has voted against new textbooks that do not contain those "weaknesses." She is a newspaper editor, not a teacher.

Lowe will replace Don McLeroy, another self-described creationist and dentist whose reappointment was blocked by Democrats. He had been chairman of the board since 2007 and will remain a member.

Freedom of speech being a bedrock of American democracy, Gail Lowe is free to say anything she likes about the theory of evolution. But anyone who fantasizes a role for her in the education of American schoolchildren has an obligation to recognize that nothing she says about "the strengths and weaknesses of the theory of evolution" can be allowed to have any influence of any kind over educational policy because she gives no evidence of any knowledge of (a) the theory of evolution, (b) its "scientific strengths and weaknesses," or (c) anything else to do with science. She is simply spewing the reality-thumbing propaganda of Crap Christianity.

It is tiresome to have to say it yet again, and pointless too, because the people who need to grasp these simple realities have disconnected the batteries that power their brains. Still, actual scientists have been addressing the "weaknesses" of evolutionary theory since evolutionary theory was first formulated, which is why the theory has evolved to such a great extent. That's how science works. It's not like propaganda, which is simply concocted in the minds of people to suit their prejudices and agendas. So-called "creationism" bears no relation to science; it's just a facade invented to advance the Crap Christian agenda while pretending the motivation is something other than crap-religious.

Just the other day our colleague A Siegel was reporting on his Get Energy Smart Now blog ("Republicans reject Science; Scientists reject Republicans") on a Pew Research poll ("Public Praises Science; Scientists Fault Public, Media") that appears to document a more or less terminal divide between science and scientists on the one hand and The Republican War on Science on the other:

* “Both scientists and the public overwhelmingly say it is appropriate for scientists to become active in political debates about such issues as nuclear power or stem cell research.”
* While scientists self-identify as liberal, most American’s don’t see scientists as liberal. Thus, engaged experts might view themselves as politically liberal, the general public is likely not to view them in this way.
* Scientists are the third most respected profession (after the military and teachers)

These three combine to suggest that scientists could be strong spokesman for “liberal”, “progressive”, “science-based” policy.

As Stephen Colbert put it, “reality has a well-known liberal bias”. Scientists work in, specialize in understanding reality. Should it shock anyone that they have a liberal bias?

Now, disinformation on key issues clearly has had an impact. 87% of scientists state that evolution is the result of natural processes with just 32 percent public agreement.

[T]he near consensus among scientists about global warming is not mirrored in the general public. While 84% of scientists say the earth is getting warmer because of human activity such as burning fossil fuels, just 49% of the public agrees.

These sort of significant gaps between expert and informed knowledge and general, public view should be -- are -- troubling. The scientists identify poor media coverage of science as a key problem. And, journalistic analyses of media reporting on global warming agree with that. Thus, the challenge isn’t expert knowledge, but communicating that knowledge to the general public with a thick and confusing media filter while dealing with determined disinformation campaigns.

UPDATE: Battle For The Texas Governor's Mansion --
Conservative vs. Secessionist

Kay Bailey Hutchison, one of Texas' two far right senators, is making it official: she's in the race to win the governorship from lunatic fringe Texas Governor Rick Perry. She has $12 million cash on hand and he has $9 million. Both, of course, are 100% owned by Big Business special interests. And Perry, the further right of the two, claims that Sarah Palin will be in Texas campaigning for him. I think the Democrats are putting up Kinky Friedman. Why not? -- Howie

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