1) Billy Binion on Alec Baldwin:
If convicted of the first involuntary manslaughter charge, Baldwin faces up to 18 months behind bars. If convicted of the second—to which prosecutors tacked on a firearm enhancement—he faces a mandatory minimum of five years in prison.
Carmack-Altwies makes her case sound like a slam dunk. It is anything but.
The case comes down to what the word negligence means under the law. It doesn’t refer to a careless, airheaded moment with deadly consequences. That negligence has to be criminal, which under the New Mexico statute requires “that the defendant must possess subjective knowledge ‘of the danger or risk to others posed by his or her actions.'”
Does that mean that Baldwin is blameless? No. Does that mean that the prosecution will have an easy time convincing a jury that he is criminally culpable? Also no. “The prosecution would have to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he was subjectively aware of the danger: that he actually thought about the possibility that the gun might be loaded, and proceeded to point it and pull the trigger despite that,” writes Eugene Volokh, a professor of law at UCLA. “That’s much harder than just to show carelessness, or even gross carelessness.” …
So why bring the case against Baldwin? I’d venture to guess it’s not because the government thinks that the actor, unpalatable as he may be, needs to spend five years in prison to protect public safety. Andrea Reeb, a special prosecutor helping on the case, provided a clue during the national press tour she did alongside Carmack-Altwies. “We’re trying to definitely make it clear that everybody’s equal under the law, including A-list actors like Alec Baldwin,” she said. Ironically, one wonders if these charges would have materialized had no one famous been involved and had it not attracted the attention of the world.
2) Eugene Volokh:
Involuntary manslaughter is thus very different from the voluntary; the similarities are just that it’s a homicide but not murder. One branch of it (“manslaughter committed in the commission of an unlawful act not amounting to felony”) is the so-called “manslaughter-misdemeanor” rule, an analog to the “felony-murder” rule. The second branch involves, basically, causing death through negligence.
But not just any old negligence, of the sort that we’re familiar with from civil cases. Rather, it has to be “criminal negligence,” which is defined in New Mexico as “willful disregard of the rights or safety of others”—what some other states might call “recklessness”:
In New Mexico, “the State must show at least criminal negligence to convict a criminal defendant of involuntary manslaughter.” Because involuntary manslaughter is an unintentional killing, we only attach felony liability where the actor has behaved with the requisite mens rea. This Court has made clear that the criminal negligence standard applies to all three categories of involuntary manslaughter. Criminal negligence exists where the defendant “act[s] with willful disregard of the rights or safety of others and in a manner which endanger[s] any person or property.” We also require that the defendant must possess subjective knowledge “of the danger or risk to others posed by his or her actions.” [Emphasis added.]
Say, then, that the prosecution can show that Baldwin pointed the gun at Hutchins and pulled the trigger, but carelessly believed (without checking this for himself) that it was unloaded.
It wouldn’t be enough to show that Baldwin was careless, negligent, or lacked due caution in the ordinary sense of the word. The prosecution would have to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he was subjectively aware of the danger: that he actually thought about the possibility that the gun might be loaded, and proceeded to point it and pull the trigger despite that. That’s much harder than just to show carelessness, or even gross carelessness, though of course much depends on what evidence the prosecution has gathered.
3) NYT: “Lights, Camera, Weapons Check? Actors Worry After Baldwin Charges.”
The news that Alec Baldwin is facing manslaughter charges for killing a cinematographer with a gun he had been told was safe had the actor Steven Pasquale thinking back to the filming of “Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem” more than a decade ago, when he and other actors were handed military-style rifles and told to start shooting.
He felt safe, he said, because he relied on the professional props experts and the armorer who had checked and shown him the gun.
“We are artists — we are not actual cowboys, actual cops, actual superheroes,” Mr. Pasquale said. “We are not Jason Bourne. I can’t even begin to imagine an actor having the responsibility of now needing to be the safety person on the set regarding prop guns. That’s insane.”
The charges being brought against Mr. Baldwin for an on-set shooting had many actors recalling their own experiences with guns on sets, and discussing safety measures and who bears primary responsibility for them…
Kirk Acevedo, an actor who has worked extensively with weapons on shows like “Band of Brothers” and in the film “The Thin Red Line,” said it was typical for a film’s armorer, who is responsible for guns and ammunition on set, to open a gun and demonstrate to the actor that it was empty. Mr. Acevedo said that while he owned guns and had experience with them, many actors lacked the expertise to check firearms on their own. In some cases, he noted, the actors are children.
“It’s not me,” he said, referring to who has the responsibility. “It can’t be me. If you have never fired a weapon before, how would you know how to do all of that? For some people, it’s hard to even pull back the slide.”
4) Really interesting take from Rob Henderson on family dysfunction among low income Americans, ‘No One Expects Young Men To Do Anything and They Are Responding By Doing Nothing”
If you come from poverty and chaos, you are up against 3 enemies:
1. Dysfunction and deprivation
2. Yourself, as a result of what that environment does to you
3. The upper class, who wants to keep you mired in it
The people with the most money and education—the class most responsible for shaping politics and culture and customs—ensure that their children are raised in stable homes.
But actively undermine the norm for everyone else…
Absent fathers and broken family units are major factors for many social ills. It’s obvious but no one wants to talk about it.
I am well aware of the behavior genetics research, twin studies, and so on indicating little effect of home environment on personality, propensity for crime, addiction, and so on. These studies are inapplicable for kids living in extreme dysfunction.
Behavior geneticists investigate the relative role of genetic and environmental variation within the sampled population.
Behavioral genetics studies report findings from within the environmental variation in their samples,not in all conceivable environments.
For example, there are many studies on identical twins separated at birth who are adopted by different families.
Researchers find little difference between these twins when they are adults. Their personalities, IQ, preferences, and so on are very similar.
But twins are usually adopted by intact middle-class families.
They are typically taken in by married parents with the means to jump through the hoops to qualify for adoption. Additionally, adoptive parents are the kind of people who would adopt, which introduces another layer of similarity.
I’ve yet to see any twin studies with one set of identical twins raised in extremely bad environments and another in good ones.
The intelligence researcher Russell T. Warne has written:
“A problem with heritability study samples is that they tend to consist of more middle and upper-class individuals than a representative sample would have…results of behavioral genetics studies will indicate genes are important—if a person already lives in an industrialized nation in a home where basic needs are met…it is not clear how well these results apply to individuals in highly unfavorable environments.”
In a chapter titled Genes and the Mind, the psychologist David Lykken states:
“If twins were separated as infants and placed, one with a middle-class Minnesota family and the other with an 18-year-old unmarried mother living on AFDC in the South Bronx, the twins will surely differ 30 years later.”
Yes, genes are responsible for human traits and behavior. But these traits are responsive to social norms and other environmental factors too.
Height is 90 percent heritable. But it is still malleable by the environment. Before Korea was divided, Northerners were taller than Southerners. Today, North Koreans are 6 inches shorter, on average, than South Koreans. Did their genes change? No. Their environments did.
Obesity is highly heritable (40-70%) but the percentage of Americans who are obese has tripled since 1982.
Access to food made people change their behavior by eating more.
Tobacco use is highly heritable (60-80%) but the percentage of Americans who smoke has dropped by half since 1982.
Strong norms against smoking made people change their behavior by smoking less.
Norms were loosened around being an absentee father. So more men took the option.
But nobody wants to admit it because it upsets people.
Instead, we retreat to discussions of poverty and economics because talking about family and parenting makes people feel weird and judgmental.
But young men will only do what’s expected of them.
And a lot did use to be expected. There were social norms to work hard, provide, take care of loved ones, and so on.
Today, these norms have largely dissolved.
Young men have responded accordingly.
5) Really good stuff from Jessica Grose on NZ prime minister, having it all, and what we expect out of our politicians:
|
In 2023, it’s clear that women can be ambitious and have families. We shouldn’t — we don’t — need to prove that at this point, though Ardern provided us with ample evidence of how well it can be done. She became prime minister in 2017 at just 37. She gave birth while in office, and rose to worldwide prominence for her “extraordinary leadership” in the aftermath of the tragic mass shootings at two Christchurch mosques in 2019.
|
|
Like every other world leader, she navigated the coronavirus pandemic and its various economic and political repercussions. As my colleague Natasha Frost reports, though Ardern’s Labour Party has lost favor with New Zealanders, she “has remained personally popular with the electorate” and is still most New Zealanders’ “preferred prime minister.”
|
|
All the while, she’s had a young child at home. In 2018, she brought her baby daughter to a United Nations peace summit honoring Nelson Mandela. During the scary early days of the Covid crisis, she “addressed the nation via a casual Facebook Live session she conducted on her phone after putting her toddler to bed,” as my colleague Amanda Taub wrote in 2020.
|
|
Making the decision to leave office now rather than run herself into the ground isn’t conceding that she can’t do the job anymore. It’s an acknowledgment — one that’s both astute and selfless, fine qualities in an elected official — that she no longer wants to do it in this particular way. While she says she has “no plan” and “no next steps” for after she leaves her government role, I anticipate she’ll put her abundant political skill to good use in some way.
|
|
She demonstrated that skill in her moving resignation speech, addressing her nation in terms highly relatable to any parent versed in the current motherhood discourse of “filling our tanks” before they are empty and putting our “oxygen masks” on first so we have something left to give our families before we burn out…
|
I never thought “having it all” meant we should sacrifice our entire lives and our health on the altar of ambition and outward metrics of success or financial reward. It shouldn’t mean that we can never leave a professional role that is no longer suiting us or our families, because feminism, or something. The world would probably be better off if more leaders were like Ardern, less concerned about their own egos and more concerned about what was best for their countries. The “I alone can fix it” posture has its obvious limitations.
|
|
6) Interesting, “Citing Accessibility, State Department Ditches Times New Roman for Calibri” I love me some Times New Roman, but when I’m not using serifs (like, I just realized, this blog!) I’m good with Calibri. That said, this article was frustrating because it was all assertions and no actual evidence.
7) I’m not sure this policy is necessarily coming from the best place politically, but I do find myself sympathetic to this idea, “UNC Board of Governors to consider policy barring staff from ‘compelling’ speech”
The UNC Board of Governors is considering a policy that would prohibit UNC System schools from asking applicants for employment, promotion or academic admission to share their personal beliefs.
The proposed policy would bar questions requiring applicants “to affirmatively ascribe to or opine about beliefs, affiliations, ideals, or principles regarding matters of contemporary political debate or social action as a condition to admission, employment, or professional advancement.” It would revise the “Employee Political Activities” section of the system’s policy manual.
8) Regarding the Singal piece I linked yesterday, the problem of DEI trainings is not a new idea, “Don’t Mistake Training for Education: That should especially be the case when it comes to diversity, equity and inclusion, argue Amna Khalid and Jeffrey Aaron Snyder.”
9) Ian Milhiser in Vox, “A new Supreme Court case could turn every workplace into a religious battleground: The fight over whether religious conservatives enjoy special rights is coming to a workplace near you.”
The Supreme Court announced on Friday that it will hear Groff v. DeJoy, a case that could give religious conservatives an unprecedented new ability to dictate how their workplaces operate, and which workplace rules they will refuse to follow.
Yet Groff is also likely to overrule a previous Supreme Court decision that treated the interests of religious employees far more dismissively than federal law suggests that these workers should be treated.
The case, in other words, presents genuinely tricky questions about the limits of accommodating an employee’s religious beliefs. But those questions will be resolved by a Supreme Court that has shown an extraordinary willingness to bend the law in ways that benefit Christian-identified conservatives.
That could lead to a scenario in which the Court announces a new legal rule that disrupts the workplace — and that potentially places far too many burdens on non-religious employees.
10) Yglesias addresses highway lanes (as part of a larger argument on transit)
In other words, I don’t think the induced demand critics of highway widening are wrong exactly. But they’re not really saying what they mean. This is what I think they mean:
-
The pollution associated with driving cars is bad.
-
Addressing that pollution via an appropriate gas tax seems politically challenging.
-
Because the American political system is laden with veto points and NIMBY institutions, blocking highway projects is easier than raising taxes.
-
Both new transit and new highways fail to solve traffic, but transit fails by leaving net driving flat while highways increase vehicle miles traveled.
-
Therefore we should advocate for transit and not for highways.
I don’t have a problem with that logic exactly. But when you live by the NIMBY, you die by the NIMBY. Just as the same NIMBY toolkit that blocks private development also blocks public housing, the NIMBY toolkit that blocks highway projects also makes it impossible to complete transit projects in a timely and cost-effective manner.
Beyond that, traffic congestion is a real problem and it deserves a solution.
11) I was really excited about the prospects of fluvoxamine as a cheap, effective treatment for Covid. New studies show that, alas, among the vaccinated there’s just no benefit.
12) Another take from Rob Henderson, I really enjoyed, “Nobody is a Prisoner of Their IQ”
People often treat intelligence, a relatively immutable trait, as the sole predictive variable in determining life outcomes. And then use it as an instrument to advance their favored agendas.
People on the right and, increasingly, on the left, generally accept the importance of IQ. The right is more open about it. Those on the left are often coy in public, concealing their statements underneath an avalanche of hedges—but in private, without the fear of negative social judgment, most will acknowledge that intelligence matters a lot for achievement.
Recently, two prominent books discussing the importance of intelligence have been written by authors who are broadly thought to be on the political left: The Cult of Smart and The Genetic Lottery.
That intelligence is largely (though not entirely) influenced by genes is somehow simultaneously taboo and widely accepted. Perhaps an example of Paul Graham’s observation that “the biggest source of moral taboos will turn out to be power struggles in which one side only barely has the upper hand. That’s where you’ll find a group powerful enough to enforce taboos, but weak enough to need them.” Still, the publication and relative absence of anger about the two aforementioned books suggests that were it not for fear of being mobbed by lunatics, people would be more forthcoming about their acceptance of this psychological concept.
The importance and fixity of intelligence are now used by both the political right and left in different ways. For many on the left, it confirms that their view that unfairness is pervasive and thus they have a strong argument in favor of large-scale redistribution. You didn’t earn the genes that made you smart, thus whatever earnings you’ve obtained due to your innate abilities are due to luck. For many on the right, the durability of intelligence confirms their view that differences between people exist and there isn’t much you can do about it. Thus society should accept that things are unfair and, e.g., limit the number of immigrants who, on average, extract more resources than they contribute.
Intelligence is important, but it’s far from the only thing that matters for living a decent life. A meta-analysis of 23 studies found that at the individual level, intelligence has no relationship with happiness. Knowing the IQ of two random people in the same country tells you nothing about whether one is happier than the other. And if you believe Richard Hanania, today the high IQ elites are more miserable than everybody else (yes, the elites are smarter than average—but often smart people use their intelligence to raise their own status rather than seek the truth).
The psychologist and intelligence researcher Russell T. Warne points out:
“Although below-average intelligence makes life more difficult for a person, other traits or life circumstances can compensate for having a lower IQ. Having a supportive family, higher socioeconomic status, motivation, conscientiousness, cultural influences that discourage unfavorable behaviors, determination, and many other characteristics can compensate for a. lower level of intelligence. Nobody is a prisoner of their IQ.”
13) What MSG is doing is still so wrong, but this is nonetheless heartening, “Lawyers Barred by Madison Square Garden Found a Way Back In: MSG Entertainment resorted to facial recognition technology to kick out legal foes, but some have undermined the ban using a law passed to protect theater critics in 1941.”
14) Enjoyed “The Last of Us” and enjoyed learning more about fungal infections here, “The Last Of Us Fungal Outbreak Is Terrifying, But Is It Realistic?”
In The Last of Us premiere episode, 20 years have passed with no progress made against the fungal threat — which is because of the real-life similarities between fungi and humans as eukaryotes, or organisms with nucleated cells, explains Dr. Ilan Schwartz, an instructor with the Duke University School of Medicine who specializes in immunocompromised hosts and invasive fungal infections.
“Our cells are a lot more complex than, for example, bacteria, and fungi are more related to people than they are to bacteria that cause infections,” says Dr. Schwartz of why there are only three antifungal agents compared with “way more classes of antibacterials.” “We have this problem with our adversary being closely related, and what that means is that the cell machinery is the same as ours. There are far fewer targets for antifungals to work with, to selectively cause damage to fungal cells without causing damage to human cells.”
15) Eric Barker on the value of humor and how to be funnier:
We just don’t take humor that seriously.
Yeah, it makes us happier, but its effects are much, much more profound than you might guess.
People who use humor to cope with stress have better immune systems, reduced risk of heart attack and stroke, experience less pain during dental work and live longer. Surgery patients who watched comedies needed 60% less pain medication. Heck, even anticipating humor has been shown to reduce stress.
Humor improves your relationships. Surveys say it’s the second most desirable trait in a partner. When both people in a couple have a good sense of humor they have 67% less conflict. (Want a tip? Reliving moments that made the two of you laugh is a proven way to increase relationship satisfaction.)
Let’s up the stakes, shall we? What about the office? A lot of people think humor isn’t appropriate at work and those people are, as we say, “wrong.” A survey of hundreds of senior executives showed 98% prefer employees who are funny – and 84% thought those people actually did better work.
In fact, if you’re not going for laughs at the office, you may be hurting your career. Humor increases perceptions of power and status. It boosts creativity. It signals intelligence. Making people laugh increases persuasion and made buyers willing to pay higher prices. In fact, studies show work teams often fail simply because they don’t joke around enough. And leaders with a sense of humor were rated as 23% more respected and 25% more pleasant to work with.
Can I stop there? I’ll stop there.
We need to get to the bottom of how to do this humor thing right. We’re gonna pull from a slew of excellent books and studies including Humor, Seriously, How to Write Funny, Inside Jokes, and Ha: The Science of Why We Laugh.
Alright, let’s get to it…
16) Drum summarizes some cool new PS research:
A new study is out that tries to measure the effectiveness of social media advertising campaigns in political races. The unique part of this study is that it makes use of an actual advertising campaign during the 2020 presidential contest that deliberately held out a control group so that its effectiveness could be measured:
We present the results of a large, US$8.9 million campaign-wide field experiment, conducted among 2 million moderate- and low-information persuadable voters in five battleground states during the 2020 US presidential election. Treatment group participants were exposed to an 8-month-long advertising programme delivered via social media, designed to persuade people to vote against Donald Trump and for Joe Biden.
The funny thing is that I think the authors underrate their own results. For example, here is turnout for Republicans and Democrats:
The authors say, “We found both small mobilizing effects among Biden leaners and small demobilizing effects among Trump leaners.” But this is a net difference of 1.8% in turnout. In most political campaigns this would be considered pretty substantial and the price tag of $8.9 million for five states pretty modest. Most campaign managers in battleground states would be thrilled with it.
Basically, I think you can say two things here. First, on an absolute basis this study shows a fairly small effect. Second, within the context of a close political race, it shows a very substantial effect.
17) I hate this! If we can’t have meat alternatives, can’t we at least pay more for meat to not have it be horribly inhumane? Apparently not. “Spy Cams Reveal the Grim Reality of Slaughterhouse Gas Chambers”
18) Well, this is intriguing and, hopefully, promising, “Could this be the solution to chronic pain—and the opioid crisis? Early research suggests that monoclonal antibodies—used to protect the vulnerable from COVID-19—may provide non-addictive, long-lasting pain relief from a variety of conditions.”
As the pandemic raged, monoclonal antibodies gained sudden prominence when these laboratory-made proteins were found to reduce the risk of hospitalization from COVID in vulnerable and immunocompromised people. Now researchers are investigating whether these types of proteins might also be an effective treatment for a variety of chronic pain conditions: low back pain, pain from osteoarthritis, neuropathic pain (such as diabetic peripheral neuropathy), rheumatoid arthritis, and cancer pain.
Already, the Food and Drug Administration has approved four monoclonal antibodies (mAb) to prevent and treat painful chronic migraine attacks. Last year, the FDA approved use of an mAb (an injection of frunevetmab) to treat osteoarthritic pain in cats; similar drugs are in the works for people. And clinical trials for other mAbs for chronic pain are expected to begin later in 2023.
“The hope is that as we learn more about specific pain mechanisms, we can develop monoclonal antibodies that would target different forms of chronic pain,” says Charles Argoff, a professor of neurology and director of the Comprehensive Pain Center at the Albany Medical Center in New York. “But we’re not there yet and I don’t think it’s going to happen tomorrow.” …
The reason mAbs can be used for many different purposes is that each one has a highly specific target. During the pandemic, monoclonal antibodies were used to block the protein on the COVID-19 virus that enabled it to attach to human cells. Similarly, researchers believe they can design mAbs that can bind to receptors involved in pain transmission, thus blocking the signals.
Yarov-Yarovoy’s goal is to create monoclonal antibodies that target specific ion channels on the surface of nerve cells that receive signals caused by painful stimuli; essentially shutting off the transmission of chronic pain that occurs in a variety of medical conditions.
“In terms of chronic pain, we’ve got to figure something out because it’s difficult to treat and there aren’t a lot of great options,” says Ryan Marino, a medical toxicologist and addiction medicine specialist at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. “Opioids lose their effectiveness with long-term use for a lot of people, and there’s a potential for dependency to develop. Even if you’re taking them as prescribed, you will have to take higher and higher doses to get pain relief.”
19) I’m not worried about getting germs from my spice jars. I don’t handle raw meat anymore, but, when I did, I guarantee you I was zealous enough with hand-washing that I was not cross-contaminating spice jars. “The germiest spot in your kitchen? The spice jars, a new study found.”
If you had to guess the germiest spot in your kitchen, you might think of the refrigerator handle, the cutting board or maybe the inside of your sink. But a new study shows that icky bacteria could be more likely to be lurking in an unexpected spot: your spice drawer.
Researchers in
a recent study commissioned by the Agriculture Department’s Food Safety and Inspection Service examined how people preparing turkey burgers cross-contaminated various surfaces in a kitchen. (Sneakily, the participants weren’t told they were participating in a food safety study; instead, they thought they were testing new recipes.)
Spice jars used in the meal, the researchers found, were far and away the most cross-contaminated spot — 48 percentof those used were found to harbor bacteria from the turkey.
The study, recently published in the Journal of Food Protection, noted that while consumers might have heard about the importance of cleaning cutting boards or wiping down handles, they might not have thought about their spice jars. “Consumers may not necessarily think to wipe down or decontaminate spice containers after cooking because they are not typically targeted as high risk for cross-contamination in consumer messaging,” the study says.
20) This is a really cool feature, “The happiest, least stressful, most meaningful jobs in America.” Check it out with the gift link.
21) Good stuff on ChatGPT, “Large Language Models like ChatGPT say The Darnedest Things: The Errors They Make, Why We Need to Document Them, and What We Have Decided to Do About it”
22) Thanks, Republicans! “Opposition to School Vaccine Mandates Has Grown Significantly, Study Finds: A third of parents now feel they should be the ones to decide whether to get their children immunized against measles, mumps and other childhood diseases.”
For generations of most American families, getting children vaccinated was just something to check off on the list of back-to-school chores. But after the ferocious battles over Covid shots of the past two years, simmering resistance to general school vaccine mandates has grown significantly. Now, 35 percent of parents oppose requirements that children receive routine immunizations in order to attend school, according to a new survey released Friday by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
All of the states and the District of Columbia mandate that children receive vaccinations against measles, mumps, rubella and other highly contagious, deadly childhood diseases. (Most permit a few limited exemptions.)
Throughout the pandemic, the Kaiser foundation, a nonpartisan health care research organization, has been issuing monthly reports on changing attitudes toward Covid vaccines. The surveys have showed a growing political divide over the issue, and the latest study indicates that division now extends to routine childhood vaccinations.
Forty-four percent of adults who either identify as Republicans or lean that way said in the latest survey that parents should have the right to opt out of school vaccine mandates, up from 20 percent in a prepandemic poll conducted in 2019 by the Pew Research Center. In contrast, 88 percent of adults who identify as or lean Democratic endorsed childhood vaccine requirements, a slight increase from 86 percent in 2019.
21) Speaking of Republicans, “The House spectacle highlights a key difference between the parties”
As political scientists Matt Grossmann and David A. Hopkins wrote in their 2016 book, “Asymmetric Politics”: “While the Democratic Party is fundamentally a group coalition, the Republican Party can be most accurately characterized as the vehicle of an ideological movement.” Group coalitions can be managed through transactional politics — so long as some of the groups’ priorities are advanced, they will stick together to deliver for the other groups in the coalition.
Ideological movements are less flexible. There’s pressure for alignment among members — and even when members are mostly aligned, remaining differences may seem all the more significant. (McCarthy’s move rightward hasn’t done much to shore up his position with his opponents.)
Since “Asymmetric Politics” was published, Democrats have grown increasingly ideological, and the ideological emphases of the GOP have changed. Yet it’s still the case that “the Democratic Party — in the electorate, as an organizational network, and in government — is organized around group interests.” The party’s “self-conscious” constituent groups include, for example, indebted college graduates, intellectuals and the expert class, government-employee unions, and the organized civil-rights apparatus (which itself includes many independent interests).
Democrats tend to argue for specific policies, Grossmann and Hopkins observed, on the grounds that they will help a specific group they see as part of their coalition — women, unions, universities. Republicans, meanwhile, are more likely to appeal to “general concepts and principles … frequently emphasizing the need to limit the scope of government or preserve traditional American society.” A coalition that makes ideology its lodestar is stronger in some respects — but as the House GOP fractiousness has shown, weaker in others.
Business might have once been a group interest within the GOP. Corporations are amenable to transactional politics and have historically expected benefits under Republican governance. But in the Trump years, big business and the Republican Party drifted apart, both because of corporate discomfort with populism and the GOP’s discomfort with business’s growing social liberalism. The gap widened after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot. The Republican-business rift has left the House GOP even less constrained by interest groups’ needs, and more driven by ideological goals.
When Republicans ran the House between 2011 and 2019, they had comfortable majorities — from 234 seats to 247 — and still faced significant divisions that made speakers John Boehner and Paul Ryan struggle to find 218 votes for legislation at key junctures. The new speaker’s margin for error will be much smaller.
There are similarities between each party’s populist wing — Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) is a firebrand like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.); Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont launched an insurgent 2016 Democratic primary bid that paralleled Donald Trump’s. But the Democratic Party’s upstarts have been embraced by the party establishment; it also has leverage over them. Republican populism is more unpredictable and genuinely disruptive to the party system.
22) Alice Evans highlights interesting research on sex differences
Like this:
Like Loading...
Fully Myelinated 
Recent Comments