In Case You Missed It (v3)

I know you want to read me every day, right? But sometimes you can't?

It's OK - not only do I forgive you, but I'm even handing you a cheat sheet to this week's posts. Take a look.

On our Sunday School stroll through the halls of punditry this week, we heard from Mayor Pete on Afghanistan, particularly a misinterpreted comment during the debate about how the war started. Some in the media thought (or pretended they thought) that he said the US started that war. Buttigieg, on the anniversary of his coming home from that war, clarified

 I did not say that the US started the war; what I'm saying is the lesson is that wars are difficult to end...

And we heard from Andrew Yang on a number of subjects, including his announcement during the debate that he'd offer $1000 per month to ten families who got on his website and told him why they needed the money. And, he raised attention to the issue of money in politics, noting that if he

"gave a million dollars to a media company or consultants or hired a small army of canvassers, no one would blink an eye, but if we give the money directly to the American people, somehow that's problematic. So, it just speaks directly to how messed up our system is..."

In Monday's We Don't Need to Take People's Guns Away I disagreed with Beto O'Rourke's plan to do exactly that.

Don't get me wrong -- I think these guns are unnecessary, and have no purpose other than inflicting a great deal of harm in a very short period of time. But the mandatory buyback - confiscation with pay, if you will - is wrong. And I don't think most Democrats, or most Americans, believe it's right, or constitutional, even though O'Rourke says it can be done using the Commerce Clause without stepping on the Second Amendment.

This is exactly the kind of position that will make it much harder to get Donald Trump out of office next year. 

My sense that most Americans don't agree with O'Rourke on this was illustrated in Wednesday's Poll Watch  which summarized a recent Quinnipiac survey or registered voters.  But more interesting than our opinions on guns, and on climate change, another of the survey's topics, were the opinions on prejudice. For example,

By political party, the percentages of people saying prejudice is at least a somewhat serious problem falls where you'd expect it to, but the percentages were a little more extreme than I anticipated. 

We were Wondering on Wednesday afternoon about Republican presidential primaries being cancelled, angry Bernie Sanders voters, impeaching Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and about Trump's new National Security Advisor. On Kavanaugh, I wondered if we'd return to any sense of normalcy.

More important, though - under even the weakest of normal circumstances, the nomination of a potential SCOTUS justice with even a hint of what he's accused of never would have seen the light of day. And I wonder if we'll ever be close to that kind of normal again.

In Thursday's visit to the Update Desk, we looked at email activity from the top ten Democrats. Both the volume of emails, and the percentage of them asking for money, increased this week. What didn't change? What the candidates are talking about (money) and not talking about (issues).

Only Booker and Yang dedicated an email to the UAW strike, which surprised me given the candidates are all actively seeking the coveted union endorsements. Mayor Pete talked about Medicare For All Who Want It, his health insurance plan, and Cory Booker released an economic plan, so that was worth one email. And that was it - nothing solely related to immigration, foreign policy, education, and climate change. 

And finally, it was the last day of the work week and time for our TGIF feature, which looked at not just people (Rudy Giuliani, for one) but at a word. That's right - a word. Can a word have a good week or a bad week? Well, it seems it can. Or, sometimes, it 'shall', which

has this particularly relevant meaning, under 3(b): --used in laws, regulations, or directives to express what is mandatory.

Hmm.. mandatory? You mean like when a whistleblower complaint has been investigated and determined to be credible and urgent, and therefore it shall be turned over to Congress?  I would have thought this would be a good week for 'shall' but in our bizarro world, 'shall' and 'shall not' are synonyms, not antonyms.

So - there's this week in a nutshell. Next week, we'll have our regular features, as well as updates on whatever hot topics shall arise.

Poll Watch: Climate, Guns and Prejudice

As promised, here's the post highlighting what was learned about climate change, gun control. and prejudice in America from the recent Quinnipiac poll. 

Here's the small print: Quinnipiac University surveyed 1422 self-identified registered voters nationwide August 21-26. Generally, the pollsters conduct live interviews with people on randomly dialed landlines and cell phones. The margin of error for this survey is +/- 3.1percentage points.

The survey shows:

• 56% of registered voters say climate change is an emergency, with both Democrats and Independents believing this; Republicans do not. Further, 67% of registered voters believe the US needs to do more to combat climate change. 

• 72% of voters say Congress needs to do more to reduce gun violence - even 50% of Republicans think so. The majority - 60% - thinks we need stricter gun laws.

• 74% of voters think that prejudice against immigrants is at least a somewhat serious issue (23%), with 51% thinking it's a very serious issue.

Let's look at some of the details.

Prejudice.

This section of the survey focused on prejudice against specific groups of people, and whether it's a very serious, somewhat serious, or not so serious problem, or if it's not a problem at all. By political party, the percentages of people saying prejudice is at least a somewhat serious problem falls where you'd expect it to, but the percentages were a little more extreme than I anticipated. 

When you look at it from a 'what's your religion' perspective, the divides are also extreme. 

When a majority of people think that prejudice against whites is a bigger problem than any other kind of prejudice, in a society in which whites are overwhelmingly better off from every measure, we've got our work cut out for us.

Guns.

As we all wait to hear from the president what he wants Congress to do, and we hear from the Democratic candidates what they want to do, here's what we want them to do.

• Universal background checks are supported by +87 (93% to 6%).  Every demographic supports this, even Republicans, at 89% and rural voters at 91%.

• Needing a license to purchase a gun is supported by +66 (82% to 16%); again, every demographic supports this, including Republicans, by +41.

• Red Flag laws are supported by +65 (80% to 15%)

• An assault weapon ban is supported by +24 (60% to 36%),Surprisingly, support for this measure is actually down 3% since the May survey. This was a surprise, given that the mass shootings in Virginia Beach, Dayton, El Paso, and Odessa/Midland, which resulted in 50 deaths and 79 injuries, happened between the two surveys.

• An assault weapon mandatory buyback is underwater by -3 (46% in favor, 49% opposed)

The overall percentage of folks saying more needs to be done, at 67%, is the highest since since the question started being asked back in December 2015.

Support for stricter gun laws comes from across all demographics except for Republicans and gun owners. Men (53%), white men (49%) and whites without college degrees (51%) all support stricter rules. Even rural voters by the slimmest of margins (47% to 46%) support this. And, 

• Almost every demographic (again, Republicans are the outlier, at -10) believe Congress needs to do more. And the overall percentage on this question is up 4 points since it was last asked in March 2018. 

• More people overall, and people of every demographic except Democrats and Blacks, feel that mental illness is a bigger cause of mass shootings than is the availability of guns. 

• Most think that stricter gun laws would help decrease the number of mass shootings, but by generally much slimmer margins than the political party demographic reflects: Dems agree +71, while Reps disagree by +54. 

And no matter what the president says, we do think he has an impact on white supremacists when it comes to motivating them to commit violence. Everyone but folks in the four standard outliers are of one mind on this.

Climate Change.
40% of voters overall (and 15% of Republicans, 56% of Democrats, and 44% of Independents) are worried that someone in their family might be affected by an extreme weather event. The overall percentage is unchanged since this was last asked in December 2018.

By age group, 43% of those 35-49 and 65+ are worried; by race, Hispanics (48%) are the most worried about this. The least worried? Republicans (83%) white men (67%) all men (66%), and whites without college degrees (63%).

On the question of whether we're doing enough, doing too much, or if we need to do more, 91% of Dems and 76% of Independents say we need to do more. In fact, every demographic but one --Republicans, at 32% - believe by a pretty significant margin that we need to do more.

As to whether climate change is an emergency, only Republicans, at 81% saying no, and people 50-64 (50% no, 49% yes) believe it's not. All other demographics believe it is. 

One more thing.
The last question asks whether the respondent feels more safe or less safe with Donald Trump as president or if he doesn't have an impact on a person's sense of safety. By a +20 margin (46% to 26%), people feel less safe with Trump in office. 

#MAGA, or something. 

Maybe It's Not as Bad as We Think It Is

I think we all know, in our heart of hearts, that we are a more polarized society lately than we were in the past, or at least, than we are in 'our' past, right?

I'm not old enough to remember the civil rights battles of the 50s and early 60s, and while I remember what was going on during the Vietnam War era and the assassination of MLK and RFK, I experienced those as a child of a history teacher, not as an active participant.

Those were polarizing times, for sure, but what's happening now has to be worse; it has to be. I mean, we're reminded all the time how polarizing the election of Barack Obama was - a black community organizer, not even an American, married to an arms-baring tranny? How could that have happened in America???

And then everything got at least a bazillion times worse when Donald Trump lost the popular vote, won the Electoral College and plopped on his imperial, racist, lying, swampy throne, putting his family in charge of policies, stealing the party - how did THAT happen here???

If you believe either of those descriptions, or similar ones, of the Obama and Trump years, how do they influence how you interact with people who hold a different opinion? Or do they impact your interactions at all?

Well, that's what the folks at The Atlantic tried to figure out. They recently shared their findings in an article which used data and analytics from PredictWise to determine the relative 'affective polarization,' county by county, for the entire country. The methodology is here, including survey questions measuring how people feel about things like a family member marrying someone from the other political party, how much certain words describe Democrats and Republicans, and feelings about the political parties and voters in each party.

I was pleasantly surprised to find out that New York as a whole fared well; we're less politically prejudicial than we're led to believe, than what we see and hear and read. In fact, one small city in northern NY was featured in a related article for its lack of political prejudice.

...Watertown is notable for another reason, officially unrecognized until now. It is located in one of the most politically tolerant counties in America...Jefferson County and several nearby counties in the North Country are distinct from other parts of America. 

In New York, can you believe it? And my neck of the woods fared pretty well, too.

Let's take a look.