Yesterday FiveThirtyEight published a piece about the Republican push to restrict voting. It's a good roundup of all the latest research on voter suppression, but it also included an interesting chart that tracks the Republican Party's overall commitment to democracy as measured by V-Dem, a Swedish think tank. I've taken the liberty of replotting the chart and adding another line for comparison:
Within the Democratic Party, nothing has happened. Democrats remain about as committed to democracy as always.
The same was true of the Republican Party up through 1998. Then in 2000 anti-democratic sentiment started to rise and continued to rise through 2018. What could account for this?
I've given the game away with the black dashed line, which represents Fox News primetime viewership. In 1996 Fox News started up and for its first few years mostly toed a moderate conservative line. Then, starting around 2000, they adopted a much more right-wing format and their viewership rose as they became available on more cable channels. And guess what? As their viewership expanded, the Republican Party became less and less committed to democratic norms.
Correlation is not causation blah blah blah. By itself, this isn't proof of the baneful effects of Rupert Murdoch's media empire. However, there's plenty of other evidence and this is one more straw on the camel's back. Fox News is responsible more than any other single entity for the destruction of American politics over the past two decades.
No, it's the Republican party which is mainly responsible. They have deliberately cultivated irrational, unprincipled partisanship based on racism and religion since the sixties. This created the environment in which racist voters could turn to Trump as leader. Fox News is important, but really as the tool of Republicans. Would Fox News have been able to create the current situation if Republican politicians had not been cultivating racism for decades? Fox initially opposed Trump (for the most part). They came around only after he won many primaries. They tried again to dump Trump after the election, but had to back off.
No, it's the majority of white people of America who are mainly responsible. The majority of them are ignorant, hateful bigots. FOX tells them they have every reason to be that way. Republican elected officials have to pander to them in order to get elected. Remember, they tossed Eric Cantor because he wasn't hateful enough toward Obama. They chose Trump over every other Republican candidate. How many times did we hear, "He says what I'm thinking" from Trump supporters.
And in the years before they chose Trump, they chose Scott Walker, Rick Snyder, Joni Ernst, and the like. They are horrible people, more numerous and active then we imagined or feared, and we are just stuck with them for many years to come.
I would change "white people" to "Republican base," but otherwise I think you are right in your analysis. Trump actually won the Republican nomination without winning a majority of the primary vote, let alone a majority of the overall white vote. It's hard to blame Fox News for Trump when they did not really jump on the bandwagon until the very last minute. Fox News as an organization wanted Rubio or Cruz, not a farcical, mentally defective con artist. Remember when Trump was so mad at Fox News because of Megyn Kelly that he boycotted their primary debate? At the end of the day, Republican voters were the ones who picked Trump. They were the ones who stuck by him after the election and the insurrection, when Fox News was clearly ready to move on.
Pretty sure that Trump won the majority of white people in the US, twice, in the general elections. The implication is that the majority of white people are 'hateful, ignorant, and horrible people'. Not people that have their own ethnic/racial interests, like, oh, the people represented by 'La Raza (rebranded as Unidos), or the NAACP , or the ADL, or the House Asian and Pacific Islander caucus (whitey can be an associate member, but not an actual member).
Whites have no interests, no legitimate political voice. Remember that.
I think you are responding to wrong comment. I specifically disagreed with the original poster's position that white people are solely responsible for Trump. I would also add that Trump winning a majority of the white vote twice doesn't tell us much of anything, since every Republican since 1968 has won the white vote in the general election.
I believe Jimmy Carter won the white vote in 1976, but could be wrong.
That does actually same something though, doesn't it. Maybe the Dems are so for open borders, despite the obvious deleterious effects on lower end wages, quality of schools, income inequality, and the local (and global) environment.
Gerrymandering the electorate itself.
Mitchell Young: [looks in mirror, does not like what he sees] Who's that funky guy, staring back at me?
Your comment would be insightful.... on a different planet where those other groups are not oppressed by white people. White people have VAST interests, and nearly ALL of the political "voice".
That is why their fight (and I am white just not a right-wing douchebag) is "supremacy".
Is this starting to make sense to you?
Nice to know your feelings.
Skeptonomist is exactly right. Fox is mainly culpable as it played along, but its basically a situation where not only Fox, but other right wing "media" was perfectly willing to essentially issue propaganda and falsehoods as long as it got ratings.
Note that during the same time period there were also more liberal outlets gaining viewership, but despite such availability there was no change. That's because liberal outlets are actual journalists.
The exact moment when it all really started to go south was when "criticism" of government evolved into hatred of government, and, by extension, liberals who support good government.
For decades it was like sports. You might support your city's baseball team by going to game or watching them on TV. As a supporter, under the "you pays your money and you takes your choice" theory, you could second guess players, managers, umpires, etc. etc.
But the Republicans no longer simply stand for second guessing government policy, its as if they became a manager of a baseball team and fired all the pitchers and sent a golden retriever out to the mound to fetch the ball and drop it on home plate. The other players and the umpire stand there dumbfounded. How can the game even go on with a dog as a pitcher? Its the difference between having a strong opinion on what your baseball team ought to do and having zero respect for it at all. See, eg. Matt Gaetz and others.
Trump is the ultimate embodiment of government as joke. He didn't even try to hide it.
Ain't no rule that says a dog can't play baseball.
FOX is responsible for Trumpism. They may have half-heartedly opposed Trump during the 2016 primary hoping instead for a more viable general election candidate, but they previously spent 20 years creating Trumpism by espousing the racial grievances and reality-detached nonsense that is the core of Trumpism today (and leading to his takeover of the party). Fox fed the birther lie. It gave Trump a platform to run a de facto Republican primary campaign for many years on Republican TV free of charge.
But it’s mostly semantics at this point. The GOP = FOX = Trumpism (/ Trump’s base). It’s all one organism. Leadership, propaganda organ, and voters all intertwined in a rat’s nest of white grievance and victimization that the 1% are using to shave a few % off their taxes.
It's debatable if the tail is wagging the dog or vice versa, but Kevin is dead on... there's no doubt that Rupert Murdoch's propaganda machine was the innovation that facilitated a right wing bubble (a.k.a. "cult") that has allowed conservative politicians to shift endlessly to the right without paying any electoral price, and regardless of what the old party "establishment" thinks about it.
Anyone with a conservative family member knows this viscerally... you've seen the dark change in them over your lifetime and where their talking points are spewing from.
Fertile ground and viable seed, just add water. Murdoch has always been a great water seller.
There is a chicken-and-egg problem with trying to separate the impact of Fox News from the impact of the internet. I think this paranoid/authoritarian streak has existed on the American right for a long, long time, from Lindbergh and America First to McCarthy and the Birchers to Nixon and his fixers to Gingrich and his "revolution." In the past the weirdos and conspiracy theorists were isolated from each other and could thus be safely ignored for the most part by mainstream media and by the Republican party as a whole. With the rise of the internet, however, the loons were able to find one another and discover that there were millions of them out there, with millions more to be found and recruited to the cause. Fox's chief contribution was their conscious decision to specifically appeal to this racist, authoritarian, and paranoid segment of the American right. Their enormous financial success implies - at least to me - that if it wasn't Murdoch, Ailes, etc., someone else would have taken the Rush Limbaugh model to TV and the ultimate result would probably have been the same.
V-Dem’s methodology being?
Keven Drum has zero idea. He just found some convenient numbers for his thesis and made a chart .
If you really want to know, its here. I've just skimmed it, but as usually and despite the project being named 'varieties' of democracy, 'liberal democracy' is what they are about...meaning heavy roles for judges and jurists, international NGOs, etc. Oh, and their numbers are derived from 'expert coding'.
But I'm sure KD went through their methodology section with a rapt attention, printing out the article and making copious marginal notes.
https://www.v-dem.net/media/filer_public/94/87/94876a61-1682-4227-baa0-ab927645d507/method.pdf
liberal democracy - noun, a democratic system of government in which individual rights and freedoms are officially recognized and protected, and the exercise of political power is limited by the rule of law.
1. It's not a noun, it's phrase composed of two words, one an adjective.
2. It's really hard to take even your fake definition seriously. After all, the Left is generally for the expansion of political power See, for example, the 1964 civil rights act which got government involved in private contracts, private associations and the like. That's why Mr. Libertarian Barry Goldwater opposed it.
Or we can go into the Environmental Protection Act, which dictates to a much greater extent than any commonlaw practice what people can do with their own land.
Now, I'm not saying either is bad (though, okay, the '64 so-called Civil Rights law was bad), but they don't meet your alleged definition of liberal democracy.
I'd propose a working, practical definition -- rule by judges, think tank 'experts', and NGO mucky mucks.
'. After all, the Left is generally for the expansion of political power '
Unless the Right were to come along and attempt to institute FASCISM.
But that could never happen in America, amirite?
'I'd propose a working, practical definition -- rule by judges, think tank 'experts', and NGO mucky mucks.'
I assume that this refers to the Heritage Institute, ALEC, and the Federalist Society.
Yes, two words that together form a noun phrase. Two other words which come to mind when reading your drivel everywhere here are "Dunning" and "Kruger."
I see that you certainly took nothing meaningful away from the study, and also are confused about the meaning of liberal democracy- the only thing giving YOU a voice in your government- unless you vote for the GOP of course.
In which case you are literally voting against voting. But that irony is no doubt lost on you as well.
I think it should require a modicum of effort to vote, yes, to ensure ballot security, prevent 'harvesting', and put the thumb on the scale for more informed and engaged voters. I'd be okay with Sunday as election day, or an election day holiday, but as a rule people should have to go to the polls.
One of the silliest trends in 'journalism' on the Left is, well, just like the quote in the 538 article 'pointing to a chart and saying -- see, see?'. The main reason is that the operationalization of the usual 'y axis' variable used in these things are not explained or questioned or even thought about. 'Commitment to democracy' isn't an obviously thing like air temperature (which isn't actually obvious either, but much less so that 'commitment to democracy'.
I could just as easily say that Democrats aren't committed to democracy. After all, what is the single most iconic image of American democracy? I'd say the Rockwell painting of the young middle aged white guy with a report rolled up and tucked in his jacket pocket, standing up to speak at this town meeting.
https://coralspringstalk.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Rockwell-feat.jpg
It isn't a ballot harvestor depositing off a bunch of who knows where ze got them ballots in the dead of night at the 'drop box'.
Likewise, the filibuster was once held up as an example of American democracy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BL-Jg7CyqLQ
Now, what is easier to actually measure, to see, are actions. It isn't the GOP that changed from our perfectly good precinct system in California-- show up, see neighbors you haven't seen for 2-3-4 year or ever, wait 10 mins, blue haired lady asks you your name and address, crosses your name off the list of register voters, and you go in an vote. Now we have a confusing system of universal mail in ballots (sent out illegally by Newsome), drop boxes, 'voting centers' etc. And we still have lines.
Similar things occurred in GA, where irregular placement of drop boxes likely skewed election results.
I won't even get into the expansion of early voting (hell, why not make it year round every year) and who the actual 'demos' is -- the Dems have been doing gerrymandering via immigration since the late 1990s.
I don't need any journalists on the left to tell me that the Republican base no longer believes in democracy. I just need to look at the events of January 6 and the reaction to those events from the masses of Republican politicians (especially at the state and local level) and Republican voters. That reaction is incompatible with a support for a democratic system of government, as the farce currently unfolding in Phoenix certainly shows. Please also note that we still have not seen even a shred of evidence of voter fraud in the 2020 election. In fact, the only case of proven fraud from 2020 that I am aware of was in Pennsylvania, where a Trump supporter cast a fraudulent vote for Trump on behalf of his dead mother.
January 6th has been much exaggerated (see for example the totally false narrative of Officer Sicknick's tragedy, the basic falseness of which was known by January 8 due to reporting by, of all organizations, Pro-Publica). But even there I would say that the majority of people were there to express there concern that democracy had been violated, that the loosey goosey election 'rules' (ever changing) put in place mostly by Dems during the pandemic were blow to any sort of real democracy. 'Days of Democracy' in heavily blue areas of Wisconsin for example How about examining the 'drop box' placement in GA.
And further there is evidence suggestive of voter fraud. See this rather unconvincing attempt to 'fact check' the work of Steven Crowder on voting from non-existent addresses. So so so many "typos:".
https://leadstories.com/hoax-alert/2021/02/fact-check-louder-with-crowder-video-of-vacant-voter-addresses-is-not-proof-of-voter-fraud.html
"evidence suggestive of voter fraud" I love it! Orwell would be impressed! You'd think that with every Republican in the country frantically searching for real evidence of actual fraud for the past six months, we'd have something more. Especially since the "fraud" they are looking for supposedly involved millions of votes. In fact, Republicans have been looking for evidence of election fraud for the past 30+ years and have still failed to produce anything of substance except a bunch of idiotic laws that make it marginally harder for Democrats to vote. At this point, "voter fraud" is right there with elves, unicorns and the Loch Ness Monster.
As for January 6, we are indeed lucky that the lunatics who invaded our Capitol were too disorganized to do even more damage that they did. But that doesn't change the fact that a band of goons invaded and overran the Capitol for the express purpose of overturning the results of a legitimate election. The fact that Republicans are now consciously minimizing this catastrophic and unprecedented assault on our democracy is all the proof I need that the current Republican party presents a clear and present danger to our democratic system of government.
Minimizing to correct the maximizing.
Let's remember that Jan 6 came after 6 months of political violence, including the night of May 31 to June 1 2020 when the Secret Service was so concerned for the President and his family that they brought him to a 'bunker' -- much to the delight of the Left (see the hashtag #bunkerboy on Twitter). Barricades were breached, the perimeter fence shaken enough that the SS was worried it would give way. Across from the WH an centuries old church was burning.
Meanwhile, across the country, a Federal courthouse was under sustained attack, a police precinct was abandoned under threat of violence, occupied and then razed, and a small but significant section of a major American city effectively seceded. Complete with armed guards at the 'borders' -- armed guards who later killed a young black kid and wounded another.
So I'm not really worried about 'overthrowing' our 'democracy'.
You heard wrong. The “President” went to the bunker to give an inspection.
"After all, what is the single most iconic image of American democracy? I'd say the Rockwell painting of the young middle aged white guy with a report rolled up and tucked in his jacket pocket, standing up to speak at this town meeting."
You could say that, but you'd look like an idiot doing it, which is on par for you.
538 isn't left.
& Nate Silver would sue you for implying that.
He'd have a tough time of it. Both on the facts and on the law.
Nate Silver is a Log Cabin Republican.
Is that the geh kind?
In March 2016, before Trump got elected president, David Remick wrote " .... but Trump is also the beneficiary of a long process of Republican intellectual decadence. Paul Ryan denounces Trump but not the Tea Party rhetoric .... John McCain holds Trump in contempt, but selected Sarah Palin as his running mate .... Mitt Romney righteously slammed Trump as a "phony" and a misogynist, and yet in 2012 he embraced Trump's endorsement .... " The Republican party's intellectual decadence, as Remick calls it, predates Fox and goes all the way back to Lee Atwater, the Reagan presidency and the Nixon southern strategy. Fox has enabled and profited from the decadence, but it was alive and thriving well before Fox showed up.
"Mitt Romney righteously slammed Trump as a "phony" and a misogynist, and yet in 2012 he embraced Trump's endorsement ..."
Didn't our current 'Vice President' slam our current 'President' as being racist and having slept (politically) with segregationists? And yet she gladly accepted nomination to the second spot in the 'racist's' admin.
"all the way back to Lee Atwater, the Reagan presidency and the Nixon southern strategy. Fox has enabled and profited from the decadence, "
God forbid white southrons should be allowed to vote for a candidate somewhat in accord with their interests, and double god forbid that they vote in coalition with white urban 'ethnics' (which was, btw, the 'Southern' strategy').
Bonus info -- William Fulbright, he of the eponymous scholarship $$$ doled out by your government, was a signer of the Southern Manifesto. He was never 'disowned' by the Dems, in fact went on to mentor Clinton A and B.
Your point, as far as I can decipher it, is that there have been shades of racism in American politics for a long time. Who is denying that? Remick's point is about Republican intellectual decadence. Racism, overt and covert, have been a signficant part, but just a part, of that. Dishonesty, hypocrisy and pretend populism have been have been equally prominent features of the decadence.
My point, for those who got 450 on their SAT language section, is that hypocrisy is typical in politics, that politicians routinely support those who they not two weeks ago were attacking savagely is nothing new and nothing unique to the GOP. That a political analyst like David Remnick would imply it is shows his mendacity. (That's lying)
If the GOP were a more diverse party, they wouldn't have been caught so much in the Fox News spin cycle. But the GOP eschews diversity and is now in the pursuit of something even worse than ideological purity: absolute leadership loyalty. Cheney's dismissal is just a signaling device.
They don't eschew diversity, they just don't want to be around it, but if they have to be it's a fine motivating object to cultivate the psychology of a rioting mob. This is why the social conservatives' most common concept of leadership is to find a crowd that really wants to jump off a cliff, rush to the front of it, harangue them into actually doing it, then either jump off first or jump out of the way at the last minute, so you'll able to claim to be both getting away with it, and that you did your best as the voice of reason.
Liz Cheney just jumped too soon. She needed to wait until the rest of them hit bottom to give her a cushion to land on.
Liz Cheney is a war monger, it's a genetic trait. She won't shut up about some untoward events that have been massively exaggerated by her parties enemies. She keeps Trump in the spot light when the rest of the GOP is quietly moving on, respectfully and influenced by Trumpist ideas. Finally, she openly disdains the majority of GOP voters. That's why she had to be dismissed from leadership.
"some untoward events that have been massively exaggerated"
You yada-yadaed an insurrection! Very slick!
"insurrection"
I love air quotes.
“President” Trump is an “honest” man.
Rudy Giuliani is a “talented” lawyer.
The 2020 election was “stolen” from Trump.
The ‘will be wild’ rally on the 6th was attended by “mostly” peaceful “patriots.”
Five people died, dozens of officers were injured, legislators of both parties barricaded themselves for hours, and pipe bombs and guns were found stowed nearby during the “exaggerated” violence that was really more of a “tour” of the Capitol.
Fox viewing audience (top shows): 3 million people
Fox availability: 87 million households (of 121 million total)
Who pays for Fox? Each of the 87 million households that subscribe to a cable package and get Fox as part of it. The cable companies pay Fox $1.8 billion a year in carriage fees. Fox pays Tucker Carlson $10 million a year, despite most major advertisers pulling their ads for his show.
Make the Fox viewers pay for Fox programming -- not the rest of us -- and we are well on our way to fixing our Fox problem. End the cable bundle. Let viewers cut the cord to Fox.
LOL. The urge to suppress information and opinion is always there on the Left.
If you want debundling, lets do it to CNN, CBS , MSNBC.
And most importantly, let's end *all* subsidies to NPR/PBS , including 'tax expenditures' (a Left term) which lets corporations write off their lavish donations to these entities , donations which do buy de facto advertising. And let college radio be college radio again...let the kids run it, not NPR. Make NPR affiliation agreement with HE institutions illegal. And finally strip the 'National' and 'Public' from their title.
I'll take that deal.
Might want to be a liiitle careful what you wish for vis a vis unbundling and the likely effect it will have on overall pricing and channel availability. I don’t think you’d be able to limit the unbundling to just Fox.
No doubt the Toenail Channel and the Spearfishing in the Himalayas Network would go out of business. The effect on other channels is hard to predict but the ones that people actually watch would find a way to continue.
Among news channels, Fox earns the highest carriage fee ($1.72/month vs. $1.01/month for CNN). It earns a disproportionate share of its revenue from cable fees rather than advertising.
There is no reason why 72% of American homes should have to subsidize a network dedicated to anti-democratic, neo-fascist, race-baiting propaganda.
Whatever collateral effects unbundling has on TV news, Americans will be left better informed.
Amen
Who says they are subsidizing it? Fox news has some of the top...maybe even the top...rated programs. I think Tucker Carlson (get out the smelling salts) is in fact *the* top rated show fairly consistently. So there's a demand for Fox.
The rise of "anti-gov't" comes from tax policies, and the loss of federal revenue sharing. People hate taxes being taken out of their paycheck, but what really drives them nuts are property taxes (one or two big hits per year), endless fees and fines, look it's a toll road now, we get to arrange for our own garbage and recycling pickups, etc. And, roads are as bad as ever.
The "Reagan Revolution" hit towns hard, which resorted to nickle and diming people to death to maintain revenues, while services are slashed, because they didn't have income taxes to rely on and states also were cash strapped.
When you run on "gov't is the problem" and get elected, it is easy to make gov't the problem.
As someone who lives in a country not "serviced" by Fox News or any equivalent, I see antidemocratic sentiment rise around me too. I think it's due to the doomsday sentiment that took hold a bit before 2000, and that's been getting worse ever since. It's an epistemic crisis, in the sense of Michel Foucault. Including, per Foucault, the erosion of commonly and deeply held assumptions about how to seek truth. If you can no longer agree on how to determine facts, you also won't agree on facts.
Even so I hail Kevin for beating this drum so repeatedly. Because yes, if the support for democracy falls even faster in the US than elsewhere, it's Fox.
LOL. Kinda ironic misreading Foucault while decrying a lack in the search for truth.
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The Murdoch media and Fox News are terrorist organizations which provide propaganda and funding. They are more dangerous, I think, than any Islamist group. They have struck at the heart of western democracy and damaged it far more than bin Laden ever could.
Fox News is responsible more than any other single entity for the destruction of American politics over the past two decades.
I remember thinking that back in the mid-00s when I noticed it was playing on screens around the gym. This was before everyone had phones with them all the time. I was wondering how Fox News had managed effectively to get kiosk presence on the public floor of a national fitness chain. Looking back, I'd guess back channel connections or money had something to do with it, but back then it was still just another confounder.
It's much more plausible that Fox simply saw a market niche emerging and exploited it, but nothing is going to dissuade Kevin from the belief that somehow a cable TV network watched by fewer than one in 100 Americans has been responsible for the right's turn to tyranny.