Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

Briboy, On which party has been better for the economy see

To link a couple - Deficit Don? Red ink gushes in Trump era
"An A- for the U.S. Economy, but Failing Grades for Trump’s Policies"
.. add link here, https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=147874443

[...]

Dems Are Better for the Economy. Why Won’t They Say So?
[...]
The period from 1961 up through 2017 covers 56 years. As it happens, the parties split presidential control during that time exactly evenly, 28 years each.
In the Republicans’ 28 years, the non-farm job rolls added 31.5 million workers. In the Democrats’ years? Try 61.2 million. Essentially twice as many.

https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=150075465

"Sorry, Mitt: If You Want to Live Like a Republican, Vote Democratic"

Edit: Add some

Yeah. McConnell allegedly wasn't at the Caucus Room restaurant meeting, but he sure as hell was there in spirit.
[...]
Did Republicans Deliberately Crash the US Economy?
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=78020618
.. with others .. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=150174569

Those all here - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=150561020

It appears, on the evidence, that Democrats have been better for the economy. Moving on, i see your

"I look at our country now, over the last
50 years, Liberalism has brought the
USA down to its knees, drowning in
Political Correctness, tribalism an outright
hatred for those, like me, who still hold
Traditional values. Not perfect, but we were
in a better place then. Now, we’re trying
to get out of a big shithole."

as missing-the-mark in more ways than one. Hate, e.g. comes much more from your side. This one touches on that.

A new theory for why Republicans and Democrats see the world differently

Our political divisions aren’t red versus blue, but fixed versus fluid.

By Ezra Klein @ezraklein Dec 18, 2018, 8:50am EST



[...]

Marc Hetherington

Not exactly. A worldview isn’t an identity. It is a way of understanding the nature of the world. Is it safe or dangerous? Should we protect traditional ways of doing things, or is it safe to challenge them?

Today’s political acrimony results from Americans’ worldviews becoming married to their partisanship. Because people’s worldviews organize their whole life — not just the political part of it — a party identity defined by them produces intense conflict. Opposing worldviews have always existed in America (and probably since humans have been around). What is new is that they are now mapped neatly onto Americans’ party identities.

Evidence is everywhere. The clear theme of the 2016 GOP convention was that life in 21st-century American is perilous. “American carnage” was central to Trump’s inaugural. His recent statement on standing with Saudi Arabia literally began with, “The world is a very dangerous place!”

When Democrats see, hear, and read these things, they just don’t get it. Although they see danger, it is in the form of Republicans who perceive people who look or sound different as threats to national security. Modern-day Democrats see old traditions that discriminate against minorities, women, and LGBT people as the real threats to American life.

The reality that the world is actually safer hardly matters. What matters to today’s politics is that the bases of the two parties see it much differently.

Ezra Klein

That makes sense to me as an explanation for why partisan identities seem so much deeper, but it doesn’t really explain why American politics would’ve reorganized around understandings of threat in an age when the world, overall, was getting safer. What’s the explanation for that?

]...]

Marc Hetherington

The issues that produced this “worldview evolution” include race, law and order, gender equality, religion in the public sphere, LGBT rights, protecting the country from terrorism, gun rights, and immigration.

A cascade of new issues rose to subsume the old New Deal conflict that had divided the parties. Beginning in the 1960s with the Democrats’ embrace of civil rights and the Republicans’ “Southern strategy,” the process continues to this day, involving a range of issues that have one thing in common: The Democrats have consistently taken the more “modern” or “open” side of them, while the Republicans have taken the more “traditional” or “closed” one. This is why Americans’ worldviews now map so neatly onto their party identifications.

But what do race and immigration have to do with gender equality? What do the domestic issues, in general, have to do with keeping Americans secure from terrorist threats? Our research shows that Americans’ preferences on all these issues turn on the same thing — their worldviews. People at opposite ends of the worldview spectrum differ by 40, 50, and sometimes 60 percentage points on all these matters.

If your worldview suggests the world is dangerous, the specter of terrorism will, of course, be especially concerning. But social change is potentially dangerous, too. Existing traditions and hierarchies have maintained order for millennia. Racial and gender equality threaten those hierarchies. LGBT people challenge those traditions.

If you think the world is safe, you don’t see refugees as trying to infiltrate the country to do harm. They need our help. You don’t see identity groups vying for equality as threats. Instead old traditions and hierarchies are the real threats because they perpetuate discrimination.

[...]

Marc Hetherington

The racial split in the US is not a worldview split. On worldview, African Americans would actually fit better in the GOP. Blacks, white evangelicals, and working-class whites are the groups most likely to have fixed worldviews. For African Americans, in particular, the world has, after all, been a dangerous place.

Remember Republicans have been demeaning African Americans to attract the white working class for decades. Fixed worldview whites perceive African Americans and immigrant groups as threats. But African Americans and immigrant groups don’t view themselves as threats. Republicans are the threat to them. Group identity, not worldview, drives their party choices.

People’s worldviews remain pretty stable over time. It is a deeply ingrained understanding of how the world works, which guides decisions in all different parts of people’s lives. That being said, we find that the fluid become “situationally fixed” in their political preferences when they are frightened.

Take 9/11, for example. Americans across the worldview spectrum were petrified. In the short run, the more fluid became more willing to trade civil liberties for security, more willing to support the use of torture. The fixed were already likely to support those things before the attacks. As time passed, however, the fluid went back to valuing civil liberties and opposing torture. Their worldviews hadn’t changed.

That being said, our research makes clear that fear benefits Republicans in a worldview divided system. Opinions creep to the right, at least for a time.

Ezra Klein

This brings up something else I wanted to ask you about in the book. You argue that there’s an asymmetry in truth-seeking between the two sides — that “misperceptions about climate change, crime rates, and the side effects of vaccinations all find their staunchest defenders on the political right, rather than the left.” You go on to say that “evidence is piling up that those on the political right seem to have a stronger tendency to take steps to buttress their worldview than those on the political left.”

On the one hand, that very much seems to describe a political party in which Fox News is the most trusted news source and Donald Trump, a genuine conspiracy theorist, is the leader of the party. It’s also a hard conversation to have because even talking about differences in truth-seeking sounds insulting and biased, and it’s easy enough to come up with individual examples of lefties who believe crazy things (though left institutions seem more robust against those crazy things). Can you walk me through the evidence that convinced you?

Marc Hetherington

You express a concern about being seen as “insulting and biased” to conservatives, a concern we share. But it seems an asymmetric one. When did you last observe conservatives worrying that about exaggerating liberal pathologies? Regardless, we don’t argue there is some “problem” with conservative Americans. The problem starts with conservative leaders.

The simple fact is that Republican leaders more often traffic in falsehoods than Democratic leaders do — climate change denial, birtherism, suggesting voter fraud is rampant, and more. These are not positions of the conservative fringe. The president of the United States himself has embraced all these falsehoods. If Democratic leaders were similarly likely to push false narratives, more Democrats would believe them.

Conservative media amplify these falsehoods. This is what links what leaders say and do to what the public believes. Liberals tend to rely on a range of liberal and mainstream news sources. Conservatives tend to rely on a much smaller number of highly ideological sources. According to a 2014 Pew study, consistent conservatives expressed the same level of mistrust of ABC News as consistent liberals did of Sean Hannity.

Hence, conservative Americans are more likely than liberals to believe falsehoods about the other side. For example, Democrats were about 12 points more likely than Republicans to say that the Bush administration directed flooding to parts of New Orleans during Katrina. But Republicans were 34 points more likely to believe Obama was born in Kenya than Democrats and 32 points more likely to believe that Obamacare included “death panels.”

That doesn’t mean that there is no biased thinking among liberals. They, too, are more willing to support or oppose a policy because it is or isn’t being carried out by their team. But skepticism about basic facts does, in fact, differ markedly by party and ideology.

Ezra Klein

I’m very interested by the idea that the problem starts with conservative leaders.

[...]

Ezra Klein

Let me close by asking you the question I always dread asking. I can imagine the pessimistic, or maybe even just realistic, story in which these trends simply continue. What’s the optimistic story about what can be done?
Marc Hetherington

I’m an optimist and even I can’t generate much optimism now. The hatred of our opponents that accompanies a party system divided by worldview is self-reinforcing and, ultimately, dangerous.

We appear to be approaching a crucible moment. Robert Mueller appears ready to produce evidence that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to help win the presidency. Federal law enforcement has already indicated Trump himself broke campaign finance laws. Yet I suspect Republicans will greet both developments with a collective shrug. When you hate your opponent as much as Republicans hate Democrats, it is hard to give an inch on anything. Their response will cause Democrats to hate Republicans even more than they do now. And so on and so on.

For things to change, something must supplant these primal worldviews as the dividing line between the parties. That impetus must come from the top. Leaders set the grounds of debate. Ordinary people follow their lead. Democrats, for their part, seem to be trying. In focusing on health care and wages in 2018, they are making the dividing line about the size of government. It is a winning strategy.

I worry, though, that politics divided by worldview may be the natural state of things. We just didn’t realize that because we grew up in an anomalous time when the divide was about the size of government. Looking back over centuries, politics has almost always been fought between forces who favor the traditional and those who favor modernity. Governments didn’t have the resources to do much, so it couldn’t be the central source of division. We’ve gone back to the future.

As chapter seven of our book shows, the same process is playing out in Europe. Bolsonaro’s victory .. https://www.vox.com/world/2018/10/29/18025066/bolsonaro-brazil-elections-voters-q-a .. in Brazil suggests the same thing there. It is not a happy story.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/12/18/18139556/republicans-democrats-partisanship-ideology-philosophy-psychology-marc-hetherington

Always good to see you are alive and kicking. Be well.