Daily Clips: June 9th, 2015
The Mobilization Error
David Brooks – The New York Times
I want to like David Brooks. I really do. I want to be able to tell people that I read his columns from time to time and agree with some of his points. And sometimes I do. But in the vast majority of cases I find myself nauseated by his holier-than-thou attitude about politics, life and humanity. Remember his column on marijuana, for instance – “Weed. Been There. Done That.” Good for you, Dave.
I digress. His most recent article starts off by drawing a thoughtful distinction between two types of presidential campaigns:
Every serious presidential candidate has to answer a fundamental strategic question: Do I think I can win by expanding my party’s reach, or do I think I can win by mobilizing my party’s base?
So far, so good. He opines that Hillary Clinton’s campaign is following the latter strategy – that is, mobilizing the party’s base. Fair enough. However, Brooks loses me when begins to lament that
Clinton will adopt left-leaning policy positions carefully designed to energize the Obama coalition — African-Americans, Latinos, single women and highly educated progressives.
Oh, the horror! Because the last thing you want to do as a candidate is “carefully design” a campaign which courts disadvantaged groups and listens to well-educated individuals. But the barbarity of Clinton’s strategy isn’t just its misplaced energy, Brooks argues, it’s that
[Her] strategy is bad, first, for the country…Politics is broken today because [coalition building politicians] have been replaced by highly polarizing, base-mobilizing politicians who hew to party orthodoxy, ignore the 38 percent of voters who identify as moderates and exacerbate partisanship and gridlock. If Clinton decides to be just another unimaginative base-mobilizing politician, she will make our broken politics even worse.
He then goes onto list four reasons why Hillary’s African-American loving, single women pandering campaign is just so awful for our democracy, but I’m going to save you the time from reading this column. Why?
Because Brooks is perpetuating a lie that both parties are to blame for polarizing American politics. Bullsh**.
We know, based on data, that this is not the case. In fact, last week I showcased Kenneth Poole and Howard Rosenthal’s work, which shows that Congressional Republicans (especially those in the House of Representatives) have completely jolted from the political middle. Don’t believe me? Check out this graph.
On top of this, Pew Research has showed that among consistently conservative Republicans, 66 percent consider Democratic policies as a threat to America’s well-being. Compare that to only 50 percent of Democrats who think the same about Republican policies.
So, David Brooks, who’s really at fault for polarizing politics? Don’t talk the intellectually lazy option and blame Clinton.
Tri-Cities ranks sixth best in nation for STEM graduates: For every 1,000 jobs in the Tri-Cities, there are 91 jobs in science, technology, education, and math, ranking the area 6th best in the nation for STEM graduates. As the author mentions,
While most of the high-ranking places on the list are tech hubs with many computer-related jobs, that’s not the case for the Tri-Cities.
US job openings at record high: Reuters reports that the “Labor Department said job openings increased to 5.4 million in April, the highest since the series began in December 2000, from 5.1 million in March.”
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