Warning: The dirty little secret of polls

OCT 13

Warning: The dirty little secret of polls

Three reasons to be skeptical

		ROBERT REICH

Want some good news? With 27 days until Election Day, polling averages suggest Democrats could retain control of the Senate and even gain a few seats there, and are within sight of keeping the House.

Last week, the Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan election forecaster, shifted its forecast in 10 House races, seven of them in favor of Democrats. A day later, analysts at Sabato’s Crystal Ball, an election handicapper based at the University of Virginia, shifted six House seats, four favoring Democrats. 

"Democratic optimism grows in battle for House," read The Hill’s Mike Lillis' headline Tuesday morning. Lillis goes on to say: “With a month remaining before the midterm elections, House Democrats are in a position where few expected them to be even just a few months ago: competitive.”

Meanwhile, the forecasters at FiveThirtyEight, tallying up the available evidence, put the chances that Democrats hold the Senate at seventy-one per cent.

But wait. There’s reason to doubt these optimistic numbers.

The debacle of 2016 election polls showing Hillary Clinton with a healthy lead, and the 2020 election polls overstating Biden’s lead over Trump, reveal a dirty little secret: Election polls overstate Democratic strength and understate Republican.

There are three reasons for this bias:

1. Republicans are less likely to respond to election polls. The pandemic understated Republican strength in 2020 because safety-conscious liberals were more likely to be home during lockdowns (and answer telephone calls) while conservatives went out and lived their lives. With lockdowns over, this bias may be over too.

But Trump Republicans are less likely to participate in election polls in the first place. Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst, found that in 2020, white Democrats were 20 percent likelier to respond to Times/Siena polls than white Republicans. Trump voters tend to be less educated, more anti-establishment, and therefore less likely to respond to polls. (In the poll Cohn is undertaking right now, only 0.4 percent of dials have yielded a completed interview.)

2. Election polls over-estimate the number of people who will be voting, and non-voters are much more likely to be or lean Democrat than are regular voters. People who rarely or never vote don’t like to admit this to pollsters (they don’t want to be thought of, and don’t want to think of themselves, as non-voters). But because non-voters are far more likely to lean Democrat and tell pollsters they favor a Democratic candidate, poll results exaggerate Democratic strength at the ballot box.

3. People who respond to election pollsters don’t want to admit their preferences for Trump. The vast majority of Trump voters lack a college degree. They believe that pollsters (as educated professionals) will disapprove of their support for Trump, so they don’t admit it. This happened in 2016 and again in 2020.

Trump isn’t on the midterm ballot, of course, but many Republican candidates who support him and his Big Lie are on the ballot (in fact, a majority of Republican candidates are election-deniers), so the effect is likely to be the same: understating Republican strength at the ballot box. (According to the Cato Institute’s own polling, 62 percent of Americans say they have political views they’re afraid to share. Many of them, presumably, support Trump and Trump election-deniers.)

I don’t mean to discourage you. Quite the opposite. With 27 days to go, many races could go either way. My point is you shouldn’t pay attention to the polls, and not become so confident that you stop phone banking, canvassing, contributing, and doing whatever else you can. Turnout is the critical variable. We must do everything humanly possible to get out the vote. 

 

Mike’s Midterm Tsunami Truth #29

They’ve Got Big Plans That We’ve Gotta Stop

MICHAEL MOORE OCT 27

(Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

On June 24th this summer, our Supreme Court — 67% White, 78% Catholic, 59% Men and 66% who don’t know what dry shampoo is — issued their religious edict forcing all women of childbearing age who hold a fertilized egg into a government mandated and enforced pregnancy, under penalty of law. The Court ran out of room on their parchment scroll to list what the exact penalties would be should a woman try to escape the 9-month incubation by removing the clump of cells, so they left it up to the profound wisdom of the states — like Texas, where successfully performing an abortion is now a first-degree felony, punishable by up to life in prison. We are not that far from women hanging on the wall off the Boston Common. To think otherwise shows one’s stupidly dangerous naïveté.

On that day in June, with a nation in shock — and a gender in revolt, the spoils of which will be revealed on spikes in 12 days — much was made of the clear and incoherent opinion issued by the 12th-century Vatican scholar Samuel Alito. But there was little attention paid to the concurring opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas who, like Alito, is a true believer in shoving vicious, never-uttered-by-Jesus Catholic ideology down the throats of America. 

On that day of infamy, Justice Thomas waxed poetically, wondering just how far the Christian Nationalists could take their Roe-killing decision.

According to Thomas, very far. 

Here’s what he wrote in his concurring opinion:

“We should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold (which legalized Birth Control), Lawrence (which invalidated sodomy laws), and Obergefell (which legalized same-sex marriage). Because any substantive due process decision is “demonstrably erroneous,” we have a duty to “correct the error” established in those precedents. After overruling these demonstrably erroneous decisions…”

So, to translate Thomas’ plans, here’s what he’d like the Court to do:

Outlaw birth control.

Outlaw same-sex sex.

Outlaw same-sex marriage. 

The idea is to build on outlawing abortion, using the Court’s new rationale to expand their bans on other sexual behaviors they find to be deviant and against God’s will. 

But as we know, it’s usually the actual deviants, in their sick and twisted minds, who want to stop the “perverts” who use a diaphragm or a condom or an IUD, or any pill or device that grants women absolute control over their bodies. That, to them, is the ultimate crime.

And now they think they can get away with it because, well, they just did get away with it.

Thomas is not alone. His opinion was hailed by all forms of Republicans and right-wingers, and emboldened a swath of Republican lawmakers to publicly pledge their loyalty to this agenda.

In July, when the House Democrats, as the majority, put the “Respect for Marriage Act” — a bill that would repeal the “Defense of Marriage Act,” and prohibit states from discriminating against couples married in other states regardless of the couple’s “sex, race, ethnicity, or national origin” — up for a vote, 157 Republicans voted against it.

Democrats followed up a few days later with a vote for the “Right to Contraception Act” — a bill written to “protect a person’s ability to access contraceptives, to engage in contraception, and to protect a health care provider’s ability to provide contraceptives, contraception, and information related to contraception.”

This time, only 8 Republicans crossed the partisan line to vote with the Democrats, 2 others abstained, and a whopping 195 Republicans voted against Americans having the right to buy, use, or even learn about condoms.

But, my friends, the fatal flaw in their agenda, the actual Achilles’ heel here, is that what they’re trying to attempt is actually something the vast majority of Americans oppose:

• 71% of Americans support same-sex marriage.

• 75% of Americans support access to birth control.

In fact, as the LA Times reported, “Only four states — S. Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi and Arkansas — lack clear majority support for marriage equality, according to state-by-state surveys by the Public Religion Research Institute.”

As the “Respect for Marriage Act” sits and waits for its vote on the Senate floor after the Midterms, 5 Republican Senators have publicly stated their support, while 8 Republican Senators have clearly stated their opposition. For the rest, mums the word, as they try to “wait it out,” past the election, knowing the will of the majority of the American people stands in conflict with their base.

It’s clear though in the last couple weeks, that despite the actions of their colleagues in the House, the Senate Republicans have been told to tone down their rhetoric, that their anti-abortion stance is a losing proposition in this election.

One of the 5 Senators that has publicly stated his support for the “Respect for Marriage Act” is Ron Johnson who said that while he thinks the bill is unnecessary because he believes Obergefell will never fall, “should it come before the Senate, I see no reason to oppose it.” Why? Because he’s running in a hotly contested Senate race and he knows full well that 72% of Wisconsinites support marriage equality — including 58% of Wisconsin Republicans.

And that, my friends, is why they’re going to lose. Even Ron Johnson can see the writing on the wall.

Not just because of everybody reading this, but because everybody wants and needs birth control. Everybody wants to marry the person they’re in love with, regardless of their gender. And everyone wants and deserves their God-given right to have sex.

---

ICYMI:

Mike’s Midterm Tsunami of Truths:

Truth #1: The Campaign

Truth #2: Even a kid from 4th hour Trig class can beat this crowd

Truth #3: The Haters, the Bigots and the Supremacists Always Lose in the End

Truth #4: Introducing The Whackadoodle 10

Truth #5: Trump is not the Big Bad Wolf. But he is very afraid of You.

Truth #6: The Easy-to-Digest Republican Party Platform

Truth #7: Biden, Don’t F**k with Me

Truth #8: If you’re not registered, you can’t Roe, Roe, Roe the Vote!

Truth #9: Why will we win? Because the American people hate fascism.

Truth #10: Meet Blake Masters, Whackadoodle No. 9

Truth #11: 147 Reasons We Will Win on November 8th

Truth #12: Biden just gave us a boost and a toke.

Truth #13: Women. That’s it.

Truth #14: If the Mainstream Media Thinks There’s a Chance We May Be Right about Roevember, Watch Out.

Truth #15: Republican candidate for Governor of Pennsylvania, Whackadoodle No. 8

Truth #16: As Alex Jones has now been fined a billion dollars for his lies, that is nothing compared to the punishment other Republicans are going to get on November 8th.

Truth #17: Early Voting, Mail-in Voting, Dropbox Voting — These Were Made for Libs, Hard Workers, Book Readers, Artists, Busy Parents, Slackers, and Progressives like us! In other words, The Majority!

Truth #18: The Good Queen vs. The Mad King

Truth #19: A Workers' Revolt Extends to the Voting Booth

Truth #20: We Are in Charge

Truth #21: Don’t believe it.

Truth #22: If the election is about inflation and the economy, THANK GOD — We Win

Truth #23: We Believe in Science. And that’s why we will win.

Truth #24: Vote Local, Win National

Truth #25: The side with the best nursery rhymes wins.

Truth #26: We Will Win Because Americans Don’t Want to See This Happen...

Truth #27: We are going to win because our side has millions of good souls like this…

Truth #28: Whackadoodle No More

October 27, 2022 HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

October 27, 2022 HEATHER COX RICHARDSON OCT 28 Data released this morning from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis showed that the nation’s gross domestic product—that is, the total value of goods and services produced in the U.S.—was up in the third quarter of 2022, increasing at an annual rate of 2.6%. This increase reflected increases in “exports, consumer spending, nonresidential fixed investment, federal government spending, and state and local government spending,” as well as decreases in imports. That growth was partly offset by lower housing sales. Disposable personal income and personal savings were also up. The previous two quarters had shown the economy contracting, and since Republicans have made the notion that the country is in a recession a centerpiece of their campaign messaging, President Joe Biden was quick to celebrate the news, saying in a statement that “today we got further evidence that our economic recovery is continuing to power forward.” He noted that the country has added 10 million jobs since he took office and that employment remains at a 50-year high. New York Times economic and business reporter Ben Casselman complicated the story a bit. He noted that the data from the past three quarters—two down, one up—shows that the economy is slowing, and he suggested that this quarter’s big swing upward is due to changes in trade and inventories. But, he pointed out, slowing the economy a bit is exactly what the Federal Reserve is trying to do: slow demand to bring down inflation. The primary tool the Fed uses to do that is interest rates, but those adjustments are very blunt instruments, and those people interested in continuing growth are always worried the Fed will raise interest rates too much, too fast, throwing the economy into reverse. Trying to figure out exactly how to adjust the economy so inflation slows but employment doesn’t, seems to me to be rather like trying to catch an egg on a plate, as the saying goes. Biden observed today that inflation remains a problem—“we need to make more progress on our top economic challenge: bringing down high prices for American families”—but noted that gas prices continue to fall (the average price of a gallon of gas today was $3.76 a gallon). He also pointed to the Inflation Reduction Act’s reduction of drug prices and health care premiums, which will go into effect next year. In addition, the administration yesterday announced plans to stop so-called junk fees on consumers, as well. Yesterday, Jim Tankersley and Emily Cochrane of the New York Times noted that Republicans are emphasizing inflation as a reason to vote Democrats out of office. Republicans say they will reduce government spending and pass more tax cuts, including a repeal of the tax increases on corporations that the Democrats passed this summer. They promise to cut funding for the IRS, which Congress funded to enable it to go after corporations and the very wealthy who cheat on their taxes. But, Tankersley and Cochrane point out, “few economists on either end of the ideological spectrum expect the party’s proposals to meaningfully reduce inflation in the short term.” Indeed, economists say tax cuts could make inflation worse by freeing up more money. What would take money out of the economy, though, is Republicans’ promise to get rid of the IRA’s new health care tax credits and caps on drug prices. They also promise to stop Biden’s student loan forgiveness program, which would put loan burdens back on about 40 million Americans, thus cutting down their disposable income. Meanwhile, London-based oil company Shell today reported its third-quarter adjusted earnings. They were the second highest on record for Shell: $9.45 billion. (Shell’s top earnings period was the second quarter of this year, when it reported $11.5 billion.) Profits for Paris-based TotalEnergies were $9.9 billion. That’s more than double what their profits were in the same period last year. Shell says it will use the windfall to buy back about $4 billion of its shares, making this year’s total buybacks $18.5 billion. It will also increase dividends to shareholders. According to Stanley Reed of the New York Times, Shell’s chief financial officer told reporters that the company had not paid Britain’s new windfall tax on oil and gas profits because the company’s spending on projects in the North Sea had reduced profits, but that they expected to see the tax kick in next year. If Biden is focusing on the economy before the midterms, the Republicans seem to be doubling down on their ties to the right-wing movements around the world. In a speech today, Russian president Vladimir Putin appeared to be reaching out to right-wing Americans when he divided “the West,” into two groups: one of “traditional, mainly Christian values” that aligns with Russia, and one of “aggressive, cosmopolitan, neocolonial” values “acting as the weapon of the neoliberal elite” and trying to impose its “strange” values on the world. Antisemitism is also on the rise on the American right in what looks like outreach to those embracing European-style fascism. Former president Trump recently warned American Jews to “get their act together” and show more support for Israel “before it is too late,” while the recent outbursts from artist Ye (also known as Kanye West) have led Adidas to cancel its contract with him and upended his other projects. In Pennsylvania the Republican candidate for governor, Doug Mastriano, a right-wing Christian who opposes the separation of church and state, has made attacking the Jewish faith of his Democratic opponent, Attorney General Josh Shapiro, a big part of his campaign. “Empirically, something is different,” Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive officer of the Anti-Defamation League, told Michelle Boorstein and Isaac Arnsdorf of the Washington Post. “The level of public animosity towards Jews is higher than it’s been in recent memory.” My own guess is that increasing antisemitism on the part of Republicans is not simply the encouragement of hate such as that exhibited four years ago today when a gunman murdered eleven people and wounded six more at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, but is rather an attempt to signal directly to neo-Nazis before the election that the party wants their support. The danger posed by the current-day Republican Party’s embrace of authoritarianism is not going unchallenged. Indeed, it is remaking American politics as defenders of democracy band together. Today, Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) endorsed Representative Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) for reelection, her first endorsement of a Democrat since the Republican Party turned on her over her insistence on holding Trump to account for the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Both women sit on the House Armed Services Committee. Cheney called Slotkin “a good and honorable public servant who works hard for the people she represents, wants what's best for the country, and is in this for the right reasons.” Cheney continued: “While Elissa and I have our policy disagreements, at a time when our nation is facing threats at home and abroad, we need serious, responsible, substantive members like Elissa in Congress. I encourage all voters in the 7th district—Republicans, Democrats, and Independents—to support her in this election.” The two will appear together at an “evening for patriotism and bipartisanship” on November 1. And in Alaska, Senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican, and Representative Mary Peltola, a Democrat, have just endorsed each other in the upcoming election. The Alaska Federation of Natives has endorsed them both. — Notes: https://www.bea.gov/news/2022/gross-domestic-product-third-quarter-2022-advance-estimate https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/10/27/statement-by-president-biden-on-third-quarter-gdp-report/ https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/oct/27/profits-at-worlds-seven-biggest-oil-firms-soar-to-almost-150bn-this-year-windfall-tax https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/27/business/economy/us-economy-gdp.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/10/27/gdp-2022-q3-economy/ https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/27/business/shell-earnings-profit-oil-gas.html https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/10/27/world/russia-ukraine-war-news https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/10/us/politics/mastriano-shapiro-antisemitism.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/26/us/politics/midterms-gop-republican-inflation-plans.html https://gasprices.aaa.com/national-average-continues-to-fall-as-gas-demand-remains-low/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/10/27/antisemitism-kanye-trump-adidas-jews/ https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/23207150/republican-liz-cheney-endorses-democrat-elissa-slotkin.pdf https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/cheney-endorsement-elissa-slotkin-democrat https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/3701555-murkowski-peltola-buck-parties-to-endorse-each-other-in-alaska/

October 28, 2022 HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

 

October 28, 2022 HEATHER COX RICHARDSON OCT 29 At about 2:30 am, police in San Francisco responding to a call discovered that an assailant had broken into the San Francisco home of House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and attacked her husband, 82-year-old Paul Pelosi, with a hammer, shouting, “Where’s Nancy?” The attacker apparently tried to tie Mr. Pelosi up “until Nancy got home” and told police he was “waiting for Nancy.” Mr. Pelosi suffered a fractured skull and serious injuries to his right arm and his hands. He underwent surgery today. He is expected to recover. Speaker Pelosi was in Washington, D.C., at the time. The House speaker is the third-ranking officer of our government, second in line to succeed the president. An attack on her is an attack on our fundamental government structure. Those who knew the alleged attacker, 42-year-old David DePape, say his behavior has been concerning. His Facebook page featured conspiracy theories common on right-wing media, saying Covid vaccines were deadly; that George Floyd, the Minneapolis man murdered by police officer Derek Chauvin, actually died of a drug overdose; that the 2020 election was stolen; and the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol was a “FARCE.” He reposted a number of videos by Mike Lindell, the Trump loyalist and chief executive officer of the MyPillow company, lying that the 2020 election was stolen. Matthew Gertz of Media Matters reviewed DePape’s blog and found it “a standard case of right-wing online radicalization. QAnon, Great Reset, Pizzagate, Gamergate and all there, along with M[en’s] R[ights] A[ctivist]/misogyny, hatred of Blacks/Jews/trans people/’groomers,’ and anti-vax conspiracy theories.” According to Harry Litman, the legal affairs columnist for the Los Angeles Times, DePape has been booked so far only on state crimes, including attempted homicide and elder abuse. According to Joyce White Vance at Civil Discourse, evidence that he went after Mr. Pelosi in order to intimidate Speaker Pelosi or stop her from performing her official duties would constitute a federal crime. The attack on Mr. Pelosi comes after right-wing figures have so often advocated violence against the House speaker that the rioters on January 6 roamed the U.S. Capitol calling for her in the singsong cadences of a horror movie. Before she ran for Congress, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) said Pelosi was a “traitor” and told her listeners that treason is “a crime punishable by death,” and House minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) once “joked” about hitting Speaker Pelosi with the speaker’s gavel if he becomes speaker himself, prompting laughter from his audience. Whipping up supporters against a perceived enemy to create a statistical probability of an attack without advocating a specific event is known as “stochastic terrorism.” Without using that phrase, Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) explained it today: “[W]hen you convince people that politicians are rigging elections, drink babies blood, etc, you will get violence. This must be rejected.” Right-wing media channels immediately spun the home invasion and attack into Republican talking points, saying that “crime hits everybody” and that “this can happen anywhere, crime is random and that’s why it’s such a significant part of this election story.” Some tried to pin the attack on President Joe Biden, blaming him for not healing the country’s divisions; Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin said of Pelosi and her husband: “There’s no room for violence anywhere, but we’re going to send her back to be with him in California.” Aaron Rupar of Public Notice called out how few Republicans publicly condemned the attack and how many tried to pin the blame for it on Democrats. Late yesterday, Twitter’s board completed the $44 billion sale of the company to billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk. Musk has promised to be an advocate for free speech and to reopen the platform to those previously banned for spreading racist content or disinformation—including former president Trump—but his actual purchase of the site might complicate that position. In the technology magazine The Verge, editor Nilay Patel wrote, “Welcome to hell, Elon.” The problems with Twitter, Patel wrote, “are not engineering problems. They are political problems.” The site itself is valuable only because of its users, he points out, and trying to regulate how people behave is “historically a miserable experience.” Patel notes that to attract advertising revenue, Musk will have to protect advertisers’ brands, which means banning “racism, sexism, transphobia, and all kinds of other speech that is totally legal in the United States but reveals people to be total a**holes.” And that content moderation, of course, will infuriate the right-wing cheerleaders who “are going to viciously turn on you, just like they turn on every other social network that realizes the same essential truth.” And that’s even before Twitter has to take on the speech laws of other countries. Musk clearly understands this tension. Trying to reassure advertisers before the sale, he tweeted: “Twitter obviously cannot become a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences!” Car manufacturer General Motors has temporarily stopped running ads on Twitter until its direction becomes clearer. Today, racist and antisemitic content rose sharply as users appeared to be testing the limits of the platform under Musk. The Network Contagion Research Institute, which studies disinformation on social media, noted that posters on the anonymous website 4chan have been encouraging users to spread racist and derogatory slurs on Twitter. The Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism, which focuses on civil rights law, backed this observation up today when it noted that on October 27, an anonymous post on 4chan, which users immediately spread to extremist Telegram channels, told followers how to increase antisemitic content on Twitter. In the first 12 hours after Musk acquired the site, the use of the n-word increased nearly 500%. After a few high-profile accounts appeared to have been reinstated, this afternoon, Musk tweeted that he is creating a council to figure out a content moderation policy, and that no major content decisions or reinstatements will happen until it creates a policy. At the very least, this should protect Twitter from becoming associated with new accounts promoting violence before the midterm elections. And that is a concern. Today, the Department of Homeland Security, FBI, National Counterterrorism Center, and U.S. Capitol Police warned of violent extremism surrounding the upcoming midterm elections, including attacks on “candidates running for public office, elected officials, election workers, political rallies, political party representatives, racial and religious minorities, or perceived ideological opponents.” The aim of those attacking our elections is to discredit our democracy. — Notes: Because this site populates Twitter posts fully, tonight’s notes put me over the space limit. So I’ve pulled out the Twitter part of the following urls. If you want to see the tweets, you can cut and paste these identifiers into Twitter itself:  ADL/status/1586101227041230848 harrylitman/status/1586049960641851392 gingerconejero/status/1586042013387919360 MattGertz/status/1585981763137904640 kurtbardella/status/1586082111055810560 duty2warn/status/1586064582065369088 elonmusk/status/1586059953311137792 AdamKinzinger/status/1586041683963092994 atrupar/status/1586088806260039680 MattGertz/status/1586062241480130560 ncri_io/status/1586007698910646272 And the rest of the notes: https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/26/politics/marjorie-taylor-greene-democrats-violence/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/28/politics/pelosi-attack-suspect-conspiracy-theories-invs/index.html https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/pelosi-targeted https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/10/28/us/pelosi-san-francisco-home-attack https://www.huffpost.com/entry/nancy-pelosi-husband-paul-attacke_n_635c09b7e4b01c1b94e60eac Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance Assaulting a Federal Official's Family Member Speaker Pelosi’s husband Paul was attacked by a man who entered their San Francisco home and reportedly called for Nancy Pelosi; a situation eerily reminiscent of January 6 when the mob roamed through the Capitol, calling her name. Paul Pelosi was seriously injured, but is expected to recover. His attacker is now in custody… Read more 10 hours ago · 270 likes · 48 comments · Joyce Vance https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/10/27/twitter-elon-musk/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/2022-elections-threat-dhs-bulletin/ https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/domestic-extremists-pose-heightened-threat-2022-midterms-law/story?id=92312858 https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/28/23428132/elon-musk-twitter-acquisition-problems-speech-moderation https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/10/28/musk-twitter-racist-posts/

RSN: FOCUS: Vincent Bevins | Brazil's Democracy Is on the Brink and the Ballot

30 October 22

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FOCUS: Vincent Bevins | Brazil's Democracy Is on the Brink and the Ballot
Vincent Bevins, New York Magazine
Bevins writes: "Former president Luiz Inácio 'Lula' da Silva, on the verge of possible reelection in Brazil, has brought together a surprisingly broad coalition of contradictory forces united in a desperate attempt to preserve Brazilian democracy, fight extreme poverty, and establish basic protections for the Amazon rain forest."

ALSO SEE: Brazil's Presidential Election May Determine
the Fate of the Amazon Rainforest
— and the Entire Planet's Climate

Brazil’s Democracy Is on the Brink and the Ballot

Bolsonaro’s campaign has struggled, but he has laid the groundwork to reject defeat.

Former president Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva, on the verge of possible reelection in Brazil, has brought together a surprisingly broad coalition of contradictory forces united in a desperate attempt to preserve Brazilian democracy, fight extreme poverty, and establish basic protections for the Amazon rain forest. This Sunday, they hope to defeat the country’s extreme-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, in power since 2018, who trailed the Workers’ Party candidate by five points in the first round of voting on October 2. Bolsonaro has tried to close the gap since then even as he reverts to constant attacks on the electoral system in a campaign marked by frenetic violence, floods of fake news online, and fear of an outright coup.

With so much at stake, rivals have become allies. “When democracy is visibly at risk, what matters is not the particular program of any given candidate or which party you usually support,” insisted Marina Silva, the environmentalist who ran for president against the Partido dos Trabalhadores in 2014. She was speaking on Sunday alongside Geraldo Alckmin, the establishment politician who ran against Lula in 2006 — but is now his running mate — and Tabata Amaral, a popular young congresswoman with few fans on the left. The audience was predominantly white, wealthy Brazilians in the heart of São Paulo’s financial district — the kind of people that, as a class, mostly cheered along as the left-leaning PT was crushed by the 2016 impeachment of former president Dilma Rousseff and then again as Lula, the party’s co-founder, was imprisoned ahead of Bolsonaro’s election victory in 2018. Things are different now. “Businesspeople know that institutional stability and democratic politics are essential,” Silva continued. “If you want to preserve your liberty, the best way is democracy.” She received a standing ovation.

The PT’s base of support is still Brazil’s poorer non-white majority. But the problem, for the party and the rest of Brazil’s pro-democracy forces, is that a lot of regular people chose to vote for Bolsonaro and his allies earlier this month. Even if Lula sails to victory in Sunday’s runoff election, there will be a ferocious Bolsonarista bloc in Congress and in control of many state governments. If Bolsonaro wins — after billions in slush-fund spending throughout Brazil and battles with the country’s election officials — he could have his way with the country’s institutions.

“The risks to Brazilian democracy are very serious, for reasons which are both true in general and specific to our case,” explained Flávia Biroli, a political scientist at the University of Brasília. “First, we know that autocratic leaders given more than one mandate tend to destroy institutions from the inside. And here specifically, after first-round voting, we can already see that radical Bolsonarismo is here to stay.”

At its heart, Bolsonarismo is a violently anti-democratic force. The president is a former army captain who made his career praising the U.S.-backed military dictatorship that ended in the 1980s and famously said as a congressman that the regime did not kill enough people, that violence, not voting, was the only path to change, that it would be “fine” if tens of thousands of innocent people died in the process, and that the president should be executed.

In 2018, Lula was ahead in the polls until he was imprisoned by a judge, who soon after joined Bolsonaro’s government, on charges that Brazil’s Supreme Court later overturned.

As president, Bolsonaro has governed erratically and aggressively. During the pandemic, deaths soared as the economy shrank, and millions of children now find themselves without enough to eat. The chaos he unleashed led some of the country’s institutional elites to back away from him. But his movement also connected with diverse sectors of the population while in power. Bolsonarismo’s most loyal base, by far, is white men in the comfortable middle class, but he has also won support among Evangelical Christians; the country’s cowboy-settler class; the military, police, and their supporters; and, to a large extent, Brazil’s growing community of YouTubers, TikTok stars, and Instagram influencers.

“Bolsonaro did some good things for the country, but in reality, the Supreme Court wouldn’t let him govern,” Kleber Borges, a 44-year-old security guard, told me. Borges commutes 90 minutes twice a day between his job in São Paulo and his home in a poor suburb and says he will vote to reelect the president on Sunday. “What I am afraid of is the left letting crime get even worse and him siphoning off money and helping countries like Venezuela and Cuba.”

“Hold on,” he said, pulling out his phone. “Let me show you some videos of what Lula really plans to do.”

Jair Bolsonaro is often compared to Donald Trump, and not only because the Bolsonaros have actively cultivated the association. Though Bolsonaro comes from a much more coherent ideological tradition, his family has seemingly tried to import U.S. culture wars with varying levels of success. During the pandemic, Bolsonaro embraced anti-vaccine rhetoric — though a great many Brazilians got vaccinated anyway. This year, during an interview with Tucker Carlson, Bolsonaro sat stone-faced as the Fox News host called his opposition in Brazil a “coalition of billionaires, college professors, and CNN” — though elites had lined up behind Bolsonaro in 2018. And while trailing far behind in the polls over the past year, Bolsonaro has attacked the Brazilian voting system — though no one can point to any real problems with it. It has also become a common fear here in Brazil that Bolsonaro’s supporters will mount their own version of what happened in the U.S. on January 6, 2021, some kind of militant rejection of his possible loss that, in the South American context, could mean serious chaos or precede a concerted attempt to seize power.

Bolsonaro has always made it clear he would crush democracy if he had the means to do so. One reason many analysts suspect Lula has assembled such a broad political coalition is that he wants to bulletproof the democratic transition of power against a coup attempt. After the first round of voting, all of the other major candidates, along with the founder of the country’s right-libertarian NOVO party, lined up behind him.

The (North) Americanization of Brazilian politics has proceeded along other axes this year. To a novel extent, the campaign has been dominated by celebrity endorsements, media meta-discourse, and last-minute mudslinging on religious terrain. On the first front, the pro-Lula camp has managed to assemble pop stars like Anitta and Pablo Vittar, rapper Emicida, and foreign dignitaries like the Portuguese prime minister — and Sonic Youth. Bolsonarismo meanwhile counts on Gusttavo Lima and much of the rest of the country’s growing country-music scene as well as crypto-shilling soccer superstar Neymar. (Last week, during an appearance on Brazil’s Joe Rogan–esque Flow podcast, Lula implied that Bolsonaro had forgiven some of Neymar’s massive tax debt.)

The Bolsonaro family has also long insisted on arming the entire Brazilian population, USA-style. Last Sunday, voters got a shocking demonstration of what that looks like. Roberto Jefferson, a former congressman and longtime Bolsonaro family friend, unleashed his arsenal on police officers who had come to bring him in after he broke the terms of his house arrest by posting online messages attacking a Supreme Court justice. Two officers were injured during the standoff after Jefferson opened fire and threw a hand grenade at them.

Another violent scandal broke out on Thursday in Brazil’s most populous state. According to witnesses, plainclothes police officers working for gubernatorial candidate and Bolsonaro ally Tarcísio de Oliveira killed a man in a São Paulo favela. Then, a campaign staffer ordered a journalist to delete the evidence, and the candidate then tried to claim he had been attacked. The Bolsonaro family has been linked to paramilitary police mílicias, and right-wing fake-news campaigns have this month tried to associate Lula with organized crime. “I have covered a lot of campaigns,” said the cameraman who was told to erase his footage. “But I have never seen a candidate for governor working with people like that.”

During Lula’s two terms as president from 2003 to 2010, he oversaw an economic boom and the expansion of social services. Almost everybody in Brazil became better off in those years, and after tens of millions of people rose out of poverty, he left office with an approval rating of over 80 percent. This was the period when a so-called “pink tide” of left-leaning governments, buoyed by Chinese demand for their nations’ commodities, made advances across Latin America. Nothing symbolized the tide’s recession more than the waves of crises that hit Brazil — political, economic, and judicial — in the 2010s, threatening at one point to wash away the Workers’ Party once and for all. Now, with a new crop of left-leaning leaders in power in countries like Chile, Colombia, and Argentina, supporters see Lula’s return as both an attempt to finally stop the bleeding in Latin America’s largest country and a cathartic victory over the right-wing forces that used courts and chicanery to crush a popular movement.

As Bolsonaro’s campaign has continued to struggle, he has been laying the groundwork for a post-defeat narrative that his movement was stabbed in the back and the election stolen. He and his allies are already claiming that the vote-counting system is flawed, that over-stretched and hyperactive electoral authorities have engaged in censorship, and/or that his message is being suppressed on radio stations. Meanwhile, tens of millions of overstressed Brazilians watch the news anxiously, praying for a peaceful democratic transition over the next several weeks.

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Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba speaks during a news conference. (photo: Kuba Stezycki/Reuters)

Ukraine Promises to Export More Grains to African Countries
Al Jazeera
Excerpt: "Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has promised that his country will do all it can to send more grain to Africa as he began his African tour this week in Senegal."

“We will do our best until the last breath to continue exporting Ukrainian grain to Africa and the world for food security,” Kuleba said at a joint press briefing with his Senegalese counterpart, Aissata Tall Sall.

Senegal’s President Macky Sall, the current chairman of the African Union, has urged Russia and Ukraine to resume their grain exports despite the ongoing war.

Many African countries depend heavily on grain imports from Russia and Ukraine. Amid market shortages, Russia has sought to portray the West as the villain, blaming it for rising food prices.

Western leaders, meanwhile, have accused the Kremlin of cynically using food as a weapon and waging an imperial-style war of conquest.

So far, Africa has stayed somewhat neutral on Ukraine: some 25 African countries either voted to abstain or did not vote at all on the United Nations resolution that condemned the war in Ukraine earlier this year. Senegal was among those abstaining and its president told the UN General Assembly last month that Africa “does not want to be the breeding ground of a new Cold War”.

Despite these positions of neutrality, Ukraine’s foreign minister said he wants to deepen his country’s ties to Africa.

“I do not come to Africa against anyone,” Kuleba said Monday. “We must strengthen our cooperation. Our future depends on the relationships we build and what happens every day.”

The Ukrainian minister criticised Russia’s statements.

“The Senegalese may be surprised if they listen to Russian propaganda. Russia wanted to make believe that [the war is because] Ukraine wants to be a member of NATO. Finland wants to be a member. And yet Russia did not attack it,” he said.

“Russia also believes that we are one people. This is not true,” Kuleba said. “The language we speak is not the same. We have a different culture and a different people. If someone tries to impose a doctrine on you, you would reject it.”

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