By Kent R. Kroeger (Source: NuQum.com; June 1, 2019)

If I didn’t know better, I’d think the mainstream media is trying to undercut the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign.

“Polls show Sanders losing support, as others such as Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris gain ground,” argues CNN’s Nia-Malika Henderson.

The Morning Consult headlined in its recent Democratic nomination poll summary: “Sanders on the decline with 18–29 year-olds. Throughout March, Bernie Sanders had 45 percent of the first choice vote share among America’s youngest voters. That support has steadily declined and currently sits at 33 percent.”

“He can’t grow, and if he can’t hold his most important supporters? His path to the nomination, already near-zero, becomes effectively zero,” concludes The DailyKos.com.

‘Bernie is so 2016′ echoes around dinner conversations from Greenwich Village to the Upper East Side. The liberal establishment can hardly contain their collective grin.

“He (Bernie Sanders) evokes an ersatz George McGovern: a candidate who inspires great passion among a slice of the electorate just large enough to win his party’s nomination, before losing to an incumbent president steeped in criminality. In more ways than one, America cannot afford him,” writes Richard North Patterson. “Sanders is a political tooth fairy, asking voters to chase a fantasy down a rabbit hole to nowhere. But magical thinking won’t beat Trump. The reckoning of 2020 demands a candidate with the discipline, talent, realism and resolve to make our collective reality better. Whoever that might be, it isn’t Bernie Sanders.”

But are these stories of Bernie’s demise true?

Similar to the Trump-Russia collusion myth, the ‘Bernie is fading’ narrative is based more on wishful thinking than reality.

The truth is….

According to RealClearPolitics’ polling averages, Sanders was pulling just under 20 percent of likely Democratic primary voters when consistent polling on the nomination started late last year (see Figure 1). Apart from a period around his candidacy announcement, when his support grew into the mid-20s, Sanders’ polling has hovered within 5 percentage points of 20 percent.

In fact, the top four candidates — Joe Biden, Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris — have seen few substantive changes in their support levels since last year, though Biden’s support has grown somewhat (about 10 percentage points since the beginning of 2019). And contrary Nia-Malika Henderson’s claim about Harris and Warren’s surge, neither has seen any support growth.

Figure 1: Weekly Polling Averages for 2020 Democratic Nomination Race

However, Sanders’ critics are correct about one thing: 20 percent is not enough to win the Democratic nomination. He must grow his support beyond his current base (which consists of much more than just millennials and left-wing progressives, when you dig deeper into the data). And with over 20 candidates in the race, building upon his base is not going to be easy in the near-term.

But this is still early June and the Democrats have not even held a debate yet. To argue Sanders’ chance for the nomination is ‘effectively zero’ isn’t just wrong, it is unfair. Deliberately so, I would add.

“The Democratic nomination will be about who can most likely beat Trump,” said one Democratic pundit during a recent roundtable discussion on the nomination race. And Bernie Sanders can’t beat Trump was the implication.

Substance and policy be damned, the Democratic Party is saying to its core voters, ignoring that fact that the 2020 Democrat nominee employed the same policy-free strategy — and lost to the Orange Mephistopheles.

This is the message the Democratic Party establishment wants every Democrat to internalize between now and the February 2020 caucus in Iowa.

But will it work this time?

• K.R.K.

By Kent R. Kroeger (Source: NuQum.com; May 29, 2019)

Recently, three major renewable energy milestones passed virtually unnoticed as the mainstream media continues to obsess about the 2020 presidential race, the aftermath of the Mueller Report, and the possible impeachment of President Donald Trump.

The first milestone was announced by the Institute for Energy Economics & Financial Analysis (IEEFA), when it reported that, in April and May,renewable energy sources, including hydroelectricity, will for the first time generate more U.S. electricity than coal-fired plants, signaling a “tipping point” in the advance of renewable energy as this nation’s primary source of electricity generation.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), all renewables will produce 18 percent of U.S. electricity in 2019, and almost 20 percent in 2020. “Renewable generation is catching up to coal, and faster than forecast,” says Utility Dive editor Robert Walton.

The second milestone was announced by India’s Central Electricity Authority, when it reported India’s solar power industry generated 11.3 terawatt-hours (TWh) of solar power during the 1st quarter of 2019. This is a 16.5 percent increase from the previous quarter and a 57 percent increase from the same quarter in 2018. More significantly, it is the first time solar power in India has surpassed 10 TWh in a quarter, representing about 3 percent of all electricity generation. In total, renewable energy sources account for around 9 percent of all electricity generation in India.

Nine percent may seem small, but the long-term trajectory for renewables in India is on the rapid upswing. Without such progress by India (and China), any hope of achieving zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions on a global scale is lost.

The third milestone is less obvious but perhaps the most important. The International Energy Agency (IEA) recently announced that, despite fast Asian economic growth making coal more popular than ever as an electricity generation source, final investment decisions (FIDs) for coal plants have declined annually from 88 Gigawatts (GW) in 2015 to just 22 GW in 2018, the IEA announced in early May. Given that 30 GW of coal plants were retired last year and this retirement rate will continue into the foreseeable future, more coal capacity will be retired than approved each year going forward.

“This is a sneak preview of where we’ll be in three to four years time,” says Tim Buckley, director of energy finance studies at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, a renewable energy advocacy group. “If closures stay where they are, we’re at peak (coal) by 2021.”

The future is bleak for fossil fuels (especially coal)

Peak coal is finally visible on the horizon and the world is inexorably marching towards net zero GHG emissions with certainty in the latter half of this century. While still facing many technological challenges —advances in battery storage being among the biggest— the world’s path to zero-emissions electricity generation by 2050 is not wishful thinking (see Figure 1). And the green transformation of other major GHG sources — transportation and industry— won’t be far behind. Electric vehicles, in fact, may be cheaper than internal combustion engine vehicles by 2022, significantly accelerating the transition.

Figure 1: International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) Forecasts for Renewable Energy through 2050

Of course, forecasts can be wrong as they are dependent on a myriad of factors, not all under our control. And the potential for policy changes and economic shocks to stunt our progress can never be ruled out.

Still, even with the Trump administration’s open hostility to climate change science, the U.S. continues its conversion to renewable energy which accelerated during the Obama administration and, according to recent figures from the EIA, has continued in the Trump administration’s first two years (see Figure 2). Indeed, as a source for electricity generation, renewable energy has grown faster annually in Trump’s first two years than during Obama’s eight years (8.2% avg. annual growth vs. 6.3% avg. annual growth, respectively). In comparison, renewable energy’s annual growth during George W. Bush’s tenure was only 1.4 percent.

Figure 2: U.S. Renewable Electricity Generation (Actual and Forecast)

Why the gloom and doom among climate change activists?

If these recent headlines are any indication, the dominate political-media narrative is oblivious to the real progress being made on renewable energy:

Climate change WARNING: Oceans could rise 7 FEET putting 200 MILLION at risk (The Daily and Sunday Express, May 24, 2019)

It is absolutely time to panic about climate change: Author David Wallace-Wells on the dystopian hellscape that awaits us (Vox.com, February 24, 2019)

The grave threat to US civilisation is not China, but climate change (South China Morning Post, May 28, 2019)

“It is, I promise, worse than you think,” environmental author David Wallace-Wells warned in 2017 about climate change’s impact.

How could a dystopian hellscape be anything else but worse than expected?

“Last year in the summer of 2018 in the Northern Hemisphere you had this unprecedented heat wave that killed people all around the world. You had the crazy hurricane season. In California, wildfires burned more than a million acres. And we’re really only just beginning to see these sorts of effects,” Wallace-Wells recently told Vox.com. “If we continue on the track we’re on now, in terms of emissions, and we just take the wildfire example, conventional wisdom says that by the end of the century we could be seeing roughly 64 times as much land burned every year as we saw in 2018, a year that felt completely unprecedented and inflicted unimaginable damage in California.”

Apocalyptic jeremiads like Wallace-Wells’ new book, “The Uninhabitable Earth,” demoralize readers and feed a sense of hopelessness at the precise moment we need to motivate them. Up to now, such climate change alarmism has been an ineffective strategy to build broad public support for policies that will fundamentally reorganize the world economy.

In spite of that, alarmism remains front-and-center in the 2020 U.S. presidential race. In a thinly-veiled response to former Vice President Joe Biden’s recent suggestion of a “middle ground” approach to climate change, New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said: “I will be damned if the same politicians who refused to act (in past decades) are going to try to come back today and say we need a middle of the road approach to save our lives.”

At least on paper, Ocasio-Cortez has backed up her climate change rhetoric with a wide-ranging manifesto, the Green New Deal (GND). On a scale far grander than Obamacare, the last significant government program passed by Congress, the GND envisions the elimination of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. by 2030 with renewable and zero-emission energy sources, including nuclear power, making up 100 percent of U.S. power demand. Ambitious on paper, the GND is the ultimate stretch-goal. That is what saving the planet and the people on it will require, says Ocasio-Cortez.

Backbreaking to the U.S. economy is how Republicans describe the GND. “It is quite amazing that someone that is in government — actually elected to the government of the United States of America — would propose that we eliminate all fossil fuels in 12 years,” said Greenpeace Co-Founder Patrick Moore in an interview with The New American. “If we did it on a global level, it would result in the decimation of the human population from 7-odd billion down to who knows how few people.”

With the GND, the progressive movement’s over-stimulated ego meets the Republican’s science agnostic id. Its a septic brew not conducive to successful policymaking.

Yet, we make progress anyway.

To ignore the real advances made in expanding renewable energy capacity in the U.S. (and around the world) is to mischaracterize reality. Furthermore, the momentum in the U.S. has occurred against a hyperpartisan political backdrop where very little substantive climate change legislation has been passed in the past two decades. To the contrary, according to the International Monetary Fund, U.S. direct and indirect subsidies for coal, oil and gas reached $649 billion in 2015. That is more than we spend on national defense.

In an odd way, that should be reason for optimism moving forward. Imagine what this country could do on renewable energy if it stopped distorting the marketplace in favor of fossil fuels and let the free market decide.

That is a project even Republicans might get behind.

• K.R.K.

By Kent R. Kroeger (Source: NuQum.com; May 24, 2019)

I last wrote the about Trump-Russia collusion investigation in August 2018, promising to myself I wouldn’t return to the story unless genuinely new information emerged.

Since then, with respect to a conspiracy with Russia, the sectarian news media has proffered no new, inculpating evidence against President Donald Trump and his 2016 campaign.

None. Zippo. Nada.

Instead, they recycled old news (e.g., Powerpoint summaries of Trump campaign survey data given to Russian-allied operatives) or blatantly false news (e.g., secret Manafort-Assange meetings in an Ecuadorian embassy) to keep the story alive.

Despite the demonstrably poor journalism, Figure 1 shows how the American public’s interest in Russiagate — as measured by their Google search frequencies on related key terms — has not waned since the start of the story in 2016. If anything, it has increased.

Figure 1: Google Search Trends Related to Russiagate

And why? The obvious source of the continued Russiagate interest is the news media itself, which in the past two years has taken only brief respites from Russiagate to cover stories such as Syria, Venezuela, school shootings, immigration and the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination race.

Jointly, the news media and its consumers are engaged in a strategy investors call ‘averaging down.’ This is an investment approach where, as the value of an asset declines from its original purchase price, the investor buys additional units of that asset in the expectation that it will eventually recover some or all its original value. It is the investor equivalent of continuously moving the bar lower.

Is it a good strategy? Yes, if the asset’s value recovers. Should it not recover, the investor is royally screwed.

In that context, Russiagate, as a common stock, would be valued in pennies right now, having plunged precipitously after the April release of the redacted Mueller report which confirmed what objective observers already suspected: the Trump campaign was amateurish, disorganized, prone to poor judgment, and unethical at times, but it did not conspire with the Russians in the 2016 election to defraud the American people.

Trump’s campaign was unquestionably probed and approached by Russian intelligence operatives (and by Western intelligence operatives as well — as we will find out in the near future), but there was no conspiracy.

The Mueller report is unequivocal on this point:

Suggestions that the Mueller investigation found evidence of a conspiracy — but not enough to indict — is merely the news media employing the ‘averaging down’ strategy and choosing to stay in its advocacy journalism comfort zone, even if it risks losing whatever credibility they still possess.

Left at the conspiracy theory alter by Mueller, the Democrats and the news media are now feverishly trying to convert their shares of the Trump-Russia conspiracy into shares of Trump obstructed justice and must be impeached.

Cable news has become a 24–7 symposium on the legal definitions of obstruction of justice and constitutional theories on impeachment. And if the last two years is an indication, they probably are misleading us on that story too.

Independent journalist Michael Tracey aptly explains the psychology of why the Democrats and the national news media can’t move on from Russiagate and its conspiratorial subsidiaries: “Since 2016, liberals/leftists have perpetuated a moral panic to validate their own parochial political and personal obsessions. They’ve done a lot of damage in the process, not least to people’s psyches. Don’t count on the fever dream ending any time soon.”

Russiagate’s damage is real. This country is not having a constructive dialogue on Libya (where the U.S. seems to be embracing the general — a Virginia resident — trying to take over the country), Yemen (an ongoing humanitarian disaster where there is a lot of blame to pass around), regime change wars(pick any country with oil that the U.S. doesn’t control — Norway, we’re watching you), Medicare-4-All (it is less costly than our current health care system, but if you’ve been watching Jake Tapper, Chris Matthews or Fox News, you wouldn’t know that), climate change (yeah, I would avoid buying coastal or riverbank property going forward), consumer debt (Why does Joe Biden support the Delaware-incorporated bank lenders over student borrowers and credit card consumers? I may have just answered my own question), growing income inequality (that is what a $700 billion defense budget buys), and the list goes on.

Instead, such concerns are mocked for taking our attention away from the media-embellished crisis called Donald Trump (see cartoon below).

Who is stopping these conversations? It is not Donald Trump or Fox News. You are far more likely to get a balanced discussion on Venezuela from Tucker Carlson than you are from Rachel Maddow or Chris Cuomo.

Who is stopping debates on the most important topics of the day? It is the Democratic Party establishment. They are terrified of genuine policy discussions on health care, Venezuela or Iran. Feel free to talk about Peter Buttigieg’s articulateness or Kamala Harris’s favorite music. But ask questions about Venezuela or the dysfunction of our current health care system? Kein Kommentar, says the Democratic Party.

Still, there is hope. The American people are starting to disengage from the mainstream media.

MSNBC and CNN’s ratings are plunging — post-Mueller report.

If we are lucky, this may augur an era of new thinking by the news media. Perhaps they will finally realize it is time to move on from 2016.

• K.R.K.

By Kent R. Kroeger (Source: NuQum.com; May 20, 2019)

By Kent R. Kroeger (NuQum.com; May 16, 2019)

By Kent R. Kroeger (Source: NuQum.com; May 10, 2019)

By Kent R. Kroeger (Source: NuQum.com; May 8, 2019)

My previous essay investigated whether tropical cyclones since 1960 have grown more intense. Admittedly, my finding that the minimum central pressure of the average tropical cyclone was dropping by .09 millibars (mb) every year was exploratory. I am a statistician, not a climatologist — which means I’m comfortable enough with climate data to do real damage.

Intellectual limitations aside, my earlier conclusion is consistent with other climatological studies whose models predict a higher frequency of high-intensity storms in the South Indian Ocean, the Northern Atlantic and worldwide.

My motive for analyzing National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship (IBTrACS) tropical cyclone data was not about challenging climate science, but rather a demonstration of how much high-quality, globally comprehensive climate data is available to the public for analysis.

And to confirm, to my own satisfaction, many of claims being made by climate researchers regarding tropical cyclones.

To the credit of the climate science community, they put their data online. They don’t hide it. And when they systematically adjust it for historical inaccuracies and systematic measurement errors, they document it. Climate science isn’t a secret society and they aren’t hiding anything substantive from public scrutiny.

So when critics of my storm intensity article were actual, PhD-minted climatologists, not just amateur schleps like myself, I took notice.

According to one climatologist critical of my essay, I didn’t properly convey the natural mechanisms involved in tropical cyclone development and intensification which explain why a rapidly warming earth is not experiencing dramatically stronger cyclones (yet). While I did mention how warmer oceans provide more energy for cyclone development (which is true), it is also true that higher atmospheric temperatures create more wind shear which weakens storms. Climatologists, therefore, are not surprised that tropical cyclones have not significantly increased in intensity through the present.

Another critic directed my attention to data compiled by Colorado State University (using the same IBTrACS database I used for my analysis) showing that the annual accumulated cyclone energy (which combines frequency, size and intensity measures of cyclone strength) has not increased worldwide since 1980 (see Figure 1). Again, this is not a surprise to the climate science community.

Figure 1: Global Accumulated Cyclone Energy (Annual)

Finally, one other critic noted that I filtered my tropical cyclone dataset down to storms with sustained winds of at least 39 knots in order to minimize missing pressure data (particularly in the North Indian Ocean basin and for storms in the 1960s); however, I did not impute missing pressure values for the remaining 12 percent of tropical cyclones that still had missing data.

The missing data issue does give me pause as it is one of my consistent complaints about many statistical analyses reported in the popular media. The problem is too important to casually wave off (as I did in my tropical cyclone analysis).

Therefore, I have gone back and re-done my analysis with three major analytic changes: (1) I did not filter out smaller storms below 40 knots, (2) I restricted my analysis to 4,224 storms from the period 1980 to 2018 in order to minimize the occurrence of missing data, and (3) where there was still missing data (12% of storms, n=526), I imputed maximum sustained wind and minimum central pressure for all IBTrACS documented storms using a multiple imputation linear regression model.

For the minimum central pressure missing data model, the predictors were basin, storm duration, and maximum sustained winds (plus random error). For missing maximum wind data, the predictor variables were minimum central pressure, basin, and storm duration (plus random error). In cases where both pressure and wind data were missing (low information cases, n=179), the imputation models included only storm duration and basin (plus random error). Where pressure or wind data were available, the imputation models predicted 90 percent of the variance. For the low information cases, the imputation model predicted just over 30 percent of the variance.

To compare the revised results, Figure 2 shows the original pressure data series with a observed trend of -0.092 mb in minimum central pressure for the average tropical cyclone.

Figure 2: Average Minimum Central Pressure (millibars) per Tropical Cyclone (Without Missing Data Imputation)

Figure 3 shows the revised data series for minimum central pressure (globally) from 1960 to 2018. The revised model — with all missing cases imputed — reveals an even steeper decline per year in average minimum central pressure (b = -0.159). This is not surprising as most of the missing cases were among smaller cyclones occurring in the 1980s.

Figure 3: Average Minimum Central Pressure (millibars) per Tropical Cyclone (With Missing Data Imputation) and linear trend regression

If this linear trend continues, by 2100, the average tropical cyclone will have a minimum central pressure almost 13 mb lower than today. As noted in my previous essay, that can be the difference between a Category 1 storm and a Category 3 storm, though factors other than pressure also impact a storm’s maximum sustained winds.

Nonetheless, according to the linear trend model in Figure 3, tropical cyclones are going to be incrementally stronger over time, assuming the generating process (such as global warming) remains unchanged.

Consistent with decreasing central pressures, maximum sustained winds per storm are also rising (see Figure 4) by 0.166 knots every year. If this linear trend continues, by 2100, the average tropical cyclone will have maximum sustained winds almost 14 knots higher than today.

Figure 4: Average Maximum Sustained Winds (knots) per Tropical Cyclone and linear trend regression

Also consistent with theory and existing research by NASA, the number tropical cyclone days — which is annually a function of the number of tropical storms multiplied by the average cyclone’s lifespan — is declining (see Figure 5). The globe is seeing 4.4 fewer tropical cyclone days each year and if this trend continues, by 2100, the globe will experience 364 fewer cyclone days each year compared to today. That will be over half of the 590 cyclone days the global experienced in 2018.

Figure 5: Tropical Cyclone Days Annually (1980 to 2018) and linear trend regression

But the IBTrACS data reveals something else. Tropical cyclones are not just getting more intense, they may also be getting bigger.

With the strong caveat that there is significantly more missing data with the storm size parameters in the IBTrACS database, an exploratory analysis of the radius of the outermost closed isobar (ROCI) and the radius of maximum winds (RMW) indicates, since 2001, tropical cyclones may be getting larger.

Though the trend does not achieve statistical significance, the average tropical cyclone’s ROCI may be growing by 1.85 nautical miles per year worldwide (see Figure 6). By 2100, the average tropical cyclone could be wider by about 155 nautical miles — about one and a half Long Islands (NY) — and almost double the size of an average tropical cyclone today.

Figure 6: Average Radius of Outermost Closed Isobar (in nautical miles)

Similarly, within the North Atlantic basin where more complete data is available in IBTrACS, the radius of maximum winds for the average storm may be growing by 0.63 nautical miles each year — more than double the RMW of an average tropical cyclone today (see Figure 7). Again, this trend is not statistically significant, but possibly indicative of a longer term trend that would be in line with current theory and forecasts regarding global warming’s impact on tropical cyclones.

Figure 7: Average Radius of Maximum Winds (in nautical miles)

What does this all mean?

First, of all the assertions made in the mainstream media about climate change, much of it inaccurate, speculative and over-dramatized, we should not discount the real changes we are witnessing in the global occurrence of tropical cyclones. These storms may be less frequent, but they are getting stronger and bigger.

Second, my analysis here is simply modeling the behavior over time of selected tropical storm metrics, not the underlying causal mechanisms generating these trends. The strong assumption accompanying this approach is that the generating process behind each trend is constant and will persist into the future. That is not likely to be the case. Global warming is not a linear process and its impact over time is not either.

Finally, this non-peer-reviewed research on my part treats tropical storms as a singular phenomenon, which is a substantial over-simplification.

“You have to remember that storms aren’t one-dimensional,” according to NASA climatologist Dr. Anthony Del Genio. “There are many types of storms, and sorting out how aspects of each type respond to warming is where the science really gets interesting.”

The real research is going on at that level and explicitly modeling the impact of a warming planet on these complex meteorological phenomena.

What I am comfortable concluding from a statistical perspective, using data vetted by the climate science community, is that tropical cyclones are changing in frequency, size and intensity. Whether these trends continue and how these trends might change are the questions challenging climate scientists going forward.

• K.R.K.

Additional information

Good online resources for current climate science research are the following:

NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies: https://www.giss.nasa.gov/

AGU Publications: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/

NOAA Climate Resources: https://www.noaa.gov/climate

UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Online Report Library: https://www.ipcc.ch/reports/

By Kent R. Kroeger (Source: NuQum.com; April 24, 2019)

By Kent R. Kroeger (Source: NuQum.com; April 13, 2019)

The mainstream media and the U.S. government tell us the indictment of Julian Assange is merely a case of prosecuting a man for aiding and abetting a felonious act and has little to do with press freedoms. Civil libertarians, in contrast, say the U.S. Attorney’s Office action is a clear-cut attack on the constitutional right of journalists to investigate and publish information that exposes government wrongdoing.

The reality is messier than either side want to believe.

Since the website’s inception over a decade ago, I have been uneasy about the WikiLeaks journalism model: Publishing large quantities of private (usually stolen) information under the rationale that it brings necessary transparency to important institutions in our society.

Assange sits in a British jail cell today because the U.S. government wants to prosecute him for aiding and abetting Chelsea Manning, a former intelligence analyst in the U.S. Army, in removing Iraq and Afghanistan war logs and diplomatic cables from a classified U.S. Dept. of Defense computer network (SIPRNet) in 2010. Manning, as well, sits in a Virginia jail cell today for refusing to testify before a grand jury regarding the Assange case.

The critical legal question (as of now) facing Assange is not whether he (WikiLeaks) had the right to publish the classified information that embarrassed the U.S. government in its revealing a significantly larger number of civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan than had been previously disclosed by the U.S. military, and also exposing sensitive communications within the U.S. and foreign diplomatic communities. The Trump Justice Department is emphasizing that they are not challenging WikiLeaks’ right to publish, but merely prosecuting Assange for his encouraging and materially helping Manning commit an illegal act.

Those cheering Arrange’s arrest have long argued that he (and Manning) did substantive damage to U.S. security by exposing the identities of Iraqi and Afghan informants working with the U.S. military and by exposing confidential and critical conversations within the diplomatic community.

“There is blood on their hands” is a common refrain in the national security establishment.

As for the actual Assange indictment, it is a little less dramatic. The conspiracy indictment issued by the U.S. Attorney’s Office (Eastern District of Virginia) alleges that:

“Assange engaged in a conspiracy with Chelsea Manning…to assist Manning in cracking a password stored on U.S. Department of Defense computers connected to the Secret Internet Protocol Network (SIPRNet), a U.S. government network used for classified documents and communications. Manning, who had access to the computers in connection with her duties as an intelligence analyst, was using the computers to download classified records to transmit to WikiLeaks. Cracking the password would have allowed Manning to log on to the computers under a username that did not belong to her. Such a deceptive measure would have made it more difficult for investigators to determine the source of the illegal disclosures…

…During the conspiracy, Manning and Assange engaged in real-time discussions regarding Manning’s transmission of classified records to Assange. The discussions also reflect Assange actively encouraging Manning to provide more information.”

But First Amendment defenders are eager to point out that what Assange is accused of doing is done by investigation journalists every day in the execution of their jobs.

Never shy about exposing the hypocrisy of the mainstream news media, journalist Glenn Greenwald points out that news organizations routinely assist in the discovery, delivery and concealment of stolen goods and information.

“The New York Times implemented a system to allow stolen materials to be delivered to it without the thief getting caught,” tweeted Greenwald to New York Time journalist Katie Benner, who defends Assange’s arrest.

“The New York Times actively aids stealing,” says Greenwald.

Furthermore, investigative journalists are not passive actors in bringing transparency to private and public institutions in the name of the public good. They are proactive participants in seeking, discovering and publishing such information. They don’t sit at their desks waiting for whistle blowers to deliver ‘stolen’ information that exposes potential wrongdoing — they identify, pursue, and talk to potential sources with access to such information.

Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein entered journalism lore because they weren’t afraid to prod, beg, and even shame potential sources into obtaining damning information about the Nixon administration.

But they still didn’t steal the information themselves — which is where the Assange case gets murky. To what extent are journalists are protected through the First Amendment to provide the incentives, tools and cover to help whistle blowers?

My no-law-background gut feeling says the U.S. Supreme Court will give tremendous latitude to journalists pursing the public interest. There is something about that Constitution of ours that swamps the temporary requirements of partisan bias and political convenience.

As for damage to U.S. security, the evidence against Manning and WikiLeaks is sparse. A 2011 DoD report concluded “with high confidence that disclosure of the Iraq data set will have no direct personal impact on current and former US leadership in Iraq.”

Former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates gave reporters in 2010 a similar assessment:

“The fact is governments deal with the United States because its in their interest, not because they like us, not because they trust us and not because they believe we can keep secrets,” he said. “Some governments deal with us because they fear us, some because they respect us, most because they need us. We are still essentially …. the indispensable nation.”

“So other nations will continue to deal with us. They will continue to work with us. We will continue to share sensitive information with one another. Is this embarrassing? Yes. Is it awkward? Yes. Consequences for U.S. foreign policy? I think fairly modest.”

More probable harm was done to intelligence informants cultivated through the U.S. military and intelligence efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Despite efforts by WikiLeaks to expunge identifying information regarding intelligence sources — for example, initially about 15,000 of the 92,000 documents obtained from Manning were not released in order to protect individuals cooperating with the U.S. military — Assange as subsequently asserted however that WikiLeaks is “not obligated to protect other people’s sources…unless it is from unjust retribution.”

And, in practice, it is almost impossible to remove enough information to protect all informants, particularly considering Manning lifted more than 740,000 pages of classified information from military servers.

“The lives of cooperating Afghans, Iraqis, and other foreign interlocutors have been placed at increased risk,” read a June 2011 Defense Intelligence Agency(DIA) executive summary regrading the impact of the Manning leaks.

I cannot categorically condone everything Assange and Manning did in releasing classified information — even as some of that information revealed likely war crimes committed by my government and its agents. It was likely a war crime when U.S. military personnel knowingly killed medical personnel (and two Reuters journalists) responding to a U.S. military attack on an adversarial target. [You can learn more about this attack and the accompanying video here.]

Without Manning and Assange’s actions, we may never have found about this now documented attack — and others like it. In my pedestrian view, learning of that attack is worth risking the lives of U.S. informants, who, after all, knowingly entered into that relationship cognizant of the risks involved.

Thus, at the end of the day, I stand with the Obama Dept. of Justice decision not to prosecute Assange on the belief that doing so would do significant harm to press freedom.

Nothing factual has changed since that Obama administration decision.

Furthermore, since WikiLeaks released the Manning materials, the U.S. security state has only grown bigger and more capable at invading the privacy of Americans and other persons protected by our Constitution. We must consider proportionality when deciding to prosecute and jail threats to a security state that far outweighs those threats in terms of power and ability to hide their illegal actions.

Adding to my inclination to defend Assange is that in over 10 years of WikLeaks’ existence, there is no concrete evidence suggesting it has ever published documents that were not authentic and accurate. CNN can’t seem to go 10 days without retracting a false story.

But the issue remains, to what extent is WikiLeaks responsible for protecting innocent people referenced in materials it publishes and to what extent is Assange, personally, responsible for aiding and abetting the theft of government property?

For Julian Assange’s own sake and reputation, he needs to have his case argued in the American court system, where I believe extenuating circumstances will lead to his acquittal.

But I don’t know that for a fact, and nor does anybody else.

• K.R.K.

Please send all comments, questions and federal indictments to: kroeger98@yahoo.com

By Kent R. Kroeger (Source: NuQum.com; April 9, 2019)

President Donald Trump was in prime free-styling mode while speaking to the Republican Jewish Coalition last week in Las Vegas:

“I stood with Prime Minister Netanyahu…Benjamin Netanyahu…How’s the race going by the way? How is it? Whose going to win the race? Tell me. I don’t know. Well, its gonna be close. I think its gonna be close. Two good people. Two good people. But I stood with your prime minister (emphasis mine) at the White House to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the GOLAN! (emphasis Trump’s) Heights. The Golan Heights is something I’ve been hearing about for a long time…(extended applause)…The Golan Heights. So, I was talking to Ambassador (David) Freidman and — not about this — they’ve been trying to get that approved, as you know, for 52 years ’cause they’ve wanted recognition from…” (Trump’s stream of consciousness continued on for another 30 minutes)

The speech quickly went viral, with Trump’s critics focusing on the anti-Semitic trope of dual loyalty implied by his saying “your prime minister.”

“Mr. President, words matter,” tweeted Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt. “As with all elected officials, its critical for you to avoid language that leads people to believe Jews aren’t loyal Americans.”

Trump knew he was talking to Americans. After all, he was in Las Vegas. How could he not know? The only rational conclusion is that Trump thought his audience’s loyalties to Israel equaled, if not eclipsed, other loyalties.

Rep. Omar’s Controversial Statements on Israel

Even with a generous interpretation, Trump’s slur was patently more offensive than Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar’s suggestion in a February town hall meetingthat, after she had criticized Israeli policies towards Palestinians, she had been pressured from both sides of the political spectrum to confirm her loyalty to Israel.

“I should not be expected to have allegiance/pledge support to a foreign country in order to serve my country in Congress,” responded Omar to criticisms of her town hall comments. “I have not said anything about the loyalty of others, but spoke about the loyalty expected of me.”

[Personally, I found Omar’s comment about U.S. support for Israel being all ‘about the Benjamins’ to be more offensive and interpretable as anti-Semitic.]

But for some, Omar’s clarification was insufficient.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said of Rep. Omar: “She is casting Jewish Americans as the other, suggesting a dual loyalty that calls our devotion to America into question.”

But Trump’s use of “your prime minister” is doing exactly that, directly. There is no nuance in Trump’s phrasing. He assumed his Las Vegas audience considered the political leader of another sovereign country to be their leader as well.

That is the definition of the dual loyalty slur. But was the deep-rooted anti-Semitism of Trump’s comment to the Republican Jewish Coalition ever acknowledged as such by the GOP and Israelis?

Of course not. After all, Trump has pretty much given Netanyahu everything he’s asked for, short of a war against Iran — and with two more years left in his term, that could still happen.

Despite Protestations from Party Elites, Israel is Now a Partisan Issue in U.S. Politics

Trump’s oratorical word salads have never been funny and, as president, the misinterpretations they invite only raise the possibility that he could do real damage to our national security and interests. Such solecisms in the context of an Israeli-Palestinian conflict that has killed 9,876 Palestinians and 1,263Israelis since 2000, over 2,300 being children, are particularly reckless.

Making the situation even more unpredictable is the Israeli policy under Netanyahu’s leadership to aggressively support and reinforce Trump’s leadership in the region.

By any objective measure, Netanyahu and Trump are besties. But to what end for the Israelis? So far, just short-term political gains, such as U.S. recognition of the Golan Heights and the U.S. Embassy’s move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Those are purely symbolic outcomes from Israel’s perspective. Before Trump entered office, the U.S. Embassy was already, functionally, working out of Jerusalem and Israel’s control of the Golan Heights has been secure since 1974. Even Palestinian protestations over these U.S. policy moves have been muted and perfunctory.

But with the introduction of partisan politics into the U.S.-Israeli equation in the past 10 years, the Israeli alliance with the Republicans, and now Trump, may be effecting immeasurable damage to Israel’s (and U.S.) long-term interests.

Recent events on the 2020 presidential campaign trail illustrate this potential.

Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke, not exactly a risk taker when it comes to stating concrete policy ideas, said during a campaign stop in Iowa recently that the U.S.-Israeli relationship, to be successful, “must transcend partisanship in the United States, and it must be able to transcend a prime minister who is racist, as he warns about Arabs coming to the polls, who wants to defy any prospect for peace as he threatens to annex the West Bank, and who has sided with a far-right, racist party in order to maintain his hold on power.”

Holy Moses!

For anyone following the U.S.-Israeli relationship over the years, O’Rourke’s statement was unprecedented for a mainstream politician with presidential hopes. American politicians don’t call Israeli prime ministers racist (not even strong Netanyahu critics such as former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry or Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders). But, in the post-Obama world, the U.S.-Israeli relationship has fundamentally changed — even as U.S. foreign policy towards Israel is as supportive as it has ever been.

Should Israel annex large sections of the West Bank, as Netanyahu has promised should he form the next government after the April elections, the Two-State Solution, which is already on life-support, will be OBE (Overtaken-By-Events). There is no viable Palestinian state on the West Bank where Israel controls 60 percent of the land (see Figure 1). Even as most U.S. foreign policy experts still cling to the Two-State-Solution, on the ground, it is as dead as Jussie Smollet’s career.

Figure 1: Israeli Settlements on the West Bank

Trump’s Implicit Anti-Semitism Has Consequences

When Trump implies that American Jews are as loyal to Israel as they are to the U.S., he is not only saying something that is demonstrably untrue, he is reinforcing one of anti-Semitism’s bedrock falsehoods.

Ironically, he is also doing measurable harm to Israel’s support among American Jews.

“A growing number of American Jews look at Israel and see a country that is occupying Palestinian territory and breaking up peaceful Palestinian protests using force,” writes journalist Zack Beauchamp, a Jewish American with familial connections to Israel. “They also see a Jewish state that only recognizes one socially conservative strand of Jewry, Orthodox Judaism, as legitimate — which manifests in things like preventing liberal American Jews from praying in mixed-gender groups at the Western Wall, the holiest prayer site in Judaism.”

Trump’s politicization of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has also impacted support for Israel across all Americans, and these opinions are dividing along party lines.

In a University of Maryland Critical Issues Poll, conducted in September and October of 2018 among a nationally representative sample of 2,352 Americans, a majority of Republicans (57%) indicated they want U.S. policy to lean in favor of Israel over the Palestinians, while a substantial majority of Democrats (82%) want it to lean toward neither side, and 8 percent want it to lean toward the Palestinians.

As Trump said many times on the 2016 campaign trail, “I will do more for Israel than any president in history,” after two years, he believes he has made good on that promise. But he also done great harm, not just to Palestinians who saw a significant increase in fatalities by Israeli forces in 2018, but to Israel itself by overtly linking U.S. policy towards Israel to his political fortunes.

Given Trump’s demonstrable propensity for perpetuating anti-Semitic tropes, that is a political marriage the Israelis may well regret.

• K.R.K.

Comments can be sent to: kroeger98@yahoo.com

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This is the fifth essay in a series dedicated to analyzing the U.S. eligible-voter population using the 2018 American National Election Study (ANES), an online survey administered in Dec. 2018 by researchers from the Univ. of Michigan & Stanford Univ. 

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By Kent R. Kroeger (Source: NuQum.com; April 5, 2019)

Nothing makes a Democrat happier than describing the ‘average’ conservative Republican:

“The Republican base is now made up of religious and neoconservative ideologues, and the uneducated white underclass with a token person of color or two up front on TV to obscure the all-white, all-reactionary, all-backward, ‘there-is-no-global-warming’ rube reality. Actual conservatives, let alone the educated classes, have long since fled,” says author and filmmaker Frank Schaeffer, a conservative Christian in his youth who became a liberal Democrat as an adult. “…the Republican Party — as it is now — must be utterly destroyed in 2020. The word euthanized comes to mind.”

Sean McElwee, a researcher for dataforprogress.org, offers a more balanced, less provocative description of the GOP’s conservative base:

“While non-college whites do indeed make up a significant portion of (Donald) Trump’s base, they also make up a non-trivial share of (Hillary) Clinton voters…

…If we define the base as a group making up a non-trivial share of the electorate that overwhelmingly prefers one party, it is fair to call white evangelicals Trump’s base. If we define the base purely by the size of the coalition, we might prefer instead white non-college voters or whites over 50, both of whom make up more than half of Trump’s voters.”

And New York Magazine writer Eric Levitz takes a variant approach by summarizing what motivates this conservative base — but the implication about who is being motivated is crystal clear:

“For decades now, the conservative movement has sought to keep its core voters confined to a carefully curated media ecosystem — one where the Democratic Party is a Marxist–Islamist organization, America is the world’s most over-taxed nation, illegal immigrants bear sole responsibility for the stagnation of middle-class wages (and/or all violent crime), and there’s never been a better time to buy gold coins.”

Schaeffer and Levitz’ descriptions wouldn’t be funny if they weren’t somewhat accurate.

These are stereotypes about Donald Trump’s conservative base — rooted in reality — but deeply misleading at the same time.

Summarizing 62 million Trump voters is a Sisyphean task even for statisticians and strategic consultants, much less for the average political journalist, which is why stereotyping is so seductive, as it is often based on kernels of truth.

Using the attitudinal segmentation detailed in my previous essays, I computed within each political segment the percentage who were white and did not have a 4-year college degree. As seen in Figure 1, the majority of the conservative base (also referred to as ‘Trump’s conservative base’ in this essay) fit this demographic description (63%). In comparison, only 31 percent of the Democratic progressive base shares those attributes.

On the surface, it appears fine to categorize — or, rather, stereotype — conservatives as less-educated, white people.

Figure 1: Prevalence of Whites without a 4-year College Degree by Political Segment

Data Source: 2018 American National Election Study (Pilot); Analytics & Segmentation by Kent R. Kroeger

But this characterization is not precise.

Anytime we use stereotypes as a heuristic device to save analytic time and energy, we risk mischaracterizing the world we’re trying to explain.

That is the case with many who try to describe Trump’s conservative base.

Stereotyping is lazy analytics

Stereotypes are cognitive short-cuts that help simplify our lives. We engage in stereotyping because it often works across a wide of range of daily activities.

When we choose a new restaurant, we judge it by location, cuisine, and price. That is stereotyping.

When we seek partners, we consider diction, education level, religious background, and even someone’s accent. That is stereotyping.

Stereotyping saves us time and effort. Psychologists James Hilton and William von Hippel define stereotypes as “mental representations of real differences between groups. . . allowing easier and more efficient processing of information.”

But stereotyping has a risk. It can mischaracterize the true nature of a group and its relationship to other groups. Trump’s almost monolithic white, less-educated voter base is not a myth, but its not the whole story either. And its certainly not the interesting story.

As we will see below, there is significant attitudinal diversity within the media-maligned conservative base, who could represent the tipping point in a Democrat landslide in 2020, or the foundation of a new, durable GOP electoral majority.

Yes, racism and sexism punctuated the 2016 election, but…

As the U.S. has become more educated and ethnically diverse, Republican voters have become more reflective of an earlier era in America, as they are now predominately white, Christian, and less likely — from even a decade ago — to be college graduates, according to a 2018 Pew Research study. Add in a growing partisan gender gap and it doesn’t take a PhD in demography or political science to realize this is voter base is problematic for the Republicans going forward.

Still, the formula worked for the Republicans in 2016.

Education levels among whites strongly correlated with their 2016 vote choice. The divide in vote preferences between highly-educated and lesser-educated whites grew dramatically during the 2016 campaign, according to a team of researchers led by University of Massachusetts–Amherst political scientist Brian Schaffner, and this gap is not explained by economics.

But this divide was not a reflection of greater economic stress among lesser-educated whites. According to Schaffner’s team, Trump’s vote was driven by sexism and racial denialism, not economics. “Explicit racist and sexist appeals appeared to cost Trump some votes from more educated whites, but it may have won him even more support among whites with less education.”

The UM-Amherst study, however, leaves a dark impression about the average Trump voter; even though, the analytic focus of the study had little to do with describing the average Trump voter. Its concern was in describing relationships between populations through marginal and conditional probabilities — which is not the same as describing a population such as Trump’s conservative base. Those are two different analytic tasks.

There is little doubt that Trump’s explicit appeals to nativism along with his own misogynistic behavior sharpened the sorting process among many voters still available to either Clinton or Trump in the last months of the 2016 election. But those ‘persuadable’ voters are not the same as the conservative base.

At a rally in Minnesota last summer, Donald Trump invited his audience to offer its opinion on the “fake news” media. Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images

Compassion and Acceptance Defines the Largest Conservative Bloc

Don’t let the sounds and images from Trump campaign rallies (or the rambling, ignominious rants of Trump himself) define the entire conservative base. The bloc of voters that most helped elect Trump cannot be summarized with stereotyping labels such as ‘racist,’ ‘sexist,’ ‘homophobic,’ or ‘anti-immigrant.’ I understand the temptation, but resist.

Employing a two-stage attitudinal segmentation of 2018 ANES respondents, in the first stage, using attitudes related to current policy issues (immigration, trade, health care, economic inequality, gun control and climate change) and, in the second stage, using attitudes on race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and other social organizations, three sub-segments are identified within the GOP’s conservative base (see Figure 2):

Old Guard Conservatives (33% of Conservatives; 9% of all eligible voters).

Lost Hope Conservatives (27% of Conservatives; 7% of all eligible voters).

Compassionate Conservatives (40% of Conservatives; 11% of all eligible voters).

Figure 2: The Sub-Segments within the Conservative and Progressive Political Segments

Data Source: 2018 American National Election Study (Pilot); Analytics & Segmentation by Kent R. Kroeger

Compassionate Conservatives are the largest sub-segment of conservatives (40%) and distinguish themselves from both the Lost Hope and Old Guard sub-segments with respect to their favorability towards other races, ethnicities, and social groups (i.e., group affinities). On average, Compassionate Conservatives rate whites roughly the same as they do Blacks and Hispanics (in contrast to the other conservative sub-segments who rate whites significantly higher than those groups). Second, Compassionate Conservatives demonstrate greater affinities towards Gay and Lesbian, Transgender, Muslim and immigrant Americans relative to Lost Hope and Old Guard sub-segments. They are, for lack of a better description, more open-minded than other conservatives and represent the largest number of conservatives.

Given the relatively small sample size of conservatives (effective n = 331) and progressives (effective n = 358), most of the demographic differences between the sub-segments are statistically insignificant. However, there are some notable exceptions:

• Compassionate Conservatives are the wealthiest sub-segment
• Lost Hope Conservatives are the least wealthy sub-segment
• Old Guard Conservatives are the oldest and least Female sub-segment

While more detail on the attitudinal and demographic differences between the conservative (and progressive) sub-segments can be found in the Appendix below, the following graphs highlight some of the more prominent attitudinal differences.

Figure 3 maps the conservative and progressive sub-segments based on their average ratings of whites and Blacks. The diagonal line shows where both racial groups are rated the same (equity). Four of the six groups are relatively close to this line (and statistically indistinguishable from it), while Justice Progressives, on average, rate Blacks higher than whites and Lost Hope Conservatives do the opposite.

Figure 3: Ratings of Blacks and Whites (Conservative and Progressive Sub-Segments)

Data Source: 2018 American National Election Study (Pilot); Analytics & Segmentation by Kent R. Kroeger

On these racial attitudes, Compassionate Conservatives (the orange circle) have more in common with Establishment Progressives (the dark blue circle)than they do with the two other conservative sub-segments.

On attitudes regarding immigration, Compassionate Conservatives also distinguish themselves among the conservatives. While they generally agree that immigration numbers into the U.S. should decrease (horizontal axis in Figure 4), they depart from their political brethren on whether immigration and diversity hurts American society (vertical axis in Figure 4). Only 20 percent of Compassionate Conservatives believe immigration and diversity hurts society, while 46 percent of Old Guard Conservatives and 57 percent of Lost Hope Conservatives believe it does. That is a significant and dramatic difference within the conservative base.

Figure 4: Attitudes on Immigration and Diversity (Conservative and Progressive Sub-Segments)

Data Source: 2018 American National Election Study (Pilot); Analytics & Segmentation by Kent R. Kroeger

Figures 5 through 7 summarize the sub-segments (conservative and progressive) on their ratings of Gays and Lesbians, Transgender, and Muslims. As seen in this series of bar charts, the distributions of the identity group ratings by the Compassionate Conservatives resemble the progressive sub-segments far more than the two other conservative segments. In particular, the distributions for the Compassionate Conservatives closely match those for the Paycheck Progressives, a sub-segment of progressives that skews male and less wealthy.

Figure 5: Ratings of Gays and Lesbians (Conservative and Progressive Sub-Segments)

Data Source: 2018 National Election Study (Pilot); Analytics and Segmentation by Kent R. Kroeger

Figure 6: Ratings of Transgender (Conservative and Progressive Sub-Segments)

Data Source: 2018 National Election Study (Pilot); Analytics and Segmentation by Kent R. Kroeger

Figure 7: Ratings of Muslims (Conservative and Progressive Sub-Segments)

Data Source: 2018 National Election Study (Pilot); Analytics and Segmentation by Kent R. Kroeger

If LGBTQ rights and other identity-based issues were major vote drivers for conservatives, 40 percent of the GOP/Trump base might listen to Democratic messages on such topics during the current election cycle. Then again, the GOP might just as logically target Paycheck Progressives with uniquely tailored messages.

If there is one constant in American politics, every national election is potentially competitive. The popular vote difference between the two parties in U.S. House elections has exceeded 10 percentage points just six times since 1946 (out of 37 elections).

Neither the Republicans or Democrats enter an election without hope or possibilities. Whether a party leverages their strategic and tactical strengths enough to fulfill those hopes is another matter.

Are Compassionate Conservatives the GOP’s “Breakaway Province” or their beacon to the future?

A Democratic-aligned pollster once described Reagan Democrats, a working-class, once reliable voting segment of the Democratic Party coalition, as the Democratic Party’s ‘breakaway province.’ The defection of this ‘province’ to the Republicans in 1980 ushered in Ronald Reagan’s charismatic leadership and a conservative ideology that would dominate the American political landscape until the 2008 financial crisis.

Though some political scientists are skeptical that realignments actually happen — David Mayhew once writing, “Electoral politics is to an important degree just one thing after another… and their underlying causes are not usefully sortable into generation-long spans” — some political observers believe the 2016 Trump election may be the commencement of the next great realignment.

Washington Post columnist David Ignatius recently opined: “Political systems can be like scientific theories. Sometimes there emerge so many anomalous elements that don’t fit the existing structure that the theory collapses, and a new one arises… We may be entering such a period. The definition of a winning Democrat may be that, in response to Trump’s rambling circus of self-aggrandizement, he or she could create a genuinely coherent new political order.”

One possible target of Ignatius’ new political order could be Compassionate Conservatives whose attitudes resemble many in the Democrats’ progressive base, the presumption being that the three factions in the progressive left will hold together as long as Trump is in office.

The other common assumption rising from observations like Ignatius’ is that a centrist candidate could be very attractive to Republicans and Democrats disillusioned by the ideological extremism of their parties — and that an ideologue from the left (like Bernie Sanders) or right could not build such a coalition as easily as a centrist candidate.

But the political world doesn’t operate under this naive voting model where voters line up their opinions relative to those of political candidates and make their vote choices accordingly. Centrists and non-ideological voters, in particular, are generally unable or disinclined to make decisions this way.

Political scientists realized long ago that using spatial models of voter attitudes to predict vote choice aren’t terribly informative. To the contrary, two realities describe American voting behavior: (1) Vote choice often drives voters’ opinions (not the other way around), and (2) there is little electoral penalty for political extremism.

The result is that idealistic and folksy conceptions of our pluralistic democracy as one where voters ‘throw the bums out’ when their policies fail is dangerously wrong.

Political scientists Christopher H. Achen and Larry M. Bartels, in their book, Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government, conclude that “abandoning the folk theory of democracy is a prerequisite to both greater intellectual clarity and real political change. Too many democratic reformers have squandered their energy on misguided or quixotic ideas.”

In explaining why Bernie Sanders can attract voters that don’t necessarily agree with his policies, Achen and Bartels write:

“Decades of social-scientific evidence show that voting behavior is primarily a product of inherited partisan loyalties, social identities and symbolic attachments. Over time, engaged citizens may construct policy preferences and ideologies that rationalize their choices, but those issues are seldom fundamental. That is one key reason contemporary American politics is so polarized: The electoral penalty for candidates taking extreme positions is quite modest because voters in the political center do not reliably support the candidates closest to them on the issues.”

The point is simply that we cannot assume a candidate’s views are a direct reflection of his/her supporters’ views. And we see that phenomenon in the 2018 ANES data where Centrists are often low-information voters who support candidates not always close to their own personal opinions.

One reason I don’t show the Centrist political segments when mapping opinions and attitudes (such as in this essay) is that their political behavior is either too unpredictable or non-existent (i.e., non-voters). The more ideologically cohesive political segments are far more interesting.

Which is why Compassionate Conservatives (on the right) and Paycheck Progressives (on the left) are so intriguing and potentially more impactful in the 2020 election and for the futures of their respective parties.

Contrary to media narratives, the potent political division within the Democratic Party is not between Centrists and Progressives but between Establishment Progressives (think Kamala Harris and Beto O’Rourke) and Justice Progressives (think Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren). But even those two political segments agree far more than they disagree. On health care reform, for example, the distance between Sanders’ Medicare-for-Allplan (a single public option for all) and the Democratic establishment’s Medicare-for-America (offering a public option to go with the current private health care system) is small when compared to what the Republicans offer on health care reform — which is mostly nothing.

As for the GOP’s conservative base, the media narrative on its composition is not much more than stereotyping and it is generally wrong. Representing two-fifths of conservatives, Compassionate Conservatives mirror the Democrats more than other conservatives on racial, gender, and cultural attitudes. And not only are they the largest conservative segment, they are wealthier and younger than the party’s Old Guard, promising that the power of Compassionate Conservatives within the GOP is more likely to grow than shrink proceeding into the future.

The battle for the soul of the Republican Party will be fought between the three sub-segments of conservatives described in this essay. The older, more politically active Old Guard against two relatively young sub-segments, themselves divided by education, economic status, and levels of open-mindedness.

The conservative base is not a white, uneducated monolith of racists, sexists, and homophobes (…don’t get me wrong, these conservatives do exist). But, attitudinally, the conservative base is remarkably diverse. If it weren’t, the GOP would be dead in the water heading into 2020.

• K.R.K.

For datasets and statistical codes, send requests to: kroeger98@yahoo.com

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APPENDIX: A METHODOLOGICAL SIDEBAR

A Two-Stage Segmentation Based on Policy Attitudes and Identity Politics

This essay uses an two-stage attitudinal segmentation of U.S. eligible voters as its data source to identify the GOP’s conservative base (measured in Dec. 2018).

In the segmentation’s first step, all 2,500 ANES respondents were clustered based on a series of attitudinal questions related specific social and political policies (e.g., trade, immigration, gun control, climate change, etc.) in order to create relatively homogeneous political segments. In other words, the people within each segment possess relatively similar attitudes on policy issues [More detail on these segments can be found in the previous essays, starting here.]

A five-cluster solution was selected based on fit characteristics and interpretability (Figure A.1). Progressives are the largest political segment today, accounting for 30 percent of the eligible voter population, followed by Conservatives (27%) and Independents (19%).

Figure A.1: The Political Segments in the U.S. eligible voter population

Data Source: 2018 National Election Study (Pilot); Analytics and Segmentation by Kent R. Kroeger

This essay is focused on the Conservatives, who were additionally segmented based on their racial attitudes and group affinities (i.e., orientation towards identity politics).

The second-stage segmentation identified three sub-segments within the Conservative political segment: Old Guard, Lost Hope, and Compassionate Conservatives. [My fourth essay discusses in detail the three Progressive sub-segments within the Democratic Party’s base.]

Compassionate Conservatives are the largest of the three Conservative sub-segments (40 percent of the Conservative segment and 11 percent of the total population) and, as we will see below, counter many of the stereotypes presented in the national media about the Trump base (Figure A.2).

Figure A.2: The Sub-Segments within the Conservative and Progressive Political Segments

Data Source: 2018 National Election Study (Pilot); Analytics and Segmentation by Kent R. Kroeger

Figure A.3 shows the average affinity scores (rating on a 0 to 100 scale) for each Conservative sub-segment. Where all three sub-segments agree is no surprise: They like Donald Trump, whites, rural Americans, and Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh; and they dislike Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, the #MeToo movement, socialists, journalists, and Special Counsel Robert Mueller (though on the latter, opinions have probably changed in the last few days).

Figure A.3: Racial Attitudes and Group Affinity Questions Used for 2nd-Stage Segmentation

Data source: 2018 American National Election Study (Pilot); Segmentation by Kent Kroeger (NuQum.com); Color shading is determined within the column (i.e., political sub-segment)

However, significant differences in racial attitudes and group affinities also delineate the three sub-segments. Most axiomatic are the highly negative views Lost Hope Conservatives hold towards Blacks, Hispanics and immigrants. Lost Hope Conservatives, representing only 27 percent of the Conservative political segment, are consistent with mainstream stereotypes of the Trump base: They are anti-immigrant and racially-biased (and probably sexist too).

In counterpose, Compassionate Conservatives distinguish themselves in two ways from both the Lost Hope and Old Guard sub-segments. First, on average, they rate whites roughly the same as they do Blacks and Hispanics (in contrast to the other sub-segments who rate whites significantly higher than the other races and ethnicities). Second, Compassionate Conservativesdemonstrate greater affinities towards gays and lesbians, transgender people, Muslims and immigrants relative to Lost Hope and Old Guard sub-segments. They are, for lack of a better description, more compassionate and open to the world and its inherent differences.

Though not quite a majority of the Conservative base, Compassionate Conservatives probably represent a better conspectus of the “typical” Trump-voting conservative than either the Old Guard or Lost Hope sub-segments.

Demographics and Behaviors

Figure A.4 details the demographic and behavioral characteristics of the sub-segments. In this table, the color shading is determined by each row. For example, in the first row, Establishment Progressives have the highest incidence of females (60%) and the Old Guard Conservatives have the lowest (37%).

Figure A.4: Demographic and Behavioral Characteristics (Conservative and Progressive Sub-Segments)

The starkest differences between conservatives and progressives are in the incidence of Blacks, Hispanics, a college education, Trump voters (no surprise), and non-religiousness.

Within the conservative segment, Compassionate Conservatives stand out asbeing very white and having high incomes, while the Old Guard are very male, religious, and old. The Old Guard were also the most supportive of Trump in 2016 and had the highest vote turnout percentage of the six sub-segments. Lost Hope Conservatives stand out from other conservatives with the highest percentage of females (47%) and the lowest average incomes.

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Additional Graphics

Figure A.5: Demographic and Behavioral Characteristics (Conservative and Progressive Sub-Segments)

Data Source: 2018 National Election Study (Pilot); Analytics and Segmentation by Kent R. Kroeger

Figure A.6: Ratings of the #MeToo Movement and the Transgender (Conservative and Progressive Sub-Segments)

Data Source: 2018 National Election Study (Pilot); Analytics and Segmentation by Kent R. Kroeger

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This is the fourth essay in a series dedicated to analyzing the U.S. eligible-voter population using the 2018 American National Election Study (ANES), an online survey administered in Dec. 2018 by researchers from the Univ. of Michigan & Stanford Univ. 

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By Kent R. Kroeger (Source: NuQum.com; March 19, 2019

According to an analysis of the 2018 ANES, Progressive Democrats represent roughly one-third of the American eligible-voter population and two-thirds of all Democrats; and, by some accounts, are the ‘center of gravity’ in American politics today.

But the progressives have a problem. A big problem, if they want to win back the presidency in 2020.

Progressive Democrats are deeply divided. That is does not sound like a breaking news story to anyone that has followed politics in the last two years.

But the usual media narrative goes something like this: Establishment Democrats, centrist and pragmatic in nature, are being pulled (presumably against their better judgment) to the far left by their progressive counterparts in the party.

This narrative often gets confounded with the notion of a progressive versus centrist divide where the party establishment is generally linked to the centristfaction. However, as discussed in a previous essay, when we look at the attitudes of actual voters, the Democratic Party’s establishment wing — often represented among politicians by Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Tom Perez, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, etc. — is a much better match with the progressive voters in the party, not the centrists. Democrat-leaning centrists are decidedly more conservative than their progressive counterparts on abortion and LGBTQ rights, climate change, immigration policy and a whole host of other core issues that tend to define the mainstream of the Democratic Party.

When we talk to flesh and blood human beings, not politicians, the mainstream Democratic Party voter is progressive, not centrist — and the party’s establishment, on most issues, stands squarely with the progressive mainstream.

But this is where it gets tricky and where the political media often gets it wrong when they discuss progressive Democrats.

Labeling someone a ‘progressive Democrat’ is not analytically useful unless you are identifying a specific type of ‘progressive Democrat.’ But the progressive types are not related to variation in policy attitudes (as we might assume). The Progressive Democrats (identified in my earlier segmentation analysis of the 2018 ANES) share, by construction, similar views on: abortion rights, LGBTQ rights, health care policy, gender equality, immigration, social spending, climate change, and racial discrimination (see Figure A.1 in the Appendix).

In my subsequent drill-down into Progressive Democrats (using a K-means clustering algorithm) I find three distinct subgroups based on respondents’ personal orientations and emotional attachments to common elements found in the political world (i.e., groups, identities, individuals, etc.). And further analysis finds these differences to be associated with substantive variation on candidate preferences.

The Three Progressive Segments

Formed from the relative differences respondents’ group affinities, three distinct segments emerge within Progressive Democrats (see Figures 1 through 5 for attitudinal differences between the segments):

Establishment Progressives (45% of all progressive Democrats): Relative to the other two segments, these are progressives with strong affinities towards racial and ethnic groups, the LGBTQ community, the police, capitalists, Hillary Clinton, Special Counsel Robert Mueller, and the FBI.

Paycheck Progressives (32% of all progressive Democrats): Again, relative to the other segments, these are progressives with lower affinities towards racial and ethnic groups, immigrants, the LGBTQ community, Hillary Clinton and the #MeToo movement.

Justice Progressives (23% of all progressive Democrats): And, finally, these progressives show strong relative affinities towards racial and ethnic groups (except whites), the LGBTQ community, the #MeToo movement, immigrants, socialists, but low affinities towards whites, capitalists, rural Americans, journalists, the police, the FBI, Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Hillary Clinton, and the U.S. Supreme Court.

Figure 1: Group Affinities by Progressive Democrats Segment (0 to 100 thermometer scale, where high values indicate strong positive feelings)

Data Source: 2018 American National Election Study (Pilot); Analytics and Segmentation by Kent R. Kroeger

 

Figure 2: Group Affinities towards Economic Philosophies

 

Figure 3: Group Affinities towards the LGBTQ community

 

Figure 4: Group Affinities towards the #MeToo Movement and Immigrants

 

Figure 5: Group Affinities towards Racial Groups

Data Source for Figures 2 through 5: 2018 American National Election Study (Pilot); Analytics and Segmentation by Kent R. Kroeger

Naming the Segments

By construction, the three segments differ in their orientation towards various people and social groups, but they also differ in terms of demographics and behavior.

The most apparent difference is age (see Figure 6). Justice Progressives are the youngest segment (mean age = 38), followed by Paycheck Progressives(mean age = 46), and the Establishment Progressives (mean age = 54).

Figure 6: Age Distributions 

Data Source: 2018 American National Election Study (Pilot); Analytics and Segmentation by Kent R. Kroeger

 

Another factor separating the progressive segments is self-reported ideology. Justice Progressives are most likely to call themselves ‘‘very liberal’ (59%), while Paycheck Progressives and Establishment Progressives are most likely to call themselves ‘somewhat liberal’ or ‘moderate’ (71% and 70%, respectively).

In a multinomial logistic regression analysis, age and self-reported ideology proved to be the most significant predictors of membership in the three progressive segments. Those relationships are evident in Figure 7, particularly in how those factors distinguish Justice Progressives from the other two segments.

Figure 7: Progressive segments by Age and Self-Reported Ideology

Data Source: 2018 American National Election Study (Pilot); Analytics and Segmentation by Kent R. Kroeger

Gender, age, education, life-stage, and group affinities were central to the naming of the three progressive segments (Figures 8 and 9 show how gender, education, and religious affiliation differentiate the segments). Notably, differences in racial and ethnic characteristics are not statistically significant across the three segments (though, directionally, the Justice Progressives do appear to be more racially and ethnically diverse).

Segment Descriptions

Establishment Progressives tend to be female, older, wealthier, pro-capitalism, and very tuned in to the Robert Mueller investigation. Paycheck Progressives tend to be male, middle-aged, married (with children) and at a point in their life when they are more likely to be concerned about a mortgage payment than identity politics or the Mueller investigation. Finally, Justice Progressives are the prototypical image of progressives offered by the media: female, young, highly-educated, non-religious, anti-capitalist, and more concerned about ‘white privilege’ and identity politics than the Mueller investigation.

If it helps to put faces on the segments, Establishment Progressives might be represented by Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi, Paycheck Progressives by Joe Biden and New Jersey Senator Cory Booker (admittedly, rough fits here), and Justice Progressives by New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and California Representative Ro Khanna.

Figure 8: Progressive segments by Gender and Education

 

Figure 9: Progressive segments by Religious Affiliation

Data Source for Figures 8 and 9: 2018 American National Election Study (Pilot); Analytics and Segmentation by Kent R. Kroeger

Behavioral Differences

Having established the demographic differences, there are also behavioral factors that distinguish the progressive segments — in fact, its these factors that make the segments relevant to the Democratic Party’s strategy going into the 2020 election.

The suspected culprits behind Hillary Clinton’s defeat to Donald Trump in 2016 are many, not the least of which are the Berniecrats who some have claimed disproportionately either voted for Trump, voted for a third party candidate, or did not vote. That dispute won’t be settled here, but the progressive segments give us some clues.

In an earlier essay, I determined that 81 percent of Democratic Progressives, the most liberal voter segment, voted for Hillary Clinton (14 percent did not vote, 4 percent voted for a third party candidate, and 1 percent voted for Trump). When we breakout the Clinton vote by the three progressive segments in Figure 10, we have a likely suspect for the bulk of defections from Clinton: Paycheck Progressives (of whom only 75 percent voted for Clinton, 17 percent did not vote, 4 percent voted for a third party candidate, and 4 percent voted for Trump).

If I am hearing cries of ‘sexist pigs,’ it is understandable given that Paycheck Progressives skew male — but, given the small sample size (115 respondents), there is no statistically significant difference in the 2016 voting behavior of male Paycheck Progressives and female Paycheck Progressives.

But if we are going to call out the Paycheck Progressives, we must also throw a stink-eye gaze at the Justice Progressives, who also voted for Clinton at a lower rate than Establishment Progressives (75% versus 87%, respectively). If the two segments had voted for Clinton at the same rate as the Establishment Progressives, in all likelihood, Clinton wins Florida, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and the presidency.

Figure 10: The Paycheck and Justice Progressives may have let Hillary down

Data Source: 2018 American National Election Study (Pilot); Analytics and Segmentation by Kent R. Kroeger

Finally, the 2018 ANES also asked likely 2020 Democratic Party primary voters which candidate they currently prefer (see Figure 11). When this preference is crossed with the progressive segments, we get some validation of the segmentation categories — 30 percent of Justice Progressives prefer Bernie Sanders, while over 30 percent of both Paycheck Progressives and Establishment Progressives prefer former Vice President Joe Biden.

The progressive segments mate nicely with 2020 vote preferences, keeping in mind that most of the now declared Democratic candidates for president were not well known in December 2018 when the survey was conducted. In fact, only three candidates exceed 10 percent support among Democrats in the survey (Biden, Sanders, and Beto O’Rourke).

Figure 11: Preferences for the 2020 Democratic Party Nominee

Data Source: 2018 American National Election Study (Pilot); Analytics and Segmentation by Kent R. Kroeger

Still, this segmentation should cause some worry among Sanders supporters, as the two largest progressive segments, representing three-quarters of progressives, are not (currently) fertile territory for finding Sanders support.

Keep in mind, this analysis does not look at the other Democratic Party-aligned voter segment — Centrist Democrats — which is a group, surprisingly, where Sanders does relatively well, according to the 2018 ANES.

Democratic Progressives however exceed their Centrist allies in market share by 2 to 1 and it is hard to envisage the Democratic Party’s ‘center of gravity’ being anywhere but with the progressives in 2020. Yet, within the progressives, existing divisions — which at least marginally impacted the 2016 election outcome — could easily do so again.

Still, Establishment Progressives are the largest force within the party’s progressive wing, and by extension, the most dominant force in the Democratic Party.

Unless something dramatic happens, that is bad news for Berniecrats.

• K.R.K.

Send comments and online gift cards to: kroeger98@yahoo.com

 

APPENDIX: Additional Charts, Tables and Graphics

Figure A.1: Policy Attitudes by Progressive Segment 

Data Source: 2018 American National Election Study (Pilot); Analytics and Segmentation by Kent R. Kroeger

 

Figure A.2: Feelings about Capitalism by Age (among Progressive Democrats) 

Data Source: 2018 American National Election Study (Pilot); Analytics and Segmentation by Kent R. Kroeger

 

Figure A.3: Feelings about the Police by Age (among Progressive Democrats) 

Data Source: 2018 American National Election Study (Pilot); Analytics and Segmentation by Kent R. Kroeger

 

Figure A.4: 2016 Vote Choice by Progressive Democrat Segments 

Data Source: 2018 American National Election Study (Pilot); Analytics and Segmentation by Kent R. Kroeger

 

Figure A.5: 2016 Vote Choice by Party Factions 

Data Source: 2018 American National Election Study (Pilot); Analytics and Segmentation by Kent R. Kroeger

_________________________________________________________________________

This is the third essay in a series dedicated to analyzing the U.S. eligible voter population using the 2018 American National Election Study (ANES), an online survey administered in December 2018 by researchers from the University of Michigan and Stanford University.

__________________________________________________________________________

By Kent R. Kroeger (Source: NuQum.com; March 14, 2019)

Republican pundits are loving the post-2016 emphasis Democrats place on identity politics, while some Democratic pundits are wringing their hands.

“Embrace of Identity Politics Is Killing Democratic Party”

“Democrats Need to Drop Identity Politics — Now”

“Identity Politics, and the Divisible Nation for Which It Stands”

“Democratic Playbook’s Only Page: Division”

It is a term we cannot escape. But what does it actually mean? And what can the 2018 ANES offer in understanding its importance in today’s political environment.

While I want to keep the pretensions here light, a short discussion of definitions might be helpful.

Stanford philosophy professor Laura Maguire defines identity politics as “when people of a particular race, ethnicity, gender, or religion form alliances and organize politically to defend their group’s interests.” The best known examples would be the feminist, civil rights, and gay rights movements.

But that is a rather narrow, sectarian definition, as people can be engaged in identity politics outside their own identity group. You don’t need to be a woman to be a feminist. And there was a White Panther Party aligned with the Black Panther’s in the late-1960s. Our personal identities don’t limit our potential for engaging across the multidimensional space of identity politics.

Furthermore, identity politics is not as utilitarian as Maguire’s definition. Identity politics can be a private and passive activity as well. A person opposed to — or even ambivalent towards — the interests of other identity groups is participating in identity politics. Of a more consequential nature, making vote choices based on group identities is identity politics. That is a consequential act that requires no more than a private thought and a valid voter registration.

This broadly defined, everyone engages in identity politics, consciously and unconsciously. And with this expansive view of identity politics, I undertook the task of clustering Americans according to how they engage in identity politics.

The Data

The 2018 ANES asked 2,500 respondents a series of attitudinal measures regarding their affinity towards specific identity groups, individuals, social movements, and organizations (see Figure 1). These questions were inputs into a K-means clustering algorithm implemented in the SPSS statistical package.

Figure 1: 2018 ANES Questions Used for Identity Politics Clustering

The K-means clustering algorithm partitions respondents into clusters in which each respondent belongs to the cluster with the nearest mean. To the best extent possible, the aim is to make the clusters as homogeneous as possible while maximizing the differences across clusters.

The most enjoyable task in conducting a cluster analysis is naming the clusters. Ideally, the names are indicative of the “prototypical” member in that cluster. However, in most cluster analyses, particularly those representing large populations, individual clusters can be heterogeneous and the naming process becomes more art than science. That is when it really gets fun.

The Results

With that caveat, I identified five identity politics clusters (IPCs) in the U.S. eligible voter population. Within each of these IPCs, additional sub-clusters were identified and will be discussed in a future essay.

For now, I will describe the five macro-clusters represented in Figure 2 by their relative population size.

Figure 2: The Identity Politics Cluster Sizes (U.S. eligible voter population)

Data source: 2018 American National Election Study; Analytics and Segmentation by Kent R. Kroeger

The two largest IPCs are Hannity’s Americans (29%), a cluster containing mostly Republicans, and its counterpoise, Maddow’s Minions (29%), a cluster composed almost entirely of Democrats.

The next largest cluster is the Mehs (21%) — distinguished by their general ambivalence or lack of affinity for any specific person or group. The Care Bears (14%), in contrast, like everybody (except President Trump). And, finally, the Angry Young Men (7%), the smallest cluster and notable for their dislike of pretty much everybody (except President Trump and white people).

The IPCs distinguish themselves by their average ratings of the various identity groups, individuals and organizations (see Figure 3). For example, among the five clusters, Hannity’s Americans rate Donald Trump the highest (mean rating = 89.5). Not surprisingly, Maddow’s Minions can only muster an average rating of 2.3 for the current president. I don’t think he’s a fan of Rachel Maddow any way.

On the other end of the scale, Hannity’s Americans rate Hillary Clinton a 4.6 and Barack Obama only slightly better at 12.1.

Figure 3: The Identity Politics Cluster Sizes (U.S. eligible voter population)

Among the racial and ethnicity-defined identity groups, Hannity’s Americans and Maddow’s Minions are roughly similar in their ratings for Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians when viewed as a deviation from the cluster’s group mean (i.e., the color-coding in Figure 3). However, where Maddow’s Minions rate whites lower than Blacks, Hispanics or Asians, Hannity’s Americans rate whites higher than those groups.

However, on other identity groups, the differences are stark. Hannity’s Americans, on average, rate the #MeToo movement a 19.3, compared to 83.6 for Maddow’s Minions. Hannity’s Americans rate socialists a 9.5, on average; while Maddow’s Minions give them a 65.4 rating.

The two biggest clusters are predictable considering their strong partisan composition and 30 years of a growing partisanship divide within the American public. By now, anyone that is a strong partisan should know the ‘in’ groups from the ‘out’ groups. Hannity’s Americans like capitalists, rural America, and the police; Maddow’s minions like immigrants, transgender persons and journalists. We didn’t need a survey to tell us that.

Not as obvious are the three ‘middle’ clusters. They represent 40 percent of the eligible voter population, a potentially relevant force in any election (though all three clusters have much lower voter turnout rates than the two partisan clusters; see Figure 4).

The Mehs are the least interesting in terms of variation across their identity group ratings. Their average rating ranges between 40 and 55 — with two exceptions: They like Obama (66.3%) and dislike Trump and Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh (26.0 and 29.4, respectively). Spoiler alert: In Figure 4 you will notice Mehs skew female.

The Care Bears skew even more female than Mehs but have a greater affinity for the various identity groups. They like almost everybody (except, again, Trump — I think he might have a problem with the ladies).

In contradistinction are the Young Angry Men who dislike everybody, except Trump, whites, and rural Americans — but, frankly, this cluster isn’t thrilled with them either as all fail to break the rating scale’s midpoint (50).

Figure 3: The Identity Politics Cluster Sizes (U.S. eligible voter population)

How can find these cluster members?

If a political party or campaign were to target any of these five clusters, Figure 4 would be a good place to start that process.

I won’t cover here every demographic and behavioral detail for the IPCs. Hopefully, Figure 4 makes those characteristics clear. A simple summary must suffice for now:

Hannity’s Americans are largely white, Christian, older Republicans that voted for Trump and are interested in politics.

Maddow’s Minions are largely white, educated, female Democrats (no children) that did not vote for Trump and are interested in politics.

Mehs are largely young, racially diverse and less likely to be religious.

Care Bears are largely in the middle on most attributes, but have a high percentage of Catholics and a low percentage of agnostics.

And, lastly, Angry Young Men are…well…young men. But a sizable number have children in their household, are racially diverse, are political independents, and live on either the East or West Coasts. The quality they do not possess is an interest in politics which explains why most of them did not vote in 2016. For political mobilizing and vote harvesting purposes, this group would be a slog for even the Republicans.

Figure 4: The Identity Politics Cluster Sizes (U.S. eligible voter population)

Implications

After running these clusters past a former colleague, now a Democrat-aligned pollster, a question arose: How do the two major factions within the Democratic Party (Progressives and Centrists) relate to the identity politics clusters?

Figure 5 cross tabulates the IPCs by the party factions identified in a previous segmentation analysis (using the 2018 ANES data). The association between the two segmentations — one formed using only policy-related questions and one formed using the identity group affinity questions — is strong.

Figure 5: The Identity Politics Cluster Sizes by Party Factions

Data source: 2018 American National Election Study; Analytics and Segmentation by Kent R. Kroeger

Most of Maddow’s Minions (81%) are also Democrat Progressives. Similarly, most of Hannity’s Americans (85%) are also GOP Conservatives.

As to where Democrat Centrists are categorized among the IPCs, it is more complicated. Over 70 percent of them split between the Mehs and Care Bears. Only 20 percent of them belong to Maddow’s Minions. Likewise, GOP Centrists mostly divide themselves between the Mehs and Care Bears.

This is a key strategic finding. GOP and Democrat Centrists share considerable common ground with respect to identity politics and actually divide in a similar fashion — roughly one-third are disconnected or ambivalent towards identity politics (Mehs), one-third demonstrate caring across a broad range of identity groups (Care Bears), and most of the rest are fully engaged in identity politics. If identity politics is an important focal point for the Democrats in the 2020 presidential election, their Gettysburg may come down to the battle for the vast majority of Care Bears — a population segment that is predominately female and votes. If the Democrats don’t win this group — by a lot — they don’t win the presidential election.

A superficial read of recent stump speeches by the Democratic presidential candidates — FiveThirtyEight’s Adam Kelsey posts summaries and links to these speeches here — highlights the prominent role identity politics is already playing in the 2020 campaign.

Oppression. Privilege. Reparations. Dignity. Reproductive rights. Gay rights. Racial justice. Justice. Justice. Justice.

All words and phrases peppered throughout the candidate speeches. Even those candidates centered on material, economic issues — Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren — explicitly link those issues to identity politics.

Its not simply about fighting climate change anymore, say Democrats, its now about repairing racial injustices and income inequities bred by our carbon-based energy consumption. Slow wage growth and growing income equality can’t merely be addressed through economic policy, we must now tear down institutions that protect privilege and create new, more equitable ones that correct for the damage caused by a long history of race and gender-based oppression.

These are the mainstream arguments being made now by the leading Democratic presidential candidates. And why shouldn’t they? Two-thirds of their party is composed of progressives who hold strong affinities towards groups found at the medial point of today’s identity politics.

But if the Democratic Party nominee continues with this strategy in the general election, will it work with centrist and independent voters, a good share of whom will be needed if the Democrats are to regain the White House?

A deeper drilling down into the identity politics clusters would help answer that question, but even these clusters viewed at the 30,000-foot-level, as done in this essay, lead me to believe YES is the answer.

The two election front line groups — Mehs and Care Bears — skew female and Democrat. The numbers are simply in the Democrats’ favor.

Sorry my GOP friends. But based on what I am seeing, the Democrats are not imploding under the weight of identity politics — they are on message with the majority of Americans.

• K.R.K.

Data and SPSS computer codes available upon request to: kroeger98@yahoo.com

__________________________________________________________________

This is the second essay in a series dedicated to analyzing the U.S. eligible-voter population using the 2018 American National Election Study (ANES), an online survey administered in Dec. 2018 by researchers from the Univ. of Michigan and Stanford Univ.. 

__________________________________________________________________

By Kent R. Kroeger (Source: NuQum.com; March 12, 2019)

How best to measure racism has long been debated in the political science, psychology and sociology research communities where the measures that have been developed inevitably meet with significant criticism.

The direct, self-reported method, in which researchers ask respondents directly whether they prefer their own race over others, is the most commonly used measure of individual racial bias. Using direct measures, research shows that individual racist beliefs have been in decline since the 1970s, according to longitudinal data from the General Social Survey.

Disputing this conclusion, some social scientists argue that social desirability bias —where respondents give answers based on what they believe to be ‘socially acceptable’ answers as opposed to how they actually feel — invalidate direct racism measures. However, recent research by University of Virginia psychologist Jordan R. Axt compared direct and indirect measures of racism and found that “the best method to measure individuals’ explicit racial attitudes is to ask about them directly.” People are generally honest when they answer survey questions on racial attitudes.

The direct versus indirect racism measures controversy will not be resolved here, however, and I do not out-of-hand dismiss the criticism that direct measures under count actual levels of individual racism.

With that caveat, this article— the second where I analyze 2018 American National Election Study (ANES) data — focuses on a series of direct racial attitude questions asking about respondents’ on a 0-to-100 scale their favorability ratings towards other races and ethnicities versus their own (White, Black, and Hispanic).

In addition, I focus exclusively on white respondents in the 2018 ANES. People of other races and ethnicities can, of course, be racist too. But for the sake of clarity, I target the segment in society most populous and historically most privileged.

Defining Racism in the 2018 ANES

How I define a ‘racist’ in this study is also straightforward. If the white respondent rated their race higher than another race or ethnicity (Black, Hispanic) by more than 10 scale points, they are coded as ‘racist.’ Some will argue that this definition is too harsh; while others might argue even a 1-point difference indicates something racist. That is a debate for another day.

Using my definition, there is one striking conclusion in the 2018 ANES data: Ethnocentric and racist attitudes are common among Americans — and no political party or ideology is immune from its presence.

Among vote eligible white Americans, 34 percent favor their race over Blacks or Hispanics, or both (see the third table in Figure 1). Using the political faction segmentation from my previous essay, the highest presence of racial favoritism is among Democrat Centrists (50%), GOP Centrists (49%), and GOP Conservatives (46%). The lowest presence is among Democrat Progressives(10%) and Independents (31%).

Figure 1: Prevalence of racial favoritism among vote eligible white Americans

Data Source: 2018 American National Election Study (Pilot); Analysis and Segmentation by Kent R. Kroeger (results use weighted data to account for sampling design and response rate differentials)

This racial bias can also be observed in Figures 2 and 3 which plot each respondent based on their favorability rating for white, Blacks and Hispanics. Figure 2 shows white and Black favorability scores and individual cases of racial bias are represented by dots below the diagonal line (i.e., white favorability is higher than black favorability). While most cases plot near the line, we see the obvious correlation between party factions and racial favorability. GOP Conservatives and Centrists are below the line and a high percentage are well below (10 points+) the line. Conversely, Democrat Progressives are mostly well above the line; while a sizable percentage Democrat Centrists appear on both sides.

Figure 2: Racial favorability ratings towards Blacks among vote eligible white Americans


Data Source: 2018 American National Election Study (Pilot); Analysis and Segmentation by Kent R. Kroeger (results use weighted data to account for sampling design and response rate differentials)

A very similar pattern emerges when comparing favorability ratings for whites and Hispanics (see Figure 3). Republicans are generally below the diagonal line, while Democrats are above the line.

Figure 3: Racial favorability ratings towards Hispanics among vote eligible white Americans



Data Source: 2018 American National Election Study (Pilot); Analysis and Segmentation by Kent R. Kroeger (results use weighted data to account for sampling design and response rate differentials)

Before Democrat Progressives start crowing about these findings, keep in mind that racial bias is only one noxious bias present in our society. There are many other types of biases: economic class, gender, sexual orientation, religious, geographic, age, education, political ideology and others. Rest assured, Democrat Progressives possess their fair share of socially corrosive biases. But that, as well, is a debate for another day.

Having established that racism, as defined here, is not uncommon among whites and that there is a political relationship to this bias, how might it relate to our current president, Donald Trump? Probably the least suspenseful question ever asked. But here we go…

First, let us establish that feelings about President Trump are strongly related to political attitudes (and party factions). Figure 4 illuminates that relationship. Plotting political attitudes for all respondents in the 2018 ANES — based on a series of policy-related questions — against how respondents rate Donald Trump, we see a strong relationship.

Figure 4: Political attitudes and favorability towards Donald Trump (All 2018 ANES respondents)



Data Source: 2018 American National Election Study (Pilot); Analysis and Segmentation by Kent R. Kroeger (results use weighted data to account for sampling design and response rate differentials)

The bluish dots (Democrats) tend to rate Donald Trump low and are to the right along the political attitudes index (i.e., possess liberal political attitudes).

In contrast, the reddish dots tend towards the upper left-hand quadrant of the chart (i.e., rate Trump highly and have conservative political attitudes).

Interestingly, GOP and Democrat Centrists and Independents are sprinkled throughout the chart in Figure 4. There are a lot of them and their views on Trump don’t relate to partisan policy attitudes. I would call that a tactical opportunity for both parties heading into the 2020 election. But that is a topic for another essay.

Racist Attitudes and Feelings Towards Trump

Based on this essay’s definition of a racist attitude, there is a clear (but not deterministic) relationship between racist attitudes and feelings regarding Trump and political attitudes (see Figure 5 below). Most, but not all, of the black and yellow dots (racists) are in the upper left-hand quadrant of the chart.

However, it is not an air tight relationship. The Kendall tau-b statistic of association for racist attitudes and feelings towards Trump is 0.21 (significant at the 0.01 level, two-tailed test), and with political attitudes it is only -0.19 (also statistically significant).

By comparison, feelings regarding Trump and party faction membership (DEM Progressive, DEM Centrist, Independent, GOP Centrist, GOP Conservative) generate a Kendall tau-b statistic of 0.70, indicating a much stronger relationship. Likewise, political attitudes and feelings towards Trump achieve a Kendall tau-b statistic of -0.65.

Figure 5: Political attitudes and favorability towards Donald Trump by racist attitudes



Data Source: 2018 American National Election Study (Pilot); Analysis and Segmentation by Kent R. Kroeger (results use weighted data to account for sampling design and response rate differentials)

In a multiple regression model with controls for party identification, age, gender, and political attitudes, the racism index is a significant, independent predictor of feelings towards Trump. However, relative to political attitudes and party identification, the racism index is a minor contributor in explaining feelings towards Trump (see Appendix for the linear regression model summary output).

Implications

It is oddly refreshing that Americans appear willing to express their racial biases on a national opinion survey (even if it still may be an under representation of actual racial bias levels in the total population).

If our goal is to reduce all types of racism in this country — assume we can never eliminate it — a good start is creating an atmosphere where everyone feels comfortable talking about their own racial attitudes without fear of shaming and retribution.

German Lopez’ excellent article on Vox.com is a good place to start the process of generating ideas and strategies for reducing racism. As Lopez points out, there are ways to reduce racial bias, but “calling people racist isn’t one of them.” And that is pretty much the level of dialogue we are treated to on a daily basis on cable news channels and social media. Whatever the motives and intentions of these media lords, they aren’t working to reduce racial bias.

In his 1993 book, Race Matters, Harvard professor Dr. Cornel West argues we must first “understand that racism and race are woven in American history and can never be eradicated without understanding that race matters in everything we consider American.”

Knowing this, it is encouraging that Americans from all perspectives seem willing to share their attitudes and beliefs on race with survey researchers. Its a good start in the long process of creating a healthy environment conducive to racial understanding and acceptance.

• K.R.K.

Data and SPSS computer codes available upon request to: kroeger98@yahoo.com

APPENDIX

Linear regression model for explaining ‘Feelings towards Trump’.

Data Source: 2018 American National Election Study (Pilot); Analysis and Segmentation by Kent R. Kroeger (results use weighted data to account for sampling design and response rate differentials)