establishmentI’m not sure whether the tendency of former French presidents to get indicted is because they demand integrity, are particularly corrupt, or prosecution-as-politics, but is the sort of thing that makes me think it’s not so bad that Ford pardoned Nixon.

Of course, Republican governors have a tendency to become subject to very overzealous prosecutors when they plan to run for president, such as Rick Perry, whose charges have been dismissed.

The Trump phenomenon has so many fathers (such as), and is yet an orphan. For my own part, I find fault in my own ideas regarding the party that gave way to Trump, most notably in my dismissal of immigration concerns. On the other hand, it’s really not all about immigration.

Clay Shirky explains how political parties have become hosts for independent campaigns.

Attention Gannon! If you’re out there. In England and Wales, more babies are being born to women 35 and over than women younger than 25.

Jason Bedrick takes a crack at the study that found poor results from Louisiana’s voucher program, arguing that the problem is regulation. Maybe, but the regulations they cite actually seem prudent to me.

As immigrants assimilate and intermarry, it’s becoming harder to see the lines and count the people on each side.

Edwin Lyngar is worried that we have become addicted to fear. I agree, and might cite this as an example.

If you want to live to 112, the solution apparently involves chain smoking. Maybe this is why advocates are trying to convince me that my smoking cessation wasn’t good for my health.

The EPA says that it has cleaned up after the Gold King Mine disaster, but locals aren’t so sure.

Having a child has likely changed my politics in some subtle ways I do not realize, but one overt change is my views on funding PBS, so this makes me happy.

Florida is stepping up enforcement against left-lain snails.

For Sale! The most troubled half of one of our most troubled states.

Well, with all of the babies being born in Utah, I suppose this was bound to happen at some point.

If you’re looking to leave the country when Donald Trump becomes president, Nova Scotia may want you!


Category: Newsroom

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7 Responses to Linkluster Grams Per Pound

  1. Michael Drew says:

    I ALSO just Storified a string of tweets about independent campaigns within parties. In 5 tweets instead of 50, though. I think I differ with Shirky in thinking that Dean & Obama were proto-independent runs because ther was supposed to be a consensus on Iraq. What is a party primary normally for but hashing that kind of thing out? But he’s right that the infrastructure they used created the apparatus for the full-blown phenomenon we’re now seing to happen. And it’s definitely on now.

    I actually started with thinking about how the parties will respond: are genuinely contested primaries long for this world if parties are going to have no control over candidate participation and ideas. I hope they will continue, but it’s fair to say that neither approach being taken right now (actually, you could say the parties’ approaches to these primaries pre-existed the emergence of these intra-independent insurgencies, but they’re also structuring their responses) has been quite satisfactory: the GOP’s many candidates leave them unable to coordinate a response to the internal pathogen, while the Democrats’ single counterpart leaves them fully vulnerable to any weakness she may display with no tactical diversity nor even a ready Plan B option.

    Nevertheless, as I say, I like this development: I think operating insurgencies inside the parties will have a greater effect on the parties themselves and on policy than the kind of third-party runs seen in the ’90s & 2000, which put the parties in extreme loss-avoidance mode and kills policy flexibility as th parties are forced to very particular places to find available voters.

    (My suspicion is that the genuine third party runs we would be likely to see in this era would push the Dems to the center, i.e. I think they’d run away form a Sanders-type leftist run, and toward a Bloomberg run, trying to compete with him for the middle. And they’d push the GOP to the right (i.e. I think they’d run away from a Bloomberg run toward the solid-right base, and toward a right-wing third party, trying to convince the right wing to come back to the fold. But YMMV.)

    https://storify.com/MikeDrewWhat/the-future-of-party-primaries

    • Michael Drew says:

      …And I had no idea Shirky had had the same thoughts.

    • Michael Drew says:

      …Maybe I should say, a better effect, not necessarily a larger one. A somewhat more considered one, because it’s hashing things out in the course of deciding who & what will represent the party, rather than in a desperate, craven, all-against-all war for actual governing power.

    • trumwill says:

      I’m not sure there’s anything here I disagree with. On the first paragraph, I think Shirky underestimates how much “establishment” support Obama had. He was the insurgent campaign in a way, I guess, but he had the current and former Senate Majority Leader at his back. (If you haven’t read Double Down, I recommend.)

      Sanders, though… that qualifies, and not because he’s a nominal independent. Sanders is likely to lose, of course, but it set up a template.

      Third parties in the US are so democratically inefficient that “change from within” is almost always going to make more sense. At least until we’re talking about Irreconcilable Differences, which itself involves numerous failed attempts to change the party from within.

      What Shirky didn’t talk about, but should have, is Corbyn. While I did take that as significant, I didn’t take it as nearly significant enough.

      I wonder if the next phase is going to be sub-parties. Or more precisely, rigid caucuses that agree and produce their own candidates for national consideration. Still sketching this idea out in my mind.

      • Michael Drew says:

        Very much agreed on Obama. That was just genuinely a party primary. She had most of the establishment to start, but he had a slice, and he won out with superior skill and the preferred position set – and that was that. He was a newcomer to the national stage, but a long-time elected local Democrat. Pretty straightforward.

  2. Oscar Gordon says:

    I’m not sure if the people are addicted to fear, but our political class certainly is.

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