THERE’S A CONQUEST’S LAW ABOUT THIS: Freakout At The YWCA.
Archive for 2016
November 12, 2016
THAT’S EASY. A “RIOT” IS WHERE BROOKS BROTHERS-CLAD REPUBLICANS DEMAND BALLOT FAIRNESS. A “PROTEST” IS WHERE DEMOCRATS BURN CARS AND BEAT PEOPLE UNCONSCIOUS. Media still struggles with the difference between a protest and a riot.
SO BILL CLINTON WANTED HILLARY TO PAY MORE ATTENTION TO WORKING-CLASS WHITE VOTERS, AND SHE IGNORED HIM.
Instead, they targeted the emerging electorate of young, Latino and African-American voters who catapulted Mr. Obama to victory twice, expecting, mistakenly, that this coalition would support her in nearly the same numbers. They did not.
In the end, Mr. Trump’s simple promise to “Make America Great Again,” a catchphrase Mrs. Clinton dismissed as a vow to return to a racist past already long disappeared, would draw enough white Americans to the polls to make up for his low minority support.
“The emerging demographic majority isn’t quite there yet,” said Anita Dunn, a Democratic strategist and former White House communications director. “The idea you can get to a presidential campaign and just press a button and they’ll vote, it’s not there yet.”
Mrs. Clinton had planned to conclude her 19-month campaign with an elaborate victory celebration on Tuesday night, complete with confetti shaped like glass shards that would fall from the glass ceiling of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in Midtown Manhattan — an extravagant production to mark the history of the evening.
Instead, in a hastily scheduled speech in a dreary hotel ballroom on Wednesday, Mrs. Clinton gave her concession speech, declaring the country “more deeply divided than we thought.”
A few thoughts. (1) Is it Bill leaking this “they should have listened to Bill” story?
(2) In 2000, there was a similar happening, where former Tennessee Governor (and politico extraordinaire) Ned Ray McWherter tried to warn Al Gore that he would lose Tennessee if he didn’t adjust his campaign, only to be blown off by staffers who didn’t even really know who he was, causing Al to lose the state and the election; and
(3) The big one: What if minority voters just won’t turn out for non-minority candidates any more? That’s a real problem for the Democrats, especially if all the racial politics they pursue in order to try to motivate minority voters (Black Lives Matter, immigration protests, etc.) actually serve to make minorities less likely to vote for whites, even if they’re Democrats. And if working-class whites start to vote Republican the way minorities have voted Democratic — and all that racial politics is likely to encourage that — the Dems are in trouble.
GOOD ADVICE FROM EUGENE VOLOKH: Good lawyers don’t deplore their judges and jurors — advice to the young and politically minded.
My advice: Stop deploring.
Hillary Clinton’s condemnation of half of Trump supporters as a “basket of deplorables” was a famous wrong move on her part (as Romney’s 47 percent comment had been a wrong move on his). But it’s important to think about why it’s a bad approach: Why, even if some of your adversaries’ views really are deplorable, thinking this way isn’t useful.
If you’re trying to influence the public, think of yourself as a lawyer, and of voters as your judges and jurors. Except that there are no peremptory challenges or challenges for cause. You can’t strike people because they’re prejudiced, or because you think they are. You’re stuck with them, and they’ll be passing judgment on your client — on your ideas and ideals that you are arguing for. Now what are you going to do?
Good lawyers don’t deplore their judges and jurors. Partly that’s because they don’t want to alienate the people who will be passing judgment on them. Deploring obviously turns off the deplored.
But it’s also because deploring blinds the deplorer. If you focus on how evil some of your judges are, you won’t do a good job of figuring out how you can persuade them — how you can find common ground, how you can fit your requests into their worldview. Good lawyering, like good politics, in large measure relies on empathy: The ability (which starts the willingness) to put yourself into the judge’s and juror’s shoes, to identify the arguments against you that they see as most compelling and to figure out how you can make your arguments compelling to people like them — not to people like you, but to people like them, however benighted you might otherwise think they are.
That’s especially because giving in to the urge to deplore will systematically lead you to misjudge what really animates some of your judges and jurors. The most natural thing in the world is for us to assume the best motives on the part of our friends and to assume the worst motives on the part of our adversaries. Indeed, it’s natural because it’s often so emotionally rewarding.
Sometimes we’re right about the motives of some chunk of our adversaries. But often we’re wrong. Focusing on how deplorable some judges’ or jurors’ views are will often lead us to misunderstand what really drives them, and how we can use that to lead them to our way of thinking (or at least our way of voting).
Good advice, for lawyers, politicians, and everyone else.
HILLARY CLINTON BLAMES FBI DIRECTOR FOR ELECTION LOSS.
In related headlines, Capone Blames Ness for Disruption of Business Empire.
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Why Trump Won.
WEEPY BUREAUCRATS DEAL WITH TRUMP VICTORY BY ABUSING SICK LEAVE: “One career EPA employee tells E&E News, ‘If you look at the seven stages of grief, I’m still in denial. I will not look at the news.’ It sounds like there are a lot of deniers at the EPA this week. Apparently the irony of this is lost on them.”
Heh, indeed.™
And speaking of the EPA, “Donald Trump has been appointing members of his transition team, appointments that presumably foreshadow the ultimate composition of his administration. So far, I have been impressed by his choices. A case in point is Myron Ebell, who will lead Trump’s EPA transition team. The headline says it all: ‘Trump Picks Top Climate Skeptic to Lead EPA Transition.’”
Huh, apparently the MSM believes that there are people who are skeptical that the planet has a climate — who knew?
I look forward to the sound of much gnashing of teeth if and when CBS’s Scott Pelley interviews Ebell. I wonder if he’ll go full Godwin?
“OTHERING” TRUMP SUPPORTERS IN THE NEW YORK TIMES: “I’m stunned by the unfairness toward this real person.”
Plus:
Whatever happened to diversity? Benzizoune had originally thought her roommate was like her, but then she was “this suddenly strange person.” Benzizoune’s college experience turned into something university’s normally encourage: confrontation and dealing with diversity.
Benzizoune’s response was to reject her roommate and to go out and find a more homogeneous group to hang around with. And then she outed the roommate to the whole world, exposing her to contempt and hostility in The New York Times.
After gaining access through the imposed intimacy of roommateship in a university that (I’m sure) promotes diversity, she betrayed this woman — who is perhaps 18 years old — and invited hatred. She did it deliberately, with fervor, and facilitated by the most powerful newspaper in America.
And it seemed justified. Why?
Why? Because:
Well, most of it has to do with Clinton’s persuasion experts and supporters framing Trump and his supporters as the next coming of Hitler. . . .
With this kind of messaging you should not be surprised to see crowds attacking Trump supporters. The attackers feel they have the moral authority to do so. Here’s a fresh example where a group of Clinton supporters repeatedly beat an older Trump supporter on camera. The scary part is that they appear to be proud of it, as though it is morally justified.
That kind of casually callous unfairness, of course, is why a lot of people voted for Trump in the first place.
Also related: My Liberal University Cemented My Vote For Trump.
SOUTH KOREA’S PRESIDENT PARK GUEN-HYE ON THE BRINK: This scandal –now called the Choi Scandal–involves inner-circle corruption and the mishandling of classified information. Influence peddling and classified information compromise have a certain resonance with ole Hillary’s antics, don’t they? Pressure is building on President Park to resign. She’s resisting it. The pressure, however, appears to be across the board.
Many among the protesters said it was their first time out in the streets protesting…“I never expected to see a president who blatantly violated Constitution as Park did. I want her out of office immediately. She does not deserve the power she now exercises.”
This isn’t a Soros-funded fake protest. Stay tuned.
After the election, a handful of Twitter loyalists confessed to feeling alienation over the role the service played in their lives, and the country, this year.
“At best, it was just quips and outrages — a diet of candy,” wrote Brent Simmons, a well-known software developer who took his feed dark after blaming the service for, among other things, being part of the system that helped elect Mr. Trump.
But it was less partisan outrage and more a feeling of exhaustion that inspired a new round of quitter Twitter last week.
“Twitter is toxic,” tweeted Steve Kovach, a writer at the Business Insider website who likened the service to an unshakable addiction. “I can’t stand it anymore,” he told me in a private message on Twitter. “I started regularly deleting my tweets this summer and unfollowed everyone and started over. It was driving me nuts and making me sad.” Mr. Kovach said he has had trouble sticking with his self-imposed ban, but that the campaign’s end had strengthened his resolve.
I’ve been off Twitter for over a month and I’m amazed at how little I miss it. It was addictive while I was on it, but now it seems like a weird little obsessive place that has little importance in the wider world — which is what I thought of it before I got sucked in. Plus, I strongly dislike the company and its management, and don’t want to support them.
What’s more, since I got off I’m calmer and happier, and I feel like I got a sizable infusion of fresh brain cells. Marc Andreessen, who quit about the same time I did, reports something similar.
#NOTMYPRESIDENT? Well. . .
Via Nick Searcy on Facebook.
IT’S JUST BECAUSE THE PEOPLE WHO LIVE THERE SUDDENLY TURNED RACIST: Trump’s Key To Victory: Counties Obama Carried. “Of the nearly 700 counties that twice sent Obama to the White House, a stunning one-third flipped to support Trump. Trump also won 194 of the 207 counties that voted for Obama either in 2008 or 2012. . . . The Obama-Trump counties were critical in delivering electoral victories for Trump. Many of them fall in states that supported Obama in 2012, but Trump in 2016.”
HILLARY CONTINUES TO BLAME THE FBI LETTERS, AS SHE CALLS THEM: She’s the crook who committed the damn crimes. In July FBI Director James Comey bent the law on her behalf. Comey should never have made any recommendation regarding prosecution. Attorney General Loretta Lynch should have had to wear that burning necklace, but Comey gave her cover. Hillary ought to be blaming Anthony Weiner, Huma Abedin and her own criminal self. But that would require honesty, a character trait she demonstrably lacks.
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I DON’T THINK IT’S VERY PROFOUND TO OBSERVE THAT whether you enjoy exercising depends on your levels of dopamine in response. But I don’t think that’s as genetically determined as this story suggests. I didn’t particularly enjoy exercise when I started, but now I do, and I think it’s probably because my brain has actually changed in response.
ZUCKERBERG UNBOUND: Mark Zuckerberg says it’s ‘crazy’ to think fake news stories got Donald Trump elected.
“I do think that there is a certain profound lack of empathy in asserting that the only reason why someone could have voted the way that they did was because they saw some fake news,” he said. “I think if you believe that, then I don’t think you have internalized the message that Trump supporters are trying to send in this election.”
Good point. But I note that he’s actually taking a step to neutralize a technique that Trump’s campaign used to discourage blacks from voting for Hillary: Facebook To Ban “Ethnic Affinity” Ads. The Trump campaign aggressively targeted black Facebook users with video of Hillary’s “suprepredator” remarks, etc. Is that why blacks didn’t turn out for Hillary? Who knows, but this will make it harder to do next time.
WAIT, PEOPLE ON FACEBOOK ARE TELLING ME THAT TRUMP IS GOING TO OUTLAW BIRTH CONTROL: No, Birth Control Coverage Won’t Go Away.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Whatever you do this Thanksgiving, DO NOT wash your turkey.
A LOOK AT science, Trump, and the transition.
MY UT COLLEAGUE MAURICE STUCKE ON TRUMP AND ANTITRUST:
Donald Trump railed against the proposed merger of AT&T and Time Warner on the campaign trail.
With corporate consolidation growing and increasing concerns from some economists over a lack of competition and innovation due to the domination of business behemoths, might a new Trump administration be pushed by his populist followers to take a harder line on mega-mergers?
“We’re at the beginning of something significant that could happen with Trump in terms of this populism,” said Maurice Stucke, a law professor at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville who worked in the antitrust division of the Justice Department. “You might have antitrust enforcement like under Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican appealing to a populist base.”
Stucke is author, with Oxford’s Ariel Ezrachi, of Big Data and Competition Policy. Given Trump’s interest in regulating Internet behemoths like Google, I expect he’ll have a lot to do in coming years.
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IT’S COME TO THIS: UMich law school scrubs post-Trump Play-Doh and coloring event from website.
Just an observation: When schools treat an election as a traumatic event — often via their programs on “diversity and inclusion” — they are in fact telling students who voted for the “traumatic” candidate that they aren’t welcome as members of the community. Saying that there’s only one acceptable outcome for an election doesn’t promote diversity, and it makes students who supported the other candidate feel excluded.
PAUL KRUGMAN ON ELECTION NIGHT: “If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never.”
CNBC right now: Dow posts best week since 2011 after Donald Trump election win.
Hey, it’s 2016: Anything can happen!