The October Surprise: Media agrees he's racist

My Sunday viewing was a couple of videos about Leonard Bernstein. The first was his 19 minute segment at the Kennedy Center Honors in 1980. As is done of each honoree they do a 10 minute summary of his life, then performances by people he inspired. In this case it was conductor Michael Tilson Thomas and his daughter Jamie Bernstein, who did a touching song thanking her father. The narrator was Lauren Bacall and in part of her introduction call him a “generous volcano.” The second was a 50 minute interview with Bernstein. I think the Kennedy Center does an extended interview with each honoree (which I didn’t know they did). In this one Bernstein talks about his influences. The woman he studied piano with at the Curtis Institute. Serge Koussevitzky at Tanglewood who became like a father. Arturo Toscanini. And from there he talked about his experiences with many of the great conductors of the mid 20th century when he was still quite young and they were getting old. He said about several of them, “He was my greatest friend.” And that he was friends with all of them, even those that hated each other. He played piano duets with this one. He made an appointment with that one over a trivial question so they could spend hours together. I am familiar with most of the names and enjoyed the stories. If you aren’t a classical music fan or a Bernstein fan this video may not mean much. Kos of Daily Kos described the rally the nasty guy held at Madison Square Garden last Sunday. A way to summarize it: “He let out his MAGA movement’s ugly all-out bigotry.” Yeah, the news has been full of comedian Tony Hinchcliffe and his comments of the “floating island of garbage” saying it is Puerto Rico. The nasty guy campaign has tried to say that’s not us, but the campaign loaded that joke into the teleprompter and refused to include another. Lots of artists and politicians of Puerto Rican ancestry are condemning the comment and the general racist tone of the event. The tone was so bad even newspaper headlines were using the term “racist” which they usually avoid.

This is the October surprise: everyone, including the media, finally realizing what the MAGA movement truly is and being unafraid to state it. The “comedian” himself sure as heck sees nothing wrong with his racism and bigotry. And Gimenez, despite criticizing Hinchcliffe, sure went out of his way to praise Trump, the guy whose operation hired Hinchcliffe for the act. This is who they are.

Oliver Willis of Kos reported that Fox News is annoyed with all the other media outlets using the term “racist.” Willis pointed out that Hinchcliffe was not the only speaker to use racist language. Emily Singer of Kos listed thirteen news outlets that used the word “racist” or “racism” in the headlines for their stories describing the event. The conservative Wall Street Journal settled for described the event as having a “dark tone.” Again, Singer’s point is the media is finally calling the nasty guy’s campaign what it is and always has been. In a pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev posted quotes discussing a variety of topics, including the Madison Square Garden event. The first is from Greg Sargent of the New Republic saying the event was the nasty guy’s actual closing argument. He has clearly told you who he is.

For many months, Trump and his top allies have been engaged in a two-step. Trump has been running on an explicit platform of ramped-up racism, vows of a mass purging of the nation’s internal enemies, and open threats of cleansing retribution and authoritarian violence. Again and again, as Trump has laid all this bare, his spinners and advisers have insisted that he doesn’t really mean what he’s saying, he’s being taken out of context, he’s not actually threatening to do what he’s telling us he’ll do in his own words. The rally at Madison Square Garden is best understood as the final coming-out party, the ultimate declaration that, yes, he has indeed meant every word of it all along.

Darrell West of Brookings Institute warned that in Pennsylvania mail in ballots can’t be tabulated until after the polls close. Since Democrats tend to vote by mail and Republicans in person it will appear the nasty guy will be in the lead early, then perhaps overtaken by Harris. And in 2020 the nasty guy declared that meant ballot fraud and a stolen election. Pennsylvania is the most important, but not the only, state that may have a slow count. And slow counts will be interpreted as suspicious. And there will be an avalanche of fake claims. The time to start debunking those claims is now. I suggest Republican legislatures passed laws to slow down the count (as was done with mail ballots in PA) to allow conspiracy theories to have time to flourish. Daniel Nichanian of Bolts discussed a proposed constitution amendment in Ohio that would ban gerrymandering by turning redistricting over to citizens and away from politicians. Good to see Ohio try to do what Michigan did six years ago. One problem: A Republican got to write the ballot description. Proposition proponents immediately complained it was misleading. Dhruv Khullar of The New Yorker discussed a study by Thomas Bollyky, published in The Lancet that correlates the health of a country’s citizens with the strength of its democracy. Within a decade of throwing off a dictator the life expectancy can increase by more than two years.

Democratic governments are accountable to people, and people like to be healthy. Health care is what economists call a superior good, meaning that as societies get richer they want more of it. Democracies, accordingly, spend more on health than autocracies do, and are likely to preserve access to care even when the economy tanks. Meanwhile, a free press keeps people informed; the rule of law fuels innovation, by curbing corruption and protecting intellectual property; and independent agencies check power and implement regulations to promote clean water, breathable air, and safe food.

So don’t entrust your health to the nasty guy. Josh Clinton of Good Authority discussed how polls are conducted. A big part of a poll is “weighting” the raw data. Those willing to respond to polls will rarely “match the electorate demographically in terms of sex, age, education, race, etc.” this was why 2016 polls didn’t match the actual vote. After that first weighting, pollsters then ask do the respondents match the politics of the electorate? That was the problem in 2020. And the third question is whether the respondents will actually vote. In another pundit roundup Greg Dworkin of Kos also quoted Clinton’s study and included an example. He presents data from 1,718 respondents (where they’re from is not stated) and weighted the data according to different demographics:

Raw data +6.0 Harris Weighted to 2016 demographics +7.3 Weighted to 2020 demographics +9.0 Weighted to 2022 demographics +8.8

No one knows the right weighting for 2024. Down in the comments are a few cartoons showing the nasty guy as the Pied Piper. Kos wrote according to Pew Research there is a big difference in how married and unmarried women vote. The married women are more Republican. “That suggests men might have something to do with women’s voting patterns.”

Now, up front, Pew doesn’t draw a causal link between marriage and changes in a woman’s politics. We don't know whether marriage makes women more Republican or whether Republican women are more likely to get and stay married. On top of that, age matters. Older people are more Republican and more likely to be married. Geography also matters, with people in the conservative states marrying younger than people in liberal states.

There is a campaign in conservative areas, including an ad voiced by Julia Roberts, of women leaving notes to other women in women’s spaces that are variations on “Your vote is secret. Your husband doesn’t have to know.” Commenters disputed the last statement. If a woman votes by mail her husband may demand she fill out the ballot in his presence. And even while voting in person a woman may say she needs “help” to fill out the ballot and the husband may then “help” her. And a husband my threaten her if she doesn’t ask for that “help.” I learned about this through a post on Kos by Walter Einenkel. However, I think a better description is in a post by Andi Ortiz for The Wrap. I’ll work from both. For quite a while now naturalization ceremonies for US immigrants end with the song “God Bless the USA” by Lee Greenwood. When Greenwood found the USCIS is using his song he forced them into paying him $700 a year. Because Greenwood created the Bible the nasty guy sells and because he allowed the same song, with minimal tweaking, be used in Canadian naturalization ceremonies, John Oliver, also an immigrant, decided the USCIS needed a new song. And he got Will Farrell to sing it. Oliver says the USCIS should never use Greenwood’s song and instead use his. He’ll even pay the USCIS $701 a year for the privilege. The song begins:

You studied hard. You did your best. Filled out the forms, and passed the test. Now you’re part of a land that’s so God blessed, and starting today, you’re American.

Since this is Farrell and Oliver the song veers into unexpected directions. Now that you’re an American we’ve got some really big problems we could use your help to solve. Like student debt, metal detectors in schools, private prisons, the war on drugs, fossil fuels, and Ted Cruz. And now they’re your problems too. You did volunteer to join us. Of course, the video of Farrell singing is delightfully over the top. Both articles include the video.