November 14, 2012
Ted Cruz
Since everybody has decided that the Hispanics are our future, it's worth catching up on the Spanish surnamed crowd.
Texas just elected Republican Ted Cruz to the U.S. Senate by a healthy margin. Ted's father came from Cuba in 1957 and went into the oil business. His mother, a Rice grad is Irish and Italian. One possible impediment to his Presidential hopes is that he was born in the Calgary oil patch, but his parents returned to Houston when he was 4.
Ted has the usual academic superstar track record: He graduated from Princeton and Harvard Law, then clerked for Chief Justice Rehnquist. His wife, Heidi Nelson Cruz, works for Goldman Sachs.
As you may have noticed, he looks rather like a younger Pat Buchanan.
The Game take on what the GOP is doing wrong
A reader comments:
To channel Whiskey, this whole election is one gigantic "sh*t test" that the GOP is failing. The GOP needs to demonstrate that they have a spine, and they are failing badly.
Talking heads: GOP, here's what you need to do to win our hearts! You need to declare an amnesty. You need to embrace gay marriage. You need to become the party of abortions for all and sundry. But most important of all, you must embrace the idea that you have inherited the original sin of racism due to your white skin, and constantly self-flagellate yourself according to the tenets of PC to achieve true redemption.
Only THEN will we go out with you. Will you do that for us? (Bats doe eyes at GOP.)
GOP: Aww shucks, really? Is that all you want? Ok then!
GOP then goes out and changes whole platform, salivating at the thought that all of these votes could be his!
GOP (to himself): This time, I'll win for sure! I've done everything they asked me to do! I'm looking forward to the American public finally going out with me!
Another four years roll by.
American public: Sorry GOP, I'm sorry we didn't vote for you. It's just that we needed a REAL LEADER, and, look, I know you are a really nice guy and all...
GOP: (tears well in eyes)
American public: Oh, I'm so sorry GOP! We can still be friends though! Give me your number, I'll call you up some day and we can hang out. What's your number?
GOP: um, 555-2382. You mean you'll really call me?
American Public: 555-BETA? Oh, that's so easy to remember, I won't even need to type that into my phone. Don't worry GOP, I surely WILL CALL YOU. Later now!
GOP: Awww, gee, thanks! When will you call me?
American Public: I'll call you REAL SOON NOW, I promise!
Several weeks pass by...
GOP to best friend Rove: Rove, I've got this public I really want to woo, but to be honest I'm not sure if I'm ever going to get anywhere.
Rove: What's the situation?
GOP: Well, she seems really nice, and at least I'm friends with her, she's even told me so! I've done everything she's asked, or at least what her friends the talking heads told me to do. But something seems wrong, it's just this feeling I can't shake.
Rove: Have you got several hundred million dollars? I feel like I could tell you the answer, if only you could pony up that money for me.
GOP: You mean it, honest! Sure thing, what's your bank account number, I'll send it to you right away. You won't change your mind, will you?
Rove: No, I'm always here to take your money, I promise. I'm a good friend like that. Just don't talk to that Sailer, he's mean and nasty and stuff. If you want to be seen to be some sort of big, gigantic a*****e, you would listen to him. You don't want that, do you?
GOP: No, I pride myself on being a nice guy, liked by everyone!
Rove: Just send me the money then.
Kitsch down through the ages
A reader writes:
Why do traditional cultures in general seem to get degraded into kitschiness once they come into contact with modernity? There isn't any kitschiness among traditional traditional cultures. You notice the same sort of thing among with "traditionally" oriented white folks too. You have, in no particular order, tacky madonnas, Evangelical praise songs, Vatican II masses, Thomas Kinkade, the prose style of Lord of the Rings and large swathes of country music.
I have remarked before about the bifurcation of modern aesthetics into two camps. High art has tended to eschew any sort of sentiment at all and gone in for either the overly abstract and intellectual, or else the disgusting and degrading.
Perhaps we just can't read the sentimentality in alien traditional cultures?
Or, perhaps the small scale sentimental stuff didn't get carved into giant marble I-am-Ozymandias-king-of-kings statues, so we don't have much of ancient kitsch left anymore? It could be that Ozymandias's mom had court artists do up lots of cute little statues and paintings of Ozymandias as a baby, as a toddler, going to the prom, beheading his first rebel, all that sort of thing that warms a queen mother's heart. But, that kind of art didn't weigh as much as Ozymandias's giant brutal marble statue in Shelley's poem, so, being more portable, it got carried off by looters, or tossed out in the trash, or just worn away by the elements over time.
For example, I only recently became aware of a trove of 2000-year old Roman Egyptian paintings, the Fayum mummy portraits, that families paid professionals to make to (presumably) remember lost loved ones. They only survived due to the dry climate.
But, keep in mind that these Fayum portraits were semi-mass produced, using standard techniques. They probably aren't terribly realistic pictures of the deceased, being more like reproductions from various pre-existing templates of say, a pre-adolescent boy. I fear that if I were an educated, aristocratic resident of Alexandria and had seen them all my life, I'd roll my eyes and disparage them as kitschy.
The Republican brain trust would like your attention
From the NYT, on how the Republicans should reform for 2016:
DEBATERS
Get Rid of the Radicals
NORMAN J. ORNSTEIN, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTEA party that puts short-term political advantage ahead of solving the country's problems is in trouble.Enough With the Immigrant Bashing
LINDA CHAVEZ, FORMER REAGAN OFFICIALIf G.O.P. candidates can’t figure out how to woo Hispanics, they will struggle to win national election.Stop Turning Off Women
TRACEY SCHMITT, REPUBLICAN STRATEGISTRepublicans need to do a better job of showing compassion and concern for the problems women face in their everyday lives.Win Over Blacks Via the Military
KIRON K. SKINNER, FORMER ADVISER TO THE ROMNEY CAMPAIGNThe G.O.P. should make the case to African-Americans that the future of the U. S. defense posture has pocketbook implications for them.Stay Firm on Fiscal Responsibility
MATT KIBBE, FREEDOMWORKSFortunately for the G.O.P., the class of the 2010 Tea Party revolution will be ready for prime time in 2016.
How white immigrants voted in 2008 (not 2012)
A reader writes:
Not exactly what you asked for, but for what is worth the white immigrant vote can be estimated. This obviously also includes west-Europeans, Canadians and middle-easterners.
According to the Cooperative Campaign Analysis Project in 2008 Obama got 54% of white immigrant two-party share, compared to 47% of the white non-immigrant share in that data-set (a bit higher than exit polls of 44%) and 77% of non-white immigrant vote. The sample of white immigrants was 214.
http://ccap.yougov.com/
though you won't be able to download it, it costs $15000 to participate, a professor gave me the data.
"Why Hispanics are Natural Democrats and what the GOP can do about it"
An economist writes:
As you see, there has never been a majority of Hispanics voting for a Republican president. This even when Republicans have supported or even enacted an immigration Amnesty, the issue most commonly cited as key to garner Hispanic support. The variation in Republican support is fairly small.
What turned out to be decisive in 2012 was hence the increase in the number of Hispanic voters.
Romney received 27 percent of the Hispanic vote, marginally down from Pro-Comprehensive Immigration Reform John McCain who got 31 percent. The highest vote share a Republican has received among Hispanics is Texas governor George Bush who got 40 percent post 9-11 and right before the peak of the housing boom, and hence the peak of Hispanic economic fortunes. The 40 percent Bush got was still a decisive defeat. Even though Republican President Ronald Reagan had granted illegal immigrants Amnesty in 1986, two years later only 30 percent of Hispanics voted for Bush Sr.
This ["natural Republicans"] claim is demonstrably false. In 2012 Hispanics solidly support the Democrats on virtually every issue, not only on illegal immigration. This includes taxes, the size of government, health care. Less known is that increasingly liberal Hispanics now support Democrats on abortion, gay marriage and contraception.
Why do Hispanics vote Democrat? The main reason is that Hispanics on average earn far less than Whites (henceforth "Whites" refers to non-Hispanic Whites). It is simply not in Hispanic material self-interests to vote for the party of limited government.
The main reason that people believe largely unsupported claims about Hispanics being “Natural Republicans” is that unflattering facts about immigration are considered gauche in US public debate. It is just not nice to point out that a large segment of a group is comparatively poor and low-skilled. Though confronting these facts frankly may be uncomfortable to some, doing so is crucial to the survival of the Republican Party.
What pundits really mean when they say Mexicans are "socially conservative"
Charles Krauthammer explains his conversion to amnesty since the election:
[Hispanics] should be a natural Republican constituency: striving immigrant community, religious, family-oriented and socially conservative. The principal reason they go Democratic is the issue of illegal immigrants.
Charles Krauthammer was born in New York City and raised in Montreal, then educated at McGill, Oxford, and Harvard Medical School, where he graduated with his class despite breaking his neck during his first year. He's been paralyzed for close to four decades and that takes its toll in all sorts of ways. Who knows how much else he would have been able to accomplish if he hadn't been in a wheelchair? In other words, he's an exceptional individual.
One thing he clearly hasn't had time for in his remarkable life is getting to know much about Mexican-Americans.
Now, we've been through before this "natural social conservative" meme. Nobody has ever shown how it translates into many Republican votes.
So, what do affluent, sophisticated pundits mean when they say that Hispanics (of which approaching 70% are Mexican) are socially conservative?
It finally occurs to me that the reason elites like Krauthammer say that (and even sort of believe that) is because, deep down, they equate "socially conservative" with "tacky."
And, indeed, Mexican-Americans, whether immigrant or born here, do not, generally, display refined taste. So, that makes them "socially conservative."
Now, I'm quite conscious that I don't have the best of taste, and even more so that I don't have the money to buy it either. I'm quite aware that my neighbors are saints for not complaining to my face about my dinged up cars and other failings at keeping up property values. I don't upgrade my landscaping to follow trends, I'm not always thinking about how to make things look better. I wish I had the money, energy, time, and talent to do that. But, I don't.
Still, being perfectly open that I've not the right person to complain, I've got to say that, having spent much of my life living near Mexican-American neighborhoods, that Mexican tackiness just wears me down.
I can't believe that nobody else in America has the same reaction. I suspect Krauthammer does. But how many other pundits ever mention that immigration policy is directly related to the aesthetic wear-and-tear imposed by giant Mexican neighborhoods? It just doesn't seem to come up.
Maybe everybody else just assumes that it's all going to change for the better Real Soon Now. But, I can remember back about, say, 45 years, and not much has changed.
I've been trying to figure out why upper middle class white people in, say, Marin County, people who are extremely concerned about optimizing the aesthetics of their lifestyles, like it when illegal immigrants push out the indigenous working class from their region We've been through the cheap-labor aspects of this a million times, but I'm interested here in the pure psychology of why else you'd also support policies that drive out natives that speak your language and look like yourself.
Say you live on that lovely winding road in Marin County where George Lucas tried and failed for 15 years to get permission to convert 5% of his vast ranch into a movie studio. As a moderately wealthy homeowner, an average of three times per week you have male blue collar service workers come by to do work in your house and on your grounds.
Back in the Bad Old Days a couple of decades or so ago, the workers were third generation Californian Okies, real Grapes of Wrath types, or maybe some assimilated American-born Chicanos, or maybe some Okie-Chicano mixes. Now, they are all Mexicans or Central Americans, six inches shorter, and only the foreman speaks English.
Leaving aside the cost issue, why is that an improvement in your lifestyle?
I can imagine several reasons.
First, your workers now look poorer. That's reassuring. That suggests they aren't ripping you off by charging too much. In the old days, your workers were strapping big guys, and it gnawed away at you that you were paying them more than you had too. Sure, you could afford it, but, still ... it bothered you.
Second, the new guys don't speak English, so you can't understand them when they talk to each other, so they don't get on your nerves as much when they talk about whatever low class things yard workers talk to each other about.
Third, most of your new workers don't try to talk to you because they don't speak English. Remember the plumber with the biker sideburns who always wanted to talk to you about the Raiders? Well, he moved to Idaho. Good riddance.
Fourth, you can't understand the lyrics to their songs. Granted, the newcomers' musical tastes are pretty dire, but at least it's not Country, with all those Blue Collar Pride lyrics crafted in Nashville by Vanderbilt English majors to annoy people like you.
Fifth, their bumper stickers aren't as obnoxious as the American proles' bumper stickers were. Remember the pickup truck with all the NRA bumper stickers? It just drove you crazy. Well, maybe if you could read the Spanish bumperstickers you'd be offended, but you can't, so you're not.
Sixth, now you aren't worried anymore about your wife or daughter taking a shine to some guy with a tool belt. (Look what happened to Larry David. Let that be a lesson to us all.) But it's not going to happen if the guy with the tool belt is 5'2" and speaks Mixtec.
In summary, your service workers used to be real people to you, and that was a major hassle. Now, they are just The Other, and you like it like that.
I can't believe that nobody else in America has the same reaction. I suspect Krauthammer does. But how many other pundits ever mention that immigration policy is directly related to the aesthetic wear-and-tear imposed by giant Mexican neighborhoods? It just doesn't seem to come up.
Maybe everybody else just assumes that it's all going to change for the better Real Soon Now. But, I can remember back about, say, 45 years, and not much has changed.
I've been trying to figure out why upper middle class white people in, say, Marin County, people who are extremely concerned about optimizing the aesthetics of their lifestyles, like it when illegal immigrants push out the indigenous working class from their region We've been through the cheap-labor aspects of this a million times, but I'm interested here in the pure psychology of why else you'd also support policies that drive out natives that speak your language and look like yourself.
Say you live on that lovely winding road in Marin County where George Lucas tried and failed for 15 years to get permission to convert 5% of his vast ranch into a movie studio. As a moderately wealthy homeowner, an average of three times per week you have male blue collar service workers come by to do work in your house and on your grounds.
Back in the Bad Old Days a couple of decades or so ago, the workers were third generation Californian Okies, real Grapes of Wrath types, or maybe some assimilated American-born Chicanos, or maybe some Okie-Chicano mixes. Now, they are all Mexicans or Central Americans, six inches shorter, and only the foreman speaks English.
Leaving aside the cost issue, why is that an improvement in your lifestyle?
I can imagine several reasons.
First, your workers now look poorer. That's reassuring. That suggests they aren't ripping you off by charging too much. In the old days, your workers were strapping big guys, and it gnawed away at you that you were paying them more than you had too. Sure, you could afford it, but, still ... it bothered you.
Second, the new guys don't speak English, so you can't understand them when they talk to each other, so they don't get on your nerves as much when they talk about whatever low class things yard workers talk to each other about.
Third, most of your new workers don't try to talk to you because they don't speak English. Remember the plumber with the biker sideburns who always wanted to talk to you about the Raiders? Well, he moved to Idaho. Good riddance.
Fourth, you can't understand the lyrics to their songs. Granted, the newcomers' musical tastes are pretty dire, but at least it's not Country, with all those Blue Collar Pride lyrics crafted in Nashville by Vanderbilt English majors to annoy people like you.
Fifth, their bumper stickers aren't as obnoxious as the American proles' bumper stickers were. Remember the pickup truck with all the NRA bumper stickers? It just drove you crazy. Well, maybe if you could read the Spanish bumperstickers you'd be offended, but you can't, so you're not.
Sixth, now you aren't worried anymore about your wife or daughter taking a shine to some guy with a tool belt. (Look what happened to Larry David. Let that be a lesson to us all.) But it's not going to happen if the guy with the tool belt is 5'2" and speaks Mixtec.
In summary, your service workers used to be real people to you, and that was a major hassle. Now, they are just The Other, and you like it like that.
November 13, 2012
"Lincoln"
From my movie review in Taki's Magazine:
With his unimpeachable performance in Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln (which opens nationwide on Friday), Daniel Day-Lewis seems ready to become the first man ever to win three Best Actor Oscars.
Read the whole thing there.
By the way, congratulations to Taki for winning the over-70 world judo championship, defeating the giant actor Bo Svenson (Sheriff Buford Pusser in various Walking Tall movies) in the final.
Does anybody know how new white immigrants vote?
My late father's favorite grocery store was Jon's in Valley Village in the southeast San Fernando Valley. It now carries a whole lot of weird products like Bulgarian soda pop and Georgian stuff in little glass jars: comfort food from home, if your home is somewhere in the ex-Warsaw Pact. I've been to Moscow and I've been to Istanbul, and the clientele of Jon's looks like a cross between the two.
My vague impression is that liberated Eastern Europeans take their lead in choosing where to immigrate to from Armenians. They don't necessarily like Armenians per se, but you've gotta admit that Armenians aren't stupid, so if Armenians have been moving to the northern part of the southeast San Fernando Valley (i.e, not the rich parts south of Ventura Blvd., but the more marginal parts where the homeowners are mostly white and the apartment dwellers mostly Hispanic), we ought to look into it. (It's like how lots of newly rich oil sheiks in the 1970s immediately decided to move to Beverly Hills.) Also, a lot of ultra-Orthodox Jews now live in this area (there were zero when I was a kid), although they don't shop at Jon's.
By the way, the phrase "flatheads" that is used to describe the hired muscle who escort ex-Soviet oligarchs to nightclubs (think Viggo Mortensen as the pimp in Eastern Promises) and which inevitably comes to mind while standing in the checkout line at Jon's -- does that just come from their favored haircuts or do they really have flatter heads? What did Carleton Coon and the other caliper boys have to say? Or is it a recent Human Growth Hormone thing?
I've never seen anybody talk about how these newcomers and their kids (if any) are likely to eventually vote. The only evidence I have is that I knew a Ukrainian lady who arrived in Valley Village with some multi-syllabic Ludmilla Tourischeva-like name and immediately had her last name legally changed to Reagan.
Paul Krugman on Hispanics as natural Republicans
Paul Krugman blogs:
Some of the attempts to predict future trends argue that over time Hispanics will become politically “white”, the way Irish and Italians did. Maybe, although somehow that hasn’t happened yet to my tribe.
By the way, a story that has gotten very little attention is that Romney did quite a bit better than McCain in the Jewish vote -- approaching 50% better. That's still not very good (30% in Edison up from 21% in 2008, 34% in Reuters). The numbers are tiny, of course, but everything about trends in Jewish opinion ought to be of interest, for the Sarah Silverman Reason.
Off the top of my head, I'd hypothesize that Romney's number isn't a fluke -- that's about what the Republicans would usually get from Jewish voters if they always nominated a Northeastern moderate who only talks about tax rates. McCain's low number in 2008 reflects the Jewish crush of that era on Obama that contributed to and was the result of Obamamania.
The best evidence for this was New Yorker editor David Remnick's vast quasi-biography of Obama, The Bridge. Since Obama has done so little in his life that's interesting to read about, Remnick's book was padded out with potted Civil Rights Struggle history. The "bridge" of the title refers to some victory in the civil rights years in the South, even though Obama was not actually there. (Indeed, according to David Maraniss's boring but less infatuated biography, Obama was at that point being enrolled in an upscale pre-school in an expensive Honolulu suburb with a highly diverse class and a Japanese-American teacher.) Plus, Remnick tossed in endless reminiscences from elite friends, heavily Jewish, of how the first time they met Obama they knew that here was going to be the black President they'd always dreamed of.
Subtly, though, the bloom was off the rose of Obama in 2012. The media, with its credibility on the line for promoting Obama so uncritically, so shamelessly, hunkered down instead to attack Romney and divert attention from Obama.
But, it will be interesting to see if the media shields erected around Obama erode during the second term.
How badly did Romney get ripped off by his consultants?
From the NYT:
Academic ‘Dream Team’ Helped Obama’s Effort
By Benedict Carey
Late last year Matthew Barzun, an official with the Obama campaign, called Craig Fox, a psychologist in Los Angeles, and invited him to a political planning meeting in Chicago, according to two people who attended the session.
Off topic, but in case you are wondering, from Wikipedia:
Matthew Barzun is a descendent of John Winthrop, the first governor of Massachusetts, and Lucretia Mott,[9] a proponent of women's rights. ... Matthew Barzun’s grandfather is the renowned French-born American cultural historian and former Columbia University professor, Jacques Martin Barzun [who recently died at 104].
“He said, ‘Bring the whole group; let’s hear what you have to say,’ ” recalled Dr. Fox, a behavioral economist at the University of California, Los Angeles.
So began an effort by a team of social scientists to help their favored candidate in the 2012 presidential election. Some members of the team had consulted with the Obama campaign in the 2008 cycle, but the meeting in January signaled a different direction.
“The culture of the campaign had changed,” Dr. Fox said. “Before then I felt like we had to sell ourselves; this time there was a real hunger for our ideas.”
This election season the Obama campaign won a reputation for drawing on the tools of social science. The book “Victory Lab,” by Sasha Issenberg, and news reports have portrayed an operation that ran its own experiment and, among other efforts, consulted with the Analyst Institute, a Washington voter research group established in 2007 by union officials and their allies to help Democratic candidates.
Less well known is that the Obama campaign also had a panel of unpaid academic advisers. The group — which calls itself the “consortium of behavioral scientists,” or COBS — provided ideas on how to counter false rumors, like one that President Obama is a Muslim. It suggested how to characterize the Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, in advertisements. It also delivered research-based advice on how to mobilize voters.
“In the way it used research, this was a campaign like no other,” said Todd Rogers, a psychologist at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and a former director of the Analyst Institute. “It’s a big change for a culture that historically has relied on consultants, experts and gurulike intuition.” ...
In addition to Dr. Fox, the consortium included Susan T. Fiske of Princeton University; Samuel L. Popkin of the University of California, San Diego; Robert Cialdini, a professor emeritus at Arizona State University; Richard H. Thaler, a professor of behavioral science and economics at the University of Chicago’s business school; and Michael Morris, a psychologist at Columbia.
It's useful to have bright people in your campaign whose salaries are being paid for by the taxpayers or wealthy institutions.
“A kind of dream team, in my opinion,” Dr. Fox said.
He said that the ideas the team proposed were “little things that can make a difference” in people’s behavior.
For example, Dr. Fiske’s research has shown that when deciding on a candidate, people generally focus on two elements: competence and warmth. “A candidate wants to make sure to score high on both dimensions,” Dr. Fiske said in an interview. “You can’t just run on the idea that everyone wants to have a beer with you; some people care a whole lot about competence.”
Yup, you'd need some real geniuses to figure that out.
Most of the behavioral science breakthroughs in the article don't seem all that brilliant, but, one way or another, Team Obama outperformed Romney's hired guns. The daughters of the consultants Romney hired will no doubt have lovely weddings someday courtesy of the amount of cash that flowed in 2012.
There are a couple of issues for Republicans: one is that when you outsource everything, you often get taken to the cleaners. The other is the lack of institutional intellect. I often joke about the Republican Brain Trust, but, it's serious: the Republican strategists aren't that bright. You need academics, you need sabermetricians, you need guys who like numbers, not just the numbers in their bank accounts.
November 12, 2012
Bryan Caplan: 3 more challenges to Sailerian citizenism
Last week, Bryan Caplan dredged up an old analogy I had drawn to launch an attack on my notion of citizenism. Bryan wrote:
If you think you're often morally obligated to suppress the favoritism you naturally feel for your children, why aren't you morally obligated to suppress the far milder favoritism you naturally feel for your fellow citizens?
This, by the way, is why I emphasize the notion of the half-full (and thus also half-empty) glass so often. If "you're often morally obligated to suppress the favoritism you naturally feel," you're often not morally obligated to suppress the favoritism you feel. Thus, for example, it's not morally right for America to invade Canada, but it's also not morally wrong for America to keep Mexicans from invading America.
This idea that the glass tends to be part-full and part-empty at the same time isn't some novel insight of mine. Aristotle, for instance, liked to point out that life is full of trade-offs, perfection is unlikely, and the best you can do is some kind of optimum. (Confucius said something like this, too.)
But, I'm a notorious extremist, always going around citing Aristotle, Benjamin Franklin, the Preamble of the Constitution, George Washington's Farewell Address, and other fringe crackpots.
Last week, Bryan got rather badly schooled in his comments section. Now, he's back with three more posts [Update: links fixed]
Immigration, Trespassing, and Socialism
Heckuva job, Albertoie!
Back on 9/11, 343 men of the Fire Department of New York gave their lives. Six years later, the Bush Administration (Alberto Gonzales, Attorney General) rewarded the survivors by suing the FDNY on the grounds that the hiring test was an example of disparate impact discrimination because too many white guys aced it.
How's that working out for Republicans, anyway? How many black and Hispanic voters were converted to Republicans by this ploy?
Here's the other exit poll data that nobody knows about
My big article is up at VDARE.com analyzing the demographics of the election.
You've been reading a huge amount about the exit poll with a sample size of 25,000 conducted by Edison, but virtually nothing about the poll with a sample size of 40,000 conducted by Reuters-Ipsos.
They're both pretty decent, but Reuters' American Mosaic Polling Explorer website has one huge advantage: it allows the general public to crosstab the data anyway they want.
Two weeks ago, I previewed the Reuters-Ipsos demographics using a sample size of 7,500 from October (which showed Obama ahead by 2 points). Now I'm back with a much larger sample size.
Read the whole thing there.
You've been reading a huge amount about the exit poll with a sample size of 25,000 conducted by Edison, but virtually nothing about the poll with a sample size of 40,000 conducted by Reuters-Ipsos.
They're both pretty decent, but Reuters' American Mosaic Polling Explorer website has one huge advantage: it allows the general public to crosstab the data anyway they want.
Two weeks ago, I previewed the Reuters-Ipsos demographics using a sample size of 7,500 from October (which showed Obama ahead by 2 points). Now I'm back with a much larger sample size.
Read the whole thing there.
Washington Post: "Crosshairs" on the conservative white male
Columnist Courtland Milloy writes in the Washington Post:
What repels many of those potential recruits, however, is the perception, if not the reality, that the party roils with racial resentment. Why else would the GOP be so overwhelmingly white?
It didn’t help matters, either, when Republican strategists unleashed ads aimed at whipping the party’s core constituency — aging, right-wing, non-college-educated white men — into a racial frenzy with “dog whistle” warnings that a black “food stamp president” was out to get them.
The “Bubba strategy,” as President Obama supporters called it.
On Election Day, Bubba went whole hog for Republican contender Mitt Romney, only to be vanquished by a multiracial, mixed-gendered groundswell of voters. In the aftermath, the conservative white male was placed on the politically endangered species list — the crosshairs on him now.
You may remember back in January 2011 when Sarah Palin was widely castigated for running ads during the 2010 House races saying various Democrats in marginals seats were in the "crosshairs." But, that was wrong for Palin to do that because she is a conservative white male, and they deserve what's coming to them. Whereas Courtland Milloy is only about 3/4ths white, so he's A-OK.
Asians get their reward from Obama Justice Dept.
Asians apparently voted overwhelmingly last Tuesday for the Party of Affirmative Action in Admissions.
How's that working out for them?
So far, not so hot.
The New York Times editorializes in favor of the Obama Justice Department's complaint that, in effect, too many Asians are scoring highly on the admissions test to elite New York City public high schools:
The Elite Eight, on the Federal Radar
The civil rights office of the federal Department of Education has rightly decided to investigate a complaint filed in September by civil rights groups over the admissions policies of eight highly competitive “specialized” high schools in New York City, among which are Stuyvesant, the Bronx High School of Science and Brooklyn Technical High School.
The investigation into a possible violation of civil rights law is just beginning. The city could be required to revise the admissions policies and could potentially be threatened with the loss of federal education funds if it refuses. The city and state should revisit the admissions process before things get to that point.
The complaint, filed by a coalition of organizations including the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, charges the city with illegally screening out qualified black and Latino middle-school students by basing admissions on a single poorly designed test. Supported by influential groups like the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the complaint offers a devastating analysis of the two-and-a-half-hour multiple-choice test, which, among other flaws, fails to reflect the curriculum taught at many middle schools. The test also heavily favors those who can afford extensive tutoring and has not been shown to be a good predictor of student performance in high school.
November 11, 2012
Last amnesty set off baby boom of future Democrats in California
As I pointed out in 2002: The last illegal alien amnesty had unexpected repercussions that echoed for years in California. It turns out that the 1986 amnesty for illegals set off a big baby boom among its beneficiaries - inevitably worsening the subsequent crowding in schools and emergency rooms, not to mention burgeoning votes for Democrats.
Demographers Laura E. Hill and Hans P. Johnson of the Public Policy Institute of California wrote in "Understanding the Future of Californians' Fertility: The Role of Immigrants:"
"Between 1987 and 1991, total fertility rates for foreign-born Hispanics [in California] increased from 3.2 to 4.4 [expected babies per woman over her lifetime]. This dramatic rise was the primary force behind the overall increase in the state's total fertility rate during this period. Were it not for the large increase in fertility among Hispanic immigrants, fertility rates in California would have increased very little between 1987 and 1991.
"Why did total fertility rates increase so dramatically for Hispanic immigrants? First, the composition of the Hispanic immigrant population in California changed as a result of the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986. In California alone, 1.6 million unauthorized immigrants applied for amnesty (legal immigrant status) under this act. The vast majority were young men, and many were agricultural workers who settled permanently in the United States.
Previous research indicates that many of those granted amnesty were joined later by spouses and relatives in the United States... As a result, many young adult Hispanic women came to California during the late 1980s. We also know that unauthorized immigrants tend to have less education than other immigrants and that they are more likely to come from rural areas. Both characteristics are associated with high levels of fertility. As a result, changes in the composition of the Hispanic immigration population probably increased fertility rates.
"Another possible reason for the sudden increase in fertility rates for Hispanic immigrants is also related to IRCA. Because many of those granted amnesty and their spouses had been apart for some time, their reunion in California prompted a "catch-up" effect in the timing of births..."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
