Dear Commons Community,

Concordia University at Portland, part of the eight-campus Concordia system, will permanently close its doors after spring commencement, the university announced yesterday. The 115-year-old Lutheran university had an overall enrollment of 5,342 in the fall of 2018, with a majority (3,841) of its students in graduate programs.   Thomas Ries, the interim president, said in a news release. “We have come to the decision that this is in the best interest of our students, faculty, staff and partners…  The Board of Regents concluded that the university’s current and projected enrollment and finances make it impossible to continue its educational mission.”    As reported by The Chronicle of Higher Education.

“The university experienced stunning enrollment growth in the early 2010s thanks to the development of online graduate programs. But The Oregonian newspaper reported in 2016 that the growth came at a price: Concordia paid more than $160 million to a contractor, HotChalk Inc., that handled many aspects of the university’s immensely popular online graduate-degree program.

Concordia’s relationship with HotChalk also drew federal scrutiny. Regulators alleged that HotChalk was too heavily involved with Concordia’s operations. Concordia and HotChalk eventually signed a $1-million settlement that admitted no wrongdoing in the case, according to The Oregonian.

Reis said the payment and work with HotChalk had nothing to do with Concordia’s closure. The contractor has remained a partner, but strong competition in the online market from ascendant mega-universities has practically starved Concordia of students.

“Enrollment actually has declined significantly over the last four years,” he said. More than 7,000 students, with more than 6,000 of them in graduate programs, were enrolled in Concordia in the fall of 2014, according to federal data. By the fall of 2018, the graduate enrollment had dropped to just over 3,800.

Reis, who became interim president on January 2, said news of the closure came as a surprise to faculty and students. According to Concordia’s website, the university will work with students to help them transition to new colleges.

After the university closes, its campus will be returned to Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and one of the lenders, the Lutheran Church Extension Fund, which will look to sell the 24-acre property.”

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

At a time when Southern states are debating the removal of Confederate monuments, Maryland is adding bronze statues of two of the state’s famous black historical figures to the Maryland State House.  The statues of abolitionists Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass will be unveiled tonight  in the Old House Chamber, the room where slavery was abolished in Maryland in 1864.   As reported by the Associated Press.

“It’s a really incredible, incredible, moment,” Senate President Bill Ferguson said, as he told senators about the upcoming event last month.

While the commissioning of the statues was put in motion several years ago, their arrival coincides with new leadership in the state legislature, including Maryland’s first black and first female speaker of the House and the first new Senate president in more than three decades.

Tubman escaped from slavery to become a leading abolitionist who helped slaves escape through the Underground Railroad. Douglass also escaped slavery on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. He went on to become an author, speaker, abolitionist and supporter of women’s rights. His autobiography, published in 1845, was a best-seller that helped fuel the abolitionist movement.

The statues aren’t the only recent examples of the state taking steps to reflect its rich black history.

Last month, a portrait of a black female lawmaker replaced one of a white governor who had been on the wall for 115 years. The painting of Verda Welcome, who was elected to the state Senate in 1962, is the first portrait of a black person to adorn the Maryland’s Senate walls.

During the unveiling ceremony, Ferguson, who became Senate president last month, recalled a letter he received from an 8th grader in Baltimore several years ago. The student wrote she was saddened she did not see anyone who looked like her in the paintings that decorate the State House.

“We’ve heard a lot about change in these chambers over the last few days, and portraits are, I admit, less impactful than our elected leaders, but the public display of portraits is meaningful,” State Archivist Tim Baker said during the ceremony. “Images have an importance that transcends the painted canvas.”

Mary Sue Welcome, the late senator’s daughter, said during the unveiling of her mother’s portrait that she was struck by how much more diverse the legislative body has become since her mother served in office.

“When I was a little girl I used to come to these chambers — and to the one across the hall — and I would look around and the color was a lot different than it is now,” Welcome said. “The coloration is so absolutely beautiful now.”

Maryland also has removed painful reminders of its past in recent years.

In 2017, the state removed a statue of Roger B. Taney, the U.S. Supreme Court justice who wrote the 1857 Dred Scott decision that upheld slavery and denied citizenship to African Americans.

State officials voted to remove the Taney statue days after a woman was killed in Charlottesville, Virginia. Heather Heyer, 32, was killed when a man rammed his car through a crowd of people who were there to condemn hundreds of white nationalists who were protesting the planned removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

Congratulations to the government leaders in the state of Maryland!

Tony

Workers Getting Statues of Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglas Ready for Tonight’s Unveiling

Dear Commons Community,

Amid all the Hollywood glitz,  American Factory,  the first Netflix project released under the banner of Barack and Michelle Obama’s production company, Higher Ground Productions, won an Academy Award at the 2020 Oscars last night.

The documentary, directed by filmmakers Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar, won the award for Best Documentary Feature. The film chronicles what happened when a Chinese billionaire opened a new factory at the former General Motors plant outside of Dayton, Ohio, in 2014. It was produced by originally by Participant Media before the finished film was acquired by Netflix and Higher Ground.

American Factory was released on the streaming service last year in August. Reichert and Bognar met the former president and first lady in Washington the month prior to discuss the project.

Reichert said the Obamas are “wonderful people.”

“It was amazing when we heard that the president and the first lady had seen our film, and wanted to embrace it and wanted to elevate us as filmmakers,” she said. “I mean, they’re very much into artists and writers.”

During a sit-down conversation between the filmmakers and the Obamas that was published online in August, Michelle Obama noted, “one of the many things I love about this project is that it’s not an editorial.”

“I mean, you truly let people speak for themselves,” she continued. 

American Factory also won the Directing Award for a U.S. documentary at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.

Congratulations to all the Oscar winners including American Factory.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Angelina Chapman, who writes for The Huffington Post, The Guardian and New York magazine, has an article this morning, characterizing Republican Senators as a cult in defending Donald Trump during his recent impeachment trial.  She comments that they blocked evidence and used lies, conspiracy theories and convoluted arguments to defend their leader. Here is an excerpt.

“…They blocked witnesses from testifying at the Senate trial and used lies, conspiracy theories and acrobatic logic to try to prove his innocence. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), the only Republican in the Senate to vote for Trump’s removal from office, has been skewered by the president and some members of the GOP over the past few days. On Friday, Trump dismissed two House impeachment witnesses, saying he was “not happy” with them. 

And though this behavior might seem like dirty politics as usual, psychologists and professors say the extreme measures Republicans took to defend Trump resemble a more sinister phenomenon: the mentality of cult members.

“They’ve just refused to entertain any ideas that go against their leader,” said  Janja Lalich, a sociology professor at California State University, Chico, who studies cults and extremist groups. “That kind of closed-mindedness is just so typical of cult members.” 

Many experts and politicians have made the comparison between Trumpism and cults. Lev Parnas, an associate of Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, said there was a “cult-like” atmosphere around the president, as did Anthony Scaramucci, Trump’s former communications director. Joe Walsh, the former Illinois congressman who launched a failed bid to challenge Trump’s nomination, said point-blank: “My Republican Party isn’t a party. It’s a cult.”

Though some professors who study groups think this description is overly simplistic, psychology experts say Trump’s narcissistic qualities, us-vs.-them mentality and lead-by-fear approach is straight from the textbook of history’s most notorious cults. Republican senators were scared that if they voted to convict Trump of the impeachment charges, he would attack them with nasty nicknames and launch campaigns to discredit them, according to Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), who wrote an op-ed for The New York Times.  

And they have good reason to worry. In his speech Thursday, Trump referred to the Democrats who tried to remove him from office as “dirty cops,” “leakers” and “liars.” He insulted Romney, saying the senator failed “so badly when running for president,” and he tweeted a video that called him a “Democrat secret asset.”

“They’re afraid to get on his bad side,” said Lalich of Republican senators. “That very much parallels what we see in cults where people are terrified of, you know, being caught out in any kind of expression of doubt or mistrust of the leader.” 

Of course, it’s normal for party members to try and keep their leader in power. The political futures of many Republicans are tied to Trump and they will do whatever it takes to protect their careers, said Timothy Miller, a religious studies professor at the University of Kansas who studies group-think. He points out that during President Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial, no Democrats voted against the president. 

But there are some key differences as to how senators handled the two impeachments. Democrats didn’t deny what Clinton had done ― they argued that his affair with Monica Lewinsky didn’t merit being kicked out of the White House and proposed that he should instead be censured. While some Republicans have acknowledged, in the face of overwhelming evidence, that Trump is guilty of offering the Ukrainian government a quid pro quo to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, others have denied that reality.

Before the trial even started, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said he had already decided the president was not guilty: “I’m not trying to pretend to be a fair juror here,” he told CNN. Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.) denied that Trump asked the Ukrainian president to investigate Biden, his political rival, and Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) said there was “no evidence of a quid pro quo.”

This type of denial and close-minded attitude mimics how cult members blindly follow their leaders after being indoctrinated. Trump thinks he is above the law said Steven Hassan, a mental health counselor and author of “The Cult of Trump.” “If [Trump] says ‘I did nothing wrong,’ everyone should accept that.” 

Cult members experience cognitive dissonance when presented with facts that contradict their beliefs, said Lalich. If Republican senators believe that Trump is good for America, they will work hard to ignore information that would shatter their worldview. 

“They’ll shut out whatever’s happening in reality,” she said, “to keep themselves safe within this little cocoon that they’ve built around themselves.” 

It’s common for members to use outright lies and mental gymnastics to protect their leader, and themselves. The mentality is that the “end justifies the means,” according to Daniel Shaw, a psychotherapist who specializes in cults. For Republicans, that means keeping Trump in power at all costs. 

“Scientology operates in the same way,” he said. “Members are immediately dispersed to deny any wrongdoing and to make false claims.” They create alternate realities to discredit any narrative that attacks a leader.

Republican attorney Steve Castor, for example, repeatedly parroted a debunked conspiracy theory that the Ukrainian government had interfered with the 2016 presidential election to stop Trump’s victory, and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) insisted that the claim was true. Multiple Republican congressmen said Biden could not be considered a political opponent, which is obviously false. Despite the fact that the Constitution addresses why foreign interference is an impeachable offense, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) said, “This is exactly the sort of thing the American people elected President Trump to do.”

Once the trial was done, Trump attacked his opponents and Romney in a way that resembles how cult leaders pit their members against everyone else, said Lalich. 

This divisive mentality helps bind group members together and makes everything on the outside seem “horrifying and evil.”

“A healthy organization needs to allow for dissent and for asking questions,” said Hassan. “When any organization treats people like traitors for following their conscience or following an oath, that to me is a telltale sign of a mind control cult.”

Good analysis!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

I was not able to watch the Democratic debate last night sponsored by ABC News.  It was held in preparation for the New Hampshire primary being held this Tuesday.  Below is a recap, courtesy of the Associated Press.

Tony

———————————————————————————————————–

Associated Press

Front-runners Buttigieg and Sanders beat back debate attacks

By STEVE PEOPLES, KATHLEEN RONAYNE and HUNTER WOODALLtoday

MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) — Democratic presidential front-runners Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg beat back a barrage of attacks during a debate as rivals raised persistent questions about their ideology and experience, hoping to sow doubts about their ability to defeat President Donald Trump.

Reeling from a weak finish in this week’s Iowa caucuses, former Vice President Joe Biden was a chief aggressor throughout Friday night. He questioned Sanders’ status as a democratic socialist and said Buttigieg, the 38-year-old former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, doesn’t have the background to lead in a complicated world. Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, who is struggling to break into the top tier, voiced similar criticisms.

But Sanders and Buttigieg, who are essentially tied in Iowa, largely brushed off the broadsides.

“Donald Trump lies all the time,” Sanders said in response to suggestions that Trump would use his self-described identity as a democratic socialist to brand him — and all Democrats — as radical.

Buttigieg sought to turn skepticism of his resume into a positive, portraying himself as a fresh face from outside Washington with experience in dealing with real-life problems and ready to lead a weary nation in a new direction.

“I’m interested in the style of the politics we need to put forward to actually finally turn the page,” Buttigieg said. He added a jab at Biden: “I freely admit that if you’re looking for the person with the most years of Washington establishment experience under their belt, you’ve got your candidate, and of course it’s not me.”

Friday marked the eighth and perhaps most consequential debate in the Democratic Party’s yearlong quest for a presidential nominee. The prime-time affair came just four days after Iowa’s chaotic caucuses — and four days before New Hampshire’s primary — with several candidates facing pointed questions about their political survival. While several candidates had strong moments, it was unclear the event would change the trajectory of the campaign.

Biden was especially explicit about the state of his candidacy during the opening moments, predicting he would “take a hit” in New Hampshire next week before the contest moves into more diverse states where he hopes to perform better.

He faced criticism on stage as someone too steeped in the ways of Washington to represent the change many Democratic voters say they are seeking. He responded by once again aligning himself with former President Barack Obama.

“The politics of the past I think were not all that bad,” Biden said. “I don’t know what about the past about Barack Obama and Joe Biden was so bad.”

But Biden had to defend his long record as the candidates sparred over the decision nearly two decades ago to send U.S. troops to Iraq.

Biden acknowledged anew that his vote in favor of the war authorization as a senator was a mistake, while Sanders said his Senate vote against deploying troops was proof of his judgment on national security issues. Buttigieg, who was in college at the time and later served in Afghanistan, said he would have opposed the war, too.

While the debate was heated at times, there were moments of unity with candidates aware that Democratic primary voters have little desire to see an all-out intraparty brawl. When a moderator asked Klobuchar to respond to Hillary Clinton’s comments that no one likes Sanders, Biden walked over and gave him a hug. Klobuchar, meanwhile, joked that Sanders is “just fine” and noted times when they had worked together on policy.

A somber Biden was appreciative when Buttigieg defended him and his son, Hunter Biden, against attacks from Trump in the impeachment inquiry.

And while Biden challenged Sanders’ embrace of a version of socialism, most of his rivals seemed willing to overlook that political identity. When the moderator asked whether any of the candidates would have a problem with a democratic socialist as their party’s presidential nominee, only Klobuchar raised her hand.

Warren avoided any direct criticism of her rivals and repeatedly pivoted to her core anti-corruption message. As Biden, Sanders and Klobuchar fought about the best way forward on health care, Warren did not engage, instead speaking broadly about the need to lower prescription drug costs.

Billionaire activist Tom Steyer and New York entrepreneur Andrew Yang, meanwhile, were fighting to prove they belong in the conversation.

Traditionally, the knives come out during this phase in the presidential primary process.

It was the pre-New Hampshire debate four years ago on the Republican side when then-New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie devastated Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s presidential ambitions with a well-timed take-down. Rubio never recovered, making it easier for Donald Trump to emerge as his party’s presidential nominee.

The stakes were particularly high for Biden, who has played front-runner in virtually every one of the previous seven debates but left Iowa in a distant fourth place. While reporting problems have blunted the impact of the Iowa contest, Biden’s weakness rattled supporters who encouraged him to take an aggressive tack Friday night.

Klobuchar made a passionate pitch to moderate-minded voters unhappy with Biden and Buttigieg.

“I’m not a political newcomer with no record, but I have a record of fighting for people,” she said. “I know you and I’ll fight for you.”

The seven-person field highlighted the evolution of the Democrats’ 2020 nomination fight, which began with more than two dozen candidates and has been effectively whittled down to a handful of top-tier contenders.

There are clear dividing lines based on ideology, age and gender. But just one of the candidates on stage, Yang, was an ethnic minority.

Campaigning in one of the whitest states in the nation, Steyer repeatedly highlighted his support for reparations for African-Americans to make up for the impacts of slavery. His steady focus on race Friday was a reminder that he’s invested heavily in South Carolina, where black voters are expected to play a deciding role and are central to Biden’s strategy for success in later states.

Mike Bloomberg was not onstage Friday night, but the New York billionaire was referenced repeatedly as the candidates took turns bashing the the rich.

The former New York City mayor is bypassing New Hampshire, among the four states that vote this month, in favor of the delegate-rich states that hold primary contests in March and beyond. While no one has ever won the nomination with such a strategy, Bloomberg has caught the attention of establishment-minded Democrats concerned about Biden’s viability and Buttigieg’s thin resume.

Bloomberg is also poised to spend $1 billion on his presidential ambitions.

“I don’t think anyone ought to be able to buy their way into the nomination or be president of the United States,” Warren said in one of her few aggressive moments. “I don’t think any billionaire ought to be able to do it and I don’t think people who suck up to billionaires in order to fund their campaigns ought to do it.”

Dear Commons Community,

A new survey revealed that Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is the least popular Trump administration official.  The poll — conducted online, with responses from 1,008 registered voters between Dec. 11-15, 2019 and shared with Yahoo News — was conducted by Global Strategy Group, a Democratic polling company, on behalf of Allied Progress, a liberal consumer advocacy group.

While there is broad concern about senior officials in the Trump administration, the public is especially alarmed about the job Secretary DeVos is doing.  Respondents gave DeVos the highest disapproval rating at 39%, followed by Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney at 33%, and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin at 25%.  As reported by Yahoo News.

“The poll reflected prevailing Democratic attitudes towards DeVos, in particular. Presidential hopefuls and Senators Bernie Sanders (I-NH) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) have called her the “worst Education Secretary in our modern history” and the “worst Secretary of Education we’ve seen,” respectively. 

Separate polls by HuffPost/YouGov in 2017 and by The Economist/YouGov in 2018 also found that DeVos is the most disapproved official in the Trump administration. 

Recently during a congressional hearing on the borrower defense rule, Democrats also tore into the Secretary over her reluctance to grant full debt relief to victims defrauded by predatory for-profit colleges that had shuttered. She cited her concern that full discharge placed an unfair burden on taxpayers. 

One lawmaker took exceptional offense. “I have worked in education my entire life. … I’ve worked with Democrats and Republicans. … I’ve had some honest disagreements with my friends in the Republican Party about how to move education forward,” Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-FL) said to DeVos. “But I’ve never, not one time, believed that they were out to destroy public education, until I met you. Why has every decision you’ve made harmed students instead of empowering them?”

The key reason for DeVos’ unpopularity stems from her policy decisions, the survey found.

“We found the public is especially skeptical of Secretary DeVos, for good reason,” Allied Progress Director Derek Martin told Yahoo Finance in a statement. “What motivated DeVos’ decisions to disregard the law in order to deny debt relief to defrauded borrowers and disabled veterans? Americans want to know, and it’s Congress’ duty to find out.” 

Respondents to the poll noted that they were especially disturbed by DeVos “withholding” student loan forgiveness from severely disabled veterans — President Donald Trump signed an executive order in August to grant these veterans automatic relief, but after an initial rollout, the program was halted again, and will now resume on July 1 — as well as awarding a debt collection contract to a company she previously had financial connections with and her reluctance to grant debt relief for defrauded borrowers.

Earlier this month, House Oversight Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney threatened DeVos with a subpoena, alleging that DeVos’ office had “stonewalled and delayed” when the committee tried “multiple times” to confirm a date for her to appear for a hearing. A tentative date of Mar. 3 has been set.”

I don’t know if she is the worst of the Trump appointees in terms of her policies but she is definitely the least qualified for her position!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Reuters is reporting that Americans are evenly split, mostly along party lines (see above), over the U.S. Senate’s acquittal of President Donald Trump at his impeachment trial, even though more respondents than not think he probably did something wrong, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released yesterday.

The national opinion poll found that 43% of U.S. adults supported the Republican-led Senate’s decision on Wednesday to keep Trump in office in a case stemming from his dealings with Ukraine. Forty-one percent opposed the acquittal and 17% said they were undecided.

When asked about Trump’s acquittal, 48% of respondents said Trump “is probably guilty of the charges against him, and the Senate is protecting him,” while 39% said the president “is probably innocent of the charges against him, and the Senate made the right decision to acquit.”

The results suggest that some respondents feel that even if Trump did something wrong, it was not enough to warrant his removal from office.

The survey of 1,006 adults was conducted after the Senate voted 52-48 to acquit Trump of abuse of power and 53-47 to acquit him of obstructing Congress.

The Republican president was impeached in December by the Democratic-led House of Representatives for abusing the powers of his office in pressuring Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden, who is seeking the Democratic nomination to face Trump in the Nov. 3 election, and for obstructing a congressional investigation of the matter.

Trump denied wrongdoing and denounced the impeachment process as illegitimate. The acquittal was his biggest victory yet over his foes in Congress, who had attacked Senate Republicans for refusing to call witnesses or seek new evidence at the trial.

Senator Mitt Romney was the only Republican to vote for conviction, on the abuse-of-power charge. No Democrat voted to acquit on either charge.

Like previous surveys, the poll showed a big split between Democrats and Republicans on the issue. Democrats largely favored removing Trump from office, while most Republicans supported his acquittal.

Although Democratic lawmakers fell far short of securing the two-thirds Senate majority needed for conviction, most Democrats appeared to be largely supportive of their party’s pursuit of impeachment.

Seventy-seven percent of Democrats agreed it was “the right thing to do,” despite the acquittal, and 67% agreed their party was right to try to impeach Trump “even if it ultimately weakens Democrats’ chances of winning the presidency in 2020.”

The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted online, in English, across the United States. It had a credibility interval, a measure of precision, of 4 percentage points for the entire sample and 6 points for measurements related specifically to Democrats or Republicans.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

New York Times columnist, David Brooks, analyzes whether the Democrats are going to give away this year’s presidential election to Donald Trump.  He makes the case that they will unless they are careful and smart about what their candidate runs on.  His conclusion:

“…in his book “The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth,” Benjamin Friedman argues that in prosperous times voters are more tolerant of diversity, more committed to fairness and expanding opportunity. As he puts it, “Economic growth bears moral benefits.”

That suggests that Democrats should acknowledge that the economy has done well since the Obama recovery in 2009. They should argue that this is the time to take advantage of prosperity to begin a moral and social revival. This is the year to run a values campaign, one that champions policies to make America more socially mobile, caring and interdependent.

In 2020, running on economic gloom or class war probably won’t work.”

Good analysis!  The entire column is below.

Tony

—————————————————————————————————–

How Trump Wins Again

Are Democrats going to give this election away?

By David Brooks

Opinion Columnist

• February 6, 2020

As several people have noticed, this was the most politically successful week of the Trump presidency.

First, President Trump’s job approval numbers are rising. When the impeachment inquiry got rolling in October his Gallup approval rating was 39. Now it’s 49. If he can hold this level, he’ll probably be re-elected.

Second, impeachment never became a topic of conversation among rank-and-file Democrats, let alone independents and Republicans, so it was easily defeated in the Senate.

To the extent that it was noticed, impeachment worked for Republicans and against Democrats. Approval of the Republican Party is now at 51 percent, its highest since 2005. More Americans now identify as Republicans than as Democrats. As Gallup dryly observed in announcing these numbers, “Gallup observed similar public opinion shifts when Bill Clinton was impeached.”

Third, there is no Democratic transcender. The Iowa results, though far from final, indicate that there is no obvious candidate who can be quickly embraced by all factions of the party. With Mike Bloomberg now doubling his campaign spending, it looks like the Democratic primary battle is going to go on for a while.

Democrats may wind up in a position in which they can’t nominate Bernie Sanders because he’s too far left, and they can’t not nominate him because his followers would bolt from a Biden/Bloomberg/Buttigieg-led party.

Only 53 percent of Sanders voters say they will certainly support whomever is the Democratic nominee. This is no idle threat. In 2016, in Pennsylvania, 117,000 Sanders primary voters went for Trump in the general, and Trump won the state by 44,292 ballots. In Michigan, 48,000 Sanders voters went for Trump, and Trump won the state by 10,704. In Wisconsin, 51,300 Sanders voters went for Trump, and Trump won the state by 22,748. In short, Sanders voters helped elect Trump.

Fourth, Trump has cleverly reframed the election. I can see why Nancy Pelosi ripped up his State of the Union speech. It was the most effective speech of the Trump presidency.

In 2016, Trump ran a dark, fear-driven “American carnage” campaign. His 2016 convention speech was all about crime, violence and menace. The theme of this week’s speech was mostly upbeat “Morning in America.”

I don’t know if he can keep this tone, because unlike Ronald Reagan, he’s not an optimistic, generous person. But if he can, and he can keep his ideology anodyne, this message can resonate even with people who don’t like him.

Trump’s speech reframes the election around this core question: Is capitalism basically working or is it basically broken?

Trump can run on the proposition that it’s basically working. He has a lot of evidence on his side: The unemployment rate is the lowest in decades. Wages are rising. The typical family income is higher than it has ever been.

Americans seem to accept this position. Confidence in the economy is higher now than at any moment since the Clinton administration. According to Gallup, 59 percent of Americans say they are better off than they were a year ago. Three-quarters of Americans expect to be even better off a year from now.

Democrats, by contrast, have congregated around the message that capitalism is fundamentally broken and that the economy is bad. As Matthew Yglesias noted recently in Vox, when Democrats were asked in the PBS NewsHour/Politico debate if the economy was good, they all gave the same answer.

Joe Biden: “I don’t think [Americans] really do like the economy. Look at the middle-class neighborhoods. The middle class is getting killed. The middle class is getting crushed.” Pete Buttigieg: “This economy is not working for most of us.” Elizabeth Warren: “A rising G.D.P., rise in corporate profits, is not being felt by millions of families across the country.” And so on down the line.

An opposition party can retake the White House in a time of rising economic conditions, but it can’t do it by denouncing capitalism and it can’t do it by denying the felt reality of a majority of Americans.

It’s hard to defeat a president in good times. U.C.L.A. political scientist Lynn Vavreck, the author of “The Message Matters” and a co-author of “Identity Crisis,” has found that the rare candidates who do succeed find issues that voters care about just as much. In 1960, John Kennedy ran on the missile gap. In 1968, Richard Nixon ran on law and order. In 2016, Trump ran on Middle America identity politics.

What would that issue be? Well, in his book “The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth,” Benjamin Friedman argues that in prosperous times voters are more tolerant of diversity, more committed to fairness and expanding opportunity. As he puts it, “Economic growth bears moral benefits.”

That suggests that Democrats should acknowledge that the economy has done well since the Obama recovery in 2009. They should argue that this is the time to take advantage of prosperity to begin a moral and social revival. This is the year to run a values campaign, one that champions policies to make America more socially mobile, caring and interdependent.

In 2020, running on economic gloom or class war probably won’t work.

Dear Commons Community,

With 99.94 of the precincts reporting, the Iowa Democratic Party released the “final” results of the state caucuses that were held last Monday.  The results (see above) show Peter Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders in a virtual tie with Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden and Amy Klobucher following.

We will continue the hear about Iowa at least until next week when the New Hampshire primary is held on Tuesday.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) ripped into President Donald Trump’s decision to honor Rush Limbaugh with the Presidential Medal of Freedom during the State of the Union address on Tuesday night. And she said honoring the right-wing radio host justified her decision to skip the event. 

Limbaugh has a long history of making racist and xenophobic comments, but Trump hailed him as “a special man, beloved by millions” as he bestowed the highest civilian award issued by the president. The honor came one day after Limbaugh said he had been diagnosed with advanced lung cancer. 

Ocasio-Cortez called the medal “an extraordinarily sacred award” and noted that previous recipients have included civil rights icon Rosa Parks. 

“Rush Limbaugh is a virulent racist,” she said in a video on Instagram. 

Trump’s decision to give the award at the State of the Union ― rather than at a dedicated ceremony as was typically done ― “cheapens the value” of the honor, she said. 

Ocasio-Cortez also mocked Limbaugh’s seeming surprise, given that there had been media reports throughout the day that it would happen. 

“He had to pretend that this was some kind of Oprah moment,” she said.

Ocasio-Cortez argued that there were others in the audience who were far more deserving of the honor, yet Trump chose Limbaugh as “red meat to his base.”

“Trump knows what he’s doing,” she said. “He wants to assert that Rush Limbaugh is somehow on the same level as Rosa Parks and it’s truly nauseating and this is one of the many reasons why I did not go.”

Don’t hold back, Alexandria!

Tony