The biggest frustration I had with Biden was his inability to put out a policy that didn't have just enough lefty bullshit in it to be controversial. The infrastructure bill was a prime example, with the initial draft taking such and expansive view of infrastructure that it was easy for Republicans to oppose. If it were limited to normal things they'd just end up bitching about passenger rail subsidies or something like that and it wouldn't have had as much bite. The argument at the time was that the Republicans are going to find something wrong with it anyway so let's give them some obvious bait so we can keep the stuff we want, but I hate that way of negotiating. I'd rather they submit an uncontroversial bill and dare the opposition to vote against it.
Rov_Scam
5hr ago
Ideally, Iran makes a credible and verifiable commitment to dismantling their nuclear weapons program and stop supplying arms to HAMAS, Hezbollah, the Houthis, Russian Federation, Et Al. Less Ideally, we turn them into a failed state that wouldn't be able to muster up a nuclear weapons program even if they wanted one. If the choice is between reducing Iran to Afghanistan-esque hodge-podge of pre-industrial warring tribes and giving the IRGC access to nuclear missiles we choose to turn Iran into another Afghanistan.
If the ultimate goal here is to dismantle Iran's nuclear weapons program, the path the administration is currently on isn't set up to do that. That would require a ground invasion to secure the known nuclear sites, destroy the equipment, and remove the fissile material. But Trump doesn't have the stomach for that, if only because he knows it would be incredibly costly and would likely drag on much longer than he can endure politically. Such an invasion would have a high risk of turning into an Iraq-style quagmire. You don't seem to be advocating for that either, and instead propose two half-measure options.
Option A is less likely to happen now than it was before the war, and the chances were already diminished after Trump backed out of the JCPOA. You can complain all you want about the lack of "any time, anywhere" inspections, but Iran was already giving up quite a lot in exchange for relatively little. The big prize for Iran was the lifting of UN sanctions, but those weren't affected by the US pullout. The actual US sanctions relief provided wasn't much, and there was no plan to resume normal relations. If Trump was concerned that Iran wasn't holding up their end of the deal, there were mechanisms for that to be adjudicated, but he had no interest in hearing what an independent panel had to say about the matter. All his actions served to accomplish was a more complete erosion of trust. If Trump wanted more from the Iran deal he could have gone back to the bargaining table and offered more concessions. As someone who likes to pretend he's a master dealmaker, he doesn't seem to understand that you get what you pay for.
Of course, Trump wasn't the first person to poison this well. Back in the days before anyone was concerned about a nuclear Iran, the Iranians elected their version of an opposition candidate as president, one who did not have the endorsement of the Supreme Leader and who ran on a platform of increased dialogue with the West. There were some early successes under the Clinton administration (largely undone due to suspicion of involvement in the USS Cole bombing), and Iran denounced the 9/11 terrorists and provided key US intelligence in the invasion of Afghanistan. Then Bush gave his Axis of Evil speech, which didn't help matters, and when Iran offered their assistance with the Iraq invasion, the Bush administration stonewalled them. The effect of all of this was that the Iranian electorate came to believe that dialogue with the US was pointless, and the moderates were driven out of power. Instead you get Ahmadinejad, a revived nuclear weapons program, and intransigence in the face of international pressure. And then after they think they have a deal Trump looks for a reason to back out. Why would the Iranian government think they can trust the US to hold up their end of any bargain? Even if they agree to the kind of verifiable reductions that you're talking about, the US doesn't have a great track record with those, either. Hans Blix said numerous times in the months prior to the Iraq War that his inspection teams couldn't find any evidence of WMD facilities, but the US decided to believe their own intelligence instead and invaded anyway. If Iran actually is a nuclear threat, then their best bet at this point is to develop nukes before the US stops them, which, as I said at the beginning, they aren't going to do.
Option B is more likely to happen, but you seem to forget that Afghanistan played a key role in the worst terrorist attack in US history. Such a key role that invading them was uncontroversial. And such a scenario doesn't preclude them from getting nukes. If Iranians cause another 9/11, what do you do then? You've already bombed them back to the Stone Age, so that isn't going to be an option.
Rov_Scam
1d ago
In the late 90s and early 2000s I had friends, a brother and sister, whose dad worked some kind of sales job where he had access to free concert tickets. This is back when purchasing agents weren't prohibited from accepting gifts from vendors, and his company would buy tickets in bulk and occasionally get promotional ones thrown at them for free. While most of these were intended for customers, there were always shows with limited demand that he couldn't give away, so he would get his extended family together and they'd invite a bunch of friends and a huge group of us would go to these concerts for free. But there was one high demand show that he had a ton of tickets to that I went to, because it those demanding the tickets weren't the same as his customer base, and everyone in the group was really into music and had wide-ranging taste and would see anything remotely interesting if it was free.
I bring this up because you talked about how the Rior Grrrl trend was pretty much dead by 1999, and I think the concert I went to contributed to its demise and helps explain why girls of that disposition may have gravitated towards Woodstock '99 type music. For those who aren't familiar, Riot Grrrl was a short-lived movement that had greater purchase among critics than the general public, a situation which makes it seem more important in retrospect than it was at the time. The basic impetus was that there's a lot of loud, aggressive rock music made by men, but when women act like that it's taboo. The bands, whose style was derived from punk, made a political statement out of breaking that taboo. The lyrical themes were overtly feminist and intentionally controversial. However, describing them as "intentionally asexual angry-dyke-elastic-waistband-whine" is rather myopic.
This was certainly the popular perception, such that one existed, but it was not the reality. Calling them intentionally asexual is an odd position to take for a genre with song titles like "I Like Fucking", and when "Rebel Girl" by Bikini Kill, progenitors of the genre, has overt lesbian themes. This was at a time when the best known lesbian musician was Melissa Ethridge, was a conventional rock and roller who sang about love and loss but always in gender nonspecific terms. The idea that their style was dykey has been overblown in retrospect; they mostly just looked normal. And while they sang about lesbian themes, they were more "queer" in the contemporary sense. Musically speaking, it's not without interest but was very much of its time.
By the late 90s it was already dying. As I said, it had certain cultural cachet, but the fundamental problem of trying to turn music into politics is that when the music is part of the message itself, it will necessarily lack mainstream appeal, since there are no political implications in doing what everyone else is doing. So by saying that it was okay for girls to make aggressive music, there music had to actually be aggressive, too aggressive to have any appeal beyond college campuses and the independent scene. Now, there had already been some successful musicians who had made politics part of their work, most notably John Lennon, but it had always seemed like a sideshow. Lennon's most overtly political record, Some Time in New York City, is almost universally regarded as his worst record, and the agit-prop sing-a-longs were quickly, and wisely replaced with more conventional material on the follow up, Mind Games. The real danger to the Riot Grrrls was that a mainstream musician would make a credible claim to their political mantle.
In 1996, Candaian singer-songwriter Sara McLachlan noticed that concert promoters were reluctant to put two female acts on the same bill. The following year, at the peak of her career, she was able to organize a touring show that would feature an all-star lineup of female musicians. The tour, Lilith Fair, was a huge success, ran for three years, was flogged relentlessly on VH1, and was not shy about being overtly political. The problem with Lilith Fair was that whatever cultural cachet the Riot Grrrls had had been coopted by people who could sell more records. It's hard to evangelize Sleater-Kinney for political reasons when one can get the same sense of empowerment from Sheryl Crow. There was nothing particularly political about any of the artists who toured with Lilith Fair, and the political message was a milquetoast "women can make music as well as men" rather than the more controversial feminism of the riot grrrls.
If you haven't figured it out by now, Lilith Fair was the concert I attended with my friends, in the 1998 installment. If you were a college girl looking to get her freak on and indulge in feminist politics, it probably wasn't the place for you. It probably had more actual lesbians than a riot grrrl show (the Indigo Girls were there), but there were also a lot of families, older people, and yuppie couples. But to the extent that it had a political purpose it was more successful than the riot grrls could ever be, because it appealed to everyone. The 1999 installment had McLachlan, Crow, The Dixie Chicks, and Queen Latifah. Those are four very different styles with very different audiences, but it didn't matter because the kind of people who were likely to attend Lilith Fair weren't the kind of people who made musical taste a part of their identity. And the political message stuck, as it showed that a tour filled with women could make a ton of money, even without any stylistic coherence. And while the artists involved were mainstream, they were also credible; no one doubted that they would sell a ton of tickets with Celine Dion and the Spice Girls on the bill; they had to have people who relatively sophisticated listeners could like unironically.
But Lilith Fair wasn't cool. A 35-year-old systems analyst with 1000 CDs in his collection of all genres may have bought Surfacing after hearing "Adia" on the radio and agreed that it was a good album, but the kind of college girls who listened to it were the ones who majored in English and didn't party. The Lilith Fair acts were credible, but only to adults; they certainly weren't something that was going to get you anywhere in high school. It also didn't help that 1999 wasn't exactly the most divisive time politically. Bill Clinton had a massive approval rating despite having recently been impeached, nobody was excited about the 2000 election, and 9/11 hadn't happened yet. Most young people were apolitical. Lilith Fair was overtly political, yet I don't remember any particular criticism or disagreement.
So whatever else you want to say about the riot grrrls, they had a certain youth appeal that Lilith Fair couldn't replicate. The other thing about them is that they operated on the same wavelength as grunge in the early to mid 90s. While grunge had become fully mainstream by the middle of the decade, there was still a certain punk energy it retained, a certain leftist political lean, a certain don't-give-a-fuck slacker ethos. This is why the forgotten Woodstock 94' never received the same amount of attention as the '99 edition, even though it, too, was popularly considered a logistical failure at the time. Nu-metal had a certain dark rage to it that neither grunge nor riot grrrl had; even if the latter was consciously trying to be aggressive, it couldn't escape the arty subtext that came with the territory of being an indie band in the 90s. By the end of the decade, rock and roll, which had largely established its reputation on the basis of shocking your parents, had reached a terminal state of heaviness. Music can only get so aggressive; it had to end somewhere, and it's no surprise that rock would mellow out in the decades to follow. So what you end up with is people playing really aggressive music with no political subtext to appeal to, that only appeals to a college crowd and has little credibility among adult critics. Then put them in an abandoned air force base with 300,000 kids who are of prime partying age in horrible conditions, and tell them to start breaking things. The violence at Woodstock '99 may have not been inevitable, but it definitely wasn't surprising.
Rov_Scam
1d ago
I don't know about raspberries, but if you're looking for a kickback scheme you can do a lot better than books. People look at the nameplate advance estimates, see the bulk buys, think there's something fishy, and cry corruption, but it's really more complicated than that. Yes, Hillary Clinton got an 8 million dollar advance for Living History. I can't find any allegations that bulk buying was involved, but let's look at the economics of it anyway. She didn't get to keep the whole 8 million. An agent typically gets 15%, which takes us down to 6.8 million, plus she used a ghostwriter, and if you want a ghostwriter you have to pay them yourself. She reportedly paid hers $500,000, so we're down to 6.3 million that she collected.
But that's not a flat fee; it's an advance against royalties, meaning she can't collect any royalties until the book sells enough to recoup the 8 million advance. The list price of the book was $28. Half of that goes to the bookseller, and a typical royalty is 10% of retail. So of that $28, Hillary made $2.80 per book sold, as far as accounting against the advance. The book would need to sell a little over 2.8 million copies before she would make any money on it beyond the advance, and even when she reached that threshold, she would only be making $2.38 per book after the agent takes his cut. There are a couple caveats here: That assumes that all the sales would be of the domestic hardcover at the list price. Foreign rights are sold separately for a flat fee, so if a publisher in another country wants to pay $1 million for them then she'd get $100,000 credited towards royalties in one fell swoop. On the other hand, if there's a paperback edition the list price would be lower, and some books will be sold at below list through book clubs and publisher discounts, so she'd need to sell more books to make up for it. And then there's audiobooks, large print, etc., which has its own price.
The upshot is that if you're trying to give a politician a kickback through book sales, you're only giving them 8 1/2 cents on the dollar, and that's not until after they've recouped their advance. Most politicians aren't going to recoup their advance. Why do publishers give them if they're never recouped? Because they can still make money for the publishers. Hillary Clinton needs the book to sell 2.8 million copies (give or take the caveats) to make money beyond the advance at an effective royalty of 8.5% of retail. The publisher, however, is making 40% of retail, less fixed costs like art, editing and promotion, and marginal costs like shipping and the book itself. If we ignore those (which I will because I have no idea how much they would have cost in 2003), they're making $11.20 per book sold, meaning they only need to sell about 714,000 books to make back their investment. If I assume for the sake of argument that they're making $6/book after costs, they still only need to sell half as many books as she does to come out ahead.
The other thing about bulk buys is that it mostly isn't done as a kickback but by the author themself to their own immediate detriment. The first reason for this is similar to what you said about PACs and the like buying the book to distribute to their supporters, but politicians often buy books themselves as thank-you gifts to donors. Again, I have no idea if this happened or not, but suppose someone gives Clinton's reelection fund $1000 in 2003. They might be more inclined to donate in 2004 if they receive a signed copy of the book with a thank-you note in the mail. In this transaction, Clinton actually lost about $25, but it's worth it if it keeps a large donor on the hook. The other reason to do this is to pump the bestseller lists, particularly the NYT.
A big part of this is vanity, but there can be some financial motive. The publisher can write the best blurb in the world, but it isn't going to compare with "New York Times Bestseller" emblazoned on the cover of subsequent printings. Subsequent printings which might not happen, by the way, which extend the shelf life of a book's profitability and might not happen if the book isn't on the list. Plus it means Barnes and Noble will put it on a display in the front, and the list itself is a form of advertising. It's a risky strategy, though, because it's expensive and isn't guaranteed to work. The number of books sold required to get on the list varies by the week, and you might not have any idea of sales figures until you get royalty statements six to nine months later (and even then you can only estimate). If Hillary Clinton thinks it will take 10,000 copies sold in the first week, then she's laying out $280,000 for a shot in the dark. Plus, the NYT is a curated list, not one based on raw sales totals, and beginning in the 90s they started putting daggers next to books that they thought benefited from bulk sales. Ted Cruz was famously pissed when they refused to list his book altogether due to allegations of bulk buying. $280,000 isn't a lot when you have $6.3 million to play with, but most book advances aren't that high.
In any event, I don't think there's any real doubt that Simon & Schuster paid Clinton what they did for any reason other than economics, because the deal made sense at the time. She was already a bestselling author at that point; It Takes a Village was her most noteworthy work, but she had just put out a coffee table book that sold half a million copies. Add to that that it would be a memoir and was coming a few years after the Lewinsky scandal and it was reasonable for them to expect demand to be high. And they were right—it sold a half million copies in its first week. If she were juicing the demand through bulk sales she would have given far more than the advance back to the publisher. I don't know who buys them (I never saw them become a phenomenon like Michelle Obama's book was), but they apparently sell well.
Rov_Scam
1d ago
No worries on my end. I highly suspected he was using LLMs to do the heavy lifting, but I wasn't 100% certain because even I, as an AI skeptic, didn't think they were that bad. Maybe he's just not using them right, but I'd think that an AI would realize that his corruption amendment was just a poorly-written bribery statute. He then proceeded to argue based on the presumption that it said something it didn't. I almost lost it laughing when he responded for @netstack's simple question about corrupt book deals. Aside from not even trying to edit the LLM output, the most recent example he gave was from 25 years ago, and neither example would have resulted in any liability under his proposed amendment because there was never any indication that the publisher got anything in return other than a book.
Rov_Scam
2d ago
87 years ago, our forefathers founded a new country based on liberty and equality. Now we are at war with ourselves in a test of whether our nation, or one like it, can survive. We gather on a battlefield of that war to dedicate a cemetery for those who made the ultimate sacrifice in service of our nation, as is proper. However, there is little we can do, as it has already been consecrated by those who fought here. No one will remember this ceremony, but no one will forget the battle. Now we must use their deaths as motivation to finish the job and guarantee the future of democratic government.
Rov_Scam
2d ago
As you worded your proposal:
Any person offering payment or consideration in exchange for governmental action commits a federal felony punishable by not less than ten years imprisonment. This prohibition applies to all forms of influence including gifts, speaking fees, book deals, employment offers, investment opportunities, and any other transfer of value to an official or their family members.
Compare to the Federal bribery statute:
(b) Whoever— (1) directly or indirectly, corruptly gives, offers or promises anything of value to any public official or person who has been selected to be a public official, or offers or promises any public official or any person who has been selected to be a public official to give anything of value to any other person or entity, with intent— (A) to influence any official act
I'm not sure how what you're proposing is meaningfully different. Hell, what I excerpted is broader than your proposed law, and that's only a small, representative part of the statute. Offering payment in exchange for governmental action is the definition of a quid pro quo. Your book deal example doesn't even violate ethics rules because the deal wasn't in place at the time of the governmental action. We have these rules to begin with to prevent the corruption of the legislative process, not the corruption of the publishing industry. If the deal wasn't in place when the official cast his vote, then it couldn't have possibly influenced his decision.
You say no attorney wants to confuse a jury—I disagree. Obfuscation through 'legalese' is a standard tactic to hide the lack of a moral or logical core in a policy.
What are you basing this on? Are you a litigator? Because I am, and I can guarantee you that the last thing I want to do is confuse a jury, or a client for that matter. How do you think this works, that juries are so stupid that Lawyer A will make a reasoned argument and Lawyer B will use a bunch of fancy five-dollar words that they don't understand and will do whatever he asks anyway because they think he's smarter? No, they're going to wonder what the hell he's talking about and go with A because he actually gave them a reason. To the extent that lawyers overuse technical jargon it's because for semantic reasons we have to be very careful with language in some contexts where words have very specific meanings. But we're told from the very beginning of law school to avoid using legalese any time you're dealing with the public, or the court, or really anyone, unless it's absolutely necessary.
In this system, the 'Common Law' being preserved is the spirit of the tradition...We have had 250 years of 'modifying the common law' to the point where the original protections for the citizen are unrecognizable.
What protections are those? What do you actually know about common law beyond it being a buzzword some conservatives like to use to contrast legal concepts they like with those they don't like? Our own constitutional protections are rooted in the idea that the common law did not contain adequate protection for the citizens; every right enumerated in the Bill of Rights addressed some deficiency in that respect. The Reconstruction Amendments took the idea further, and more recent legislation like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Americans with Disabilities Act took the idea further still.
I understand your argument, but you need to consider the full ramifications. The only example I can think of of an unamendable amendment in American history was the Corwin Amendment from 1860, which would have prohibited any amendment banning slavery. Five years later, slavery would be constitutionally prohibited. The only prohibitions on amendment in the actual constitution are the prohibition on an amendment banning the slave trade prior to 1808, and the provision that there will always be equal Senate representation. The first of these is moot and the second uncontroversial, but all three examples of proposed or actual unamendability were the result of temporary political considerations that are no longer relevant. The foreclosing of the possibility of constitutional change poses two dangers: It increases the risk of violent revolution, and it leads to the very disrespect of institutions you're trying to stem. Is it consistent with democratic theory to prohibit future generations from making fundamental political choices?
Rov_Scam
2d ago
Alright, I'll bite. Your first amendment is completely pointless. Bribing a public official is already illegal in all 50 states, DC, and at the Federal level. All you've done is restate bribery laws that are lengthier yet somehow more vague than existing bribery laws. Like, why are you mentioning book deals? Politicians write books all the time, but I never heard anyone suggest that a book deal was a quid pro quo to push legislation favorable to Random House. Why do you feel the need to replace the existing court system with a special court that appears to operate more like a grand jury (whence the judge and defense attorney?) than a regular court, except it has the power to convict and sentence and no secrecy. Why the need for "plain language translators" and sanctions for trying to intentionally confuse the jury? It's the job of the attorneys and judge to present things so that the jury understands. If an attorney or expert presents confusing information the result is that the jury ignores it at best and at worst both ignores it and holds it against he side that presented it. I can think of no situation where it would be advantageous to confuse the jury.
So that's pointless. Elsewhere it's outright contradictory. You state that
"The United States shall preserve the cultural, linguistic, legal, and moral traditions established by those who founded and built this republic — rooted in Western civilization, shaped by Christian moral principles, and expressed through the English language and the common law tradition — as the core national identity into which all immigrants are assimilated.
and later go on to say
Violations by public officials — including the enactment of laws, regulations, or policies that demonstrably violate this Amendment — shall constitute a federal felony punishable by permanent disqualification from all public office and not less than ten years imprisonment.
You'd probably be interested to learn that absolute legislative immunity is a common law principle. Enacting laws is about as core a legislative duty as one can get. Furthermore, over the past 250 years, the entire modus operandi of state legislatures has been to add to or modify the common law. Things as diverse as the Uniform Commercial Code and modern procedural rules are directly at odds with the common law tradition.
But that's enough for me. I could go on, but this whole thing reads like a parody.
Rov_Scam
2d ago
I'm not saying that leaving your phone at home makes it the perfect crime. People were convicted of crimes long before smartphones. All the things you mention, and several others, could come into play, or they couldn't, and even if they did, trying to make those arguments requires more inferences on the part of the jury than having phone GPS data putting you directly at the scene.
Rov_Scam
2d ago
I think the argument is intended to be that since you carry your phone everywhere and the phone was at home, you must have been too.
Rov_Scam
2d ago
He's part of a long line of people with no credentials who say things that sound interesting when taken out of context, but when you dive into the material you realize he's a crackpot.
Rov_Scam
2d ago
I know several pharmacists, and at least one is adamant that when it comes to OTC meds and vitamins, just get the cheapest ones you can find. If it says it has 500 IUs of Vitamin L then that's what it has, period. It's a chemical compound,.and one company's isn't any different than another's.
Rov_Scam
2d ago
If you're only trying to get the data off of it, just get a SATA to USB adapter and call it a day, or find a friend who is willing to tie up his PC for a couple days in exchange for a free hard drive. What you're describing could be any number of things and I wouldn't just start throwing parts at it if you're not going to keep the machine. The only caveat here is that you might be able to resell it if it's working, which might not be a bad idea if you consider an 80 dollar power supply a major decision. Also, what's on here that you need? I understand wanting to save his work, but unless you think you're going to look at it from time to time in remembrance, there's a good chance you'll just transfer the data to a new hard drive that will sit in a drawer for the next 50 years.
Edit: I would add that I've had two power supplies fail on me and neither of them did what you described. The machine would start to boot, then shut off. I think. It's been a while, but I don't remember any boot loops. That could still be it, just letting you know my experience.
Rov_Scam
2d ago
How does this save any time? Don't you still have to give Claude the information?
Rov_Scam
2d ago
I mean, it isn't an organization the same way, say, the NAACP is, where there are local chapters and a national office and membership lists and a full-time staff. It's more like the Crips, where various local crews of a dozen guys will wear the colors but aren't beholden to any larger organization. This is assuming that people still identify as antifa and it isn't just an insult political opponents lob at people they don't like who presumably engage in certain practices.
Rov_Scam
2d ago
The difference is that corruption refers to a specific set of practices, many if which are illegal and most of which violate ethics rules. Antifa is a theoretical set of political opinions that can result in illegal activity, but the activit isn't antifa in and of itself, and holding certain opinions isn't illegal.
Rov_Scam
3d ago
The first mistake was committing the crimes in the first place. The second mistake was using electronic communications to discuss their crimes. Committing them in a jurisdiction where the jury might not be as sympathetic as it could be is pretty far down the list.
Rov_Scam
3d ago
Wasn't that part of Trump's argument, i.e. "I'm already rich so you can trust that I won't be corrupt"?
Rov_Scam
3d ago
I don't know that desalination capacity is really the best measure of competence. California doesn't desalinate because, most of the time, there's enough water in the mountains that can be impounded that it doesn't make sense to desalinate. Consider that California supports large-scale agriculture that the UAE doesn't have anywhere near the capacity for. Urban water use is a drop in the bucket compared to that. Desalination is energy-intensive, and brine disposal is a real problem, so it's only done when there aren't any better options.
Rov_Scam
3d ago
Backstopping losses probably isn't going to make as much of a difference as they think. It's uninsurable for a reason. I carry a lot of insurance on my car, but that doesn't mean I'm going out in an ice storm. Insurance is a consolation prize for unfortunate events, not a license to take on excessive risks. "Captain, we want you to take this ship into a war zone. There's a good likelihood you'll be blown to bits, but don't worry, we'll be sure to send a ham to your widow."
Rov_Scam
4d ago
I think the allegations of black antisemitism are overplayed. Yeah, it may exist on the fringes, but one only has to look at the 2020 Georgia Senate Democratic primary to see that it isn't a huge factor. Jon Ossoff, a Jew who made his heritage part of his campaign, won overwhelmingly. I can't find exit poll numbers, but he got near unanimous support from black politicians in the state, most notably from John Lewis. Josh Stein, a practicing Jew, got nearly 70% of the vote in the North Carolina Democratic primary, running against a black guy in a state where the black vote is more important in the Democratic primary than it is in a lot of other places. It's hard to do a similar analysis for Shapiro since he never ran in a competitive gubernatorial primary, but by my calculations he got about 223,000 black votes in the general election. When Wolf ran for the first time in 2014, he got about 177,000 black votes. While the latter election had higher turnout, there's nothing in the data to suggest that blacks were especially put off by Shapiro, since he performed about as well as one would expect him to. It should be noted that blacks made up about 10% of the electorate in 2014 compared with 8% in 2022, but more blacks total came to the polls, and 92% of them voted Democrat in both elections. I don't know that any conclusions can be drawn from this, but I wanted to bring it up.
You're right that Shapiro's specific political positions may come into play when it comes to certain demographics, but that's different then saying that they'll never vote for a Jew, because they probably wouldn't vote for a Gentile who said the same things, either. And with Shapiro, you'd have to be really far to the Free Palestine side of the aisle for his comments to matter. His stance on Israel is similar to that of most Democrats: He accused Israel's military of overreaching, denounced Netanyahu, called for humanitarian aid to be allowed into Gaza, and called for an end to the war. What he refused to do was call for a unilateral cease fire without the hostages being returned, and refused to denounce Israel or Zionism altogether. The former position is now a moot point, and the latter position is likely to be held by whoever the nominee is. I agree that he's riskier on that front than a guy like Beshear, but he doesn't talk about it much and the perception of him could change when and if he's in a position where he has to talk about it more.
Rov_Scam
4d ago
I hate to dig into your personal life, but what sort of academic qualifications do you have that you can describe an Ivy League law school professor as a "midwit"?
I actually thought of her, too, but she was never nearly as popular as Etheridge. The song you linked was her biggest hit, which was No. 2 on the AC chart, 38 pop. This is Etheridge's biggest hit, which was No. 1 AC, No. 10 rock, and No. 8 pop. It was pretty much everywhere in 1994, and I still hear people sing it at karaoke today. Overall, she has four singles that outperformed lang's best. Etheridge has five platinum albums in the US. lang has one. This isn't really close.
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