New Poll On The Democratic Presidential Nomination

These charts reflect the results of the latest Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between December 22nd and 24th of a national sample of 591 registered voters who say they will vote in the Democratic primary. (no moe was given for just this sample)

Disgusted

Political Cartoon is by Christopher Weyant in The Boston Globe.

Mass Shootings Top 400 In U.S. This Year (New Record)

Mass shootings haven't been in the major media headlines for a few weeks now, but don't let that fool you. They have not stopped happening. It's just that the media only covers the worst ones nationally.

The chart above (using data from the Gun Violence Archive) shows the truth. The black line traces the actual number of mass shootings for each year (2014 through 2019), while the red line shows the trend over that time period. Mass shootings continue to happen in this country at a rate of more than one every day.

There were 407 mass shootings (a shooting in which at least four people were shot) in the United States through December 25th of 2019. That's a new record, and the trend line suggests we may top that in future years.

It does not have to be this way. No other developed country has anywhere near this number of mass shootings. It is because we make getting a gun very easy in the United States. Anyone (criminals, terrorists, the dangerously mentally ill, etc.) can get any kind of gun they want (and as much ammunition as they want) with very little effort.

The Democratic House of Representatives tried to do something this year. They passed a bill requiring a background check on ALL gun purchases (including at gun shows and private gun sales). But when the bill reached the Republican Senate, it died. It was not allowed to come to the floor for debate or a vote.

Those who want to reduce mass shootings and gun deaths (38,634 in 2019 through December 25th) should remember this when they go to vote next November. We will not have reasonable (and constitutional) restrictions on guns until the Republicans are voted out of power.

This is not about taking guns away from law-abiding citizens. They have a right to own guns. It is about not allowing easy access to guns for those who do not obey the law (and want to harm others).

The Defense

Political Cartoon is by Kevin Siers in The Charlotte Observer.

Trump Betrayed The Working Class He Promised To Help

(Cartoon image is by Milt Priggee at miltpriggee.com.)

When running for president, Donald Trump made glowing promises to working class voters. He promised to bring good jobs back to America and increase worker wages. He lied. He has done just what Republicans always do -- help the richest Americans and ignore the plight of the bottom 90% of Americans (especially those in the working class).

Here's how former Labor Secretary Robert Reich describes it:

For a century the GOP has been bankrolled by big business and Wall Street. Trump wants to keep the money rolling in. His signature tax cut, two years old last Sunday, has helped U.S. corporations score record profits and the stock market reach all-time highs. To spur even more corporate generosity for the 2020 election, Trump is suggesting more giveaways. Chief of staff Mick Mulvaney recently told an assemblage of CEOs that Trump wants to “go beyond” his 2017 tax cut.

Trump also wants to expand his working-class base. In rallies and countless tweets he claims to be restoring the American working class by holding back immigration and trade. Incumbent Republicans and GOP candidates are mimicking Trump’s economic nationalism. As Trump consigliore Stephen Bannon boasted recently, “we’ve turned the Republican party into a working-class party.”

Keeping the GOP the Party of Big Money while making it over into the Party of the Working Class is a tricky maneuver, especially at a time when capital and labor are engaged in the most intense economic contest in more than a century because so much wealth and power are going to the top.

Armed with deductions and loopholes, America’s largest companies paid an average federal tax rate of only 11.3 percent on their profits last year, roughly half the official rate under the new tax law – the lowest effective corporate tax rate in more than eighty years.

Yet almost nothing has trickled down to ordinary workers. Corporations have used most of their tax savings to buy back their shares, giving the stock market a sugar high. The typical American household remains poorer today than it was before the financial crisis began in 2007.

Trump’s giant tax cut has also caused the federal budget deficit to balloon. Even as pretax corporate profits have reached record highs, corporate tax revenues have dropped about a third under projected levels. This requires more federal dollars for interest on the debt, leaving fewer for public services workers need. 

The Trump administration has already announced a $4.5 billion cut in food stamp benefits that would affect an estimated 10,000 families, many at the lower end of the working class. The administration is also proposing to reduce Social Security disability benefits, a potential blow to hundreds of thousands of workers. 

The tax cut has also shifted more of the total tax burden to workers. Payroll taxes made up 7.8 percent of national income last year while corporate taxes made up just 0.9 percent, the biggest gap in nearly two decades. All told, taxes on workers were 35 percent of federal tax revenue in 2018; taxes on corporations, only 9 percent.

Trump probably figures he can cover up this massive redistribution from the working class to the corporate elite by pushing the same economic nationalism, tinged with xenophobia and racism, he used in 2016. As Steve Bannon has noted, the formula seems to have worked for Britain’s Conservative Party.   

But it will be difficult this time around because Trump’s economic nationalism has hurt American workers, particularly in states that were critical to Trump’s 2016 win. 

Manufacturing has suffered as tariffs raised prices for imported parts and materials. Hiring has slowed sharply in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and other states Trump won, and in states like Minnesota that he narrowly lost. 

The trade wars have also harmed rural America, which also went for Trump, by reducing demand for American farm produce. Last year China bought around $8.6 billion of farm goods, down from $20 billion in 2016. (A new tentative trade deal calls for substantially more Chinese purchases.)

Meanwhile, health care costs continue to soar, college is even less affordable, and average life expectancy is dropping due to a rise in deaths from suicide and opioid drugs like fentanyl. Polls show most Americans remain dissatisfied with the country’s direction. 

The consequences of Trump’s and the Republicans’ excessive corporate giveaways and their failure to improve the lives of ordinary working Americans are becoming clearer by the day.

The only tricks left to Trump and the Republicans are stoking social and racial resentments and claiming to be foes of the establishment. But bigotry alone won’t win elections, and the detritus of the tax cut makes it difficult for Trump and the GOP to portray themselves as anti-establishment. 

This has created a giant political void, and an opportunity. Democrats have an historic chance to do what they should have done years ago: Create a multi-racial coalition of the working class, middle class, and poor, dedicated to reclaiming the economy for the vast majority and making democracy work for all.  

Mistletoe Wasn't Needed

Political Cartoon is by Daryl Cagle at Cagle.com.

The Scare Word Republicans Love To Use

Happy Holiday Season!

For many centuries, people in cultures around the world have celebrated holidays around the Winter Solstice. Whenever and however my readers celebrate this seasonal holiday, I hope they have a safe and joyous celebration -- and that they may spend it with people they love.

It's Still Biden, Sanders, And Warren For Democrats

This chart is from the latest Morning Consult Poll -- done between December 20th and 22nd of a national sample of 7,178 Democratic primary voters, with a 1 point margin of error.

Merry Impeachmas

Political Cartoon is by Milt Priggee at miltpriggee.com.

Fifteen Interesting Charts From 2019

The bipartisan Pew Research Center conducted many polls in 2019, and they used that data to produce many charts. Here are 15 of the most interesting charts they published in 2019.

Principles?

Political Cartoon is by Matt Wuerker at Politico.com.

Trump And Republicans Aren't Scrooges (They're Worse)

(Cartoon image is by John Darkow in the Columbia Missourian.)

After watching the Trump Republicans for the last three years, some might be tempted to call them Scrooges at this time of the year. But economist Paul Krugman says that would be a mistake. They are far worse than Ebenezer Scrooge. Here is how he makes this case in The New York Times:

By Trump-era standards, Ebenezer Scrooge was a nice guy.

It’s common, especially around this time of year, to describe conservative politicians who cut off aid to the poor as Scrooges; I’ve done it myself. But if you think about it, this is deeply unfair to Scrooge.

For while Dickens portrays Scrooge as a miser, he’s notably lacking in malice. True, he’s heartless until he’s visited by various ghosts. But his heartlessness consists merely of unwillingness to help those in need. He’s never shown taking pleasure in others’ suffering, or spending money to make the lives of the poor worse.

These are things you can’t say about the modern American right. In fact, many conservative politicians only pretend to be Scrooges, when they’re actually much worse — not mere misers, but actively cruel. This was true long before Donald Trump moved into the White House. What’s new about the Trump era is that the cruelty is more open, not just on Trump’s part, but throughout his party.

Now, the conventional wisdom about today’s Republicans is indeed that they are Scrooge-like. That is, the story is that they want to serve the interests of the rich (which is true), and that the reason they want to slash aid to the poor is to free up money for plutocrat-friendly tax cuts.

But is that really why the right is so determined to cut programs like food stamps and unemployment benefits?

After all, the explosion of the budget deficit under Trump shows that Republican claims to care about fiscal responsibility were always humbug, that they’re perfectly willing to slash taxes on the rich without offsetting spending cuts. Furthermore, because America spends relatively little money helping the poor, even harsh cuts — like the Trump administration’s new rules on food stamps, which will hurt hundreds of thousands — will at best save only tiny amounts compared with the cost of tax cuts.

And in important cases, the right is so eager to hurt low-income Americans that it’s willing to do so even if there are no budget savings at all.

Consider the case of Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act, which a 2012 Supreme Court decision made optional: States could choose not to participate.

Why would any state make that choice? After all, the federal government will pay 90 percent of the cost, and experience shows that expanding Medicaid produces indirect cost savings — for example, by letting states reduce aid to hospitals for uncompensated costs.

Furthermore, the federal funds brought in by Medicaid expansion boost a state’s economy, which raises tax revenues. So expansion is, from a state fiscal point of view, neutral or even net positive. Why would any state turn it down?

Yet 14 Republican-controlled states, many among the nation’s poorest, are still refusing to expand Medicaid.

At the same time, a number of states are trying to limit access to Medicaid by imposing stringent work requirements. This may sound like a cost-saving measure, but it isn’t — trying to enforce work requirements, it turns out, costs a lot of money.

The point is that these state governments are only pretending to be penny pinchers. In reality, they’re actively trying to make peoples’ lives worse, and they’re willing to lose money to accomplish that goal. But why?

In 2018, The Atlantic published a memorable essay by Adam Serwer titled “The Cruelty Is the Point,” about the political importance of shared pleasure from other people’s suffering. Serwer was inspired to write that essay by photos of lynchings, which show groups of white men obviously enjoying the show. Indeed, in America, gratuitous cruelty has often been directed at people of color.

But as Serwer also noted, it’s not just about race. There are more people than we like to imagine who rejoice in the suffering of anyone they see as unlike themselves, especially anyone they perceive as weak.

In fact, I suspect that this mentality is part of the explanation for the seeming paradox of strong Republican support in places like eastern Kentucky where large numbers of poor whites depend on programs like food stamps: Those who aren’t receiving aid actually want to see their poorer neighbors hurt.

What Trump has brought to his party is a new willingness to be openly vicious.

I’m not saying that he’s honest about his motivations. He and his aides still go through the motions of pretending that actions like denying aid to storm-ravaged Puerto Ricans or cutting off food stamps for hundreds of thousands are about fighting corruption or enforcing fiscal responsibility.

But their attempts to justify cruelty as being somehow in the national interest are low energy, especially compared with the enthusiastic nastiness Trump exhibits at political rallies. Trump has celebrated and reportedly wants to campaign with servicemen he pardoned after our own military convicted them of or charged them with war crimes, clearly because he likes the idea of indiscriminate killing — and so do some of his supporters.

So I’m going to stop calling today’s Republicans Scrooges. We’d be in much better shape if Trump and company were merely heartless misers. What they really are is much, much worse.

He Never Learns

Political Cartoon is by Jimmy Margulies at jimmymargulies.com.