Tag: politics
Why We Need Not Obsess Over Declining Birth Rates

Why We Need Not Obsess Over Declining Birth Rates

Americans have this big obsession over population numbers. One reason is that reports related to population come with numbers. Numbers give politicians and journalists something concrete to either agonize or crow over.

The problem with this approach is that the numbers don't necessarily reflect the living reality of people being counted. Americans felt OK with their country in 1960, when the population totaled 179 million. But with birthrates falling and population growth flattening, there's allegedly a crisis even though the number of Americans today, 336 million, is almost double that of 1960.

The Boston Globe frets that cities like Omaha, Nebraska, and Bakersfield, California, are producing far more babies per capita than Boston and Seattle. The reason is that highly educated workers are more likely to delay starting a family until their 30s. About 53 percent of Bostonians aged 25 and older have at least a college degree, compared with just under 40 percent of Omahans in the same age group.

Needless to say, Boston and Omaha are both wonderful cities, each in its own way.

This counting also fails to consider land area. Older coastal cities have tight city limits whereas the newer ones in the interior tend to have large land areas. Omaha has about 500,000 people living in an area of about 145 square miles, while Boston's 675,000 residents squeeze into 90 square miles. Thus, one can more easily live in a suburban-type setting — where many families prefer to raise kids — in a place like Omaha than in Boston. Boston has huge far-flung suburbs outside the city limits that don't make it into this kind of count.

There are problems attached to fewer babies. Many argue that falling birth rates combined with rising life expectancy will lead to economic crisis as fewer young people are available to support growing numbers of retirees.

Another word for problem, however, is challenge. One reason for higher life expectancies is that Americans are healthier at older ages. It's undeniable that for many, 65 isn't what it used to be.

Picturesque rural areas like Sevier County, Tennessee, are now growing rapidly as older Americans, who once hiked there on vacation, now want to hike there in retirement, The Wall Street Journal reports. Long-time locals may resent the heavier traffic, but robust younger retirees need relatively little health care, and they tend not to have kids in school. Thus, they go light on use of public services.

Furthermore, retirement is not what it used to be. The older workforce — defined as Americans 65 and up — has nearly quadrupled since the mid-1980s, according to The Pew Research Center. Those 75 and older are the fastest-growing age group in the workforce. Their participation has more than quadrupled in size since 1964.

Of course, these numbers also reflect there being more older people. And many have not saved enough for a long retirement and must continue working. But many healthy "retirees" simply want to stay engaged.

Today's older Americans tend to have higher educational levels than their parents. Their jobs are less likely to require heavy physical labor, which can wear out a body. That brings us to "phased retirement," a trend whereby a worker stays with the same employer but puts in fewer hours.

There's the related phenomenon of "bridge jobs" — jobs in the same industries that involve a different kind of work or fewer hours. An example would be a manager moving into a sales position.

In the last century, the global population nearly quadrupled from 1.6 billion to 6 billion. Continuing that trend would have led to environmental catastrophe. Today's flatlining birth rates should be far preferable.

They come with challenges, yes. But it can all be worked out,

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Rep. Jamaal Bowman's Performative Politics May Lose His Seat

Rep. Jamaal Bowman's Performative Politics May Lose His Seat

If polls are to be believed, as well as vibes by those in the district, New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman will lose Tuesday in a Democratic primary race framed around the war in Gaza, following AIPAC’s unprecedented spending in the race. Yet, if Bowman loses, it will be for reasons that go far beyond money or even the passions around the war in Gaza.

A HuffPost story from Sunday chronicles Bowman’s shift from a nuanced supporter of Israel’s right to exist (while criticizing right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s destructive policies), to calling alleged sexual assaults by Hamas on Oct. 7 “propaganda” and embracing some of the most strident anti-Israel rhetoric.

While Bowman’s district is solidly Democratic, he is now embroiled in a competitive primary, which requires a deft hand and sharp political instincts—both things that Bowman seems to lack.

New York’s 16th Congressional District comprises the northern Bronx and southern Westchester County, including the cities of Mount Vernon and Yonkers. It’s hard to get more ethnically and racially diverse than the 16th: 40 percent white, 29 percent Latino, 19 percent Black, and six percent Asian. Nearly 30 percent of the district’s population is foreign born. The per capita annual income of the district, nearly $63,000, is around 1.5 times that of the United States as a whole, and likely related, its education attainment (47.5 percent has at least a bachelor’s degree) is 1.3 times the national number. And Westchester County has a significant Jewish population.

What that all means is that entrenching oneself in this district requires judicious constituent service, being present and responsive to the vastly divergent interests of not just those larger communities but also the myriad subgroups within them. As we should all know by now, there is nothing monolithic about the white, Black, Latino, or Asian communities.

Even before Hamas’ October 7 attack, Bowman was failing the art of politics. His biggest misstep—one that’s been highlighted in plenty of ads—was his vote against President Joe Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure bill. His reason was sound as well. You might remember how progressives wanted to tie the infrastructure bill to Biden’s broader Build Back Better Act, a bill to massively invest in housing, education, and health care, among other programs. Biden and the Democratic leadership in Congress caved to West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin and ended up splitting the bills. Build Back Better failed to pass, though a substantially reduced version of it, the Inflation Reduction Act, did pass—and Bowman voted for it.

However, despite fighting for Biden’s broader agenda, Bowman’s vote against the infrastructure law has given his primary opponent, Westchester County Executive George Latimer, a clear line of attack. And it seems to be landing with voters in the area. From the aforementioned HuffPost story:

“The things that [Bowman and other leftists] are voting against because they’re not getting everything they want, to me, sounds very much like children who are packing up their toys and going home,” said Jim Metzger, an architect and photographer from Hastings-on-Hudson who supported Bowman in 2022.

If an elected official wants the freedom to cast statement votes, they need to rely on a strong base of supporters ready to have their back for casting those statement votes. And that brings us to some of the people Bowman has allied himself with …

Our political system has degenerated into an ungovernable mess where people think screaming and threatening is an effective way to influence policy and politics. Daily Kos has always promoted a programmatic politics in which we build public support before demanding our elected officials take on contentious issues. It does no good to force elected allies to cast futile votes that will hurt their chances of being reelected—and our chances of building political power to create lasting change.

Unfortunately for Bowman, he doesn’t seem to have that base of support in his district. Instead, he’s tried to court a far-left that appears to have little interest in engaging electorally. As one progressive activist told The Hill:

It’s disconcerting how many activists have pushed for Bowman to stand up for Palestinians, but as of yet, as of now, it doesn’t seem all the noise has turned into financial support and that’s why Bowman may lose.

No one is asking Bowman’s supporters to go toe-to-toe with the right-wing pro-Israel AIPAC, which has dumped a shocking $14.5 million into ousting Bowman. But if every pro-Palestinian activist in the country donated to Bowman, he’d have significantly more than the $4.3 million he raised, which is less than Latimer’s own $5.8 million. (Can’t entirely blame that on AIPAC.)

Worse, the far-left that Bowman has courted is now attacking some of the most progressive members of Congress. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has tirelessly defended Bowman, and Sen. Bernie Sanders held a weekend rally for Bowman in the Bronx. The pro-Palestinian group Within Our Lifetimes attended, but not to sign up to walk precincts, make phone calls, raise money, or otherwise help get out the vote for him. Rather, they protested the event, attempting to disrupt it because no one can ever be pure enough for them.

“AOC, your hands are red. Over 40,000 dead,” they chanted. Her crime? Seemingly, it’s that she supports Biden, whom many in this movement call “Genocide Joe.” On the issue of Gaza, specifically, few are as supportive of their efforts as AOC, and she’s ardently fighting for Bowman, who has adopted much of the same language as the protestors, even accusing Israel of genocide. And yet somehow, this group decided it is these representatives who need to be protested.

Can people possibly be more absurd?

This is the same crowd that would happily enable Donald Trump’s election, even though that would be orders of magnitude more catastrophic for the residents of Gaza. It’s the reason Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is rooting for Trump to win in November.

Yet Bowman is cut from the same cloth. Responding to Latimer’s promise to deliver “real progressive results, not rhetoric,” Bowman retorted in a debate that “rhetoric creates movements in grassroots organizing that leads to American revolutions! That is what we need in this moment. We need rhetoric and results. We have both.”

As someone who lived through a revolution, I can tell you there’s nothing romantic about them. People die. Societies are turned inside out. Families are shattered. And the results are seldom what people expect.

Indeed, in American politics, “revolution” is the pining for change unsupported by popular opinion. It’s the (seemingly) easy way forward.

But let’s be charitable to Bowman and assume that he means it as some sort of benign awakening where the magic of his words and that of his allies spur a political realignment. …

Sorry, can’t do it.

Here are some commonsense guidelines for political change that these activists don’t seem to understand:

1) If you have public support, do politics.

2) If you don’t have public support, do advocacy to build public support.

It’s simple, pragmatic, practical, and realistic.

These pro-Palestinian activists don’t have public support, so the votes just won’t be there for them (AIPAC or no AIPAC), and wishing for a revolution to give them what they haven’t earned is naive extremism.

So given that lack of public support, they could’ve focused on advocacy work to influence public opinion while strongly supporting their elected allies. Instead, they turned on those allies while being obnoxious and turning off anyone else potentially open to their message.

That’s the difference between practical politics and performative politics. The right does it too, like mandating the Ten Commandments in classrooms and feigning piety to those commandments while supporting Trump.

The performative left doesn’t have the power of its counterparts on the right, they are in no way equivalent, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t doing MAGA’s bidding. Many would rather sink Biden’s campaign and hand Trump the victory than acknowledge that politics is messy and that progress takes hard work, money, and time.

New York’s 16th Congressional District seems set to remind Democrats that they value pragmatic results over performative rhetoric. Too bad that lesson will be lost thanks to AIPAC’s flood of cash. But elected incumbents don’t often lose, and it takes more than money to oust them.

If Bowman is defeated on Tuesday, he will have failed by losing touch with his district and by allying with people little interested in doing the hard work to have his back (preferring instead to damage him). The power of incumbency may save him yet. Odds are that it won’t.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Donald Trump

No, Trump Didn't 'Win Big' In South Carolina

Politics reporters last weekend hailed Saturday’s South Carolina Republican primary results as a “big win” for Donald Trump.

Not so fast. The results show that Trump is a weak candidate even in one of the most conservative states in the country. And the coverage shows that our biggest and best news organizations, on their third try, can’t figure out how to cover Trump’s campaigns.

With nearly all ballots counted, Nikki Haley won almost 40 percent. Trump got almost 60 percent. That’s well below the 30-point or even 35-point margin polls predicted for Trump, so his win was not so big.

The South Carolina results are significant because they show, yet again, how the focus by political reporters on the horse race rather than the issues distorts and damages American politics. At DCReport, we don’t cover horse races because we focus on what politicians do far more than what they say. We also never shy away from critiquing the performance of our fellow journalists.

Tuesday, Michigan Republicans will vote in their primary, which should further indicate what to expect in November. Michigan is one of only 13 states, most in the heart of the country and the edge of the Old South, in play in the Electoral College.

Clueless Commentators

For a week or so, I’ve watched numerous politics reporters, political strategists, and former party and elected officials on various cable shows offer long, detailed, and often obtuse explanations for why Haley hasn’t withdrawn from the Republican presidential primaries, given Trump’s unbroken winning streak.

The answer is so obvious you can say it in a few words. You can conceptualize it if you think about one of those billion-dollar lotteries: If you buy a lottery ticket, your chance of winning is tiny, but if you don’t, you have no chance.

Haley is simply positioning herself to be the only viable Republican choice should Trump falter due to criminal conviction, ill health, or telling voters to stay home if he realizes he may lose badly on November 5.

The South Carolina primary vote results convey a valuable message for all Americans about the values of our citizenry: not all Republicans have gone MAGA.

A large minority of GOP voters reject the racist make America white again foundation of Trump’s campaign, along with his kowtowing to dictators, promises to deploy the military for mass roundups of undocumented people, vows to lock up those who displease him, as well as his crude misogyny.

Traditional GOP Values

In short, many Republicans still believe in democracy, the rule of law, standing up to dictators, treating others with respect, holding politicians accountable, and women’s reproductive and other rights.

That these traditional American values were supported by only a minority, albeit a significant minority, of Palmetto state Republicans, shows the truth in Haley’s argument that Trump is a weak general election candidate. As Haley said just after the polls closed Saturday evening, “nearly every day, Trump drives people away.”

In South Carolina, people can vote in the other party’s primary, so some of Haley’s votes may have come from Democrats, but it is unlikely that was a significant factor.

We will have another test of Trump’s support on Tuesday when Michigan holds its primary election. How many people turn out, the share of votes Haley gets, and how politics reporters cover this primary all matter for the fate of our democracy.

In the mid-1970s, when I was the investigative reporter in the Detroit Free Press state capital bureau, Michigan was a bastion of socially conservative and economically progressive Democrats allied with powerful unions, especially the United Auto Workers. Union political arms looked out for Joe Lunchbox’s family.

Parts of Michigan, notably around Grand Rapids and west to Lake Michigan, were solidly Republican. Still, the elected officials I knew didn’t spout hatred, admiration for dictators, and revenge as their core message the way we hear from Trump and his MAGA mob.

Jobs and Voting

Michigan’s red shift followed decades of the big three automakers paying too little attention to quality. That created an opening for Japanese and other overseas car makers who steadily improved their offerings and adapted to changing consumer preferences. Many newer vehicle plants are in Ontario because Canadian healthcare isn’t on the books of employers, unlike Michigan and the rest of America.

The anti-union politics of the 1980s also drove down American pay. As pay and job availability deteriorated for factory and related workers, many Michigan Democrats aligned with the Republicans, believing that GOP policies would make working people better off. We now have more than 50 years of indisputable economic evidence showing the reverse.

But support for Republicans, while enough to capture the governor’s office for 20 of the last 33 years, was always weak in Michigan. Trump beat Hillary Clinton in 2016 by fewer than 12,000 votes, while the Democratic Party candidate has won every other presidential election since 2000 by at least 154,000 votes.

Trump and his allies insist “deep state” operatives and partisans stole the 2020 election. Three months ago, Trump even claimed he won all 50 states. But when judges in Michigan and elsewhere asked for offers of proof in five dozen lawsuits, Trump and his fellow election deniers produced not even a scintilla of evidence. Nonetheless, ever since, leaders of the Michigan Republican Party have perpetuated Trump’s lie. This has made for a literal state party fistfight, a dramatic fall in donations, and general disarray.

Voters should pay close attention to the Michigan Republican primary turnout and the margin of Trump’s almost certain victory. The turnout will help gauge voter enthusiasm within the GOP. And, as with South Carolina, Trump’s margin will indicate the breadth of his support within the Republican Party.

Reprinted with permission from DC Report.

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