Ah. Stanford's David Kennedy Can't Quote Properly Either...

UPDATE: Apropos of my:

Walker does not offer adherence to laissez-faire as a requirement for being an economist: he explicitly rejects it...

David Kennedy writes:

so do I, and so does Paul Krugman, which is why I made the reference, by way of paying him the compliment of not adhering to the long-regnant orthodoxy of the Economics Guild. Walker wrote in a facetious vein, as did I, but I guess the joke was lost on a lot of people.

---

David Kennedy of Stanford opens his review of Paul Krugman's "Conscience of a Liberal" with a claim that AEA founding president Francis Amasa Walker defined an economist as a faithful believer in laissez-faire, “not... the test of economic orthodoxy, merely.... [But] used to decide whether a man were an economist at all.”

Why am I not surprised that Francis Amasa Walker actually said something very different?

Francis Walker did not say that belief in laissez-faire determined "whether a man were an economist at all." What Francis Walker said in "The Recent Progress of Political Economy in the United States" was: (a) the better part of economists had never imposed such a test, (b) the worse part of economists in the United States who posed as "guardians of the true [laissez-faire] faith" had lost their influence, and (c) the subject was much the better for it.

Here is what David Kennedy of Stanford wrote:

The Conscience of a Liberal - Paul Krugman - Books - Review - New York Times: [M]aybe [Paul] Krugman is not really an economist — at least not according to the definition offered more than a century ago by Francis Amasa Walker, the first president of the American Economic Association, who wrote that laissez-faire “was not... the test of economic orthodoxy, merely.... [But] used to decide whether a man were an economist at all.”

Here is the real context in which Kennedy's quote appears, in Francis Walker (1889), "The Recent Progress of Political Economy in the United States," Report of the Proceedings of the American Economic Association. Third Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, December 26-29, 1888, pp. 17-40:

Yet, while Laissez-Faire was asserted, in great breadth, in England, the writers for the reviews exaggerating the utterances of the professors in the universities, that doctrine was carefully qualified by some economists, and was by none held with such strictness as was given to it in the United States. Here it was not made the test ofeconomic orthodoxy, merely. It was used to decide whether a man were an economist at all. I don't think that I exaggerate when I say that, among those who deemed themselves the guardians of the true faith, it was considered far better that a man should know nothing about economic literature, and have no interest whatever in the subject, than that, with any amount of learning and any degree of holiest purpose, he should have adopted views varying from the standard that was set up....

The abandonment of Laissaz-Faire, as a principle of universal application, however strongly individuals may still maintain it as a general rule of conduct, at once makes communion and cooperation, not merely possible. but desirable among economists. When it is confessed that exceptions, not few or small, are to be admitted, every thinking man has a part to take in the discussion; every interested and intelligent person becomes a possible contributor; every class of men, whether divided from others by social or by industrial lines, have something to say on this subject, which no other class can say for them, and which no other class can afford not to hear from them. The characteristic institutions of every nation, the experiences of eyery distinct coinmunity not only become pertinent to the subject, but constitute a proper part of the evidence which is to be gathered, sifted and weighed....

That barrier removed, political economy becomes something which never is, but is always to be, done; growing with the growing knowledge of the race, changing, as man, its subject-matter, changes; something which, in the nature of the case, must be the work, not of one mind but of many; something to which every man in his place may contribute, to which all classes and races of men must contribute, if the full truth is to be discovered; something to which every clime and every age bring gifts all their own; something to which the history of institutions, the course of invention, the story of human experience are not pertinent only but essential.

In such a work who would not wish to join? In such a work who would not welcome every faithful and honest helper?...

Comments

[marv]

Any bets as to whether DK handles this honorably, or tap dances instead?

I'm betting on honorable.

[Robert Waldmann]

Rats. I had an idea for a post making fun of DKs assertion and you ruined it by actually looking up what Walker really said. My line was to find some physicist who, more than a century ago, claimed that accepting Newton's laws of motion was not just orthodoxy but necessary to be considered a physicist at all. The only challenge is that, about a century ago, this was so true that no one felt the need to say it.

Then I would claim that, say the latest Nobel prize winning physicists aren't physicists at all, because they reject f=ma on the grounds that m is not a constant property of an object but depends on the relative velocity of the object and the observer.

Would have made Kennedy look pretty silly, but not illiterate.

[Lewis Carroll]

Oh yeah, well I happen to have Marshall MacLuhan right here...

[Gwailo]

DK's use of ... , .... and [] reminds me of an old Mad Magazine parody of movie ads that quote the reviews, where "Not at all thrilling, can't stand it, a must miss" becomes "...thrilling...can't...miss".

[Matt]

We can say that if an economist believes in a linear model of free markets then the economist must believe in a square integrable return to equilibrium model.

It is the when, mainly, the N, at which an economist assumes the binomial approximation true. To be a truly accurate economist, he must know what N yields the approximation, and importantly, what N do we the economic agents use to yield our binomial approximation.

However, if you are using linear, return to equilibrium square integrable economies, then you are using Laissez Faire as your fundamental two force driver of markets.

[knut wicksell]

here's my take on DK's miserable review. The NYT chose a historian because Paul wrote an interpretation of American history since the Gilded Age that has certain features recalling Charles Beard's account (which fell out of favour in the 1960s). They chose an American historian to do the review, which makes sense. What doesn't make sense is choosing Kennedy, who is not particularly knowledgeable in American economic and social history. There are any number of reviewers who could have given Paul's work a critical examination. Kennedy simply tried to do a demolition job. He really shouldn't go up against people who are smarter than him, and that includes most of us here on this blog.

[PeeDee]

You have to admire David Kennedy's parsimony though. He manages to insult both Krugman and Walker with the same text.

[Tomas]

This is too funny. I am sure he could have just called the national review and they would have digged up an nutty rightwing economist to quote. Why quotemine when you have a whole quoteindustry over there?

[Colin Danby]

And 3 cheers for F. A. W. It's a nice statement.

The weird part is that PK's degree of econ orthodoxy is irrelevant to the main argument of the review, a competing account of how U.S. politics has developed.

[Gray]

With all due respect for Ms. Walker, but these are horrible phrases, very difficult to read. Especially for foreign readers like me.
:-(

[mike]

Mr. Walker, not Ms. Check the date of the quote -- not many Ms. economists then.

[Kate G.]

Gray,
Also, in checking the date of the quote remember that rolling periods were the stylistic goal in those days--not power point presentations. people had longer attention spans.

Kate G.

Oh! and Congratulations to you, Brad, for checking the cites.

[John Emerson]

By now you don't really have to review NYT reviews any more. All you have to say is "About what you'd expect from the Times" and most people will understand. You can tag the good reviews with "This is from the Times, but you should read it anyway." Much more parsimonious.

[Steve]

Remarkable catch--and depressing too. When I catch my students at this sort of thing, I knock off at least a full letter grade. When I catch an author doing this in a paper I'm reviewing, I call them on it and recommend that the paper be heavily revised (or rejected outright if the misrepresentation is really egregious). When a New York Times reviewer pulls the same sort of trick, we...what, exactly? We may point out the error and ridicule the author on one blog or another, but most Times readers will never see these comments and will presumably take Kennedy's quotation at face value. The editor, who should really have caught a flub like this, seems to be absent.

I try to teach my students that mistakes like these will get them in trouble in real life. When something like this gets through, it makes me wonder if I'm really right.

[Steve]

Ken: Kennedy didn't present Walker's definition as one Walker "did not himself adopt." He didn't say anything about that at all, and he goes on to refer to it as "Walker's orthodoxy" when in fact Walker rejects it pretty clearly.

You can easily make the sentence more accurate but still concise. For example:

"And yet maybe Krugman is not really an economist--at least not according to the standards of a century ago. As Francis Amasa Walker, the first president of the American Economic Association, once observed, laissez-faire in those days 'was not made the test of economic orthodoxy, merely. It was used to decide whether a man were an economist at all.'"

Then you have to continue:

"Walker rejected this orthodoxy..."--at which point it becomes clear that the whole concept is irrelevant and should be removed from the article entirely.

[Kate G.]

Ken McKenna,
that is the most disingenous statement I've read on any topic since I read the transcript of a Bush administration hack under oath. This is a total misreading of the function of that quote and that cite in Kennedy's work. He explicitly uses the supposed authority of Walker to claim to the unwitting reader that in some serious sense Krugman is "not an economist" in a meaningful way. There is literally no other function for that sentence in the review. Its not "casual" or "formal"--terms not usually applied to direct quotations, by the way, they are either accurate or not--its an outright falsification of Walker's point in service of a childish attack on Krugman's bona fides as an economist. Its rendered all the funnier, of course, when you read the original statement in context and realize that Walker is excoriating the "economists" that Kennedy represents him as endorsing.

This is classic hackdom. You must always suspect it when the reviewer appeals to a once famous but now obscure authority to make a tendentious point that they clearly don't feel comfortable making *on the merits* of their actual reading of the book under review. Of course, its quite common in plagiarized undergraduate papers, too.

Kate G.

[Elvis Elvisberg]

Wow. My first reaction, on reading that quote, was, "what were Mr. Walker's views on phrenology? I bet Krugman deviates from those, too."

But it's not merely a century-old quote reflecting a cartoonish misunderstanding of how economic activity among humans works; it's a century-old quote rejecting that cartoonish misunderstanding as antiquated!

Disgusting.

Great work digging up that quote, Brad.

Kennedy is fortunate that, as a conservative, he is of course incapable of feeling shame.

[Kate G.]

Ken McKenna,

Can you tell me where was the "birthplace of prohibition" if not Kansas? And remember, allusions to "georgia banned it in 1735" don't count because they *preceede the founding of the US and the state system*.

I can't quite figure out what kind of gall it takes to read the fake Walker quote and take it as significant and truthful but its the same gall that published it, obviously.

Here are the various interpretations in schematic form:

Step One: "Egad! long dead and prolix economist describes economists like Krugman as not real economist! Appeal to irrelevant authority to tarnish image of Krugman."

Step Two: Read actual Citation in entirety:
"egad, long dead and prolix economist notices that the same moronic exaltation of free market orthodoxy held sway more than a hundred years ago as today. And even a hundred years ago smart economists thought that was the dumbest thing ever." Query utility of quote for its original purpose (impeaching Krugman) discover quote more apt for impeaching Kennedy (he either didn't read the quote in its entirety (plagiarized it in bowlderized form), didn't understand it, or choose to believe his audience would be so overawed at his coolness at reading some really old stuff that they wouldnl't check the cite, or all of the above.)

And to *still* tell readers of the same two cites that
1) the first one was accurate
2) the second one isn't a total contradiction of the manipulation of the reader embedded in the first one
3) that the writer of the first had the slightest integrity.
4) that the "real problem" with Krugman's work is evidenced by his perfectly reasonable claim that "Kansas was the birthplace of Prohibition." And as for your dissmissive references to Carrie Nation if you knew any history at all you'd know what an incredibly powerful political force she and the prohibitionist movement were.

Lots of people who post here--perhaps all of them--have written reviews for major journals or newspapers. Lots of us have had occasion to grade papers. Nothing should appear in a review, or a paper, that is merely "pour epater les bourgeouis" and even more to the point nothing does appear that the author is not responsible for. Kennedy's essay crashes on all counts. He introduced a quote from an unnecessary and absurdly dated source to make a point (Krugman is no economist) that even the source would not agree with. He counted on the readers not bothering to look up the cite. He's a lazy writer, and in you he found the perfect lazy reader. Too lazy to even reconsider your ill informed opinion even when the facts are held up in front of you. I see that Kennedy knows his audience all too well. A shame that the NYT decided to publish that piece of claptrap for the delectation of the rubes but I see that their strategy is working. Serious readers won't read their reviews because they are badly written and deceptively phrased--and and the boobs will because they are badly written and deceptively phrased but they scratch some conservative itch.

Kate g.

[Kate G.]

Ken McKenna,

Can you tell me where was the "birthplace of prohibition" if not Kansas? And remember, allusions to "georgia banned it in 1735" don't count because they *preceede the founding of the US and the state system*.

I can't quite figure out what kind of gall it takes to read the fake Walker quote and take it as significant and truthful but its the same gall that published it, obviously.

Here are the various interpretations in schematic form:

Step One: "Egad! long dead and prolix economist describes economists like Krugman as not real economist! Appeal to irrelevant authority to tarnish image of Krugman."

Step Two: Read actual Citation in entirety:
"egad, long dead and prolix economist notices that the same moronic exaltation of free market orthodoxy held sway more than a hundred years ago as today. And even a hundred years ago smart economists thought that was the dumbest thing ever." Query utility of quote for its original purpose (impeaching Krugman) discover quote more apt for impeaching Kennedy (he either didn't read the quote in its entirety (plagiarized it in bowlderized form), didn't understand it, or choose to believe his audience would be so overawed at his coolness at reading some really old stuff that they wouldnl't check the cite, or all of the above.)

And to *still* tell readers of the same two cites that
1) the first one was accurate
2) the second one isn't a total contradiction of the manipulation of the reader embedded in the first one
3) that the writer of the first had the slightest integrity.
4) that the "real problem" with Krugman's work is evidenced by his perfectly reasonable claim that "Kansas was the birthplace of Prohibition." And as for your dissmissive references to Carrie Nation if you knew any history at all you'd know what an incredibly powerful political force she and the prohibitionist movement were.

Lots of people who post here--perhaps all of them--have written reviews for major journals or newspapers. Lots of us have had occasion to grade papers. Nothing should appear in a review, or a paper, that is merely "pour epater les bourgeouis" and even more to the point nothing does appear that the author is not responsible for. Kennedy's essay crashes on all counts. He introduced a quote from an unnecessary and absurdly dated source to make a point (Krugman is no economist) that even the source would not agree with. He counted on the readers not bothering to look up the cite. He's a lazy writer, and in you he found the perfect lazy reader. Too lazy to even reconsider your ill informed opinion even when the facts are held up in front of you. I see that Kennedy knows his audience all too well. A shame that the NYT decided to publish that piece of claptrap for the delectation of the rubes but I see that their strategy is working. Serious readers won't read their reviews because they are badly written and deceptively phrased--and and the boobs will because they are badly written and deceptively phrased but they scratch some conservative itch.

Kate g.

[Kate G.]

sorry for the double post. I'm annoyed, but not that annoyed!

kate G.

[Steve]

Kennedy uses "Walker's orthodoxy" to refer to the once-dominant orthodoxy identified by Walker, not one embraced by Walker.

This is only clear if you know the original context. If you don't--and most of the readers wouldn't--it isn't.

[eb]

Brad's probably read the whole thing - I don't have access to JSTOR so I can only go by the excerpt - but is Walker saying that the people who held to the old laissez-faire orthodoxy have already lost their influence or is he saying that they should lose their influence? My understanding of the history of the AEA is that many of its founders and early members questioned laissez-faire but that it was still some time before the old view was abandoned.

This does not, of course, make the Times review any less wrong on Walker.

[Kate G.]

It occurs to me that I've fallen into a very common troll trap--and we've seen it here on Brad's blog and elsewhere for the past six years so I don't really have any excuse. Its called the "oh look, michael moore is fat" ploy. Really, no one can be as dopey as Ken pretends to be and no adult, certainly, who reads book reviews ought to be at all confused about the difference between a material and an immaterial fact when it is placed in a book or a book review.

An immaterial fact might be, for example, whether Kansas was the "birthplace of prohibition" or merely the "center of a storm of prohibition activity that resulted in the insertion *in the state constitution* of the first total ban on alcohol sales* in the country..." Another immaterial fact might be, for example, whether the voting rights act was passed in 1964 or 1965 if the passage in which that argument appears doesn't hinge on a few months here or there. Its an immaterial fact, for example, if Joe Blow died in 1888 or 1889 unless some other important part of our argument hinges on the exact timing of his death.

A material fact, to my mind, is whether a cited authority is cited correctly and whether the cited authority is, in fact, an authority at all. Botching a quote from an authority, or pinning your reasoning on a non-authority, are both serious academic failures and are not excused because its "only a book review" that "needs a hook" or whatever other rush limbaughlike "I was only joking when I made fun of michael J fox's life threatening disease" non denial denial Ken and Kennedy want to offer.

but of course the whole interaction is a misdirection. I'd far, far far rather read a good discussion of what *the author* has to say than even a fun free for all of what the very badly informed Kennedy and the very badly disposed Ken think Krugman should have said to be liked by orthodox free market economists.

But I guess I'll just have to buy the book. Ka-Ching! Remember, every time a phony historian points out that Krugman is not an economist, an angel gets his wings.

kate G.

[eb]

Ok, the Prohibition thing is really odd. There were temperance movements and attempts to ban or severely restrict the sale of alcohol at local and state levels before Kansas became a state and after the founding of the US - these movements were strongly related to the religious revivals of the 1830s and 1840s. In this context, Kansas' prohibition by amendment to the constitution instead of by passage of an ordinary law seems like a change in institutional strategy, not the birth of a new movement.

It wouldn't make a lot of sense to call Wyoming the birthplace of the woman suffrage movement solely because women were first given the vote there. People campaigned for woman suffrage before there was a Wyoming.

[eb]

I see I'm coming across as a defender of the review. I'm not. I'd say I was disappointed that Krugman didn't respond to the substance - instead of picking on the Prohibition comment - but there wasn't much substance to the review. I went out and bought the book yesterday.

What I find disheartening is that Kennedy, unless his views have changed in the last few years, is not a conservative, but most of the review matches pretty well what a conservative would say. It's depressing to think that his view of Krugman probably matches those of a non-negligible portion of Democratic party supporters.

[anne]

"For example, it should be of concern to Krugman's defenders that he is arguing that Kansas can be regarded as the birthplace of Prohibition because Carry Nation chopped there and it was the first state to include a prohibition provision in its constitution. Now that's disingenuous ... and just indefensibly wrong."

Immediately, we know the whole point of the comment idiocy is idiocy. Watch me chop chop chop my way through Kansas, swilling fine Kansian brandy through the chopping.

[anne]

Interestingly, Francis Walker's comments are a response to contemporary understanding of what was traditional economics in terms of Herbert Spencer or what we call social Darwinist terms. This was the age of Sencer and colonialism and the economic justification of same.

[anne]

When I was a little girl, I has a fish named "Kansas" because he liked corn. Drank a lot, but he was only a fish so who knows.

[anne]

Krugman, bash bash bash, Krugman bash bash bash, Krugman answers, bash bash bash. Really though I love Krugman bash bash bash. I am so troubled by Krugman bashing, that is the bashing by Krugman.

Cheers, cheers, cheers. Watch my cheers cheers cheers. Bash bash bash.

[anne]

And she's buyyying a staircase to Kansasss. Bash bash bash.

Rock on, Kansas.

[TGGP]

Herbert Spencer was not a colonialist. http://mythsmasher.blogspot.com/2007/05/herbert-spencer-misrepresented-in-ny.html
His American Social Darwinist follower William Graham Sumner was also a vocal opponent of colonialism. Spencer also held a rather favorable view of labor unions. http://www.reason.com/blog/show/122275.html

I came here via Alex Tabarrok who said David Kennedy is a liberal. Now some here say he is a conservative and others say he is a liberal. His piece on Krugman seems so shoddy political animosity seems the only credible explanation, but I'd like some more information about Mr. Kennedy, not having read anything else by him.

[wood turtle]

Laissez-faire? Is that anything like the State Fair?

[andres]

anne:

"When I was a little girl, I has a fish named "Kansas" because he liked corn. Drank a lot, but he was only a fish so who knows."

Oh god, she's delirious again. Somebody ask a question about Vanguard quick before we get more of the same ;-)

[jackie]

I'm happy to see the full quote. I looked for it yesterday, without luck.

The whole passage is really the weakest part of the review. It is a bad misrepresentation of the state of economic thought today, a shot at all who participate. The quote is at least very misleading -- you certainly come away with the idea that this is what Walker believed economics SHOULD be.

But, it's NOT an attack on Krugman or his credentials, which are clearly lauded in the first paragraph. It's an attempt to set Krugman up as an iconoclast. Kennedy wants readers to think that Krugman rises above the small-minded mass of free-market worshiping economists.

You wish he'd be more careful with this sort of thing. But let's not attack a charge that doesn't exist. He's not attacking Krugman...he's attacking everyone else...

[howard]

Kate G, your takedowns of our friend Ken have been brilliant, but as someone else noted, he's impervious: sheesh, a lamer pointless recitation than his "responses" on prohibition and kansas would be harder to imagine.

Kansas was the first state to ammend its constitution to prohibit alcohol sales; that was the very method that became "prohibition." what more is there to frickin' understand? and why should we care: if the worst that kennedy can say is that krugamn got the history of prohibition wrong, then he's not saying anything at all and should just shut up.

[anne]

TGGP:

"Herbert Spencer was not a colonialist."

Surely, and I am sorry to have been misleading. Spencer developed the concept of social Darwinism, that Darwin had not considered in writing "Origin of Species." "Survival of the fittest" is Spencer's term, not Darwin's.

Spencer's thought however was perfectly suited for a rationale to colonialism, and no matter Spencer's moral objection to colonialism the rationale was so applied.

Francis Walker is looking for a reading of economic theory apart from a "survival of the fittest" sense.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/books/review/Kennedy-t.html

"Never mind the Democrats’ embrace of inherently divisive identity politics, or Democratic condescension toward the ungrammatical yokels who consider their spiritual and moral commitments no less important than the minimum wage or the Endangered Species Act, nor even the Democrats’ vulnerable post-Vietnam record on national security."

Now, I am thinking to the embrace of inherently divisive identity politics and wondering whether that means Democratic Presidential candidates appearing for debates at African American or Latino forums. Has the civil rights movement been inherently divisive identity politics only Martin Luther King never realized?

David Kennedy's review is simply a conservative bashing of Paul Krugman for the sake of the bashing. No more, and absurdly done and done with prejudice.

[anne]

"Never mind the Democrats’ embrace of inherently divisive identity politics...."

Consider carefully what such a condemnation tells us. Does it tell us that identifying with a girl's wish to play soccer is of no account in a boys' footballer world? Women were, of course, not admitted to Harvard engineering till the 1970s, among other divisions. Sliderules and sex mixed poorly in olden times.

Blacks going to school with whites, public school; blacks voting with whites; blacks working with whites. We had separate and equal for 50 years, so who needed more? Martin Luther King just would not understand, and all that marching is, you know, divisive identity politics especially when Blacks are marching. So much for civil rights, being divisive and all.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/books/review/Kennedy-t.html

"Never mind the Democrats’ embrace of inherently divisive identity politics, or Democratic condescension toward the ungrammatical yokels who consider their spiritual and moral commitments no less important than the minimum wage or the Endangered Species Act, nor even the Democrats’ vulnerable post-Vietnam record on national security."

Read the pasage, and understand just what David Kennedy is about. Kennedy is about the conservative game of dismissing 50 years of agonizing work on civil rights. Imagine, that Americans of all ethnicities might come to understand the teaching of a Martin Luther Kind. Imagine Americans coming to have civil rights; inherently divisive identity politics is what Kennedy wishes only with no mention ever made of the divisiveness.

What is it about such a comment, which is found everywhere through conservative circles? Can I identify with being Irish, or is that divisive? What about being an Irish woman, which may be more divisive? What about being Nigerian? Japanese? Haitian? Suppose I were to identify with African Americans. What then?

Does identity politics involve identifying with 3.8 million children, disabled children and adults as well, just denied helath care by non-divisive Republicans? Suppose I identify with with these children. Listen to them cough....

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/books/review/Kennedy-t.html

"But as the story unfolds, serpents slither into the garden, in the form of pesky 'movement conservatives.' Those upstarts set out in the 1960s to exploit racial tensions, national security anxieties and volatile value-laden matters like abortion, school prayer and gay rights 'to change the subject away from bread and butter issues.' By century’s end they had managed to fasten upon their hapless fellow citizens 'a second Gilded Age' in which inequality is on the rise and even the modest American version of the welfare state that the New Deal put in place is in danger of being dismantled."

What bothers David Kennedy and similar conservatives so is that Paul Krugman simply describes the shaping of modern conservatism and at all costs the point is hiding this. Conservatives want to make completely sure the minority base know who they are while making sure the majority have no idea.

Identity politics was shaped by and shaped modern conservatism, but mention race race race (notice my mention) and conservatives are crazily denying there is such a thing as race, at least for conservatives.

Imagine David Kennedy reading Paul Krugman and stumbling on the word "race" and shuddering. Republican presidential candidates even now are however throwing themselves to the Values Voters Conference while fleeing from mere counseling with African Americans or Latinos. Got no identity politics nowhere nohow never.

[anne]

"Never mind the Democrats’ embrace of inherently divisive identity politics...."

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/us/politics/21justice.html

October 21, 2007

Obama Calls for Ouster of Official After Remark
By JEFF ZELENY

WASHINGTON — Senator Barack Obama said the leader of the civil rights division of the Justice Department should step down after suggesting that minority voters were not widely disenfranchised by laws requiring photo identification because many members of minorities died before reaching old age.

"This administration has shown very little interest in making sure that all people have equal access to the ballot box," Mr. Obama said in a telephone interview. "It's important for all of us to embrace the basic notion that we should try to make voting easier, not harder."

Mr. Obama, an Illinois Democrat who is seeking his party's presidential nomination, was responding to a remark made by John Tanner, the chief of the Justice Department's civil rights division. In a speech to a Latino group earlier this month in Los Angeles, Mr. Tanner said that a disproportionate share of elderly minority voters did not have identification, but added that it was not a widespread problem because of their life expectancy.

"Creating problems for elderly persons just is not good under any circumstance," Mr. Tanner told the National Latino Congreso, according to a video posted on YouTube. "Of course, that also ties into the racial aspect because our society is such that minorities don't become elderly the way white people do. They die first."

On Friday, Mr. Obama sent a letter to the Justice Department, urging acting Attorney General Peter D. Keisler to replace Mr. Tanner for making comments that were "patently erroneous, offensive and dangerous." ...

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/03/science/03ageside.html

January 3, 2007

Data on Hispanic Immigrants Presents Puzzle on Aging
By GINA KOLATA

If medical researchers were to pick someone who might defy national life expectancy statistics, few would pick Irma Lara.

She came to this country illegally from a small town in Mexico to work as a baby sitter. She was 26, had only a first-grade education and was desperately poor.

She married a Mexican-American and had seven children. Her husband's meager salary at a cotton compress company was never enough. The family had no health insurance, never saw a dentist. Now, widowed at 75, Mrs. Lara is still poor; her monthly income is less than $600. She spends her days at a community center near her tidy subsidized apartment in Hitchcock, Tex., playing bingo, learning English, working out with exercise bands and with weights.

"I am happy," Mrs. Lara said.

And, if statistics are any guide, Mrs. Lara has a long life ahead of her, longer than would be expected if she were black or a native-born white woman. It is called the Hispanic paradox, and it is one of the most puzzling discoveries in research on aging.

For example, a recent analysis by Irma T. Elo, a demographer at the University of Pennsylvania, indicates that a 65-year-old white woman will live, on average, an additional 18.9 years. But a 65-year-old Hispanic woman who immigrated to the United States will live an additional 19.8 years, a significant difference.

The longevity difference persists even though Hispanic immigrants tend to be like Mrs. Lara, poor and poorly educated and lacking health care. It persists even though, like Mrs. Lara, they get chronic diseases like arthritis and high blood pressure and are often overweight....

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/books/review/Kennedy-t.html

"Never mind the Democrats’ embrace of inherently divisive identity politics...."

President Bush had earlier made the "minorities don't become elderly the way white people do. They die first." argument in trying to convince minority leaders to support Social Security change. After all, if minorities die first, what's the point of the current Social Security system to them?

Paul Krugman pointed out immediately that the argument was faulty and discriminatory but the argument persisted and here is being used by the officer in charge of securing voter rights, before an Hispanic audience, to argue that minorities die first. But, notice that evidently Hispanic immigrants actually appear to die second.

What difference in terms of voting rights protection would it make if Hispanics died first, which they evidently do not?

[anne]

Terry, I have Krugman's book on my desk and will read it late in the week.

David Kennedy's arugment however that Democrats have been suspect in protecting our security interests since Vietnam, strikes me as absurd and serving only to cover a perpetual Republican slander.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/18/opinion/l18iraq.html

The Relentless Tragedy Called Iraq

To the Editor:

"Insurgent Bombs Directed at G.I.'s Increase in Iraq":

I can't help but compare your headline with President Bush's bizarre remarks on Wednesday: "There's some good people in our country who believe we should cut and run. They're not bad people when they say that, they're decent people":

"President Joins in G.O.P. Attacks on Democrats About Terrorism."

You better believe I'm a decent person — and a decent mother whose 19-year-old United States Marine son is being deployed to Iraq next month to face a deadly, targeted anti-American insurgency that has nothing to do with the "war on terror."

Why should my son, or any other mother's son, be sacrificed in a mounting civil war because it's not politically advantageous for the Bush administration to admit that its Iraq policy has failed?

My decency is suffused with bitterness.

Donna J. Anton
Hayle, England, Aug. 17, 2006

[David Kennedy's Republicanism answered....]

[Robert]

Economists argue among themselves. To label some who adopt a position in those arguments as "anti-economists" marks one as stupid, ignorant, or dishonest. I leave you with the freedom of choice for those options.

Anyways, Senca Falls, NY, is the birthplace of women's sufferage. They have a plaque and a museum.

[anne]

Republicans have driven attacks on Democrats since Vietnam, and before, using the imagery of fear and lunatic bravado, and simply paying attention to any Republican presidential debate will find that attacks persist however empty and however disastrous the policy to which fear and bravado have brought us.

[eb]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/25/opinion/25kennedy.html

The Best Army We Can Buy

By DAVID M. KENNEDY
Published: July 25, 2005

THE United States now has a mercenary army. To be sure, our soldiers are hired from within the citizenry, unlike the hated Hessians whom George III recruited to fight against the American Revolutionaries. But like those Hessians, today's volunteers sign up for some mighty dangerous work largely for wages and benefits - a compensation package that may not always be commensurate with the dangers in store, as current recruiting problems testify.

Neither the idealism nor the patriotism of those who serve is in question here. The profession of arms is a noble calling, and there is no shame in wage labor. But the fact remains that the United States today has a military force that is extraordinarily lean and lethal, even while it is increasingly separated from the civil society on whose behalf it fights. This is worrisome - for reasons that go well beyond unmet recruiting targets.

One troubling aspect is obvious. By some reckonings, the Pentagon's budget is greater than the military expenditures of all other nations combined. It buys an arsenal of precision weapons for highly trained troops who can lay down a coercive footprint in the world larger and more intimidating than anything history has known. Our leaders tell us that our armed forces seek only just goals, and at the end of the day will be understood as exerting a benign influence. Yet that perspective may not come so easily to those on the receiving end of that supposedly beneficent violence.

But the modern military's disjunction from American society is even more disturbing. Since the time of the ancient Greeks through the American Revolutionary War and well into the 20th century, the obligation to bear arms and the privileges of citizenship have been intimately linked. It was for the sake of that link between service and a full place in society that the founders were so invested in militias and so worried about standing armies, which Samuel Adams warned were "always dangerous to the liberties of the people."

[There's more; I haven't pasted the whole column. Here's the end of another Kennedy column:]

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950CE2DC153CF936A35753C1A9659C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all

From Pitchforks to Proposition 13

By DAVID M. KENNEDY
Published: October 5, 2003

[first few paragraphs of column about Daniel Shays and Hiram Johnson]

Proposition 13 led directly to drastic slippage in financing for local schools, and has contributed heavily to the state's current fiscal crisis. But as Warren Buffett found out when he urged Arnold Schwarzenegger to make the overhaul of Proposition 13 the centerpiece of his gubernatorial campaign, even suggesting changes to that infamous initiative is forbidden. (Mr. Schwarzenegger told Mr. Buffett that if he mentioned Proposition 13 again he would have to do 500 push-ups. Mr. Buffett has not been heard from since.)

Proposition 13's untouchability, and Mr. Schwarzenegger's fierce commitment to it, suggest that something has happened in American society that would have mystified Daniel Shays -- and Hiram Johnson as well. In their very different ways, they sought greater democracy as the means to a government that was more responsive to the masses.

But in California more democracy has produced not more attacks on the wealthy and big business but chronic chaos and even paralysis -- a kind of political catatonia perversely sanctified by neoconservative and libertarian dogmas that assert, as another former governor of California put it, that ''government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.'' (Shays may have agreed with the second clause of that sentence, but certainly not with the first; he wanted to use the government to protect debtors and the disadvantaged.)

To the extent that Californians -- and Americans -- subscribe to that view, they have confounded the predictions of countless theorists about the nature of democratic politics. Among those theorists, Alexis de Tocqueville is an exception, for he identified the peculiarities of the American case now so vividly manifest in California, that most American of states. The characteristic social class that American society nurtured, said Tocqueville, was composed of ''eager and apprehensive men of small property.'' Though born in revolution, their country was unlikely ever again to undergo revolutionary upheaval. ''They love change, but they dread revolutions,'' Tocqueville concluded, because ''they continually and in a thousand ways feel that they might lose by one.''

That social class of small property owners, and its attendant attitudes, are now ascendant in California, and perhaps in the nation at large. Their influence explains why the government from which Shays demanded relief, and the government that Johnson tried to place more firmly in the hands of the people, has now become the object of popular suspicion and hostility. Americans apparently prefer misgovernment that will leave them to their own devices to an effective government that might actually do something for them -- or ask something of them.

We've come a long way from the Regulator to the Terminator.

[Robert]

David Kennedy calls Krugman an "anti-economist". Ken McKenna's defense of Kennedy suggests that Kennedy is ignorant of the last paragraph of Keynes' General Theory.

[Gray]

"Mr. Walker, not Ms. Check the date of the quote"

Oops, sry, in an unexplainable bout of dumbness I really mistook "Francis" for a female name. My apologies to the late Francis Walker, Sir Francis Drake, Sir Francis Bacon, Saint Francis and all other bearers of that name!

As for the date, folks, I noticed it. Still, imho 18th century Adam Smith is a much easier read than 19th century Francis Walker.
:-/

[Gray]

"Also, in checking the date of the quote remember that rolling periods were the stylistic goal in those days--not power point presentations. people had longer attention spans."

Well, in German, we call such overlong sentences "Thomas Mann Sätze", after the famousauthor who used them extensively. It is considered bad style nowadays. And I stand by my opinion that Adam Smith is much easier to read, and thus allows his readers to concentrate on his statements rather than on his grammar. Oh, and btw, if this was Wikipedia, I would add {{fact}} to your statement "people had longer attention spans"...

[Gray]

"Kennedy seems to think that economists prefer to argue in the opposite direction"

Imho it is very telling that we need a crystal ball here to come to an understanding of what Kennedy might have meant. Why such a lousy review was published by the NYT is beyond me...

[eRobin]

Anyways, Senca Falls, NY, is the birthplace of women's sufferage. They have a plaque and a museum.

And a cool statue of Amelia Bloomer introducing Susan B. Anthony to Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

[John Kerry Nation]

A quick Googling finds that residents of Ohio, Maine, and Wisconsin claim their respective states to be the birthplace of Prohibition.

While reasonable people may differ about said birthplace, and unreasonable people might stand and defend their unreasoning to the bitter end, practically everyone agrees that Prohibition was a stupid and unworkable idea that gave rise to problems considered by most to be worse for U.S. society as a whole than the one it was intended to solve.

Can we at least say much the same about notions of inflicting upon us the strictly 'free' market?

More to the point here: Even the trite 'amunsing anecdote' often used by reviewers to launch their scribblings must be relevant in some sense to their aims, or they might as well start off with a bar joke.

So there is no reason for Kennedy, even seen in the best light, to note that years ago PK would not, in America, be taken seriously as an economist--unless Kennedy is either 1) seconding that notion or 2) indicating that those who resist PKs somewhat unorthodox views are the natural descendants (or bastard children) of those economic dinosaurs.

So which is it? Or was Kennedy just too dumb to have started with "Two economists walk into a bar..."?

.

[jackie]

JK Nation -- It's (2). He's saying that economists, as a group, uncritically worship the doctrine of laissez faire (and always have). He's setting up Krugman as a maverick economist. It's meant to be an approbation of Krugman -- although he criticizes his history, he commends his economics.

It's not even half-accurate, but it's not an attack.

[Psycho]

Anyone calls me Francis, I'll kill them.

[Bill Arnold]

It was the blaming of Democrats ("the party of Carter and Clinton") for a failure to respond to the U.S.S. Cole attack that caught my eye - a indicator that the author was far too familiar with right wingnut talking points of dubious truth value.

[Bill Arnold]

It was the blaming of Democrats ("the party of Carter and Clinton") for a failure to respond to the U.S.S. Cole attack that caught my eye - a indicator that the author was far too familiar with right wingnut talking points of dubious truth value.

[History Ph.D.]

Kennedy's misquoting of Walker is surprising, since Walker's campaign to fight laissez-faire orthodoxy is a large theme in several key history texts, the most comprehensive of which is Sidney Fine's splendid _Laissez-Faire and the General Welfare State_ (1956), which really ought to be reprinted. It's truly marvelous and anyone interested in this post will want to consult it.

[orionATL]

f. amasa walker?

no, can't be.

must be "obama" walker or

"osama" walker.

check with rrat-c party candidates like wilber romney.

did amasa walker attend a madrassa school?

(you don't have a clue what a madrassa school is? neither do i. don't ask; don't tell.)

francis asama/obama/osama walker,

clearly an intellectual terrorist.

yo, fbi.

yo, doj.

the guy's dead?

dig him up!

thank god, for david kennedy, john yoo, and

john yoo U.

salvation is at hand.

[Dan S.]

"Is that right? Does Krugman actually make that argument?! Surely Kennedy is completely misrepresenting Krugman's point with this comment - in other words, surely Kennedy IS "making this up." Isn't he?

Has anyone read the book? "

Here's what I wrote a bit ago over at Ezra's:

"And don't get me started on Kennedy's completely disingenuous (or uncomprehending?) characterization of Krugman's argument about stab-in-the-back-legends, revenge fantasies, and the replacement of fading memory by cultural myth as "the runaway popularity of the Rambo films (I’m not making this up) that hoodwinked the public into believing that the party of Carter and Clinton (not to mention McGovern and Kucinich) might not be the most steadfast guardian of the Republic’s safety" Indeed, most of the events Kennedy regurgitates, with the exception of Iran, happened after the point, Krugman says, that the perception of Democrats being weak on security really jelled."

[TGGP]

Spencer's thought however was perfectly suited for a rationale to colonialism, and no matter Spencer's moral objection to colonialism the rationale was so applied.
Spencer would disagree, and so would his followers. Someone who actually did think like this was Oliver "Three generations of imbeciles is enough" Wendell Holmes, who famously declared in a Supreme Court decision that the Constitution did not enact Mr. Spencer's "Social Statics".

anne, none of the stuff you pasted indicates that Kennedy is a conservative or a Republican. What eb posted points toward the contrary, but I do not consider it a settled issue. If you know something about Kennedy we don't, please share it. Otherwise, it would seem best not to refer to Kennedy as a conservative, Republican, liberal, Democrat or whatever.

[kate G.]

Terry,
I haven't read the book yet but it is really not a very surprising argument for a cultural critic to make that, well, cultural artifacts like films or books, music or political speeches affect the way viewers/votes perceive the world. I don't claim to know one way or another about the Rambo movies but anyone who watched John Wayne--I mean President Bush--swagger across the deck of the aircraft carrier with his codpiece stuffed with socks recognized that politics is theater and theater is politics.

Kate G.

[M]

Back in 2000, David Kennedy agreed with Krugman on the Southern white vote, more or less, although he goes on to add more nuance after this section--this is from an October 2000 PBS show, discussing the history and future of American conservatism, hosted by Peter Robinson of the Hoover Institution; Sam Tanenhaus is the other guest:
---
http://www.hoover.org/publications/uk/3375481.html

Sam Tanenhaus: Barry Goldwater was not an ounce of racism in him and that's very important. The party, however, aligned itself ar--around, at least in the deep south, this reaction to civil rights. And David, as far as domestic policy went in National Review, that was the one issue where they did speak loudly. They opposed the civil rights move--they--the civil rights movement and the--the supreme court's decision in 1954 to eliminate Jim Crow. Bill Buckley and his colleagues at National Review took the states' rights position that this was an unfair infringement by the central government. And so they began to build a base among voters that had not really been accessible to the republican party before.

Peter Robinson: And it worked brilliantly. How many states did he carry? Six, seven, eight, something like that?

David Kennedy: Well the George Wallace vote becomes a--a very critical swing vote after the 1960's and it's part of what forms the more solid basis of the Reagan coalition is that he incorporates a lot of that…

Peter Robinson: Give us the meaning of Ronald Reagan. The election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.

David Kennedy: Well the so-called Reagan democrats are, in large numbers, former George Wallace voters. They're blue collar ethnic voters who were part of the historic New Deal Coalition who begin to get uneasy with the--the--you might say, the New Deal of Social Compact particularly as it begins to incorporate more conspicuously racial elements into it, the civil rights movement becomes prominent. Those votes--votes go up for grabs. George Wallace gets them for a while. Nixon gets them temporarily but can't really hold them. Reagan really grasps them and holds them and that's what forms the solid republican majorities of the '80's.
---

Similar statements in the 2003 show on the history and future of American liberalism, with the other guest being George McGovern:

---
http://www.hoover.org/publications/uk/2940031.html

Peter Robinson: [...]As I read American history, the watershed, the great realignment for the Democratic Party, takes place in 1972 with the candidacy of George McGovern. Would you care to give us a paragraph assessing the place in history of the man seated to your left?

David Kennedy: Well, let me back up because I think...

Peter Robinson: All right.

David Kennedy: ...I think a more critical, pivotal moment frankly is 1964 when Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act and turned to, I believe it was Bill Moyers, and said, "With this signature enacting this legislation into law, I believe we have just lost the South forever," which turned out to be absolutely accurate as the Republican capture of the South which was an anchor of the Democratic Party for the preceding half century or more. This was the great tidal shift in American electoral politics for the last two generations.

Peter Robinson: There's one datum there that you have to address, which is that as the legislation moved through the Senate, a higher proportion of Republicans than of Democrats voted for it. So as Lyndon Johnson signs that law, it's not at all obvious that it's the Democratic Party that enacted the Civil Rights legislation of the mid-1960s.

David Kennedy: No, the facts that you just put into evidence are perfectly consistent with what I just said that the South was disaffected by the passage of that legislation and the South then became electorally available to an alternative party.

Peter Robinson: For the GOP. I see.

David Kennedy: And the Republican Party took advantage of that. Seems to me that 1972 was an occasion when candidate George McGovern tried to reestablish much of that formerly impregnable Democratic coalition but it was too late, that the damage had been done. It was already historically a kind of an unholy combination of the conservative South and the ethnic and laboring North and it had come unglued by 1972.
----

Well, so depending on how much stress you want to place on "unholy combination"...still not sure how to label him. Obviously the host of these shows is conservative, but maybe Kennedy was invited just because he's a respected American historian at Stanford. He seems to be trying very hard (even on TV, albeit PBS) to preserve nuance and impartiality, so that maybe the major psychological beef he has with Krugman's book is the unabashed taking of sides?

Political contributions? At OpenSecrets.org, Dianne Feinstein and (??) David Wu seem to be his big receipients...

[eb]

He seems to be trying very hard (even on TV, albeit PBS) to preserve nuance and impartiality, so that maybe the major psychological beef he has with Krugman's book is the unabashed taking of sides?

I think this is probably right.

[eb]

Hmmm. html doesn't seem to work in the comments here so my italics didn't show up: that first sentence in my comment above is a quote from M's comment.

[Anderson]

Updated David Kennedy: "When I wrote that Krugman's not an economist, I was KIDDING! Didn't y'all hear the tone of voice I was writing in?"

[wood turtle]

Walker's paragraphs make no sense, and I don't see how you arrived at your conclusions from them.

[M]

Oh, and Walker's speech is also available through Google Book Search
http://books.google.com/

Search for:
intitle:"contributions to the wages question"

And you get:
Contributions to the Wages Question: I. Theory of Wages By Stuart Wood, John Bates Clark

Which has the full speech of Walker's, with the quote in question on p. 26.

[Bill Camarda]

"It was just a joke. Don't any of you people have a sense of humor?"

I expect that line from Coulter, Limbaugh, and Beck, not David Kennedy. Disappointing.

[dogfacegeorge]

DK: You're a disingenious asshole! Do you get the joke? I'm actually giving you a compliment.

[crack]

I don't think it's reasonable to assume that a reader would see Walker's statement as facetious within the context its given, especially since the next paragraph starts out refering to 'Walker's orthodoxy'. Looking at it now, with more knowledge of Walker and the quote, I can see how it would work. That just means it was either written for a tiny tiny insider audience, basically DK himself, or it was poorly written. Or both. Probably both.

[derek]

Kennedy writes: "....I guess the joke was lost on a lot of people." Why is it that people on the right always claim that they were making a joke that we poor stupid uneducated rubes just didnt' get [David Brooks comes to mind with his smear that those who criticized the neo-cons were guilty of anti-semitism]. Maybe it was "lost" on us because it was not only not funny but also because it wasn't a joke in the first place and, having been found out for their smearing innuendo and terminological inexactitude, they have to somehow crawl out from under the torrent of justified criticism that they receive for their "joke". Kennedy should be ashamed of himself for not owning up to his remark and also for thinking that we stupid uneducated rubes will fall for another one of his lies. He gives the profession of history not only a bad name but also a bad odor. Shame on him.

[Paul G. Brown]

Oh! It was a JOKE!

...

i don't get it

[anne]

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/22/values-and-voting/

October 22, 2007

Values and Voting
By Paul Krugman

In "The Conscience of a Liberal" I emphasize the importance of race in allowing movement conservatives to win elections despite their anti-populist economic policies. Critics — book reviewers and others — say, what about moral values? Actually, the book does talk about that — and concludes that they're less important than advertised.

That's not my hunch — it's what you learn from the work of political scientists, especially Larry Bartels, whose What's the Matter With "What's the Matter With Kansas"? is must reading on this subject. You don't have to agree with Bartels, but anyone who casually invokes "values" without confronting his facts (cough — David Kennedy — cough) hasn't done his homework.

Here are some selected observations:

"Has the white working class abandoned the Democratic Party? No. White voters in the bottom third of the income distribution have actually become more reliably Democratic in presidential elections over the past half-century.

…

"Has the white working class become more conservative? No. The average views of low-income whites have remained virtually unchanged over the past 30 years.

…

"Do working class 'moral values' trump economics? No. Social issues (including abortion) are less strongly related to party identification and presidential votes than economic issues are, and that is even more true for whites in the bottom third of the income distribution than for more affluent whites.

…

"Are religious voters distracted from economic issues? No. The partisan attachments and presidential votes of frequent church-goers and people who say religion provides "a great deal" of guidance in their lives are much more strongly related to their views about economic issues than to their views about social issues."

In short, the data don't support the whole thesis that values were what won America for the GOP. What did it, instead, was the switch of Southern whites.

[anne]

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/22/income-and-voting/

October 22, 2007

Income and Voting
By Paul Krugman

And one more before the day's round of media stuff begins.

Another weirdly persistent myth is that rich people vote Democratic, while working stiffs vote Republican. Here's Tucker Carlson:

OK, but here's the fact that nobody ever, ever mentions — Democrats win rich people. Over 100,000 in income, you are likely more than not to vote for Democrats. People never point that out. Rich people vote liberal. I don't know what that's all about

Actually, people mention this alleged fact all the time — but the truth is just the opposite.

From the 2006 exit polls:

VOTE BY INCOME (Total) Democrat Republican

Less Than $100,000 (78%) 55% 43%
$100,000 or More (22%) 47% 52%

And the fact that people with higher incomes are more likely to vote Republican has been consistently true since 1972.

The interesting question is why so many pundits know for a fact something that simply ain't so.

[anne]

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/24/even-more-on-income-and-voting/

October 24, 2007

Even More on Income and Voting
By Paul Krugman

As I pointed out in an earlier post, * there's a weird myth among the commentariat that rich people vote Democratic. There's another strange thing about that myth: the notion that income class doesn't matter for voting, or that it's perverse, has spread even as the actual relationship between income and voting has become much stronger.

Larry Bartels offers us these data, which I also provide in "Conscience of a Liberal," on white voting patterns in presidential elections by income:

As you can see, a 4-point difference between top and bottom became a 14-point difference.

Andrew Gelman et al ** offer us an election-by-election graph; the dots represent an estimate of the effect of income on the tendency to vote Republican, the whiskers the range of statistical uncertainty. Again, a weak link in the earlier period, except when Barry Goldwater was the candidate, and a much stronger link since then.

So the conventional pundit wisdom about the relationship between class and voting is, literally, the opposite of the truth.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/25/more-bartels/

October 25, 2007

More Bartels

A quick hit — I have to go out and sell some books this morning. Anyway, Larry Bartels has another nice comparison:

Al Gore and John Kerry did better among low-income whites in the close elections of 2000 and 2004 than John Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey did in the close elections of 1960 and 1968.

* http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/22/income-and-voting/

** http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/published/red_state_blue_state_revised.pdf

[anne]

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/23/white-male-math/

October 23, 2007

White Male Math
By Paul Krugman

So, people ask why, in "The Conscience of a Liberal," I downplay the role of issues other than race in swinging the political balance in favor of the GOP. The answer, basically, is the math: once you take the great southern switch into account, there isn't much left to explain.

In some correspondence with Larry Bartels, whose "What's the matter with 'What's the matter with Kansas?' " * is must reading for anyone trying to understand modern American political, economy, the issue of how the Democrats lost white males came up. Larry points out that you really need to separate out the South. Here's what he had to say:

"Unless you have a peculiar nostalgia for the racially coercive Democratic monopoly of the Jim Crow era, it makes sense to focus on the rest of the country. There, the Democratic share of the two-party presidential vote among white men was 40% in 1952 and 39% in 2004."

White men didn't turn against the Democrats; Southern white men turned against the Democrats. End of story.

* http://www.princeton.edu/~bartels/kansas.pdf

[anne]

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/24/the-thesis-of-coal/

October 24, 2007

The Thesis of COAL
By Paul Krugman

I gather from some of the correspondence I've received about "The Conscience of a Liberal" — mainly, I think, from people who've heard me on the radio but haven't yet read the book — that there's some confusion over the book's theory of modern American politics. Some people seem to think that I'm saying that racism and the other issues I classify as "weapons of mass distraction" are what movement conservatism is about. They aren't.

What the movement is about is economics: the core goal is, as Heritage says in its fundraising letters, to roll back the New Deal and the Great Society — or as Grover Norquist puts it, to get things back to the way they were "up until Teddy Roosevelt, when the socialists took over."

Race and other distractions aren't the goal, they're a tactic — they're how an anti-populist movement wins elections.

The 2004 election was a perfect example. Bush won by portraying himself as the nation's defender against gay married terrorists — then, immediately after the election, declared that privatizing Social Security was his first priority.

[Gray]

Anne, sry, but would you pls stop spamming this thread?!
Honestly, most of the readers here are perfectly capable to find Krugmann's blog if they want to, you really don't have to copy all his columns here. This mass-posting of yours makes it unnecessarily harder to find the posting of those commenters here who really have something interesting to say!
:-(

[Kenneth Almquist]

Re: Kennedy's claim that "Walker wrote in a facetious vein"

As far as I can tell Walker meant exactly what he wrote. He even introduces one observation with the phrase, "I don't think that I exaggerate when I say...," which is a way of making sure the reader understands that Walker is not exaggerating for comic effect.

It appears that Kennedy is simply unable to stop misrepresenting Walker, even after he has been caught.