Jacob Christensen

First of all: Cudos to the New York Times for releasing the tables behind the “tea partier” story. As Laura McKenna has pointed out, there is a problem with the way the article compares all voters and tea party-activists – political activists should have been included in the comparison.

Still, we are dealing with something which looks like a middle-class rebellion: Angry, middle-class, middle-aged white men, to be more specific. My hunch was that linking the tea partiers to the stagnation (if not decline) in median incomes might give some insight into the nature of the tea party-movement – the thing is, that we may have seen similar dynamics on this side of the Atlantic. (What? The Americans react like Europeans? Scary, no?).

Things, however, seem to be a bit more complicated.

Let me steal the words of Heather Boushey of Slate:

The data instead show that Tea Party supporters are in the group of Americans adversely affected by the hollowing out of the middle class in the last few decades.

…

Given that their labor market experience, education, race, and gender should give Tea Party supporters an economic advantage—as well as an internal sense that they should be moving up the ladder—their actual middle-class status may make them feel as if they haven’t lived up to their expectations. Certainly, economic security has eroded, especially in the last few years, for this demographic. White men in particular are one of the few groups to have hit all-time-record-high unemployment rates and record-low employment rates during the Great Recession, alongside teens and older workers.

The picture that emerges, then, is more like what you’d expect. The Tea Party is made up of more-traditional middle-class families who had a certain expectation of upward progress. Over the last decade or so, they’ve gotten stuck. Even before the recession, the 2000s were the first economic recovery in the post World War II era during which median family income was lower at the end than it had been at the prior economic peak, in this case, 2000. That’s a stunning lack of gains for the typical American family.

Now, we are not dealing with losers in the traditional sense here – no low-skilled industrial workers losing their jobs to the Chinese – but rather the disappointed middle class. (There still is a clear majority of men among partiers, though.) In a warped way, they are closer to the strata which were behind the left-wing mobilisations of the 1960s and 1970s in Western Europe – except that these groups tended to be public employees. But still, the realisation that the affluence engine of the 1950s and 1960s has finally stopped working like it used to puts the political system under some kind of pressure. The massive lack of confidence in not only the present US administration but also US political institutions is notable. (Just as it is notable that the partiers find it harder to blame the financial sector).

When you go through the tables, it is obvious (at least to me) that the tea party equations do not add up on a number of points – specifically, the tea partiers cannot, or will not, understand the effects of Bush 43′s (and the Republican Party’s) fiscal and tax policies on the US economy and federal budget. Somehow, ideology must play a role here. As a whole, the tea partiers (conveniently?) seem to forget that the Republican Party controlled the US congress between 1995 and 2007. Perhaps the dream of 1994 lingers on?

On the other hand, we are not dealing with gun-toting fundamentalist rednecks. Yes, the partiers are generally more conservative/authoritarian on social issues (in the US meaning of the term) but they are hardly extremist. Yes, they adore Sarah Palin, but they do not think she would make an effective president of the US (which means that the partiers can make the distinction between expression and policy craft).

But somehow this looks like we are dealing with the fallout from the New Economy and the Great Moderation of the later decades. Just to exaggerate a bit: Obama is more of a traditional Democrat – industrial workers, trade unions, Mid-West, etc. – so it is perhaps not so surprising that he doesn’t click with the partiers. And similarly, the partiers’ priority of jobs as the main problem fits badly with the Obama administrations (public) focus on health care.

Én ting er, at man forbyder et enkelt produkt, men nok så interessant her er, at gulvsprayen bygger på nanoteknologi. Det gør et stigende antal produkter – eksempelvis visse typer af solcreme, byggematerialer og selvfølgelig den populære afspiller iPod Nano.

(My emphasis)

Link. Marks.dk is on the trail.

I have no answers to these, but they keep popping up when I follow UK election reports:

1. How much of the LD vote is a protest vote and how much can be said to be issue based (meaning: how stable is the surge in LD share of the vote in polls)?

2. How much is due to the Clegg-effect (Cleggfect?), and – to use the Danish phrase – how much could be picked up by a hobby-horse anyway?

3. Supposing there is no overall control in the 2010 parliament, how big are the chances of a coalition government (as compared with a tolerated minority government)? Risks and opportunities for the LD?

4. I have noted that no-one has yet called Clegg on which (formal or informal) coalition partner the party would prefer after the election. Strikes me as odd. (Or maybe this is because everybody knows that the LD draws its vote from L and assume that the only realistic option would be an L-LD pact?)

5. Main issues besides discontent? I’ve noted that the Guardian spent an hour discussing education in a podcast – but what else? Economy, employment?

6. I noted that L is using the “Brown is a safe pair of hands”-argument. Somewhere in the back of my head, I have Germany 1998 (“Weiter so” – not so, the voters said) and Denmark 2001 (“Nyrup the statesman”) as templates for disaster. Brown did better than I would have expected in last week’s debate, but patronising is very a difficult, if not outright dangerous, strategy for an unpopular leader.

7. Promising an Upper House of Parliament elected by PR seems like a dangerous strategy by Labour. Maybe I’m being Scandinavian here, but wouldn’t a more representative but less powerful chamber seriously expose the problems in FPTP – opening for a massive constitutional crisis?

Hoisted from Slate’s Culture Gabfest. Substitute “English” with relevant academic discipline:

One obvious point omitted from the neuro-lit discussion: Publish or perish. If you repeatedly tell professors their teaching adds literally little to no value to their own CV and will go all but unconsidered in their tenure hearing, then English professors will themselves devalue the teaching function of being an English professor –i.e., passing along literature to a new generation.

Link to episode (where the quote wasn’t said)

A just machine to make big decisions
Programmed by fellows with compassion and vision
We’ll be clean when their work is done
We’ll be eternally free yes and eternally young

Donald Fagen “I.G.Y.” as performed by Steely Dan.

According to Wikipedia, The Nightfly is “one of pop music’s sneakiest masterpieces”. I’m truly and utterly convinced that Mr. Fagen approves of that description.

Never ever ask a political scientist to guess the outcome of an election. We invariably take the bait even if we ought to know better.

So, without further ado, and for your entertainment:

V – 5 % (-0,9)
S – 35,5 % (+0,5)
MP – 8,5 % (+3,3)
C – 5 % (-2,9)
FP – 7 % (-0,5)
M – 26,5 % (+0,3)
KD – 5 % (-1,6)
SD – 4 % (+2,1)
PP – 2 % (+1,4)
JL – 0,5 % (±0)
F! – 0,5 % (-0,2)
Others – 0,5 %

Turn-out: 78,5 %

This makes for 49 % of the vote for the red-green opposition and 43,5 % for the government.

As you can see, I decided to hedge my bet on whether the Sweden Democrats make it past the 4%-treshold. 78,5 % turn-out is in the low end in Sweden, but my sense is that there is a curious lack of mobilisation among opposition voters this time. The government has lost support, but the opposition (with the exception of the Green Party – and as you can see I put the eventual support lower than current opinion polls) is not making any real gains. SD very much is the joker, in my view – 5 % of the vote and they could make things pretty messy.

In a historical perspective 35,5% of the vote would be a bad result for the Social Democrats – I have actually given them some extra votes compared with current polls. The party really needs to review its policies and electoral strategies. On the other hand, I suspect that a bourgeois version of “Comrade 4%” will save the Centre Party and the Christian Democrats – still 26,5% would be a historically good result for the Conservatives but actually I predict them to do worse than in current polls!

But as they say: It ain’t over ’till the fat lady sings.

SR has a page tracking polls here.

This is the final struggle
Let us stand together, and

…

play golf …?!?

Just in case anybody wondered, The Daily Mail reminds us about the mode of thought motivating today’s “Little Englanders”.

Case in point: The Mail’s character assassination of Nick Clegg – never mind his policies or political efficacy…

The multilingual Lib Dem leader was born to a Dutch mother and a half-Russian father, and employs a German spin doctor.

and it just gets worse:

Mrs Clegg, a Roman Catholic, admits that she refused her husband’s plea to give English names to their three sons, Antonio, Alberto and Miguel.

(My emphasis)

The word we’re looking for does indeed begin with an X. But in a way it is fascinating that something so noxious can be published in a mainstream newspaper.

I wonder how the Brits would react to a similar report in Bild-Zeitung. Or perhaps not.

HT: Next Left. (1), (2).

Så här skulle jag kunna hålla på varre dag. Men till slut slår man dövörat till och slutar helt enkelt att ta några undersökningar som presenteras i medierna på fullt allvar.

Marie Demker despairs over the use and reporting of surveys in media. It is not just a Swedish issue, y’know.

Commenters want the Clash instead of Kraftwerk?

Okay, you asked for it:

Full story.