Mediaboss Marketing

In 2009, Democrats controlled both the state senate and house in 27 states, the Republicans 14. After the 2016 elections, Republicans controlled both branches of the legislatures in 32 states to 14 for the Democrats.

The importance of these trends cannot be overstated. State legislatures not only control redistricting in most states a key to determining which party will control the House after the 2020 census but also serve as a training ground where politicians learn the ropes of winning elections and governing. In this respect, state legislatures are a key source of new talent.

Emerge America, an organization that recruits Democratic women to run for office, is stressing the need for candidates to file for state legislative seats. In the first six months of 2016, the group raised $500,219; during the first half of this year, it raised $2.03 million.

Andrea Dew Steele, the organizations president and founder, describes Emerge as the beginning of the food chain, performing basic training for women, many of them seeking office for the first time.

In 2017, Emerge expanded operations from 17 to 22 states, including such deep red states as Alabama, South Carolina and Louisiana. Unlike Emilys List, a more established group that supports Democratic women, Emerge pointedly does not have a litmus test requiring its candidates to back abortion rights.

One of the biggest successes so far this year is the organization called Indivisible, founded in the immediate aftermath of the 2016 election by Ezra Levin and Leah Greenberg, a married couple who both worked as aides to Democratic congressmen. Indivisible now claims 5,983 local chapters, with at least two in every congressional district.

Indivisible has played a leading role in turning out voters at congressional town halls to voice their opposition to Trumps plan to repeal Obamacare a tactic explicitly copied from the Tea Partys organizing drive in 2009-2010.

While support for these relatively new groups on the left is growing, the track record of some of the more established organizations is mixed.

The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee has traditionally been the single most important group devoted to winning state senate and state house seats. In terms of financial support, it has seen a modest increase. In the first six months of 2016, the D.L.C.C. raised $4.03 million compared to $4.36 million during the first six months of 2017.

Organizing for Action, an offshoot of Obamas presidential campaigns, has experienced a steady drop in revenues: from $26 million in 2013 to $14.4 million in 2014 to $9 million in 2015 to $6 million in 2016. O.F.A. raised $3.4 million during the first half of 2017, according to Jesse Lehrich, the organizations communications director.

Money is not the only factor in politics if it were, the efforts of these progressive groups would be doomed.

Republicans and conservative organizations have had the financial advantage in the fight for state legislatures, and they will continue to have it during the 2018 election cycle.

Take the Republican State Leadership Committee. It has raised $6.53 million so far this year, $2.17 million more than the amount raised by its Democratic counterpart.

On a larger scale, the immense network of organizations created by the Koch brothers and other conservative donors far outstrips the structures that Democrats and liberals are piecing together. USA Today reported in June that in 2017-18 the Koch machine plans to spend $300- $400 million on elections and lobbying at every level.

If we look at enthusiasm, however, Democrats have the clear advantage this year. Take special legislative elections.

In an analysis published by FiveThirtyEight, Nathaniel Rakich found that in the first 15 special elections to fill vacant state legislative seats in 2017, Democratic candidates outperformed past Democratic presidential candidates by an average of 14.4 percentage points. On Aug. 8, Phil Miller, a Democrat, won a special election to fill a vacant seat in the Iowa House by 10 points in a district that Trump carried by 22.

Another gauge of enthusiasm is the willingness of prospective candidates to enter contests in the first place. Michael Malbin, executive director of the Campaign Finance Institute and a professor of political science at the University at Albany, tracked the number of Democratic and Republican challengers (in other words, non-incumbents) who filed their candidacies with the Federal Election Commission and had raised $5,000 as of June 30.

Malbin compared the data to prior years and his findings are noteworthy: So far this year, there are already 209 Democratic challengers, more than in any of the previous seven election cycles and more than double the 78 Republican challengers in 2009, the year that led up to the Republican wave election of 2010.

Number of candidates running against House incumbents who raised at least $5,000 by June in each of these years.

While motivation is high on the left, there is no guarantee that it will be well directed. Many of the newly involved enthusiasts are political neophytes.

Theda Skocpol, a professor of government and sociology at Harvard, has been studying the rise of Indivisible in eight mid-western counties.

In a phone interview, Skocpol said the quality and effectiveness of Indivisible chapters ran the gamut in terms of efficacy, with only some developing structured organizations. There are groups, she said, that are equipped to mobilize members to act on specific issues and to get voters to the polls, while others are far less prepared to engage on either front.

Along similar lines, a Democratic operative with extensive experience in grass-roots organizing who asked not to be identified told me that

We are working with many of these new organizations in a variety of ways. As we have non-disclosure agreements with all of the organizations we work with, details have to come from them. The growth in activism that these groups have both spurred and harnessed outstrips anything I have seen in decades previously. That said, this activism is pushing against strong structural headwinds and entrenched power. Further, still unknown is whether the geographic distribution of this activism will be aligned with and find the political fulcrum points.

By geographic distribution, this operative means that the renewed vitality on the left is most heavily concentrated in New York, Massachusetts and California, which are already Democratic.

Resilience in the face of setbacks will be a key test of the long-range viability of activist liberal organizations across the country.

David Wasserman, an election specialist, describes the likelihood of Democratic frustration in 2018 in a detailed analysis published by FiveThirtyEight, The Congressional Map Has A Record-Setting Bias Against Democrats. As Wasserman writes,

Even if Democrats were to win every single 2018 House and Senate race for seats representing places that Hillary Clinton won or that Trump won by less than 3 percentage points a pretty good midterm by historical standards they could still fall short of the House majority and lose five Senate seats.

The combination of Republican gerrymandering and the clustering of Democratic voters in urban centers has moved the median House seat well to the right of the nation, Wasserman notes.

The result is what Wasserman calls a structural partisan bias favoring Republicans in Congressional elections:

Trump lost the national popular vote by 2.1 percentage points, but Republicans won the median House seat by 3.4 points and the median Senate seat by 3.6 points.

Which is to say that Democrats will have an uphill struggle in 2018 to wrest control of either the House or Senate. Of the 25 Senate seats held by Democrats that are up for election next year, 10 are in states that Trump carried.

In the past, Republican commitments to building strength at the local level have been sustained by trade associations and corporations with a financial stake in decisions made at the county and state level. There is every reason to believe these interests will continue to invest time and money to protect their profits.

From 2010 to 2016, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was the single largest contributor to the Republican State Leadership Committee, steadily increasing its support over this period to a total of $14.9 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Such companies as Walmart, Reynolds American, Eli Lilly and AT&T are also substantial R.S.L.C. backers.

The liberal donors and activists who have mobilized this year have a less materialistic stake in the outcome of local elections. If, as Wassermans data suggests, a major victory is beyond reach in November 2018, will these players regroup and fight on? Or will they retreat at the state and local level, as they have in the past, leaving this refractory terrain to their highly motivated Republican adversaries?

Read the original here:
Donald Trump Is the Godfather of a Democratic Renaissance - New York Times

The rally was sparked by Charlottesville's decision to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from Emancipation Park. (ABC7)

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) -- The organizer of a weekend rally that's expected to draw hundreds of "alt-right" activists and white nationalists is suing a Virginia city over its decision to relocate the event.

Attorneys for right-wing blogger Jason Kessler filed the federal lawsuit Thursday against Charlottesville.

The city says Kessler's Saturday event can't take place in its downtown Emancipation Park. Citing safety considerations, they ordered it moved to a park about a mile away.

The rally was sparked by Charlottesville's decision to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from Emancipation Park. Kessler's lawsuit argues moving the rally will "dilute" his message, violating free speech.

The Rutherford Institute and American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia are representing Kessler.

The so-called "alt-right" movement generally espouses a mix of racism, white nationalism and populism.

View post:
'Alt-right' rally organizer sues city over location change - WJLA

In recent months, numerous campuses have been rocked by student protests sparked by the scheduled appearances of alt-right figures such as Richard Spencer and Milo Yiannopoulos.

The alt-right activity is part of a larger surge in campus organizing and recruitment by white nationalists. Now, the movement is seeking to capitalize on the publicity and momentum it gained amid its strong support of the Trump campaign.

Some of the recent protests, at Berkeley and elsewhere, have attracted far-left activists known as anti-fascists and have turned violent, igniting a debate over freedom of speech on campus.

In its new publication The Alt-Right on Campus: What Students Need to Know the SPLC advises students to avoid direct confrontation with alt-right speakers and their supporters, many of whom are young white supremacists eager to engage in street fighting with students and anti-fascist protesters.

The guide is a project of the SPLC on Campus program, which currently has chapters at 30 colleges across the country.

The rise of the alt-right has left many students deeply concerned about hate on campus and asking what they can do to make a difference, said Lecia Brooks, SPLC director of outreach. This guide provides answers. It not only shows students how to respond to a possible alt-right event, but how to inoculate your campus against such extremism before these speakers appear on campus.

In addition to offering step-by-step instructions for students to counter the movements influence, the guide explains the racist ideology of the alt-right and profiles its leaders.

As the guide explains, public universities that have a policy allowing student groups to host outside speakers cannot legally bar alt-right speakers except under the most extreme circumstances. The SPLC urges students to hold alternative events that celebrate diversity, inclusion and cultural awareness. In addition, they should speak out against hate and encourage university administrators to issue statements condemning the views of alt-right speakers.

SPLC President Richard Cohen testified in June before the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary about the obligation of universities to uphold not only the First Amendment rights of controversial speakers but to speak out against hate and bigotry.

We need to fight speech that threatens our nations democratic values with speech that upholds them, Cohen said in his oral testimony. Its an obligation that university officials have and one that everyone in public life, starting with the president, has as well.

Read the rest here:
SPLC releases campus guide to countering 'alt-right' | Southern ... - Southern Poverty Law Center

Something is rotten with liberalisms reigning manifestation, its stench discernible to everyone but itself. A sterile managerialism signposted as what Oscar Wilde decried as the monstrous worship of facts distilled in the form of policy wonkery and modish Vox explainers, had the rug yanked from under it on Nov. 8. It was an unexpected stumble across the Rubicon one in which the ruling consensus was forsaken, crestfallen, and discombobulated within a ruptured sociopolitical milieu that was no longer recognizable.

In an essay for the Los Angeles Review of Books, Emmett Rensin diagnoses liberalisms paralysis as one plagued by the censorious impulse of technocratic reason. Donald Trump was the expression of the id, animated by libidinal whims, repressed desires, and resentments; the liberal establishment was the moralizing superego, directing commands toward appropriate conduct and policing discourse. Upon losing control of the id, the compulsion to fact-check and bellow This is not normal! into the post-truth abyss turned liberals, Rensin proclaims, into the blathering superego at the end of history.

In this political order, transgression and libertinism appeared as cathartic outlets. Irony was weaponized, and guileful wordplay camouflaged bigotry. Such was the transgressive thrill of Trumpism: the enjoyment of publicly stating what is not said openly, which tapped into what Jacques Lacan termed jouissance the desire to go beyond the limits of publicly accepted discourse.

Advertisement

Unsurprisingly, the shift toward social sadism is echoed in online culture, especially with trolling. The so-called alt-right embraced trolling, shrugging off accusations of racism and sexism by adopting a sardonic dispensation to wring its hands clean from charges of prejudice. You just dont get it, went the customary rebuke.

They know their liberal opponents well, homing in on their conscience and sanctimonious virtue-signaling. Witch-hunting and online harassment is employed as a popular strategy to hound feminists, social justice warriors, and other moralists. Equivalent disdain is reserved for establishment conservatives, branded cuckservatives for having stood pat as the positional gains of minorities emasculated White America.

Get This Week in Opinion in your inbox:

Globe Opinion's must-reads, delivered to you every Sunday.

Trumps unabashed vulgarity, scorn for political correctness, and occasional deployment of alt-right memes made him a unifying symbol for this vanguard. Making sense of the shifting terrain of far-right politics demands an understanding of a fringe movement that was memed into existence after being thrust into the mainstream spotlight during the Trump electoral campaign.

Is architecture ideological? The NRA thinks so.

In Kill All Normies, Irish journalist Angela Nagle attempts to carry out such a task. Nagle documents the meteoric rise of the alt-right through the turbulent online culture wars. While the movements indecipherable jargon led many to portray the alt-right as conservative iconoclasm as opposed to neofascism, its ideas were imported from a diverse mlange the French New Right, the Identitarian movement, and American white nationalism before getting truncated and popularized through anonymous forums like 4Chan.

As Nagle observes, the early iterations of this assemblage was a strange vanguard of teenage gamers, pseudonymous swastika-posting anime lovers, ironic South Park conservatives, anti-feminist pranksters, nerdish harassers and meme-making trolls whose dark humor and love of transgression for its own sake made it hard to know what political views were genuinely held and what were merely, as they used to say, for the lulz.

Advertisement

There is an inclination to reduce the alt-rights pranksterism to a pop-cultural spectacle, as opposed to a crucible of virulent ethno-nationalism that needs to be confronted and refuted. While the profusion of irony, memes, and in-jokes does not a movement make, it is important to eschew the revulsion that characterizes much of the response to this nebulous amalgam.

Conservatism, after all, can summon a radical undercurrent when necessary. Fundamentally reactionary as opposed to rigidly traditionalist, it is willing to absorb and redirect the potency of new revolutionary actors toward counter-revolution and new relations of domination. Political scientist Corey Robin identifies this tendency in The Reactionary Mind, where he points out that the right is more than happy to violently upend an anemic ruling class to install a more dynamic one in its place, even if it means using the tactics and rhetoric of their ideological rivals. As Robin notes, While conservatives are hostile to the goals of the left ... they often are the lefts best students.

Indeed, some of Nagles engaging commentary revolves around the emergence of the alt-rights more watered down, media-friendly face that she terms the alt-light. She argues how the alt-right understood the significance of manufacturing an alternative culture and media ecology in response to the establishments cultural dominance.

From Breitbarts Steve Bannon and Milo Yiannopoulos to Vice cofounder Gavin McInnes and InfoWars conspiratorial huckster Alex Jones, these digital-savvy alt-light figures flourished in shaping popular culture through new-media platforms. They were the self-styled new punks, fermenting a loyal right-wing fan base that had the benefit of consuming alternative content while steadily accumulating subcultural capital. Managerial liberalisms failure to tackle economic disparities, while paying lip service to a fetishistic form of identity politics, paved the way for virulent forces of reaction to repackage their Weimaresque regalia into an edgier postmodern register.

However, unlike the strategies of the left that they attempt to mimic, the alt-rights meta-politics is saddled with a problem of realization. How do you develop into a mass movement when you are not grounded in organizational struggle? Baiting progressives and racist troll-storms is one thing, but can it translate its success in cyberspace into political power? The evidence so far has been found wanting.

Nevertheless, the alt-right has managed to punch above its weight; the incorporeal battlefield they waged war on has had real consequences. Their mythologized conflict with conformity has them tirelessly hunting for a narrative of self-determination. Yet, by having reached a critical mass without the ability to transfer and regenerate its momentum, it appears that meme magic and Trumps cantankerous tweets will have to suffice for now.

Read the original post:
The limits of the alt-right - The Boston Globe

Julia Robinson for The Chronicle

Richard Spencer, a leader of the white supremacist "alt-right" movement, visited the campus of Texas A&M U. at College Station last fall. The SPLC is offering guidance to students who oppose speakers with views like his.

For universities, the new academic year has nearly arrived. If its anything like last year, controversial speakers will be a consistent challenge for administrators and students alike.

More often than not, the speakers that generate the most controversy are those labeled right-wing reactionaries by their critics. Last fall, Richard Spencer, a white nationalist, launched a speaking tour to recruit college students to the alt-right, a loose group of white supremacists and online agitators. His speech at Texas A&M University at College Station saw protest become physical, a turn that would become common throughout the coming months.

The Southern Poverty Law Center wants to help students oppose hate speech without creating a spectacle that can be exploited.

During a visit to the University of California at Berkeley in February, the far-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos was greeted by masked protesters who smashed windows and set fires on the campus. Weeks earlier, a man was shot during a protest of a speech by Mr. Yiannopoulos at the University of Washington.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit organization that monitors hate groups, wants to reduce the number of these protests gone awry. To that end, the center, which also monitored cases of anti-immigrant and race-based harassment after the presidential election, has issued a 20-page report with advice for students on how best to respond when a controversial speaker from the alt-right comes to campus. The guide, titled "The Alt-Right on Campus: What Students Need to Know," is geared toward student activists, but it also has relevance to administrators and faculty members on dealing with contentious speakers. Here are a few highlights:

Just ignore the event.

The spectacles created by counterprotesters, says Lecia Brooks, the SPLCs outreach director, only serve to embolden the speakers and allow them to portray themselves as victims.

"The best response is not to show up at all," Ms. Brooks said. "It is the better strategy."

Thats the same advice Teresa Sullivan, president of the University of Virginia, gave to the UVa community regarding a gathering of white-nationalists in Charlottesville, planned for this Saturday.

"To approach the rally and confront the activists would only satisfy their craving for spectacle," she wrote. "They believe that your counterprotest helps their cause."

A similar approach was adopted at Texas A&M when Mr. Spencer came to its campus in December. University leaders organized a competing event, "Aggies United," away from Mr. Spencers speech, though police officers in riot gear still had to stop some protesters from trying to enter the building where he was speaking.

Ask college leaders to denounce the speaker.

While it might be tempting for administrators to try and cancel the event, that could lead to even more attention for the speaker, Ms. Brooks said. Thats what happened at Auburn University when Mr. Spencer visited its campus in April. The university had tried to prevent him from speaking, but a judge ruled against that decision. Ms. Brooks said the event attracted more attention as a result.

Or consider Berkeleys juggling of Ann Coulters ultimately canceled speech. That caused plenty headaches, even though she never spoke at the campus.

Instead, the SPLC report suggests that student activists ask the administration to denounce the speakers message. Michael K. Young, the Texas A&M president, called Mr. Spencers racist message "beneath contempt" when the white nationalist visited that campus.

Talk to the group hosting the event.

Its easy to forget that these speakers dont materialize out of thin air, but rather are invited often by other students, who can have mixed motives. The views of students who invite a controversial speaker may not correspond with those of the speaker.

That was the case when Mr. Yiannopoulos visited the University of Washington. A leader of the College Republicans chapter that had invited him told The Chronicle that student organizers had wanted a tamer conservative speaker, Ben Shapiro, to speak at the college, but they couldnt afford his $10,000 fee. Mr. Yiannopoulos came free of charge.

And the dean of students at Wake Forest University was able to convince the College Republicans there to bring in Roger Stone instead of Mr. Yiannopoulos. The groups goal had really been to get more conservative viewpoints on campus, not necessarily to endorse Mr. Yiannopoulos.

The Southern Poverty Law Center encourages people to try and suss out the host groups motivation for bringing a controversial speaker to campus. For more of its insights, including a whos who in the alt-right and other tips on how to quell the storm a controversial speaker brings, check out the full report.

Chris Quintana is a breaking-news reporter. Follow him on Twitter @cquintanadc or email him at chris.quintana@chronicle.com.

Link:
An Anti-Hate Group Has This Advice for When the Alt-Right Comes to Campus - The Chronicle of Higher Education