Mediaboss Marketing

By Harold Clarke and Marianne Stewart By Harold Clarke and Marianne Stewart June 12

On May 2, during the Women for Women Internationals annual luncheon,CNNs Christiane Amanpourasked Hillary Clinton whether misogyny contributed to her defeat in the 2016 presidential election. The Democratic nominee replied: Yes. I do think that it played a role. On May 31, Clinton reiterated the claim in a widely publicized interview at Recodes Code Conference 2017 event.

In making this claim, Clinton asserted what many political commentators, and no doubt millions of Americans also believe: Negative attitudes toward women affected voters in 2016, and the impact of these attitudes influenced the outcome of the election.

We bring fresh data, and a surprising finding, to this topic.

In the fall of 2016, we asked six questions about the role and status of women on a national survey called the Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES). Respondents could agree or disagree with these six statements:

These questions are intended to capture whether survey respondents have progressive or traditionalist attitudes toward womens roles and statuses, without any reference to Clinton, Donald Trump, political parties or the election.

As the graph below shows, for the most part, progressive attitudes are more prevalent than traditionalist ones, but sizable minorities of those answering the survey expressed traditionalist attitudes, especially among men.

But even after accounting for other factors, attitudes toward womens roles were still correlated with how people voted. For example, if we imagine that the index runs from zero(most progressive) to 100 (most traditional) the average voter scores roughly a 40. Holding other factors equal, a shift from a relatively progressive position (20) to a relatively traditional position (60) would reduce the chance of voting for Clinton from 57percent to 17 percent. The finding is robust the impact of attitudes toward womens roles was consistent in statistical models with many different combinations of factors that might influence how people voted.

One interesting question is whether attitudes about womens roles were more strongly related to the votes of men or women. We didnt find evidence of any difference. These attitudes mattered similarly for both men and women.

Another important question is whether attitudes about womens roles mattered more in 2016 than in 2012? If so, this suggests that there really was something distinctive about 2016, when a female candidate ran against a male candidate who had made many crude comments about women.

The 2016 CCES asked respondents whether they supported Obama or Romney in 2012. If we apply the same statistical model to peoples 2012 vote choice, we find that attitudes toward women did not have a meaningful association with whether people supported Obama and Romney, despite the Obama campaigns attacks on Romney and Republicans for waging a war on women. Attitudes toward womens roles and statuses did not have the same traction in 2012 that they did in 2016.

In short, our analysis suggests that Hillary Clinton is correct: Attitudes toward womens roles and statuses influenced presidential voting in 2016. If fewer voters had held traditionalist attitudes toward womens roles and statuses, Clintons national popular vote total (already a plurality) would have increased. Even small shifts in these attitudes could have affected the outcomes in states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio, where Clinton lost by an average of only 0.57percent.

That said, there is another important implication of our findings one more surprising and actually more favorable to the Clinton campaign. Our survey clearly shows that attitudes toward womens roles and statuses were tilted in a progressive direction, so the salience of womens roles in voter decision-making likely helped Clinton more than it hurt her. She had more votes to gain from people with progressive attitudes than she had votes to lose from those with traditionalist views.

Thus, playing what some observers might call the woman card may have been good politics for Clinton in 2016 even if it was not enough to bring her to the White House.

Harold Clarke and Marianne Stewart are professors in the school of economic, political and policy sciences at the University of Texas at Dallas.

Link:
How attitudes about gender may have helped Hillary Clinton in 2016 ... - Washington Post

President Donald Trump alleged Tuesday -- without offering any proof -- that former Attorney General Loretta Lynch broke the law by giving former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton a free pass.

A.G. Lynch made law enforcement decisions for political purposes...gave Hillary Clinton a free pass and protection. Totally illegal! Trump said on Twitter.

Trumps allegation that Lynch committed a crime comes as Trumps own attorney general, Jeff Sessions, prepares to testify at an open hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee at 2:30 p.m. Tuesday.

Former FBI Director James Comey testified to the same panel last week that he decided to speak publicly about the probe of Clintons use of private email to conduct public business after concluding that Lynch had the appearance of a conflict of interest.

Comey said Lynch lost credibility to discuss closing the email investigation because she met with former President Bill Clinton on a plane on the tarmac in Phoenix in June 2016. Lynch had said they didnt discuss the email probe.

Comeys comments on the Clinton email probe were overshadowed by his descriptions of meetings with Trump over the Federal Bureau of Investigations probe of Russias meddling in the U.S. presidential election.

Read more:
Trump Says Lynch Gave Hillary Clinton 'Free Pass,' 'Protection' - Bloomberg

Contrary to popular belief, slavery was never outlawed in the United States. This statement is not a debatable, half-twisted analysis or a cynical opinion. It is a fact.

The 13th Amendment to the Constitution does not outlaw slavery; it only prohibits slavery in certain situations. It is entirely constitutional to turn drug dealers, gangbangers and thugs into slaves. It is perfectly legal for corporations to use legions of slaves to increase their profit and pass them along to shareholders. Even though it seems like the opposite of freedom, America is totally cool with it.

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

the 13th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America

When Hillary Clinton stood at Keene University and called black men superpredators in January 1996, it was only a few days after the New Years Day release of her book It Takes a Village. In the book, Clinton spoke about her days in the Arkansas governors mansion and the long-standing tradition of using convicted felons as free labor.

Clinton could relax and have her dark-skinned dishwashers clean the mayonnaise residue off her finger-sandwich plates because Arkansas is one of the few states that still use prison labor without compensating the prisoners. She was cool with it, thoughexcept when she was forced to send back to prison any inmate who broke a rule. Clinton lovingly referred to the felons as emotional illiterates, which is a little demeaning, but apparently not as much as the ones she hadnt locked up yet, whose powers allowed them to grow into superpredators.

America has the largest prison population in the world. According to the Washington Post, about half of the 1.6 million people in state or federal prisons are black, even though African Americans make up roughly 13 percent of the population. Black Americans were incarcerated in state prisons at an average rate of 5.1 times that of white Americans, The Guardian reported last year, and in some states that rate was 10 times or more. Even when convicted of the same crime as whites, black convicts, according to a 2014 study (pdf), were even more likely to serve time in private prisons.

The untold, secret story of Americas criminal-justice system is that there are large corporations benefiting from free black labor, and under the Trump administration, business is booming.

In August 2016, former President Barack Obama announced a push by his administration to end the federal use of private prisons. This directive sent private-prison stocks into a downward spiral. One of the first decisions Jeff Sessions made as the current attorney general under President Donald Trump was to reverse this order. The second move by the Sessions-led Department of Justice was to end the Obama administrations practice of not seeking mandatory minimums for nonviolent drug offenses. When the DOJ released the memo rescinding this policy, private-prison stocks soared to an all-time high.

In the final months of the Obama administration (August 2016), the Justice Department announced it

Perhaps Sessions decision was based on Republican ideals of law and order. Maybe it was because all conservatives believe that private companies do a better job running prisons than the government (data shows they dont).

However, it might be because Sessions investment portfolio is filled with thousands of dollars in private-prison stock. Its likely because GEO Group Inc. and CoreCivic, two of the nations largest private-prison operators, gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to Trumps fundraising efforts.

There are prisons and companies all across the country who use free or barely paid prison labor to make a profit. According to the Prison Policy Initiative, these prisoners make between 12 cents and $1.14 an hour. The products and companies that benefit from this slave labor include the following:

This list doesnt include the states, like Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas, that dont pay prisoners at all for labor. Places like Angola State Prison are known for the cruel and inhumane treatment of their prisoners, forcing them to live in tents and work for free.

In February, immigration-detention-center detainees filed a lawsuit against GEO, the private-prison operator that made it rain on the Trump campaign. According to the lawsuit, the corporation used as many as 50,000 federal detainees to work for free, or for as little as $1 a day, even threatening some with solitary confinement for refusing to work as a slave.

As many as 60,000 current and former detainees may join a class-action suit against one of the

As harsh as this sounds, there will be more. With the DOJs directive to use mandatory minimums and the renewal of the war on drugs, slavery will make a comeback under the Trump administration.

But this is all legal and constitutional. No one argues that these prisoners arent slavesor even that blacks are more likely to endure this indentured servitude. The only argument for this system of slavery is that it is profitable. It remains a stain on the American flag because we live in an oligarchy. The only reason it exists is that without it, the multibillionaires at Honda, Microsoft and McDonalds might have to live life as regular, run-of-the-mill billionaires. How else is Jeff Sessions supposed to line his pockets with the bloody dollar bills hes earned off the backs of the oppressed?

Slavery is still legal in the U.S. because there is apparently one thing that has always trumped freedom, equality and justice: white peoples money.

... and to the Republic, for which it stands, with liberty and justice for all.

Go here to read the rest:
Hillary Clinton, Jeff Sessions and America's Secret Slave System - The Root

Kevin Spacey took his job hosting the Tony Awards in an unexpected direction into former Secretary of State Hillary Clintons secret email server scandal.

Netflixs House of Cards star used his time in the limelight on Sunday night to show off his impression of former President Bill Clinton and a willingness to poke fun of Ms. Clinton. The moment came during commentary on actor Ben Platt becoming one of Time magazines 100 most influential people.

Ben, you know who you bumped off that list? My wife, Mr. Spacey said while mimicking Mr Clinton. Between you and me, you might be a better singer, but after seeing your show, theres no doubt Hillary is much better at creating fake email accounts than you!

Mr. Platt, who went on to win Best Performance by a Leading Actor for his work on Dear Evan Hansen, slid into his chair after the punchline.

I just wanted to do a joke nobody would ever think Id do, the host continued, The Daily Caller reported. That was fun, but Im gonna get in trouble when I get home.

Ms. Clinton told an audience at the 2017 Code Conference on May 31 that the FBIs investigation into her handing of the governments most secretive documents was the biggest nothing-burger ever.

There was no law against it. There was no rule, nothing of that sort. So I didnt break any rule. Nobody said, dont do this, and I was very responsible and not at all careless, she said in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, The Washington Times reported at the time.

The Department of Justice under former U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch closed the agencys case on July 7, 2016.

Read more from the original source:
Kevin Spacey zings Hillary Clinton on 'fake email accounts' at Tony Awards: 'That was fun' - Washington Times

AP Photo/Patrick Semansky

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks at a fundraiser for the Elijah Cummings Youth Program in Israel in Baltimore, Monday, June 5, 2017.

You've seen the headlines, begging Joe Biden to just give it up and get out of our faces already. "Dems want Joe Biden to leave spotlight," says The Hill. "Dear Joe Biden, please stop talking about 2016," says a USA Today columnist. "Joe Biden is back. Should Democrats be worried?" asks The New Republic. "Can Joe Biden please go quietly into the night?" asks a column in Vanity Fair. A Daily News columnist begins his missive with, "Hey, Joe Biden, shut the f--- up and go away already." Folks sure do hate that guy. And all he did was give a couple of commencement speeches and an interview or two.

OK, you've probably guessed: Joe Biden wasn't the subject of all those headlines. In fact, when the former vice president has made noises suggesting he still yearns to sit in the Oval Office, reporters treat it as at worst the understandable desires of a beloved uncle who may have lost a step or two, and at best a tantalizing possibilitydespite the fact that Biden ran for president twice, and could barely have performed worse if he had punched out the mayors of Des Moines and Dixville Notch on national television.

No, the target of all that anger and contempt is Hillary Clinton, who has dared to be seen in public on a few occasions since last November, violating some unwritten rule that says that unsuccessful presidential candidates must never be heard from again.

Or to be more precise, it was a rule that didn't exist until Hillary Clinton came along.

The problem isn't just that Clinton has the temerity to show her face, it's also what she says. One writer after another has been incensed that when Clinton is asked about why the 2016 election came out the way it did, she fails to perform a ritual of self-abasement with sufficient enthusiasm so we can all stand back and enjoy her humiliation. What she does say is that the ultimate responsibility lies with her and she made plenty of mistakes, but she also notes that had James Comey not rushed to publicly declare 11 days before the election that he was examining some emails that might be related to herleading to a collective orgasm on the part of the mainstream mediashe would probably be president. That happens to be true, but she's not allowed to say it. Nothing short of her crying out, "Yes, I'm the worst! I deserve every ounce of your hatred!" will do.

So let's be clear about this. If you don't like Hillary Clinton, that's fine. If you want to disagree with the substance of something she says in her occasional public appearances, that's fine, too. But if seeing an article about her giving a relatively anodyne commencement speech makes you seethe with rage and demand that she go away forevermore, you're the one with the problem.

This is the point where I have to note that she was an imperfect candidate who made mistakes, just like every candidate who ever ran for anything. I'd also note that I have written many critical things about her over the years. But that has nothing to do with the malignant loathing that continues to get poured upon her every time a word passes her lips. And yes, that hatred still matters, because it tells us how powerful a force misogyny continues to be in our politics. Given that there are at least four Democratic women senators who could run for president in 2020 (Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand, Amy Klobuchar, and Kamala Harris), we'll be dealing with issues around gender and power in the next election, too.

Am I arguing that all criticism of Clinton is only disguised sexism? Of course not. But saying that the particular brand of venom Clinton inspires (even from many liberals) can be divorced from questions about gender is like saying that Republicans and the media were so consumed with the matter of her emails for no reason other than their deep concern for IT security.

Entire books have been written about the myriad ways the backlash against feminism was projected onto Clinton; if you want something more concise, I'd recommend this excellent segment from Samantha Bee, who notes that at every stage of her career Clinton was told to suppress her authentic self (cut your hair, take your husband's name, apologize for speaking your mind, don't make it seem like you have a strong role in his administration) until she was finally told that she wasn't authentic enough to be elected president. Once again, Clinton is being told she's doing it wrong, being held to standards demanded of none of the men who came before her.

Other losing candidates have made different choices about how public they wanted to be after their loss, but I can't recall a single one who was told so emphatically by so many people to keep his damn mouth shut. Part of what makes this so unfortunate is that Clinton probably has a lot of interesting things to say, if she chose to say them. As New York magazine's Rebecca Traister (who has reported extensively on Clinton) told me in an email, "Hillary Clinton is not like every other candidate ever to run for president. She is the only woman in American history to have been a major party nominee for president, to have run in, to have lost, to have won the popular vote in, an American presidential election. That makes her a crucial historic figure, and one whowhile she is still alive and her memories of her experiences and perspectives remain freshSHOULD be talking about what she's just experienced."

Now maybe you still don't want to hear what she has to say; if so, you're free to ignore her. But don't complain that with a few public comments she's stealing the spotlight from somebody. It's 2017there's no shortage of spotlight to go around. No one can say, "I'd love to start working toward running for president, but all the attention Hillary Clinton gets just makes it impossible!" Every politician has a hundred different ways they can get attention or get their message out to the public, and nothing Clinton does or doesn't do will affect them one bit.

And don't tell me that Clinton is somehow keeping Democrats from having a robust debate about which direction their party should go in the future. Nobody's voice will be heard less because of her. Perhaps you think that the party should reject her incrementalism and her focus on practicalities when a more sweeping vision might be more effective. Perhaps you think it needs to forge a new identity built around younger leaders. That's terrificnobody's stopping you or anyone else from making your case. Clinton is not holding you back.

So why are so many people so angry at her now? For many of the same reasons they've been angry at her over her entire career. And you know what? That's something I'd be interested to hear her perspective on.

Read this article:
Everybody Needs to Stop Telling Hillary Clinton to Shut Up - The American Prospect