Friday Edition: Kamala?
Plus: Defunding the police is for rich kids.
Bubba
12 Jul
1. It Could Be Kamala
With pressure mounting on President Biden to drop out of the 2024 race, new polling suggests that, contrary to conventional wisdom, Vice President Kamala Harris might be Democrats’ best shot at taking down Donald Trump. (The Liberal Patriot)
Chart: The Liberal Patriot
A recent CNN poll: Harris outperforms every other Democrat against Trump, losing by just 2 points compared to Biden's 6 points, or 5 points in the case of Democratic governors Gretchen Whitmer and Gavin Newsom.
American Enterprise Institute researcher Nate Moore:
The underlying numbers offer additional hope for Harris, who does noticeably better with the groups most reluctant to Biden’s candidacy. She wins nonwhite voters by 29 points compared to Biden’s 21. She wins 18-34 year olds by a point, while Biden loses them by 6. Independents back Harris over Trump by three points, but Trump over Biden by 10 points. All these groups are overrepresented among “double haters”—which indicates one of Harris’s main advantages is simply that she isn’t Biden or Trump.
The prevailing view on Harris: Earlier this month, Trump echoed popular opinion when he said Harris would be a weaker challenger than Biden.
Trump: “She’s so bad. She’s so pathetic. … She’s so fucking bad.”
Political commentator Chris Stirewalt:
And she has had, even by the miserable standards of the vice presidency, an inglorious time as second banana. So bad that Trump’s profane offering is actually a pretty good reflection of the conventional wisdom around Harris, so much so that the idea that Harris was actually less popular than Biden became a reliable, bipartisan trope around Washington.
This may all be moot: While some polls show 47% of Democrats and 72% of independents think Dems should choose a different nominee, Team Biden seems to have dug in its heels.
Biden in a letter to House Democrats this week: “I want you to know that despite all the speculation in the press and elsewhere, I am firmly committed to staying in this race, to running this race to the end, and to beating Donald Trump.”
A Biden campaign memo to staff: “…there is also no indication that anyone else would outperform the president vs. Trump. Hypothetical polling of alternative nominees will always be unreliable, and surveys do not take into account the negative media environment that any Democratic nominee will encounter. The only Democratic candidate for whom this is already baked in is President Biden.”
Related: A new Pew Research Center poll shows the share of Americans who say Biden is “mentally sharp” has steeply declined.
Bubba’s Two Cents
President Biden spoke to the media for about an hour last night. Some commentators suggested he did pretty well, or at least that he did “more than enough to keep him in the race,” as one pundit noted. I do not believe the clips coming out of this will do much good for him. He introduced Zelensky as “President Putin”, talked about his “Vice President Trump,” and other times he dropped the, “Well. Anyway…” when even he recognized he was rambling. This may not hurt him (as the airwaves will quickly fill with defenders), but it’s almost impossible to see how this helped him.
There’s growing scrutiny over whether members of Congress’ insider knowledge should disqualify them from trading stocks while in office. (Semafor)
The latest: A bipartisan group of senators this week introduced a bill that would impose fines on members of Congress who buy and sell individual stocks.
If the law were to pass, members would be barred from selling stock 90 days after its enactment, and would have to divest from all investments by 2027.
Similar efforts to ban Congressional stock trading have failed in the past, but there’s hope that this bill’s bipartisan backing could see it through.
How things stand: Under the 2012 Stock Act, members of Congress are allowed to trade stocks.
But they’re supposed to disclose trades within 45 days.
Also, they’re barred from trading based on information they glean on the job that isn’t otherwise available to the general public.
Related: As a way to highlight potential conflicts of interest, watchdog groups like Autopilot and Quiver Quantitative have launched investment apps that mimic politicians’ trades.
In 2023, Congressional portfolios significantly outperformed the S&P 500's 24% gain.
A Nancy Pelosi-mimicking portfolio on Autopilot gained 45% last year.
More: Quiver’s Congress Buys strategy, an algorithm that mirrors U.S. politicians’ trades, is up 40% in 2024 (the S&P is up 18%).
How the public feels about it: There’s broad bipartisan support for banning members of Congress from trading stocks.
3. Progressive Privilege
It’s mostly privileged, wealthy Americans who can afford to adopt radical left-wing beliefs, argues author Rob Henderson, who grew up in foster care and ended up at Yale. (NYT)
Henderson in a new video essay for The New York Times:
I’m the rare Ph.D. who grew up carrying everything I owned in a trash bag, starting when I was 3. I lived in 10 foster homes before I joined the Air Force. Then I went to Yale on the G.I. Bill and on to Cambridge. Along the way, I came up with the term “luxury beliefs.” They’re ideas held by privileged people that make them look good but actually harm the marginalized. It’s like virtue signaling with consequences.
The stats: Henderson cites data to make his case that the stakes on these issues are often higher for lower-earning Americans.
Decriminalizing drugs:
A 2019 Cato Institute survey: 60% of Americans with at least a bachelor’s degree support drug legalization; less than 50% of those without a degree support it.
Studies have shown living in poverty makes addiction more likely and more deadly.
Defunding the police:
A 2020 Yahoo News/YouGov survey: Nearly a third of Americans earning $100,000 or more support defunding the police, compared to just 1 in 5 Americans who earn less than $50,000.
Meanwhile, federal data shows the poorest Americans are three times more likely to be victims of robbery, aggravated assault, and sexual assault compared to those earning more than $50,000 a year.
Surveys have consistently found that black Americans, who are disproportionately the victims of violence, want to maintain or increase police spending and presence in their neighborhoods.
Marriage:
While research has shown growing up in a married-parent household is a major driver of keeping kids out of poverty, highly educated progressives have led the charge against the institution of marriage as an outdated, patriarchal relic.
Meanwhile, wealthy and educated Americans are far more likely to get married.
What the 2018 Hidden Tribes study uncovered about progressive activists:
Progressive activists are 80% white, compared to 69% of the overall U.S. population (Only 3% of progressive activists are black).
Progressive activists are twice as likely to have completed college compared to the average American.
Progressive activists are more likely to earn over $100,000 per year than members of any other political group.
Progressive activists are less than half as likely to be poor compared to the average U.S. resident.
Related: A recent analysis by the Washington Monthly found pro-Palestine campus protests are much more likely to take place at elite schools full of comparatively wealthy students.
4. Stats Aren’t Everything
FBI statistics show violent crime nationwide fell 15% in the first three months of 2024, so why are people still wringing their hands over it? (Los Angeles Times)
The latest: The shocking killing of a New Zealand tourist near Los Angeles last week has spurred a debate about repeat offenders.
Patricia McKay, 68, was killed in a botched robbery at Fashion Island mall in Newport Beach.
According to police, two men attempted to rob McKay and her husband at a Barnes and Noble store.
One of the suspects dragged her into the street, where she was struck and killed by a third man driving a white sedan.
Los Angeles Times crime writer Richard Winton on one of the suspects:
McCrary is a third-striker who had not served prison time for his most recent two felony convictions in L.A. County. He also faces charges of felony attempted second-degree robbery and evading while driving recklessly. He was previously convicted of residential burglary in 2018, criminal threats in 2020 and robbery in 2023, all in L.A. County, according to prosecutors.
In 2023, McCrary pleaded no contest to charges of robbery and being a narcotics addict in possession of a firearm. He was sentenced to two years of probation with three years in state prison suspended.
He also was previously arrested in a nearly identical armed robbery. Santa Monica police said McCrary and another suspect placed a gun to the head of a man while stealing his Rolex in September 2022. He was arrested in January 2023 while in court on another case, and it was that robbery case that resulted in a suspended sentence and two years’ probation.
What Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said about McKay’s killing:
Our entire community extends its deepest sympathies to the loved ones of Patricia McKay and to the entire country of New Zealand as we mourn her senseless death in the commission of a crime that should have never happened.
A pattern: Incidents where a suspect was recently arrested and let go before going on to commit a crime aren’t that rare.
Zoom out: John Pfaff, a Fordham University law professor who thinks the U.S. locks up too many people, has pointed out that contrary to the mainstream prison reform narrative, violent crime, not drugs, is what’s driving mass incarceration.
Approximately 95% of inmates serving long sentences in state prisons — 90% of the nation's 1.5 million prisoners — where were convicted of serious violent offenses.
Over 50% of state prisoners are serving time for violent crimes.
Only 15% of state prison populations are made up of people convicted of drug crimes.
Pfaff:
If we freed everyone in prison tomorrow except that 25 percent who are there for murder, manslaughter or sexual assault, we’d still have an incarceration rate higher than that of almost every European country.
Bubba’s Two Cents
You can cite statistics all day, but until stuff like the above cases stops happening, Americans aren’t going to stop being concerned about crime.
5. Hot Takes
Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro, Washington Free Beacon resident satirist Andrew Stiles and polling expert Nate Silver all had interesting thoughts on the media this week.
Shapiro testified before Congress Wednesday about media and government censorship of conservative voices.
We all know what these government actors, what some people in this room are doing. You're using the tacit threat of government action to compel private companies to throttle viewpoints you don't particularly like. The First Amendment was not designed to enable workarounds by elected officials. It was directed at Congress, at you.
And you're abdicating your fundamental duty when you exert pressure on private companies to censor speech. Some in this room have been doing just that for years. We in the non-legacy media have been feeling the effects. In the name of the Constitution and the name of democracy, this should stop.
Stiles mocked the mainstream media’s penchant for taking subtle digs at conservatives in obituary headlines — and came up with some “pre-written obituary headlines for prominent Democrats” to “more accurately reflect the style and tone of our mainstream peers.”
Washington Free Beacon
Silver went after the misinformation industry.
Bonus: Mentally sharp vs. mean-spirited.
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