Journalism and Illiberalism

A number of posts have discussed media bias.

James Bennet at The Economist:

In my experience, reporters overwhelmingly support Democratic policies and candidates. They are generally also motivated by a desire for a more just world. Neither of those tendencies are new. But there has been a sea change over the past ten years in how journalists think about pursuing justice. The reporters’ creed used to have its foundation in liberalism, in the classic philosophical sense. The exercise of a reporter’s curiosity and empathy, given scope by the constitutional protections of free speech, would equip readers with the best information to form their own judgments. The best ideas and arguments would win out. The journalist’s role was to be a sworn witness; the readers’ role was to be judge and jury. In its idealised form, journalism was lonely, prickly, unpopular work, because it was only through unrelenting scepticism and questioning that society could advance. If everyone the reporter knew thought X, the reporter’s role was to ask: why X?

Illiberal journalists have a different philosophy, and they have their reasons for it. They are more concerned with group rights than individual rights, which they regard as a bulwark for the privileges of white men. They have seen the principle of free speech used to protect right-wing outfits like Project Veritas and Breitbart News and are uneasy with it. They had their suspicions of their fellow citizens’ judgment confirmed by Trump’s election, and do not believe readers can be trusted with potentially dangerous ideas or facts. They are not out to achieve social justice as the knock-on effect of pursuing truth; they want to pursue it head-on. The term “objectivity” to them is code for ignoring the poor and weak and cosying up to power, as journalists often have done.

And they do not just want to be part of the cool crowd. They need to be. To be more valued by their peers and their contacts – and hold sway over their bosses – they need a lot of followers in social media. That means they must be seen to applaud the right sentiments of the right people in social media. The journalist from central casting used to be a loner, contrarian or a misfit. Now journalism is becoming another job for joiners, or, to borrow Twitter’s own parlance, “followers”, a term that mocks the essence of a journalist’s role

The Changing Politics of Race

Many posts have dealt with racial issues.

Joseph Simonson at The Washington Free Beacon:

Ibram X. Kendi’s Center for Antiracist Research made headlines this month when it announced it would axe a third of its workforce. But those layoffs may not have much of an impact, considering the center has hardly produced any original research at all.

The Boston University-based center has produced just two original research papers since its founding in June 2020, according to a Washington Free Beacon review. Output from the center’s scholars largely consists of op-eds or commentary posted on the center’s website. The group’s plans to "maintain the nation’s largest online database of racial inequity data in the United States" quickly fizzled out, and the database has been dormant since 2021.

The Center for Antiracist Research is the latest left-wing group to fall on hard times. George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, which gave $140,000 to Kendi’s center, cut 40 percent of its staff in June. The Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation’s revenues fell 88 percent from 2021 to 2022, as support for the movement plummeted to an all-time low.

It is unclear how much money remains in the Center for Antiracist Research’s coffers. Boston University did not respond to a request for comment.

Liam Knox at Inside HIgher Ed:

The Supreme Court’s June decision striking down race-conscious admissions may have been the most significant higher ed case in years, providing a concrete answer to questions that have spurred dozens of court cases since the 1990s. But it hardly put an end to the legal fight over affirmative action.

In fact, the outcome has unleashed a stream of new challenges to colleges’ race-conscious policies and revived cases that had been dismissed or lost before the ruling was handed down.

Just yesterday, Students for Fair Admissions, the group that spearheaded the Supreme Court cases against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, filed a lawsuit challenging the race-conscious admissions policies of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. SFFA began building the case after the Supreme Court left open the possibility that military colleges could be exempt from the affirmative action ruling due to their “potentially distinct interests” in enrolling racially diverse student bodies.

Politics and the American Political Science Association

Robert Maranto at The Hill:

From what I can tell, not a single open Republican now serves on the 31-member APSA governing council. That leaves half the country unrepresented politically in an organization whose job is to promote political research about all the country, and the world.

 Reflecting behind-the-scenes pressure from activists, since the 2012 conference in New Orleans, no APSA annual meeting has occurred in a red state, with only one in a purple state (Philadelphia in 2016). Last year, APSA met in Montreal, but it seems unlikely that we might meet in Dallas, Phoenix, Charlotte or Orlando.

...

When I mention this lack of representation, older APSA members admit it is a problem. For younger members, raised under the spell of critical theory, responses are mixed. In the meantime, many conservatives (including some anti-Trumpers like myself) have just given up, keeping their heads low in a sort of academic Benedict Option.

Chinese Propagandist

Many posts have discussed the political influence of China.

Mara Hvistendahl et al. at NYT:

On the surface, No Cold War is a loose collective run mostly by American and British activists who say the West’s rhetoric against China has distracted from issues like climate change and racial injustice.

In fact, a New York Times investigation found, it is part of a lavishly funded influence campaign that defends China and pushes its propaganda. At the center is a charismatic American millionaire, Neville Roy Singham, who is known as a socialist benefactor of far-left causes.

What is less known, and is hidden amid a tangle of nonprofit groups and shell companies, is that Mr. Singham works closely with the Chinese government media machine and is financing its propaganda worldwide.

From a think tank in Massachusetts to an event space in Manhattan, from a political party in South Africa to news organizations in India and Brazil, The Times tracked hundreds of millions of dollars to groups linked to Mr. Singham that mix progressive advocacy with Chinese government talking points.

Some, like No Cold War, popped up in recent years. Others, like the American antiwar group Code Pink, have morphed over time. Code Pink once criticized China’s rights record but now defends its internment of the predominantly Muslim Uyghurs, which human rights experts have labeled a crime against humanity.

Unmarried Voters

 Karlyn Bowman, Ruy Teixeira, and Nate Moore at AEI:

Understanding the unmarried share of the electorate will be increasingly important in coming years. Married voters are still a significantly larger share of the electorate than unmarried ones. But young people are marrying later, if at all. In 2021, according to General Social Survey data, only 15 percent of 18–29-year-old women were married, half of what it was in 2000. The young today are more ethnically diverse, less conventionally religious, and more Democratic or independent than previous generations.

Two trends confirm the liberalism of young women today. An Astin study of entering college freshmen found that in 2016, before the Me Too movement exploded, 41 percent of the women self-identified as liberal or far left, but only 28.9 percent of the young men did. Between 1966, when this survey began, and 1980, men were more liberal. The gap shrank during the Reagan administration, and since the late 1980s, women have been more liberal/left than men in their first year of college. Our AEI colleague Dan Cox showed a similar pattern using Gallup data from 1998 through 2021, with 44 percent of young women describing themselves as liberal in 2021 compared to 25 percent of young men. Additionally, as the August American Perspectives Survey shows, the Dobbs decision appears to be a significant generational moment for young women, who saw the decision as more ominous than their male counterparts. If young women carry these attitudes with them as they age, Democrats will reap the rewards.

Democrats Increasingly Identify as Liberal

Jeffrey M. Jones at Gallup:

After hovering near 50% in recent years, the percentage of Democrats who identify as politically liberal rose four percentage points in 2022 to 54%, a new high for this group. At the same time, the 10% describing themselves as conservative is the lowest to date. Thirty-six percent say their views are moderate, which is typical of the level recorded for Democrats over the past decade.

Longer term, Democrats have been growing more liberal since at least the mid-1990s when Gallup regularly began tracking party groups’ ideological views. The percentage identifying as liberal was 25% in 1994; it rose to 40% by 2010 and 50% by 2017.

As Gallup has reported previously, increased liberal identification among U.S. Democrats has occurred across all demographic categories, but that shift has been particularly pronounced among White Democrats. More than six in 10 White Democrats identified as liberal in 2022, representing a 37-percentage-point increase since 1994. That contrasts with closer to four in 10 Black and Hispanic Democrats identifying as liberal last year, up less than 20 points from 1994.

Open Society Policy Center

Brian Schwartz at CNBC:

A nonprofit financed by billionaire George Soros quietly donated $140 million to advocacy organizations and ballot initiatives in 2021, plus another $60 million to like-minded charities.

Soros, who personally donated $170 million during the 2022 midterms to Democratic candidates and campaigns on top of that, spread the additional largess through the Open Society Policy Center — a 501(c)(4) nonprofit that falls under the Soros-funded Open Society Foundations network, according to a copy of its 2021 tax filing, which was obtained by CNBC and is the most recent data available. The Open Society Policy Center also doled out $138 million to advocacy groups and causes in 2020. Two of Soros’ children sit on its board, the tax filings and its website show.

The donations bring Soros’ contributions to political campaigns and causes since January 2020 to roughly half a billion dollars — at the least — most of it steered through dark money nonprofit groups and going largely toward political causes aligned with the Democratic Party.

Soros’ nonprofit donations don’t always go directly to political causes. The funds sometimes flow from one of his nonprofits, then to another, before being spent on the advertising, organizing and social media campaigns that directly reach voters.

Many of the Open Society Policy Center’s 2021 donations weren’t necessarily earmarked to help sway the midterm elections, according to the foundation’s website. At the same time, Tom Watson, an editorial director at the Open Society Foundations, conceded in an email to CNBC that “there are definitely some OSPC grants that went to organizations working to combat voter suppression, support voter registration and expand civic participation.” Those are all core Democratic principles.

Life Experience and Politics

 Erick Erickson:

Last week, an urban planning warrior denounced the need for in-unit washers and dryers. He insisted no one ever needed to do laundry every day and once a week or two at a laundromat should be fine. He is a single childless twenty-something. He has no lived experience.

I do not think one must be in a demographic to opine on that demographic. A man should be as able to discuss issues related to women as women can with men. Civilians should be able to make informed opinions and policy decisions about the military, even with a lack of service. But credentials also should not be substituted for a lived life.

Like with the left, parts of the right are increasingly being held captive to the voices and opinions of spectacularly unaccomplished young men and women with brash Twitter personalities hiding their lack of lived lives. We probably should not be trying to set policies related to the working class based on the musings of a pampered progressive brat or of a pampered right-winger subsidized by dad. Nor should we set public policy by people who have only ever lived a political life. Unfortunately, both sides are more and more catering to the least accomplished, loudest voices whose only work experience is a political cause.

Racial Tension in Los Angeles

Racist comments by progressive Hispanic members of the city council have roiled Los Angeles.

Efrén Pérez, Alisson Ramos, Crystal Robertson and Bianca V. Vicuña at WP:

Some observers may dismiss this episode as simply a few biased people. Others might attribute the incident to some Latinos’ exposure to anti-Black ideologies in their home countries.

But our research finds that Latinos’ anti-Black prejudice has strong roots in the United States, which has been steeped in anti-Black racism since its founding. When immigrants arrive here, they and their U.S.-born children learn that however low they might be on the social scale, another group is despised more. A series of such groups, including the Irish, Italians and Poles, earned their identity as Americans by expressing anti-Black prejudice. These efforts have ranged from hurling racial epithets at African Americans to violently keeping Black families out of neighborhoods and schools.

Many Latinos — along with other communities of color — are repeating this same pattern, asserting their position in the American fabric by denigrating Black people. For example, the 2012 installment of the American National Election Study — widely considered a benchmark survey of U.S. politics — examined a large oversample of about 1,000 Latino adults. In that survey, more than half of Latino respondents agreed with statements used to measure anti-Black racism, including: “It’s really a matter of some people not trying hard enough; if Blacks would only try harder they could be just as well off as Whites.”

Blue Bubbles

Many posts have discussed partisan polarization and aversive or negative partisanship.

Samuel Abrams at AEI:

Far too often, the headlines are missing the fact that so much closed-mindedness and balkanization in terms of openness toward engaging with political difference is far more pronounced on the left. And this is a phenomenon that I have observed as a professor who has taught college and university students for almost two decades now. Despite preaching ideas about inclusion, diversity, acceptance, and love, students on the left appear to be repeatedly closed-minded and intolerant of those who see the world differently; one is welcome if they fit within a narrow band of ideas and identities and everyone else is an oppressor of some sort.

The data is unambiguously clear here in terms of left-of-center student intolerance: In 2021, Axios found that young leftists, particularly females, were far more narrow minded than conservatives with just 5 percent of Republican college students saying that they would not befriend someone from the opposite party compared to almost 4 in 10 (37 percent) Democrats. The data also demonstrated that 30 percent of Democrats and 7 percent of Republicans would not work for someone who voted differently from them, while 71 percent of Democrats but only 31 percent of Republicans would not date someone with opposing views.

Turning to the nation at large, the numbers from the May 2021 American Perspectives Survey reveal similar levels of liberal bias toward those they disagree with. The survey found that despite our polarized politics, only 15 percent of Americans report ending relationships over political disagreements; the overwhelming majority—84 percent—have not walked away and figured out how to work with others with whom they may disagree. A further breakdown of the responses, however, uncovers some troubling findings. While 10 percent of conservatives say they have lost a friend over politics, 28 percent of liberals say the same. For extreme conservative identifiers, 22 percent say they have canceled a friendship, a handful of points higher than the national average. In contrast, a whopping 45 percent of extreme liberal identifiers have ended a friendship over politics—twice the figure of their conservative counterparts. Time and time again, the data tell the same story: Liberal college and university students, along with those who are left of center in the population at large, are far more closed minded and open to canceling others than their moderate and conservative counterparts. This should not be ignored.

Unhappiness on the Left

 Samuel J. Abrams at Minding the Campus:

The Left’s characteristic displeasure is rampant on our nation’s college and university campuses. A recent nationally representative survey by College Pulse of over 2,000 students offers new proof that liberals on campus are indeed less happy than their conservative counterparts. The data reveal that during these trying pandemic months, conservative, Republican students reported mental struggles at notably lower levels than their liberal, Democratic peers. Liberal students were also far more likely than conservatives to claim that their respective schools—institutions dominated by progressive faculty and administrators— did not understand them, suggesting that liberals may never be satisfied.

For instance, over the course of the pandemic, mental health understandably declined among many students. When asked if they personally struggled with anxiety and/or depression over the past four months, two-thirds (68 percent) of students reported that they faced either a great deal or a fair amount of struggle. Such a high number is obviously unfortunate, but the figure climbs to nearly three-quarters (73 percent) for strong and weak Democrats. The rate is much lower for strong and weak Republicans, at 56 percent.

Similarly, Democratic students were more likely to say that they struggle to fit in on campus. Four in 10 (42 percent) students reported that over the past four months, they struggled a fair amount or a great deal to fit in at their school. Even more (45 percent) Democratic students responded that they had troubled fitting in, while only 37 percent of Republicans reported feeling the same way. These numbers stand out given the legions of administrators hired to promote countless initiatives aimed at inclusion, tolerance, identity, and health, as well as professional, academic, and interpersonal development. Even more noteworthy is the fact that these administrators fixate on left-leaning issues such as social justice and equity, while in the classroom, faculty are overwhelmingly left of center. Nevertheless, liberal Democratic students are still appreciably more likely than Republican students to maintain that they are the ones who do not fit in on campus.

Partisan Caricatures of the Other Side's Beliefs

 Victoria Parker at The Atlantic

Some caveats: Our research, which is available as a preprint, is under review and subject to change. We drew our large samples of respondents from online survey platforms, not from nationally representative polling. We recognize that this sample—and therefore our estimates of the prevalence of liberal and conservative opinions—is not an exact microcosm of the country. Still, other researchers have concluded that these platforms are reasonably comparable to nationally representative polling.

 The gap that we identified between what partisans really think and what their opponents think they think shows up again and again—but only on a particular kind of issue. People have a more accurate view of the other side’s position on many standard policy issues, such as taxes or health care. But specifically on culture-war issues, partisans are likely to believe a caricatured version of the opposing side’s attitudes. These misconceptions have hardened into enduring stereotypes: liberal snowflakes and free-speech police, conservative racists and “deplorables.”

 In reality, just a third of liberal participants agreed even a little with banning controversial public speakers from college campuses, but conservatives estimated that 63 percent of liberals held that view. Only 22 percent of conservatives expressed hostile and unwelcoming attitudes toward immigrants, but liberals thought that 57 percent of them did. Our data suggest that many people are walking around with an exaggerated mental representation of what other Americans stand for.

Hispanic (Not Latinx) Voters

 Ruy Teixeira:

An important thing to remember about the Hispanic population is that they are heavily oriented toward upward mobility and see themselves as being able to benefit from available opportunities to attain that. Three-fifths of Latinos in the national exit poll said they believed life would be better for the next generation of Americans.

They are also patriotic. By well over 3:1, Hispanics in the VSG survey said they would rather be a citizen of the United States than any other country in the world and by 35 points said they were proud of the way American democracy works. These findings on patriotism are confirmed by results from the 2020 More in Common Identity and Belonging study, where the views of Hispanics contrasted starkly with the negative views of progressive activists.

Clearly, this constituency does not harbor particularly radical views on the nature of American society and its supposed intrinsic racism and white supremacy. They are instead a patriotic, upwardly mobile, working class group with quite practical and down to earth concerns. Democrats will either learn to focus on that or they will continue to lose ground among this vital group of voters.

Marc Caputo and Sabrina Rodriguez at Politico:

As Democrats seek to reach out to Latino voters in a more gender-neutral way, they’ve increasingly begun using the word Latinx, a term that first began to get traction among academics and activists on the left.

But that very effort could be counterproductive in courting those of Latin American descent, according to a new nationwide poll of Hispanic voters.

Only 2 percent of those polled refer to themselves as Latinx, while 68 percent call themselves “Hispanic” and 21 percent favored “Latino” or “Latina” to describe their ethnic background, according to the survey from Bendixen & Amandi International, a top Democratic firm specializing in Latino outreach.

More problematic for Democrats: 40 percent said Latinx bothers or offends them to some degree and 30 percent said they would be less likely to support a politician or organization that uses the term.

 

Blue Inequality

 From The New York Times:

It’s easy to blame the other side. And for many Democrats, it’s obvious that Republicans are thwarting progress toward a more equal society. But what happens when Republicans aren’t standing in the way? In many states — including California, New York and Illinois — Democrats control all the levers of power. They run the government. They write the laws. And as we explore in the video above, they often aren’t living up to their values. In key respects, many blue states are actually doing worse than red states. It is in the blue states where affordable housing is often hardest to find, there are some of the most acute disparities in education funding and economic inequality is increasing most quickly. Instead of asking, “What’s the matter with Kansas?” Democrats need to spend more time pondering, “What’s the matter with California?”

Democrats and Idelogy

Lydia Saad at Gallup:

Whereas Republicans nationwide are highly unified in their ideological outlook, with most (75%) identifying as conservative, Democrats are more fragmented. According to Gallup data collected thus far in 2021, the largest subgroup of Democrats are those who describe their political views as liberal, at 51%. The other half are mostly self-described moderates (37%), along with a small group of conservatives (12%).

...

The percentage of Democrats identifying as politically liberal increased fairly steadily from 30% in 2001 to 50% in 2017. It has remained there since then, including today's 51%. As their numbers have expanded, liberals have edged out both moderates and conservatives. But moderates have been holding steady near 38% since 2013, while conservatives have become even more scarce.

...

The liberal wing of the party has had considerable momentum during this century. But despite its gains, it now represents half of all Democrats, with the other half still identifying as moderate or conservative. And while the party is now solidly liberal on social issues, it remains politically fragmented on economic issues.

Although having such a diverse political makeup has its challenges, that diversity could be helping the Democratic Party maintain its edge over Republicans in party affiliation. Even as the two parties are closely split when it comes to firm party identifiers, Democrats have held the significant edge in leaned party for most of the past two decades, including by 48% versus 42% so far this year.

On the Left

Justin Ye at The Harvard Crimson:

Of the Class of 2025 who supported a candidate, regardless of whether they were eligible to vote, 87 percent supported Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election — 3.1 percent fewer than Class of 2024 students who indicated they planned to vote for Biden last year.

Those supporting Donald Trump in the election dropped from 7.1 to 6.3 between the two class years. Of those who supported a candidate, 6.7 percent of the Class of 2025 supported Green Party candidate Howie Hawkins.

Freshmen not affiliated with any political party rose by 3.3 percent, from 22.6 percent in the Class of 2024 to 25.9 percent in the Class of 2025. The proportion of Democratic freshmen decreased from 57.4 percent last year to 55 percent this year, while the proportion of Republican freshmen decreased from 5.2 percent to 5 percent. Independents make up 11.8 percent of the Class of 2025 and libertarians 1.3 percent.

The proportion of freshmen in the Class of 2025 identifying as liberal remained unchanged from last year — 72.4 percent. Those identifying as “very liberal” rose from 31.7 percent of the class to 35.2 percent between the Class of 2024 and 2025.

Survey of 78% of incoming class of 2025 at Harvard via @thecrimson reveals, as usual, many fascinating details. The lack of political diversity remains striking, and has increased in past 5 years. https://t.co/R2QTAgFUO9 pic.twitter.com/zYfiMqsQAc

— Nicholas A. Christakis (@NAChristakis) September 28, 2021

 Agnostics (23.9%) and atheists (17.4%) outnumber Protestants (14.5%).

Is left-wing authoritarianism real?  Sally Satel at AEI:

An ambitious new study on the subject by the Emory University researcher Thomas H. Costello and five colleagues should settle the question. It proposes a rigorous new measure of antidemocratic attitudes on the left. And, by drawing on a survey of 7,258 adults, Costello’s team firmly establishes that such attitudes exist on both sides of the American electorate. (One co-author on the paper, I should note, was Costello’s adviser, the late Scott Lilienfeld—with whom I wrote a 2013 book and numerous articles.) Intriguingly, the researchers found some common traits between left-wing and right-wing authoritarians, including a “preference for social uniformity, prejudice towards different others, willingness to wield group authority to coerce behavior, cognitive rigidity, aggression and punitiveness towards perceived enemies, outsized concern for hierarchy, and moral absolutism.”

A FIRE survey of college students:

• More than 80% of students report censoring their viewpoints at their colleges at least some of the time, with 21% saying they censor themselves often.
• More than 50% of students identify racial inequality as a difficult topic to discuss on their campus.
• Two thirds of students (66%) say it is acceptable to shout down a speaker to prevent them from speaking on campus, and almost one in four (23%) say it is acceptable to use violence to stop a campus speech.

 

Targeting Scholars

 From the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education:

Scholars have long been targeted for sanction by ideological adversaries. However, some worrying trends are emerging.[1] The current research reveals that since 2015 targeting incidents are on the rise and are increasingly coming from within academia itself — from other scholars and especially from undergraduate students. These targeting incidents take a multitude of forms, including demands for an investigation, demotion, censorship, suspension, and even termination.[2]

This research documents the ways and reasons that scholars have faced calls for sanction; how scholars and institutional administrators have responded to different forms of targeting; and what (if any) sanctions scholars have ultimately faced in response to these targeting incidents, from 2015 to the present (up to and including July 31, 2021).

The key findings of this report include:

• Over the past five and a half years, a total of 426 targeting incidents have occurred. Almost three-quarters of them (314 out of 426; 74%) have resulted in some form of sanction.
• The number of targeting incidents has risen dramatically, from 24 in 2015 to 113 in 2020. As of mid-2021, 61 targeting incidents have already occurred.
• Scholars were targeted most often for speech involving race (e.g., racial inequality, historic racism, racial slurs, BLM, DEI).
• In addition to race, targeting incidents tended to involve hot-button issues such as partisanship, gender, and institutional policy.
• In almost two-thirds (269; 63%) of the incidents, scholars were targeted for expressing a personal view or opinion on a controversial social issue.
• Half of the targeting incidents have occurred because of a scholar’s scientific inquiry (106 incidents; 25%) or teaching practices (107 incidents; 25%).
• Targeting incidents have occurred most often in the disciplines that are at the core of a liberal arts education: law, political science, English, history, and philosophy.
• Targeting incidents have come from individuals and groups to the political left of the scholar more often than the political right; these targetings have come more often from those on campus, have been more organized (i.e., the online petitions have considerably more signatures), and have typically been aimed at scholars who are tenured, White, and male.
• Campuses where the most targeting incidents have occurred tend to also have severely speech-restrictive policies, and are unlikely to have adopted the Chicago Principles guaranteeing the preeminence of free speech.

Ideology: Liberals and Conservatives Outnumber Populists and Libertarians

 

Populists - voters who are culturally conservative, economically liberal, make up 14% of the electorate. In contrast, Libertarians - voters who are economically conservative, culturally liberal - make up 6% of the electorate. pic.twitter.com/sYyNCAEnEt

— Echelon Insights (@EchelonInsights) July 7, 2021

Public Opinion and Progressives

 Ruy Teixeira notes problematic issues for progressive Democrats:

* Immigration. The surge at the border is real and Democrats currently lack a coherent immigration policy with a plausible enforcement regime. This makes them vulnerable to typecasting as being in favor of open borders.

* Police conduct. Support for reform is real but strong voices within the party are demanding much more than that. Defund the police and similar demands could re-emerge, particularly in the wake of a police killing that attracts wide attention.

* Crime and public safety. There has been a spike in violent crime and murders, which Democrats are reluctant to talk about. If it persists and Democrats are viewed as being complacent or ineffective in addressing the problem, the potential for working class backlash, and not just among whites, is very real.

* “Anti-racism” and “Anti-bias” training and education. The spread of training and curricular models that are highly ideological and counterposed to the views and values summarized above poses genuine problems. To the extent Democrats are viewed as promoting these models and making them standard within schools, workplaces and government offices, the party’s ability to occupy the center ground will be compromised.

* “Equity”-driven programs. So far, including in the American Rescue Plan, Democrats have been putting their chips down on universal programs and benefits, which disproportionately help blacks and Hispanics because they are disproportionately lower income. However, there is considerable pressure to promote “equity”, which has come to mean equality of outcomes rather than equality of opportunity. This has led to calls for racially-focused programs to eliminate outcome disparities, rather than relying on the provision of universal benefits and opportunities. To the extent Democrats becoming associated with equity in this sense, it also pushes them off the center ground.

Other possibilities could be mentioned, but these examples make clear the contours of the battles that could emerge and that the Democrats will likely not be able to avoid. If they wish to command the center ground of American politics, capitalizing on the strong economic hand they appear to currently hold, they will need to couple that with a conscious effort to steer back to the center on these cultural issues. If not, they will likely fall short of the progress that now seems within their grasp.

Partisan Local News Sites

Davey Alba and Jack Nicas at NYT:

Maine Business Daily is part of a fast-growing network of nearly 1,300 websites that aim to fill a void left by vanishing local newspapers across the country. Yet the network, now in all 50 states, is built not on traditional journalism but on propaganda ordered up by dozens of conservative think tanks, political operatives, corporate executives and public-relations professionals, a Times investigation found.

The sites appear as ordinary local-news outlets, with names like Des Moines Sun, Ann Arbor Times and Empire State Today. They employ simple layouts and articles about local politics, community happenings and sometimes national issues, much like any local newspaper.

But behind the scenes, many of the stories are directed by political groups and corporate P.R. firms to promote a Republican candidate or a company, or to smear their rivals.

The network is largely overseen by Brian Timpone, a TV reporter turned internet entrepreneur who has sought to capitalize on the decline of local news organizations for nearly two decades. He has built the network with the help of several others, including a Texas brand-management consultant and a conservative Chicago radio personality.

The network is one of a proliferation of partisan local-news sites funded by political groups associated with both parties. Liberal donors have poured millions of dollars into operations like Courier, a network of eight sites that began covering local news in swing states last year. Conservative activists are running similar sites, like the Star News group in Tennessee, Virginia and Minnesota.

But those operations run just several sites each, while Mr. Timpone’s network has more than twice as many sites as the nation’s largest newspaper chain, Gannett. And while political groups have helped finance networks like Courier, investors in news operations typically don’t weigh in on specific articles.

The local sites include

• Ann Arbor Times
• Illinois Valley Times 
• North Cook News
• DuPage County Journal
• Empire State Today

 In July, Jessica Mahone and Philip Napoli reported at Nieman:

The growth of partisan media masquerading as state and local reporting is a troubling trend we’ve seen emerge amid the financial declines of local news organizations. But what do these outlets mean for journalism in American communities?

Using previous research and news reports as a guide, we’ve mapped the locations of more than 400 partisan media outlets — often funded and operated by government officials, political candidates, PACs, and political party operatives — and found, somewhat unsurprisingly, that these outlets are emerging most often in swing states, raising a concern about the ability of such organizations to fill community information needs while prioritizing the electoral value of an audience.

We found that while the (few) left-leaning sites prioritize statewide reporting, right-leaning sites are more focused on local reporting, suggesting different strategies for engaging with targeted audiences and indicating the potential for these sites to exacerbate polarization in local communities.

Here’s our map of how these sources are distributed across the U.S., along with their partisan orientation: