2016 presidential election https://www.morningsidecenter.org/ en Electoral College? Or Popular Vote? https://www.morningsidecenter.org/teachable-moment/lessons/electoral-college-or-popular-vote <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--title--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig x field--node--title.html.twig * field--node--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig * field--title.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <span>Electoral College? Or Popular Vote?</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--body--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig * field--node--body.html.twig * field--node--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig * field--body.html.twig * field--text-with-summary.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field--item"><h4>Quiz</h4> <p><strong>1. </strong>What is the Electoral College?<br> <br> a) a school of higher learning, specializing in electronics<br> b) a school of higher learning where students are taught primarily by lectures<br> c) a voting system invented in 1968 to prevent Joe McCarthy from becoming president<br> d) an indirect voting system that sometimes allows candidates for president to win without getting the most popular votes<br> e) none of the above</p> <p><em>Answer: d</em></p> <p><strong>2. </strong>True or False: The official presidential election took place on December 19, 2016, when presidential electors (who make up the "Electoral College") met in the 50 state capitols and in Washington, D.C.</p> <p><em>Answer: True</em></p> <p><strong>3. &nbsp;</strong>Members of the Electoral College are supposed to vote for the candidate who:</p> <p>a) won the popular vote in their state<br> b) polled the highest in the last three national surveys<br> c) is the best person for the job<br> d) has the best television ads</p> <p><em>Answer: a</em>. In every state but&nbsp;<a href="https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/electors.html#restrictions">Maine and Nebraska</a>, the candidate who wins the most votes in the state is supposed to receive all of the state’s electoral votes</p> <p><strong>4. &nbsp;</strong>True or False: No president has ever come to office without getting the most popular votes.</p> <p><em>Answer: False</em></p> <ul> <li>In&nbsp;1824, John Quincy Adams was elected president despite not winning the popular vote. Neither he nor his opponent Andrew Jackson got the 131 votes needed in the Electoral College to be declared president, so the decision went to the House of Representatives, which voted Adams into the White House.</li> <li>In&nbsp;1876, Rutherford B. Hayes won the election, but he lost the popular vote by more than 250,000 ballots to Samuel J. Tilden.</li> <li>In&nbsp;1888, Benjamin Harrison won the election, but lost the popular vote by more than 90,000 votes to Grover Cleveland.</li> <li>In&nbsp;2000, George W. Bush was declared the winner of the general election even though he got 540,000 fewer votes than his Democratic opponent, Al Gore.</li> <li>In 2016, Donald Trump was declared president, even though he received about 2.8 million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton, at latest count.<br> &nbsp;</li> </ul> <hr> <h4><br> Student Reading:<br> Electoral College Debate<br> &nbsp;</h4> <p><em>Have students read the material below, either out loud or silently.</em></p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>Hillary Clinton got more votes than Donald Trump - about 2.8 million more, by the most recent count. And yet, on December 19, 2016, Donald Trump became the official winner of the 2016 presidential election. How did this happen?</p> <p>Our Electoral College system, established in the U.S. Constitution, provides an indirect means of electing the president. Voters in each state, according to each state’s rules, elect "electors" who will then go on to elect a president. In almost every state, the electors&nbsp; are pledged to elect the candidate who got the most votes in their state&nbsp; -- and 29 states plus the District of Columbia have passed laws to punish electors who don’t vote this way. The exceptions are Maine and Nebraska, which distribute their electoral votes by district. (For a full description of the process, see the lesson "<a href="http://www.morningsidecenter.org/teachable-moment/lessons/should-us-junk-its-electoral-system">Should the U.S. Junk Its Electoral System?</a>")</p> <p>The Electoral College system was adopted at the 1787 Constitutional Convention for a variety of reasons --&nbsp; including an interest in protecting the system of slavery. Political scholar George C. Edwards III writes that at the Constitutional Convention: &nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <p style="margin-left:.5in;">A direct election for president did not sit well with most delegates from the slave states, which had large populations but far fewer eligible voters [because slaves could not vote]. They gravitated toward the electoral college as a compromise because it was based on population [not voters]. The convention had agreed to count each slave as three-fifths of a person for the purpose of calculating each state’s allotment of seats in Congress.</p> <p>After the 2016 election, a number of citizen groups have revived longstanding calls to create an alternative to the Electoral College system. &nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <p><strong>Opponents</strong> of the system argue that:</p> <ul> <li>Every citizen's vote should carry the same importance<br> &nbsp;</li> <li>Millions of votes are essentially "wasted" because most states award all of their electors to the winner of that state (a "winner-take-all" system).<br> &nbsp;</li> <li>The number of electors per state is itself unfair. All states, regardless of population, are awarded the same number of&nbsp; electors: two for their two senators, plus one for each of the state’s representatives in the House (which roughly corresponds to the population). So, for example, Wyoming has three electoral votes (for its two senators and one representative) - which is more representation than the state would have if electors were allotted by population. According to <a href="http://www.fairvote.org/population_vs_electoral_votes">FairVote</a>, Wyoming voters have about three times more clout in the Electoral College than the average American. Each voter in the populous state of New York, by contrast, has 12% less clout than the average American.<br> &nbsp;</li> <li>Campaigns can essentially ignore states where the outcome is predictable, because the loser's votes will count for nothing.</li> </ul> <p><strong>Advocates </strong>for retaining the Electoral College insist that:</p> <ul> <li>Without the Electoral College, a few high-population states would decide the elections. Less populous states would have diminished power as a result.<br> &nbsp;</li> <li>Rural areas, without much population, would lose power as well.<br> &nbsp;</li> <li>Eliminating the Electoral College would encourage third parties, and this could lead to the election of candidates (from the current major parties or not) who win even smaller fractions of the popular vote than under our existing system.</li> </ul> <p>The 2016 election was the second time in the last 16 years that the candidate with the most votes did not win the presidential election. (In 2000, Democrat Al Gore got over a half million more votes than Republican George Bush, who was elected President.) In the current election, Clinton won the popular vote by a&nbsp;wider margin than that of 10 winning candidates in history. This, coupled with strong opposition to a Trump presidency among many people, has spawned a variety of efforts to amend, eliminate or circumvent the Electoral College.</p> <p>Some of these efforts aimed specifically at overturning the results of the 2016 presidential election. Harvard Professor Lawrence Lessig founded an organization called Electors Trust, and promised legal assistance to any Trump elector who switched his or her vote. &nbsp;Rather than opposing the whole concept of the College, Lessig insists that the founders intended the electors to perform just such a function—to vote their conscience to prevent an unfit, but popular, person from becoming president. Change.org collected over 4 million names on a petition asking members of the Electoral College to change their vote from Trump to Clinton. Another organization, called the Hamilton Electors, asked Trump and Clinton electors to support a Republican other than Trump for the presidency. &nbsp;(Only a half dozen electors ultimately opted to change their votes on December 19.)&nbsp;</p> <p>Democratic electors from Florida and Colorado filed suit to invalidate state rules which force them to vote for the candidate who won their states. They hoped to make it easier for Republican electors to switch votes. Both efforts failed in court.</p> <p>Other challenges to the Electoral College are long-term, and opposition to it is longstanding. In its December 19, 2016, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/19/opinion/time-to-end-the-electoral-college.html?_r=0">editorial</a> for abolishing the Electoral College, the New York Times editorial &nbsp;board noted that the paper had been opposed to the current system for eight decades. A great majority of Americans also oppose it. On November 15, 2016, Sen. Barbara Boxer (Dem., CA) introduced a bill to amend the Constitution to eliminate the Electoral College.&nbsp;</p> <p>But the Electoral College is enshrined in the Constitution and amending the Constitution is extremely difficult: It requires a two-thirds majority&nbsp;vote&nbsp;in both the House of Representatives and the Senate or by a&nbsp;convention of states called for by two-thirds of the State legislatures. Then, to become part of the Constitution, an amendment must be ratified by either the legislatures of three-quarters of the&nbsp;states&nbsp;or by state ratifying conventions&nbsp;in three-quarters of the states.</p> <p>An organization called National Popular Vote has devised a plan that would retain the Electoral College but institute majority rule. Under this plan, states would voluntarily change their own rules for selecting electors by requiring them to vote for the candidate who has won the popular vote nationwide. If states selecting a simple majority of the electors agreed to the plan, then the candidate with the most votes would also win the Electoral College vote. By 2016, ten states (and the District of Columbia) had agreed to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. The tally of those states' electoral votes is 163, of the minimum, 270, that is needed for the idea to succeed.</p> <p>Efforts to amend the Constitution or make any changes at all in the electoral system will face opposition from the states and from the political party (the Republicans) that has benefited from the unequal weighting of votes.<br> &nbsp;</p> <hr> <p>&nbsp;</p> <h4>Discussion</h4> <ol> <li>The Senate, like the Electoral College, gives disproportionate power to the less-populated states (because each state gets two senators regardless of population). Is this unfair to the citizens of highly-populated states?&nbsp; What are the advantages and disadvantages of this system - keeping in mind that unlike the Senate, the House’s representatives are proportionate to the population?<br> &nbsp;</li> <li>One argument against the Electoral College posits that voters in the predictable states (where one candidate has much higher odds of winning) are discouraged from voting because they believe their vote will not count. Do you buy this argument?&nbsp; Why or why not?<br> &nbsp;</li> <li>One argument for the Electoral College is that presidential campaigns would largely ignore the rural states, because their time and money would be better spent in metropolitan areas, if only the popular vote mattered. Do you think campaigns and presidents would be more likely to ignore the concerns of rural voters if we elected presidents by popular vote?<br> &nbsp;</li> <li>Do you think the U.S. should eliminate the Electoral College and elect presidents based on the national popular vote instead?&nbsp; Why or why not? Provide your arguments.</li> </ol> <p>&nbsp;</p> <hr> <h4><br> Homework<strong> </strong></h4> <p>Ask students to write a brief essay in which they answer Question #4, providing at least three arguments to support their case.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <hr> <h4><br> Sources</h4> <p><a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/12/electoral-college-fight-matters-though-trump-will-still-win.html">http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/12/electoral-college-fight-matters-though-trump-will-still-win.html</a></p> <p><a href="http://www.snopes.com/harvard-professor-wants-electoral-college-to-reject-trump/">http://www.snopes.com/harvard-professor-wants-electoral-college-to-reject-trump/</a></p> <p><a href="http://www.newsweek.com/behind-states-push-reform-electoral-college-system-520316?utm_source=internal&amp;utm_campaign=belowcontent&amp;utm_medium=related3">http://www.newsweek.com/behind-states-push-reform-electoral-college-system-520316?utm_source=internal&amp;utm_campaign=belowcontent&amp;utm_medium=related3</a></p> <p><a href="http://constitutionus.com/">http://constitutionus.com/</a></p> <p><a href="http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/12/14/electoral-college-revolt-growing-powerful-show-force">http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/12/14/electoral-college-revolt-growing-powerful-show-force</a></p> <p><a href="http://www.morningsidecenter.org/teachable-moment/lessons/should-us-junk-its-electoral-system">http://www.morningsidecenter.org/teachable-moment/lessons/should-us-junk-its-electoral-system</a></p> <p><a href="http://www.factcheck.org/2008/03/presidents-winning-without-popular-vote/">http://www.factcheck.org/2008/03/presidents-winning-without-popular-vote/</a></p> <p><a href="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/electoral-college-slavery-constitution/">http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/electoral-college-slavery-constitution/</a></p> <p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-the-electoral-college/2012/11/02/2d45c526-1f85-11e2-afca-58c2f5789c5d_story.html?utm_term=.8d35ff38f134">https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-the-electoral-college/2012/11/02/2d45c526-1f85-11e2-afca-58c2f5789c5d_story.html?utm_term=.8d35ff38f134</a></p> <p><a href="http://www.fairvote.org/population_vs_electoral_votes">http://www.fairvote.org/population_vs_electoral_votes</a></p> <p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/19/opinion/time-to-end-the-electoral-college.html?_r=0">http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/19/opinion/time-to-end-the-electoral-college.html?_r=0</a></p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--uid--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig x field--node--uid.html.twig * field--node--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig * field--uid.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <span> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'username' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'core/modules/user/templates/username.html.twig' --> <span>fionta</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'core/modules/user/templates/username.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--created--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig x field--node--created.html.twig * field--node--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <span> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'time' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'core/modules/system/templates/time.html.twig' --> <time datetime="2016-12-20T05:20:30-05:00" title="Tuesday, December 20, 2016 - 05:20">December 20, 2016</time> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'core/modules/system/templates/time.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'links__node' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * links--node.html.twig x links.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap/templates/system/links.html.twig' --> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap/templates/system/links.html.twig' --> Tue, 20 Dec 2016 10:20:30 +0000 fionta 360 at https://www.morningsidecenter.org The Power of Appointment & Trump's Controversial Nominees https://www.morningsidecenter.org/teachable-moment/lessons/power-appointment-trumps-controversial-nominees <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--title--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig x field--node--title.html.twig * field--node--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig * field--title.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <span>The Power of Appointment &amp; Trump&#039;s Controversial Nominees</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--body--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig * field--node--body.html.twig * field--node--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig * field--body.html.twig * field--text-with-summary.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field--item"><h4>To the Teacher:</h4> <p>The power of U.S. presidents doesn’t just come from their speeches or their legislative initiatives. Presidents also have the power to appoint high government officials -- including the &nbsp;Cabinet members who head fifteen federal departments.</p> <p>This lesson consists of two readings designed to spur student discussion about the president’s power of appointment. The first reading looks broadly at the president's power to name leaders within the executive branch of government. The second reading looks more specifically at two of the most controversial appointments proposed by incoming President Donald Trump. Questions for discussion follow each reading.<br> &nbsp;</p> <hr> <p>&nbsp;</p> <h4>Reading 1:<br> The President's Power to Appoint</h4> <p>Many people think about the power of U.S. presidents in terms of their ability to give landmark speeches and set the agenda for the country. Or perhaps they think of the president's signature legislative initiatives—for example, President Obama’s Affordable Care Act or President George W. Bush’s tax cuts. However, a big part of the power of the Presidency, and a part that is often overlooked, is the power of appointment.</p> <p>In addition to appointing White House staff, the president selects the heads of fifteen departments under executive authority. These departmental leaders serve in what is known as the president's Cabinet. The Cabinet members, in turn, are in charge of more than four million employees in the federal government. The ideology and political priorities of a senior administration official or Cabinet member can go far in shaping the priorities and functioning of the federal government’s bureaucracy.</p> <p>In a December 7, 2016 article in Mic, reporter Eric Lutz <a href="https://mic.com/articles/161357/here-is-a-breakdown-of-all-the-cabinet-positions-and-what-they-do#.cVwyFYNBy">described</a> the historical role of the president’s Cabinet in setting U.S. policy:</p> <p class="rteindent1">The Cabinet, which was established in Article II, section two of the Constitution, dates back to George Washington's administration. Back then, it was a four-member council comprised of Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of Treasury Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of War Henry Knox and Attorney General Edmund Randolph. Since that time, the Cabinet has grown, and its officials now have a hand in everything from the creation of the food stamp program to the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to the Environmental Protection Agency.</p> <p class="rteindent1">Today, the Cabinet is comprised of the vice president and 15 department heads, as well as a handful of Cabinet-level positions, such as White House chief of staff.</p> <p>Cabinet members not only have a hand in creating policy, they have a powerful role in determining how government will enforce laws and regulations. In a January 29, 2016, editorial for the New York Times, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/29/opinion/elizabeth-warren-one-way-to-rebuild-our-institutions.html?_r=1">argued</a> that presidential appointments can have far-reaching implications for the government:</p> <p class="rteindent1">Presidents don’t control most day-to-day [decisions about how to enforce laws and regulations], but they do nominate the heads of all the agencies, and these choices make all the difference. Strong leaders at the Environmental Protection Agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Labor Department have pushed those agencies to forge ahead with powerful initiatives to protect the environment, consumers and workers. The Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, a tiny office charged with oversight of the post-crash bank bailout, has aggressive leaders — and a far better record of holding banks and executives accountable than its bigger counterparts.</p> <p class="rteindent1">Meanwhile, the Securities and Exchange Commission, suffering under weak leadership, is far behind on issuing congressionally mandated rules to avoid the next financial crisis. It has repeatedly granted waivers so that lawbreaking companies can continue to enjoy special privileges, while the Justice Department has dodged one opportunity after another to impose meaningful accountability on big corporations and their executives.</p> <p class="rteindent1">Each of these government divisions is headed by someone nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. The lesson is clear: Personnel is policy. &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <p>As reporter Robert A. Rankin <a href="http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1996-12-01/news/1996336096_1_cabinet-secretary-bureaucracy">explained</a> in a December 1, 1996 article for the <em>Baltimore Sun</em>, Cabinet members often have a powerful role in determining the exercise of presidential power:</p> <p class="rteindent1">While low-profile Cabinet posts may appear to be fillable by interchangeable faceless functionaries, experience teaches that each Cabinet pick is important. Poor choices undermine presidencies. Good ones extend the president's reach throughout government and society...</p> <p class="rteindent1">"I think it's enormously important," said Martin Anderson, who organized Ronald Reagan's initial Cabinet selection in 1980. "Unless he puts people into those places who are competent, within a short time they will create policy messes that he'll spend all his time cleaning up."</p> <p class="rteindent1">Like any executive, a good Cabinet secretary must be able to manage a big bureaucracy - but experts say that's only the start. He or she must be both a leader and a loyal follower simultaneously, and for many executives, that's not so easy.</p> <p class="rteindent1">"These people must understand that the president got elected, the Cabinet secretary did not. These people are part of the president's team. That's a difficult role for a CEO to accept sometimes," said one former White House manager who asked not to be identified. "They see themselves as the head of the department, but the truth is they are guiding that department at the president's direction."<br> &nbsp;</p> <p>As with all incoming presidents, many people in the United States are watching president-elect Trump’s proposed cabinet appointments as a way of gathering information about what a Trump administration will look like, both in terms of policy and enforcement of those policies.<br> &nbsp;</p> <h4>For Discussion</h4> <p><strong>1.</strong>&nbsp;How much of the material in this reading was new to you, and how much was already familiar? Do you have any questions about what you read?</p> <p><strong>2.&nbsp;</strong>According to the reading, what is the president’s Cabinet and why is it significant?</p> <p><strong>3.&nbsp;</strong>U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren has stated "personnel is policy." What does she mean by this statement? Do you agree with this idea?</p> <p><strong>4.&nbsp;</strong>Can you think of a department in the federal government that affects your life? (Examples might be the U.S. Department of Education or the Environmental Protection Agency.) How might presidential appointments to these departments result in noticeable changes in your school or neighborhood?</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <hr> <h4>&nbsp;</h4> <h4>Reading 2:<br> Donald Trump's Controversial Cabinet Picks</h4> <p>For an incoming president, selecting members of the Cabinet and White House staff is a central part of establishing the new administration. Accordingly, since the election on November 8, 2016, President-elect Donald Trump has been meeting with the people he plans to nominate for various senior positions. Several of Trump's proposed nominees have generated significant criticism and public debate. Two potential nominees in particular, for attorney general and for White House adviser, have proven extremely controversial.</p> <p>For the post of attorney general, Trump has indicated that he intends to appoint Senator Jeff Sessions, who previously served as the attorney general of Alabama. Sessions, an early Trump supporter, reportedly played a big role in shaping Trump’s policy proposals on immigration, counterterrorism and trade. As Associated Press reporters Eileen Sullivan and Chad Day <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-offers-jeff-sessions-attorney-general-post/">wrote</a> in a November 17, 2016, article, Trump’s nomination of Sessions has drawn criticism because of the senator’s history of racist comments:</p> <p class="rteindent1">Nominated for a federal judgeship in 1986, Sessions, R-Ala., was dogged by racist comments he was accused of making while serving as U.S. attorney in Alabama. He was said to have called a black assistant U.S. attorney "boy" and the NAACP "un-American" and "communist-inspired."...</p> <p class="rteindent1">"Mr. Sessions is a throwback to a shameful era, which I know both black and white Americans thought was in our past," the late Massachusetts Democrat, Sen. Edward Kennedy, said during the 1986 confirmation hearing. "It is inconceivable to me that a person of this attitude is qualified to be a U.S. attorney, let alone a U.S. federal judge."</p> <p class="rteindent1">During the hearing, a former assistant U.S. attorney, Thomas Figures, who is black, said Sessions referred to him as "boy," and told him to be careful what he said to "white folks." Sessions said he never called Figures "boy," but Kennedy produced a letter from an organization of black lawyers that said Figures made the allegation about Sessions to the organization's investigators at least twice.</p> <p class="rteindent1">Sessions told the committee that he told Figures to be careful what he said to "folks."</p> <p class="rteindent1">"I believe that the statements and actions of Mr. Sessions regarding race, and regarding civil rights, impact tremendously on whether he is decent," Figures told the committee. Figures died in 2015.</p> <p class="rteindent1">Sessions was also criticized for joking in the presence of an attorney with the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division that the Ku Klux Klan was "OK" until he learned they smoked marijuana. During his confirmation hearing, he said his comment about the Klan "was a silly comment, I guess you might say, that I made."</p> <p>In the same article, journalists Sullivan and Day report that some Senators argue that Sessions is well qualified for the position of Attorney General and will therefore have their support:</p> <p class="rteindent1">South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said he would support a Sessions nomination.</p> <p class="rteindent1">"I'd vote for him. I like Jeff. He was the early, only supporter for Donald Trump in the Senate," Graham said. "And I believe Jeff Sessions has earned the right to serve President Trump in the highest levels, and I think he's a good, competent, capable man."</p> <p class="rteindent1">Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, would also support Sessions, spokesman Conn Carroll said. "Sen. Lee has worked closely with Sessions in the Senate and has the utmost respect for his abilities," Carroll said.</p> <p>Jeff Sessions’ proposed appointment to Attorney General is not the only pending nomination by President-elect Trump that is generating controversy. Trump’s proposal to appoint Steve Bannon, head of far-right media outlet Breitbart News, as chief strategist and senior counselor at the White House has brought an outcry from critics. Writer and civil rights activist Shaun King <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/king-bannon-prefer-property-owners-vote-article-1.2889868">argued</a> in a November 28, 2016 article in the New York Daily News that Bannon’s racism, homophobia, and anti-Semitism should disqualify him from a position at the White House. King lists the various ways Bannon has demonstrated his prejudices:</p> <p class="rteindent1">His ex-wife said he openly and repeatedly made anti-Semitic statements about Jews.</p> <p class="rteindent1">His hero, Andrew Breitbart, boldly compared him to a Nazi propagandist as a compliment. &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <p class="rteindent1">Bannon himself recently admitted that he built Breitbart into "the platform for the alt-right," which is little more than Neo-Nazism with a new name.</p> <p class="rteindent1">A former Bannon colleague, Julia Jones, who worked alongside him as a partner on a Ronald Reagan film project, revealed to the New York Times that he not only spoke on issues of "genetic superiority," but that he "once mused about the desirability of limiting the vote to property owners." &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;</p> <p class="rteindent1">When Jones offered the rebuttal that such a plan "would exclude a lot of African-Americans," Bannon allegedly quipped back in return that "maybe that’s not such a bad thing."</p> <p>Countering these critics, Bannon’s defenders argue that presidents should be able to appoint whomever they prefer to serve as advisors. In their November, 15, 2016, New York Times journalists Michael D. Shear, Maggie Haberman, and Michael S. Schmidt <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/15/us/politics/donald-trump-presidency.html">detailed</a> one defense of Bannon’s proposed appointment:</p> <p class="rteindent1">Kellyanne Conway, a top adviser [to Mr. Trump], defended Mr. Bannon in brief remarks to reporters in New York, describing him as the "general of this campaign" and saying that "people should look at the full résumé."</p> <p class="rteindent1">"He has got a Harvard business degree. He’s a naval officer. He has success in entertainment," Ms. Conway said, calling him a "brilliant tactician."</p> <p class="rteindent1">Ms. Conway denied that Mr. Bannon had a connection to right-wing nationalists or that he would bring those views to the White House. "I’m personally offended that you think I would manage a campaign where that would be one of the going philosophies," she said.</p> <p><br> Despite such disavowals from the Trump camp, Bannon’s prospective appointment has drawn protest from groups including IfNotNow, a Jewish activist organization. Salon reporter Ben Norton <a href="http://www.salon.com/2016/11/21/jewishresistance-protests-trump-adviser-steve-bannon-racism-islamophobia-at-pro-israel-group-gala/">described</a> a protest of Bannon’s proposed appointment in a November 21, 2016 article:</p> <p class="rteindent1">Hundreds of people from the Jewish community gathered in New York City on Sunday night to protest the racism of the Donald Trump camp...</p> <p class="rteindent1">"I am outraged that a white supremacist, who has been at the helm of a news organization trafficking in racism, anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish bigotry, will have a desk in the West Wing and the ear of the President," Sarah Lerman-Sinkoff, a member of IfNotNow, said in a statement about the protest.</p> <p>Given such protests, scrutiny of Trump’s appointments is likely to continue as his administration commences.<br> &nbsp;</p> <h4>For Discussion</h4> <p><strong>1. </strong>How much of the material in this reading was new to you, and how much was already familiar? Do you have any questions about what you read?</p> <p><strong>2. </strong>According to the reading or other information you may have seen, what are some of the concerns about the appointment of Jeff Sessions as Attorney General? What are some of the arguments in support of his appointment?</p> <p><strong>3. </strong>&nbsp;According to the reading or other information you may have seen, what are some of the concerns about the appointment of Steve Bannon as chief strategist and senior counselor? What are some of the arguments in support of his appointment?</p> <p><strong>4. &nbsp;</strong>What do you think? Should presidents be able to appoint anyone they want for these positions, or are there some actions that disqualify someone from being a suitable pick for a Cabinet member or presidential adviser?</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--uid--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig x field--node--uid.html.twig * field--node--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig * field--uid.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <span> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'username' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'core/modules/user/templates/username.html.twig' --> <span>fionta</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'core/modules/user/templates/username.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--created--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig x field--node--created.html.twig * field--node--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <span> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'time' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'core/modules/system/templates/time.html.twig' --> <time datetime="2016-12-19T16:42:33-05:00" title="Monday, December 19, 2016 - 16:42">December 19, 2016</time> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'core/modules/system/templates/time.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'links__node' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * links--node.html.twig x links.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap/templates/system/links.html.twig' --> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap/templates/system/links.html.twig' --> Mon, 19 Dec 2016 21:42:33 +0000 fionta 361 at https://www.morningsidecenter.org Building Community, Post-Election: The Power of Kindness https://www.morningsidecenter.org/teachable-moment/lessons/building-community-post-election-power-kindness <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--title--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig x field--node--title.html.twig * field--node--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig * field--title.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <span>Building Community, Post-Election: The Power of Kindness</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--body--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig * field--node--body.html.twig * field--node--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig * field--body.html.twig * field--text-with-summary.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field--item"><p><strong><img alt src="/sites/default/files/pictures/Kindness%20486.png" style="width: 486px; height: 167px;"></strong></p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <hr> <p>&nbsp;</p> <h4>To the Teacher:</h4> <p>&nbsp;<br> The election has brought up strong feelings for many students, and, created tension in some schools. This activity aims to help students create a classroom and school community that is safe, welcoming and supportive, despite some turmoil in the outside world.&nbsp;<br> &nbsp;<br> While students, especially the youngest of them, may feel like there isn’t a lot they can do, it may be helpful to talk about small ways that they can help build community at school and outside of it, in this case, by being kind.&nbsp;<br> &nbsp;<br> In this activity you’ll think about ways to be kind, create a wall or bulletin board of art and writing to remind students of the power of kindness and ways that everyday actions can make a difference in the world.&nbsp;<br> &nbsp;<br> &nbsp;</p> <hr> <h4>Materials:</h4> <ul> <li>Index cards or post-its</li> <li>Paper - possibly cut into halves or quarters depending on how much wall space you have</li> <li>Markers, crayons, or pencils</li> <li>Tape</li> <li>Any other decorative materials you may want to add</li> </ul> <p>&nbsp;</p> <hr> <h4>Activity</h4> <p>Give students each one or two post-its or index cards and markers or crayons to write with.&nbsp;<br> &nbsp;<br> Explain that today you’re going to talk about kindness. Ask students what they think of when they think of the word kindness, or kind acts.&nbsp; If you want to, you can share this definition of kindness: "a&nbsp;kind,&nbsp;considerate,&nbsp;or&nbsp;helpful&nbsp;act" (from dictionary.com).<br> &nbsp;<br> Explain that an act of kindness can be big or small. It can be something as simple as sharing a treat or helping someone pick up things they’ve dropped. They can also be larger gestures, like caring for a sick friend or helping someone move.&nbsp;<br> &nbsp;<br> <strong>Share this quote with the class:</strong><br> <br> "This is what kindness does... Each little thing we do goes out, like a ripple, into the world."&nbsp;<br> —&nbsp;Jacqueline Woodson<br> &nbsp;<br> <strong>Ask students:</strong>&nbsp; How could an act of kindness be "like a ripple"? What does Jacqueline Woodson mean?<br> &nbsp;<br> Pair students up with whoever is beside them. Give students a few seconds to think before each of the following prompts, and then give them a minute or two to share their responses with each other.<br> &nbsp;<br> <strong>1. </strong>&nbsp; Share a time when someone was kind to you or helped you.<br> <strong>2. </strong>&nbsp; Share a time when you were kind or helped someone else.<br> &nbsp;<br> Regroup and let a few students share their stories (or go all the way around, if there’s time for it).<br> &nbsp;<br> Now ask students, in their pairs, to think about how they felt when they were helping, or being helped. What effect does an act of kindness have?&nbsp;<br> &nbsp;<br> Give the pairs a minute or two to discuss. Then ask students to write the emotion they felt answers on their index cards or post-its.&nbsp; (Skip this for younger groups.)<br> &nbsp;<br> Ask students to share the feelings that they came up with. Chart the words, and make a note of things that repeat.&nbsp;<br> &nbsp;<br> Next, ask students to write and/or draw about a time they were kind, or someone was kind to them, and what impact it had.<br> &nbsp;<br> Gather the stories, drawings, index cards or post-its, and place them all together on a wall of your classroom or on a bulletin board to remind students about how powerful kindness can be.&nbsp;<br> &nbsp;</p> <hr> <p><br> We'd love to see what you and your students create! &nbsp;<a href="mailto:scarrero@morningsidecenter.org">Email us</a>, connect through&nbsp;<a href="https://www.facebook.com/Morningside-Center-for-Teaching-Social-Responsibility-197267860293889/">Facebook</a>, or find us on Twitter&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/MorningsideCtr">@MorningsideCtr</a>.<br> &nbsp;</p> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--uid--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig x field--node--uid.html.twig * field--node--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig * field--uid.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <span> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'username' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'core/modules/user/templates/username.html.twig' --> <span>fionta</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'core/modules/user/templates/username.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--created--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig x field--node--created.html.twig * field--node--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <span> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'time' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'core/modules/system/templates/time.html.twig' --> <time datetime="2016-11-18T12:36:08-05:00" title="Friday, November 18, 2016 - 12:36">November 18, 2016</time> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'core/modules/system/templates/time.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'links__node' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * links--node.html.twig x links.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap/templates/system/links.html.twig' --> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap/templates/system/links.html.twig' --> Fri, 18 Nov 2016 17:36:08 +0000 fionta 366 at https://www.morningsidecenter.org Post-election resources for teachers https://www.morningsidecenter.org/news/post-election-resources-teachers <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--title--article.html.twig x field--node--title.html.twig * field--node--article.html.twig * field--title.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <span>Post-election resources for teachers</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--uid--article.html.twig x field--node--uid.html.twig * field--node--article.html.twig * field--uid.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <span> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'username' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'core/modules/user/templates/username.html.twig' --> <span>fionta</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'core/modules/user/templates/username.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--created--article.html.twig x field--node--created.html.twig * field--node--article.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <span> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'time' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'core/modules/system/templates/time.html.twig' --> <time datetime="2016-11-14T09:30:01-05:00" title="Monday, November 14, 2016 - 09:30">November 14, 2016</time> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'core/modules/system/templates/time.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'links__node' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * links--node.html.twig x links.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap/templates/system/links.html.twig' --> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap/templates/system/links.html.twig' --> Mon, 14 Nov 2016 14:30:01 +0000 fionta 235 at https://www.morningsidecenter.org https://www.morningsidecenter.org/news/post-election-resources-teachers#comments Dog-Whistle Politics: Talking About Race Without Talking About Race https://www.morningsidecenter.org/teachable-moment/lessons/dog-whistle-politics-talking-about-race-without-talking-about-race <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--title--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig x field--node--title.html.twig * field--node--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig * field--title.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <span>Dog-Whistle Politics: Talking About Race Without Talking About Race</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--body--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig * field--node--body.html.twig * field--node--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig * field--body.html.twig * field--text-with-summary.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field--item"><h3><br> To the Teacher:</h3> <p>Since the victories of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, politicians in the United States have generally avoided making explicitly racist appeals to voters. Instead, they have sometimes used coded words and phrases — so-called "dog whistles" — that aim to speak to biases of race, religion, or ethnicity without saying so outright. Both Democrats and Republicans have been accused of using dog whistles. In the current political climate, some commentators argue that racist attitudes are not even hidden anymore, but rather are again becoming more explicit.</p> <p>This lesson will consider the history of "dog-whistle" politics, and it will ask whether the current campaign season marks a break from past practices. The first student reading below examines the history of dog whistle politics in the United States. The second reading considers statements from the presidential campaign and asks whether they cross the line from dog-whistle politics to overt prejudice. Questions for discussion follow each reading.<br> &nbsp;</p> <hr> <p>&nbsp;</p> <h3>Reading 1<br> Dog Whistles: How Politicians Speak in Code</h3> <p><br> Since the victories of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, politicians have generally avoided making explicitly racist appeals to voters. Instead, they have sometimes used coded words and phrases — so-called "dog whistles" — that aim to speak to biases of race, religion, or ethnicity without saying so outright. Both Democrats and Republicans have been accused of using dog whistles.</p> <p>Some people argue that the use of dog whistles is an inherent part of politics and does not necessarily imply prejudice. They highlight how the careful selection of phrases and gestures send subtle signals to different audiences. In this vein, journalist Nia-Malika Henderson noted in a March 3, 2009, article for <em><a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2009/03/blacks-whites-hear-obama-differently-019538">Politico</a> </em>that President Obama could be seen as using targeted language to appeal to the black community. Henderson wrote:</p> <p style="margin-left:.5in;">On his pre-inaugural visit to Ben’s Chili Bowl, a landmark for Washington’s African-American community, President Barack Obama was asked by a cashier if he wanted his change back.&nbsp;<br> <br> "Nah, we straight," Obama replied.&nbsp;<br> <br> The phrase was so subtle some listeners missed it. The reporter on pool duty quoted Obama as saying, "No, we’re straight."</p> <p style="margin-left:.5in;">But many other listeners did not miss it. A video of the exchange became an Internet hit, and there was a clear moment of recognition among many blacks, who got a kick out of their Harvard-educated president sounding, as one commenter wrote on a hip-hop site, "mad cool."&nbsp;</p> <p style="margin-left:.5in;">On matters of racial identity, many observers in the African-American community say he benefits from what's known as "dog-whistle politics." His language, mannerisms and symbols resonate deeply with his black supporters, even as the references largely sail over the heads of white audiences....</p> <p style="margin-left:.5in;">Dog-whistle politics was hardly invented by Obama. One of its most deft practitioners lately was President George W. Bush. He regularly borrowed the language of evangelical Christianity and the anti-abortion movement to signal he was simpatico with their beliefs, even as he often avoided obvious displays of support that might turn off middle-of-the-road voters.</p> <p style="margin-left:.5in;">"The code words matter, how you dress matters, how you speak matters; it’s all subliminal messaging, and all politicians use it," said Michael Fauntroy, an assistant professor of public policy at George Mason University, who specializes in&nbsp;race and American politics.&nbsp;"Ronald Reagan used to talk about making America the shining city on a hill, which is about America as divinely inspired, and it has a deep vein in the evangelical conservative movement. It goes on all the time, and there are so many circumstances when only the target people get the message."<br> &nbsp;</p> <p>"Dog whistles" sometimes serve as a means of making racist appeals in subtle ways. As historian Robert Brent Toplin wrote in a December 10, 2015, article for <a href="http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/161448">HistoryNewsNetwork.com</a>:</p> <p style="margin-left:.5in;">Richard Nixon won the 1968 presidential election by promoting a "Southern Strategy." That, too, was an example of dog-whistle politics. The Republican candidate blamed many of America’s problems on blacks, but not through specific language. H.R. Haldeman, Nixon’s close adviser, said "The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to." Rather than refer directly to blacks, Nixon promised "law and order" and respect for "states’ rights."</p> <p style="margin-left:.5in;">Many elements factored in Ronald Reagan’s presidential victories; indirect references to race were only part of the mix. Reagan defended his positions on principle, not prejudice. He had opposed the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, arguing against federal intervention in states’ affairs. Reagan launched his 1980 campaign for the White House near Philadelphia, Mississippi, the place where three civil rights workers had been slain years before. During his visits around the United States, Reagan spoke often about an exploitative "welfare queen" in Chicago, and listeners understood that the lady was a black woman. Reagan convinced many white Democrats, including southerners, to abandon their party and register as Republicans.</p> <p>As law professor Ian Hanley-Lopez argued during an January 14, 2014, appearance on <a href="http://www.democracynow.org/2014/1/14/dog_whistle_politics_how_politicians_use"><em>Democracy Now</em>,</a> such dog-whistle racism is becoming an increasingly large part of conservative political strategy. Hanley-Lopez states:</p> <p style="margin-left:.5in;">Politics now is occurring in coded terms, like a dog whistle. On one level, we hear clearly there’s a sense of racial agitation; on another level, plausible deniability—people can insist nothing about race at all. And so, classic examples: Reagan and welfare queens, or Newt Gingrich saying Obama is a "food stamp president." Now, on one level, that’s triggering racial sentiment, triggering racial anxiety. On another, of course, Newt Gingrich can turn around and say, "I didn’t mention race. I just said food stamps." In fact, he can go further and say, "It’s a fact," as if there isn’t a sort of a racial undertone there....</p> <p style="margin-left:.5in;">They’re using these sort of coded appeals to say to people two things: One, the biggest threat in your life is not concentrated wealth, it’s minorities; and two, government coddles minorities, and all these government assistance programs, it’s all about giveaways to minorities—oppose them—government is taking your taxes and giving it to undeserving minorities. So when we think about why it is that so many people would—in the midst of an economic crisis, would vote to slash taxes for the rich, to favor deregulation and to slash social services, partly—in fact, I’d say primarily—they’re doing so because of the sort of racial narrative employed with dog whistle politics....</p> <p style="margin-left:.5in;">[W]e’re not saying that race has entered politics recently; we’re saying racism has been central to American politics for centuries, but it has changed form. After the civil rights movement, you couldn’t use open slurs... It’s political suicide now for any politician to use an open racial slur, so that the new public racism is coded. It always operates on two levels—on one level, triggering racial anxiety; on another, allowing plausible deniability.<br> &nbsp;</p> <h4>For Discussion:</h4> <ol> <li>How much of the material in this reading was new to you, and how much was already familiar? Do you have any questions about what you read?<br> &nbsp;</li> <li>According to the reading, what are "dog whistle politics"?<br> &nbsp;</li> <li>Although all politicians use some type of coded and targeted language, there is a more disturbing history of using dog whistles as a way to invoke racist ideas. What are some examples of this?<br> &nbsp;</li> <li>Have you heard "dog whistle" phrases in your own life? What have some of these phrases been? Who do you think they were meant to appeal to?<br> &nbsp;</li> <li>Journalist Nia-Malika Henderson provides examples of presidents Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan using targeted language to convey identification with specific communities, such as the black community or evangelical conservatives. How is this use of targeted rhetoric different than the use of racist dog whistles? Why might some dog whistles be okay and others be hurtful and prejudiced?<br> <br> &nbsp;</li> </ol> <hr> <p>&nbsp;</p> <h3>Reading 2:<br> Has the 2016 Campaign Gone Beyond Dog-Whistling?<br> &nbsp;</h3> <p>In the current political climate, a variety of commentators have argued that racist attitudes are not even hidden anymore, but rather are again becoming more explicit. <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jul/22/critics-trump-speech-signals-shift-to-coded-race-l/"><em>Associated Press</em></a> reporters Russell Contreras and Jesse Holland write in a July 22, 2016, article, that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's rhetoric has pushed the boundaries of dog-whistle politics. They write:</p> <p style="margin-left:.5in;">During the primaries, Donald Trump threw red-meat rhetoric to supporters, pledging to build a wall on the Mexico border and to ban Muslim immigrants. He even told at least one crowd that he wanted to punch a demonstrator who disrupted an event.</p> <p style="margin-left:.5in;">Now that he’s the GOP presidential nominee, who needs to appeal to the whole country instead of just Republicans, some observers say he’s turning to code words to gin up racial animosity and fear among America’s white voters.</p> <p style="margin-left:.5in;">Ian Haney Lopez, author of "Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class," went further, saying Trump’s [convention] speech surpassed even the coded racial language of Richard Nixon in 1968.</p> <p style="margin-left:.5in;">In addition to appealing to whites’ racial anxieties about crime, the celebrity businessman added immigrants to the mix and said refugee families with unknown backgrounds threaten to transform the nation unless drastic measures are taken, Lopez said.</p> <p style="margin-left:.5in;">"This was a speech that said essentially that the barbarians are at the gate," he said.</p> <p style="margin-left:.5in;">Samuel LeDoux, a Republican delegate from New Mexico who is Hispanic, said he didn’t hear racial overtones in Trump’s speech.</p> <p style="margin-left:.5in;">"I think people are reading too much into it," said LeDoux, 24, who agrees with Trump’s call to reduce illegal immigration because it is affecting wages. "He comes from New York, a very diverse city."</p> <p style="margin-left:.5in;">Trump "didn’t get on stage and issue a bunch of racial epithets," said Emory University political scientist Andra Gillespie, who watched his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention. "We didn’t hear the N-word, and we didn’t hear other words that may offend many people. But just because he didn’t use racial slurs doesn’t mean he didn’t frame issues in a way that people in racial and ethnic groups find problematic."</p> <p>Vincent Hutchings, a&nbsp;University of Michigan political science professor, told&nbsp;<em><a href="http://www.newsweek.com/trump-race-wedge-issue-494601">Newsweek</a></em>&nbsp;that academics have found that "politicians don’t really employ explicit racial terms anymore because it turns people off, it’s not very strategic." But, he says, Trump has gone further than most modern politicians, talking openly of race and ethnicity, labeling Mexican immigrants rapists and proposing a ban on Muslims entering the country. "Since the advent of the civil rights movement, we haven’t seen anything like this," said Hutchings.</p> <p>Trump has <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/25/politics/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-bigot/">defended himself</a> against the charges of racism, declaring that "people who want a secure border are not racists" and that people who "speak out against radical Islam and who warn about refugees are not Islamophobes... They are decent citizens who want to uphold our value as a tolerant society and who want to keep the terrorists the hell out of our country." Trump added that "those who support the police and who want crime reduced and stopped are not prejudiced... They're concerned and loving citizens and parents whose heart breaks every time an innocent child is lost to totally preventable violence."</p> <p>Trump said that "to accuse decent Americans who support this campaign... of being racists, which we’re not" is "the oldest play in the Democratic playbook...When Democratic policies fail, they are left with only this one tired argument. ‘You’re racist. You’re racist...’ It’s a tired, disgusting argument. And it is so totally predictable. They’re failing so badly. It’s the last refuge of the discredited, Democrat politician."</p> <p>Clinton herself has come under fire for her use of the term "super-predators" during&nbsp;a 1996 speech in support of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, which her husband, Bill Clinton, had signed in to law. The fact-checking website <a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/aug/28/reince-priebus/did-hillary-clinton-call-african-american-youth-su/">Politifact</a> notes that while in her speech Clinton did link children and superpredators, "nowhere in the speech does she directly label African-American youth this way." Nevertheless, during the campaign, Black Lives Matter activists urged Clinton to apologize for the statement. The following day, she expressed regret for her choice of words.</p> <p>In an April 29, 2016 op-ed, for the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/01/opinion/campaign-stops/the-upside-to-overt-racism.html">New York Times</a> entitled "The Upside to Overt Racism," journalist Jenee Desmond-Harris argued that the open controversy over race in this campaign may actually make it easier to have discussions about the reality of persistent of racism in American life. Desmond-Harris wrote:</p> <p style="margin-left:.5in;">In a world where racism and discrimination — both personal and systemic — shape opportunities and can even determine life or death, but are often denied, they’re rarely owned so boldly as they have been during this campaign....</p> <p style="margin-left:.5in;">At a March rally for Mr. Trump in Louisville, Shiya Nwanguma, a student, says she was called the n-word and other repulsive slurs. Video of the event shows her being pushed and shoved. Another protester there, Chanelle Helm, told Vibe magazine in March: "In my entire life I had never had anyone look at me with such hate. It was like the videos and photos we’ve seen from the Little Rock 9 and other school integration moments from the 1950s and ’60s where the fury was palpable in the eyes of the white women."</p> <p style="margin-left:.5in;">At a high school basketball game in Indiana earlier this year, CNN reported that students chanted "Build that wall," at an opposing team made up predominantly of Latino players.</p> <p style="margin-left:.5in;">The expression of racist views in this campaign has been so undeniable that even politicians — notoriously careful and diplomatic — are stating it as fact.</p> <p style="margin-left:.5in;">"America’s long struggle with racism is far from over, and we are seeing that in this election," Hillary Clinton said at the National Action Network convention in April. She didn’t say racial tension, or community-police relations, or inequality, or issues faced by black and Latino Americans. She said: racism.</p> <p style="margin-left:.5in;">For once, nobody is pretending that racism is at a frequency so high they can’t make it out. Racism is no longer being treated as a feeling, an allegation, a matter of opinion, or something that can be negated by the announcement of a black friend....</p> <p style="margin-left:.5in;">When Barack Obama was first elected president in 2008, a question bubbled up: "Is America on its way to being post-racial?" It was always laughably optimistic, but now we have a clearer answer than ever: no.</p> <p style="margin-left:.5in;">... If diversity is going to cause racial anxiety, it’s better to accept that than to lie to ourselves about the inevitability of a harmonious multiracial melting pot. It’s good to know the truth. And Mr. Trump’s supporters seemed to have provided a reality check.<br> &nbsp;</p> <h4>For Discussion:</h4> <ol> <li>How much of the material in this reading was new to you, and how much was already familiar? Do you have any questions about what you read?<br> &nbsp;</li> <li>Critics of Donald Trump argue that not only has he used dog whistle appeals but has also made overtly racist appeals. But Donald Trump has countered that his stances on immigration and crime are not racist, but an effort by his opponents to divert attention from their failed policies. What do you think?<br> &nbsp;</li> <li>In the New York Times, Desmond Harris notes that explicitly racist statements on the campaign trail give us the opportunity to talk more honestly about racism. What do you think about this argument? Is there a positive side to racism coming out into the open?</li> </ol> <p>&nbsp;</p> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--uid--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig x field--node--uid.html.twig * field--node--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig * field--uid.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <span> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'username' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'core/modules/user/templates/username.html.twig' --> <span>fionta</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'core/modules/user/templates/username.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--created--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig x field--node--created.html.twig * field--node--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <span> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'time' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'core/modules/system/templates/time.html.twig' --> <time datetime="2016-10-30T13:29:51-04:00" title="Sunday, October 30, 2016 - 13:29">October 30, 2016</time> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'core/modules/system/templates/time.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'links__node' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * links--node.html.twig x links.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap/templates/system/links.html.twig' --> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap/templates/system/links.html.twig' --> Sun, 30 Oct 2016 17:29:51 +0000 fionta 372 at https://www.morningsidecenter.org 2016 Presidential Election: A Dialogue https://www.morningsidecenter.org/teachable-moment/lessons/2016-presidential-election-dialogue <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--title--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig x field--node--title.html.twig * field--node--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig * field--title.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <span>2016 Presidential Election: A Dialogue</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--body--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig * field--node--body.html.twig * field--node--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig * field--body.html.twig * field--text-with-summary.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field--item"><h4>Objectives</h4> <p><strong>Students will:&nbsp;</strong></p> <ul> <li>Read a profile of an American voter this election season and attempt to step into their shoes</li> <li>Explore the difference between debate and dialogue</li> <li>Practice dialogue in a roleplay that is held in a fishbowl</li> </ul> <p>&nbsp;<br> <strong>Social and emotional skills:</strong></p> <ul> <li>Active listening; listening to diverse opinions</li> <li>Managing feelings</li> <li>Assertiveness</li> <li>Appreciating multiple points of view</li> <li>Conflict resolution skills<br> &nbsp;</li> </ul> <hr> <h4>Materials Needed</h4> <ul> <li>Today's agenda on chart paper or on the board</li> <li>Space in your class to set up two concentric circles with chairs for the purpose of a&nbsp;fishbowl (see description below)</li> <li>Printouts of <a href="/sites/default/files/files/Voter%20Profiles(1).pdf">these profiles of voters</a> (profiles are also included at the bottom of the lesson)</li> <li>Six name pages or pieces of paper that can serve as name badges<br> &nbsp;</li> </ul> <hr> <h4>Gathering<br> &nbsp;</h4> <p>Ask students what they've noticed about how the presidential candidates have engaged with one another over the past months. What words would they use to describe the candidates' interactions? Chart the words students share on the board or on chart paper posted for all to see.&nbsp;<br> &nbsp;<br> Next, ask students to raise their hands if they've heard voters argue about who they'll support in the election and why.&nbsp; Ask students what words they would use to describe these interactions. With a different color marker, chart the words students share.&nbsp;<br> &nbsp;<br> Now invite students to look at the words on the chart and discuss some or all of the following questions:<br> &nbsp;<br> What do you notice about the words on the chart?<br> What does that tell you about the kind of election season we've had in 2016?<br> How do you think these words relate to promoting understanding?<br> &nbsp;</p> <hr> <h4><br> Check agenda and goals for the day<br> &nbsp;</h4> <p>Refer back to the chart you created and note that this election period has been combative and has included several acrimonious debates. The country is deeply divided. People have strong feelings about the election, and these emotions tend to play into the conversations, arguments, and debates people have about the candidates and the issues.<br> &nbsp;<br> In today's lesson, we're going to try to approach things in a different way. Rather than debating the issues, which is a method often used in class to discuss opposing opinions, we're going to have a dialogue instead.&nbsp;<br> &nbsp;</p> <hr> <h4><br> Introduction: Debate &amp; Dialogue<br> &nbsp;</h4> <p>Introduce students to a comparison of debate and dialogue:<br> &nbsp;<br> <strong>Debate:</strong>&nbsp; Most of us are familiar with debate as a way to argue a point. Debate is an approach that takes place between opponents who are combative, who are trying to prove each other wrong. It's often a zero sum game that's all about one side winning, the other losing. In debate, opponents listen for flaws and weaknesses in the other side's argument. They defend their own assumptions as truth, assuming theirs is the one right answer or perspective. There is little to no investment in the relationship, and in a heated debate people may belittle, criticize, or even ridicule the other side.<br> &nbsp;<br> Ask students if this sounds familiar. &nbsp;<br> &nbsp;<br> <strong>Dialogue</strong>: Dialogue, on the other hand, is a cooperative endeavor that takes place between partners. In dialogue, people listen so that they can understand the other's position, seeking to find common ground that allows all parties to win. In dialogue, partners reveal their assumptions and reexamine their various positions, assuming that different people have pieces of the answer and that together we can work on stronger solutions. Dialogue requires that the partners respect one another and be open-minded, open to being wrong and open to change.<br> &nbsp;<br> Ask students, does this sound familiar?<br> &nbsp;<br> If you have time, ask some of the following questions before going into the substance of your lesson:</p> <ul> <li>Which is more prevalent at school: debate or dialogue?&nbsp;</li> <li>What about in our advisory group? [if your school has one]</li> <li>Which approach do you see used most often in the world beyond school?&nbsp; The elections?</li> <li>Which approach do you think is most useful when working as a group?</li> <li>Which is most useful when trying to resolve conflict?</li> <li>What is a key skill that is needed for dialogue?<br> &nbsp;</li> </ul> <hr> <h4><br> Roleplay/Fishbowl Activity<br> <strong>The American Electorate: A Microcosm</strong><br> &nbsp;</h4> <p>Split your class/advisory into six groups. Provide each group with a nametag or badge, and a profile of one American voter this election season.&nbsp; (Please download and print <a href="/sites/default/files/files/Voter%20Profiles(1).pdf">this pdf,</a> which includes six profiles.)&nbsp;<br> &nbsp;<br> Instruct students to read the profile and explain that their group will be speaking as this voter in a class discussion. Explain that the profiles are adapted from media stories about real people. In their small group, invite students to discuss their profile so that they can better understand the voter whose role they will be playing.&nbsp; Before beginning the fishbowl activity, ask each group to create a name tent for their voter, which they will put on the floor in front of them. It should be easily readable, and should include which voter they are, Voter A, B, C, D, E or F and three key piece of information about this voter that they'd like the others in the group to know.<br> &nbsp;<br> Set up your class in a fishbowl - that is, two concentric circles. The inner circle will include one representative from each group; others from their group will be seated behind them in the outer circle. &nbsp;(See <a href="http://www.morningsidecenter.org/teachable-moment/lessons/engaging-your-class-through-groupwork">this description</a> of group work strategies for more on how fishbowls work.)&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br> &nbsp;<br> Ask students to really take on the role of their voter, step into their shoes as they enter into this dialogue. &nbsp;<br> &nbsp;<br> Remind students that the goal of the dialogue is to better understand the other people/voters in the group. Explain that there is likely to be disagreement and that's okay. You may want to kick off the discussion by asking the voters in the inner circle a few questions, such as:</p> <ul> <li>What do you think is the biggest problem facing this country? Why?</li> <li>Which candidate do you plan to support? Why?</li> <li>What kind of policies do you think would address the problems you are most concerned about?</li> <li>How are you feeling personally about the state of the country or your community?</li> </ul> <p>Allow the dialogue to play out for a bit. Then, give other voters seated in the outside circle a chance to participate. If they would like to take the place of the person from their group in the inner circle, they can tap on that person's shoulder to indicate that they'd like to join the dialogue on behalf of their voter. The two should switch seats. Allow the dialogue to play out again, again encouraging voters to continue to get to know each other. Offer additional chances for students in the outer circle to participate and let the dialogue continue for as long as students are gaining understanding, and interest remains high. Then bring the group back together as a large circle.<br> &nbsp;<br> Debrief the process using some or all of the following questions:</p> <ul> <li>What was that like for you?&nbsp; Why?</li> <li>What was it like for you to talk with people who, in some cases, had very different opinions from your voter?</li> <li>What was it like for you to step into someone else's shoes and share their perspective?</li> <li>Were there shared concerns even among voters who supported different candidates?</li> <li>What did you learn from this dialogue?<br> &nbsp;</li> </ul> <hr> <h4>Closing</h4> <p>If you were to forget everything you did today, what would be one take away?</p> <p>&nbsp;<br> &nbsp;</p> <hr> <h3><br> VOTER PROFILES</h3> <p>&nbsp;</p> <hr> <h4><strong>VOTER A</strong></h4> <p>&nbsp;<br> <strong>You are a 55-year old Muslim man of Lebanese descent living in upstate New York.&nbsp; You are a registered Republican.&nbsp; </strong><br> &nbsp;<br> Your first choice in the primaries was Republican Carly Fiorina, a former executive at Hewlett Packard. As a strong business person, you couldn't understand why she wasn't doing better in the polls. When it was clear she wasn't going to win, you turned to Republican candidate Ben Carson. You felt he was smart and honest, though his lack of foreign policy experience was a concern.<br> &nbsp;<br> When you and your wife watched the Republican debates, your wife would leave the room because she couldn't stand watching Donald Trump. You yourself had a hard time with some of his behavior and rhetoric. You thought he was pompous and arrogant but you figured that was a strategy. And it worked: he beat 16 candidates and won the Republican nomination.<br> &nbsp;<br> You figure that Trump is a negotiator: if he wanted to buy a building for $20 million, he would come to the table offering five or maybe ten. That's how you viewed his claim that he'd build a wall on the Mexican border and throw out eleven million undocumented immigrants. It was an aggressive first move. With some back and forth, Trump would arrive at some more reasonable way to deal with illegal immigration. You don't think it's possible or desirable to throw out all undocumented immigrants, except felons of course. But you do think it's important to establish an effective border.<br> &nbsp;<br> You describe yourself as an American of Arab descent. Both your grandfathers immigrated to the U.S. from Lebanon as children. As a third-generation American, &nbsp;you're sad to have lost touch with your roots, but you do not regret the assimilation that was the cause of this loss. You think that when people come to America, they should assimilate (that is, adapt to the culture and take it in).<br> &nbsp;<br> You believe that if people want to come here, they should learn to speak English, and they should follow American laws. If they don't want to do that, they shouldn't come. That's not to say that people can't practice their customs, that's fine. But they have to abide by the Constitution.<br> &nbsp;<br> You think political correctness is destroying the country.&nbsp; You think Democrats are hypocrites for celebrating America's diversity, but then when talking about immigrants, they claim they are just like us: they work hard and love their families. And that might be true for most immigrants, but it ignores the fact that some people come from places that are vastly different from America and they bring this with them.&nbsp;There are people who love America the way it is and they don't want things to change.&nbsp; And this is not because they feel hostile towards immigrants or wish them harm.&nbsp;To deny that change is taking place is pushing people to vote for Trump.&nbsp; It's certainly pushing you in that direction.<br> &nbsp;<br> (This profile is adapted from an article in the <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/10/in-the-heart-of-trump-country">New Yorker</a> magazine.)<br> &nbsp;<br> &nbsp;</p> <hr> <h4><strong>VOTER B</strong></h4> <p>&nbsp;<br> <strong>You are a 48-year-old third-generation Latino man from West Virginia.&nbsp; You're running for state senate as a Democrat, but support Trump for president.&nbsp; </strong><br> &nbsp;<br> Most people in your area are Trump supporters. This makes perfect sense to you. You figure that if Trump does twenty per cent of what he promises, he'll be a decent President - and maybe he really will "make America great again," as he promises.&nbsp;<br> &nbsp;<br> Coal-mining used to be a major industry in your area. It provided good-paying jobs for lots of people and supported the local economy. But the mines have mostly shut down. In recent years, prescription drug addiction has reached new highs and is the cause of a lot of theft in and around town.&nbsp;<br> &nbsp;<br> Now when you drive around the area, you see a lot of abandoned houses, dilapidated, with overgrown lawns. Other homes are surrounded by garbage—old cars, tires, toys, broken TVs. It drives you crazy. Coal isn't coming back and West Virginia needs a new industry.&nbsp; Tourism would be great, but how are you ever going to be able to pull that off when the place looks like a garbage dump?&nbsp; You love your home and seeing it go to hell makes you angry.<br> &nbsp;<br> You spent the first 24 years of your adult life in the military. You served all over the world, fought wars, built up other countries and retired as a major. You've been a Democrat since you were 18. Your parents were Democrats, so you were, too. Back then, "being a Republican was like cursing. Republicans were greedy people who didn't take care of the working man."<br> &nbsp;<br> When you came back from the Army, you realized that most of the politicians in your part of the world, Republicans and Democrats alike, were crooks who didn't care about anyone but themselves.<br> &nbsp;<br> Most people in your area are registered Democrats, so when you decided to run for local office, you opted to run as a Democrat. In the national elections, though, you haven't always voted for Democrats. And in the 2016 presidential election, you're for Trump. West Virginia is historically Democratic. But in 2000, the state turned Republican.&nbsp; You believe this happened because Democratic nominee Al Gore was an environmentalist whose election would be very bad for coal.&nbsp;<br> &nbsp;<br> Coal is not the only issue though. Trump also appeals to you because of his stance on immigration.&nbsp; You support Trump's hard stance against illegal immigration, but not because you're prejudiced against Latinos. Your own family comes from Mexico. Your grandfather swam across the Rio Grande to settle north of the border. Your father was born in West Virginia and you were too. But, you argue: "When you start talking about bringing in refugees and when they get here they get medical and dental and they get set up with some funds—what do we get?" So when Donald Trump says he's going to take benefits away from people who come here illegally and give them to people who work, that sounds pretty good to you..&nbsp;<br> &nbsp;<br> Trump's promise to "put America first" resonates with you. It's rare that a national politician seems to care about the situation your state is in. You feel Trump actually cares, which is why you're willing to ignore things he says that sound nuts or that you disagree with.<br> &nbsp;<br> (This profile is adapted from an article in the <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/10/in-the-heart-of-trump-country">New Yorker</a> magazine.)<br> &nbsp;<br> &nbsp;</p> <hr> <h4><strong>VOTER C</strong></h4> <p>&nbsp;<br> <strong>You are a 38-year-old male of Cuban descent.&nbsp; You've voted Republican your whole life, but you're not sure how you'll vote this year.&nbsp; </strong><br> &nbsp;<br> You come from a long line of civic and political leaders who are the Republican bedrock of Florida's Cuban community.&nbsp; You consider yourself as a Republican through and through.&nbsp; You've helped build and maintain south Florida's Republican base.<br> &nbsp;<br> But this year is different. You haven't yet decided whether you'll vote along party lines.&nbsp;Trump's disparaging remarks about Mexicans have given you pause. And you're not alone.&nbsp; Many in the Cuban-American community express solidarity with other Latin-Americans who see Donald Trump as anti-Hispanic. Trump's nationalistic populism also smacks of the government strongmen many Latin Americans fled to come to the U.S.<br> &nbsp;<br> Still, you say, "There are aspects of Trump that appeal to parts of the Cuban-American culture: strong leadership, the ability and willingness to say bold things." Trump's strength and his willingness to call it as it is are enticing, especially when faced with Clinton, who's the exact opposite.<br> &nbsp;<br> The concern for you is when Trump crosses the line "from bold to wild, unpredictable."&nbsp; You're offended by his crudeness and bullying. His uninformed policy pronouncements worry you. You haven't endorsed Trump or Clinton and are still not sure about your vote. Neither candidate has engaged Cuban or other Hispanic voters with any sincerity, you feel.<br> &nbsp;<br> On the Cuban American radio station that you listen to, the host has been expressing his concerns about Trump.&nbsp; He's asked his listeners to compare Trump's claims that "I am your voice" and "I alone can solve" societal ills to the early appeals of authoritarian leaders like Cuba's Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, the late President of Venezuela.<br> &nbsp;<br> "It goes well beyond immigration to the very nature of our Latin-American problem," this radio host says. "Many of us remember how it starts. It starts with questioning institutions. Then you destroy institutions — you being the only person in the world who can save the nation from collapse."&nbsp;<br> &nbsp;<br> Trump's authoritarian attitude worries you.<br> &nbsp;<br> This profile is adapted from an article in <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2016-09-19/shifting-cuban-voters-could-be-the-difference-in-florida">US News</a>.<br> &nbsp;</p> <hr> <h4><strong>VOTER D</strong></h4> <p>&nbsp;<br> <strong>You are a white female voter from the rustbelt in Ohio.&nbsp; You want the America of tomorrow to be better for your grandkids. You are undecided about which candidate to support.</strong><br> &nbsp;<br> You are 68 years old.&nbsp; You have six children, 25 grandchildren and a handful of great-grandchildren. You were born in a small city in Ohio's rust belt and have lived here your whole life.&nbsp; In the 1980s, you worked at a small manufacturing company. That was the last time you had a job. You receive about $700 each month in Supplemental Security Income. $450 Of it goes to rent for your home in the south side of town. This doesn't leave much to live on.<br> &nbsp;<br> This part of Ohio has been in decline since the 1960s when foreign imports started to undercut the local economy. During the 1980s, the area lost over 25,000 manufacturing jobs. Poverty soared. You can still see the remains of steel mills, a reminder of what used to be. Now they're desolate and weed-covered.<br> &nbsp;<br> When you show people around your town, you point out: "Where these are trees now, it all used to be mills. ... All these vacant lots here, these all used to be filled with bars and restaurants. That's where the steelworkers, when they would get off, would come."&nbsp;You live in the poorest part of Ohio - one of the poorest parts of the country, in fact. &nbsp;Systematic problems have plagued your city for decades: a lack of jobs, problems with the education system, rampant violence, and poor employment training are just a few issues that people struggle with.<br> &nbsp;<br> You voted for Obama in 2000 and 2004 but are undecided this year. You think Clinton is a "nice lady and everything," but it's Bernie Sanders who you were drawn to in the primaries. You liked Sanders' promise of free college because not all of your children were able to afford college.<br> &nbsp;<br> You've seen a number of the 2016 presidential candidates come through your city, during the primaries. Now again during the presidential election, Trump and Clinton are here every month it seems. You haven't yet heard either candidate discuss what you believe is one of the most pressing issues facing your area: deteriorating infrastructure.&nbsp;There seems to be a lot of interest in Trump—particularly his message about national security. But in the end, you're not sure those are the issues you want to hear about.<br> &nbsp;<br> You want to hear what they all have to say about how they're going to help communities like yours on infrastructure, education and jobs.<br> &nbsp;<br> You admit that you're somewhat intrigued by the idea of Clinton becoming the first female president, but you don't actually think either candidate can (or will) help you or your community. You say: "It doesn't really matter to me, because nobody's gonna help me anyway."&nbsp;<br> &nbsp;<br> Compilation profile made up of voter profiles from the rustbelt in Ohio featured on <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/24/politics/gallery/rust-belt-voters-profiles/">CNN</a> and in <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/08/rust-belt-trump-ohio-clinton">Mother Jones</a>.<br> &nbsp;</p> <hr> <h4><strong>VOTER E</strong></h4> <p><strong>You're a young woman from rural Iowa, currently studying at the Central Iowa Community College.&nbsp; You caucused for Bernie Sanders in the primaries.&nbsp; You still "feel the Bern." </strong><br> &nbsp;<br> As a young woman who supported Bernie Sanders in the primaries, you were frustrated and outraged by the attacks of older feminists for your refusal to "vote according to your gender" in the primaries. You think that voting for a woman candidate because of her gender is sexist. Young women like you recognize that gender isn't what makes a person a feminist.<br> &nbsp;<br> Your vote in the primaries was based on policy, not on getting the first woman into the White House. "You want somebody that values all of your principles and the morals that you stand for."&nbsp;<br> &nbsp;<br> You felt that Sanders gave a voice to young voters and their concerns. He advocated for things such as making tuition free at public colleges and universities.&nbsp; Hillary just wasn't able to connect with you or your issues. Moreover, there was so much about her that you felt was questionable. She just didn't do it for you.<br> &nbsp;<br> When Hillary became the nominee, you felt lost for a while. You had no idea who you might support in the election. Early on, Trump appeared to have made some interesting points. He even sounded like a Democrat at times. But then, he started going off the rails.&nbsp; You considered sitting this one out altogether, but these past few months have made it clear that that is not an option either.&nbsp;<br> &nbsp;<br> Trump's has shown himself to be belligerent, boorish, racist, sexist and a whole bunch of other kinds of scary. He's crossed all lines. It's hard to believe that hasn't adjusted his approach or stance. You'd think he'd try to present himself differently, if only to appear presidential. You see him as a populist, a demagogue. (Merriam Webster defines a demagogue as someone who who makes use of popular&nbsp;prejudices&nbsp;and false claims and promises in order to gain power.)<br> &nbsp;<br> You and your father have butted heads over Trump and Hillary in recent months.&nbsp; He's trying to "educate" you about the "real" Hillary Clinton. He brings up Benghazi, the emails, and the private server, AGAIN. Initially you tried to shrug it off, but tensions have been rising when you're at home. He argues that she'll be soft on terror and wonders "if the country is really ready for a woman president." You're insulted.&nbsp; And this, coming from your dad who's always told you to be all you can be and to fight for your rights.&nbsp;<br> &nbsp;<br> You assume your dad is backing Trump. Your dad is a good guy, but he's being played.&nbsp; It's showing you, though, the importance of voting this election.&nbsp; You actually think Hillary is strong, intelligent and is the kind of experienced politician who knows how to play the Washington game. Last year, this is exactly why you turned to Bernie, but now, with everything that has happened, you'll vote for her, come election day.<br> &nbsp;<br> This profile is compiled from an article on millennial voters in the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/20/clinton-hasnt-won-millennials-sexism-isnt-to-blame">Guardian</a>.<br> &nbsp;<br> &nbsp;</p> <hr> <h4 style="font-size: 12px;"><br> <strong>VOTER F</strong></h4> <p><strong>You're a 34-year-old female lawyer&nbsp;of&nbsp;African descent, practicing in a large city on the West Coast.&nbsp;</strong></p> <p>Even&nbsp;though you're&nbsp;not&nbsp;particularly excited about Hillary, there's no doubt in your mind that that is&nbsp;who&nbsp;you'll vote&nbsp;for.&nbsp;You tell people: "I&nbsp;don't want the first woman president to be elected because the other person sucks, but that's where I think we are.&nbsp;People either say, ‘Donald Trump is not where it's at, so I'm going to vote for Hillary.' Or you have people say, ‘Donald Trump is not where it's at, so I'm not going to vote at all.' And that's not cool."</p> <p>You've noticed that the Clinton campaign&nbsp;has struggled to connect&nbsp;with&nbsp;the&nbsp;millennials&nbsp;that were at the core of&nbsp;Obama's&nbsp;campaign&nbsp;in 2008 and 2012.&nbsp;&nbsp;She's part of the political system that young people feel has failed them. And though voting rights were an important victory of the civil rights era, you don't feel you owe it to anyone to participate in the presidential election.&nbsp;</p> <p>You get that Black&nbsp;millennials&nbsp;are upset with&nbsp;Clinton&nbsp;for supporting her husband's 1994 crime bill and using the term "super predator" to describe young offenders.&nbsp;You feel she apologized, though, and that&nbsp;she deserves some credit for that. &nbsp;She has since pledged to work towards criminal justice reform. &nbsp;You feel that it's&nbsp;up to us as people, as voters, to put pressure on our political leaders to fight for our communities. &nbsp;Sitting out is not the answer. &nbsp; &nbsp;</p> <p>You are taking it upon yourself to engage young voters in your neighborhood, asking them to think about what might happen if Republicans win the election. &nbsp;What if they take the White House AND keep control of both houses of Congress? You encourage people to focus on state and local elections, because this is the level at which officials make decisions about policing and education, issues that directly affect all of our lives and issues -- and that you know are important to young Black voters in your community.</p> <p>If you had your choice of who would become&nbsp;president, it&nbsp;would&nbsp;probably be Michelle Obama, but she's not running, Hillary Clinton is. You're&nbsp;pleased&nbsp;that the first lady and the president have become more vocal in their support for Clinton in recent months. They, along with Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren,&nbsp;are able to&nbsp;connect with&nbsp;the&nbsp;young voters that Clinton&nbsp;been struggling to get through to.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <p>You tell your friends that they cannot afford not to vote, especially given that the next president will determine the nature of the Supreme Court. All of the things that we've worked so hard for, not only as African Americans,&nbsp;but&nbsp;as women, can be gone—tomorrow. We cannot allow someone who does not care about us to win. So if that means voting for Hillary Clinton, then so be it.</p> <p>This file is compiled from a report in the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/black-millennials-lack-excitement-about-the-presidential-election/2016/10/18/79072b70-8cb5-11e6-875e-2c1bfe943b66_story.html">Washington Post</a>.<br> &nbsp;</p> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--uid--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig x field--node--uid.html.twig * field--node--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig * field--uid.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <span> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'username' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'core/modules/user/templates/username.html.twig' --> <span>fionta</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'core/modules/user/templates/username.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--created--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig x field--node--created.html.twig * field--node--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <span> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'time' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'core/modules/system/templates/time.html.twig' --> <time datetime="2016-10-24T10:50:03-04:00" title="Monday, October 24, 2016 - 10:50">October 24, 2016</time> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'core/modules/system/templates/time.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'links__node' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * links--node.html.twig x links.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap/templates/system/links.html.twig' --> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap/templates/system/links.html.twig' --> Mon, 24 Oct 2016 14:50:03 +0000 fionta 373 at https://www.morningsidecenter.org Are Our Political Parties Realigning...Again? https://www.morningsidecenter.org/teachable-moment/lessons/are-our-political-parties-realigningagain <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--title--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig x field--node--title.html.twig * field--node--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig * field--title.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <span>Are Our Political Parties Realigning...Again?</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--body--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig * field--node--body.html.twig * field--node--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig * field--body.html.twig * field--text-with-summary.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field--item"><h4>To The Teacher:</h4> <p>The Republican Party often presents itself as "the party of Abraham Lincoln," the president who ended slavery in the United States. Over the past several decades, however, upwards of 80% of African-American voters have supported the Democratic candidate for president, and Republicans have struggled to garner support from African American voters. So what has changed?</p> <p>In this lesson students consider how the Republican and Democratic Parties have evolved over time, on race and other issues. The lesson includes two student readings.&nbsp; The first reading summarizes the evolution of Republicans since its early days as "the Party of Lincoln." The second reading looks at the process of "political realignment" through which the parties change and come to represent different constituencies. It will also ask if we might be experiencing a new political realignment today, amid insurgent challenges to the major party establishments by candidates such as Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.<br> &nbsp;</p> <hr> <h3>&nbsp;</h3> <h3><strong>Reading 1:</strong><br> <strong>The Party of Lincoln?</strong></h3> <p><br> The Republican Party often presents itself as "the party of Abraham Lincoln," the president who ended slavery in the United States. Over the past several decades, however, upwards of 80% of African-American voters have supported the Democratic candidate for president, while Republicans have struggled to garner support from African American voters. So what has changed?</p> <p>It is true that the Republican Party, founded in 1854, was created as an anti-slavery party, based in the North. Abraham Lincoln, elected in 1860, served as the first Republican president and issued the emancipation proclamation during the civil war. However, while modern-day Republicans are quick to claim Lincoln, they fail to note that in the late 1860s and 1870s, their Party was also the party of "Radical Reconstruction"—an era that is not celebrated &nbsp;by conservatives in the South, who make up the core of the modern Republican Party. As historian Eric Foner wrote in a March 28, 2015, article for the <em><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/29/opinion/sunday/why-reconstruction-matters.html?_r=0">New York Times</a>:</em></p> <p style="margin-left:35.45pt;">In 1867 Congress passed the Reconstruction Acts...These set in motion the establishment of new governments in the South, empowered Southern black men to vote and temporarily barred several thousand leading Confederates from the ballot. Soon after, the 15th Amendment extended black male suffrage to the entire nation.</p> <p style="margin-left:35.45pt;">The Reconstruction Acts inaugurated the period of Radical Reconstruction, when a politically mobilized black community, with its white allies, brought the Republican Party to power throughout the South. For the first time, African-Americans voted in large numbers and held public office at every level of government. It was a remarkable, unprecedented effort to build an interracial democracy on the ashes of slavery.<br> &nbsp;</p> <p>By the late 19<sup>th</sup> century, Reconstruction was defeated and state governments throughout the South were dedicating themselves to suppressing the Black vote and reestablishing white supremacy. Over time, the Republican Party became a more conservative, business-oriented party. As political commentator Steve Kornacki wrote in a September 2, 2010 article for <a href="http://www.salon.com/2010/09/02/haley_barbour_race_history/">Salon</a>:</p> <p style="margin-left:35.45pt;">For a century after the Civil War, the South was deeply and overwhelmingly Democratic, a consequence of the "humiliation" visited upon white Southerners by the Republican-initiated Reconstruction that followed the Civil War. The level of support enjoyed by Democratic candidates in the region is almost too astronomical to fathom now. In 1912, Woodrow Wilson took 42 percent of the vote nationally in a four-way presidential contest. But in South Carolina, he snared 95 percent. In Mississippi, 88 percent... The region’s congressional delegation was uniformly Democratic — and, thanks to the South’s one-party status, disproportionately influential, with lifelong incumbents taking advantage of the congressional seniority system to secure the most powerful committee gavels.</p> <p style="margin-left:35.45pt;">For decades, they comfortably coexisted in the national Democratic Party’s other major source of support, the machine-folk of the urban North. But as civil rights became a national issue — and as the Great Migration of Southern blacks to the cities of the North and West turned civil rights into a priority for Democrats outside the South — the coalition began to splinter. When the party ratified a civil rights plank at its 1948 convention, Southern Democrats staged a walkout and lined up behind Strom Thurmond, South Carolina’s governor and (like all Southern Democrats of the time) an arch-segregationist. Running under the Dixiecrat banner, Thurmond won four Deep South states that fall.</p> <p style="margin-left:35.45pt;">Throughout the ’50s and early ’60s, Southern Democrats sat in political limbo. Their national brethren were inching their way toward a full-on embrace of civil rights, but the GOP wasn’t much of an alternative, not with Dwight Eisenhower endorsing integration and not with the party’s Northern-dominated congressional ranks strongly backing civil rights legislation.</p> <p style="margin-left:35.45pt;">1964, though, is what changed everything. In signing the Civil Rights Act, LBJ [President Lyndon B. Johnson] cemented the Democrats as a civil rights party. And in nominating anti-civil rights Barry Goldwater for president (instead of pro-civil rights Nelson Rockefeller) the GOP cast its future fortunes with the white electorate of the South. LBJ trounced Goldwater nationally that fall, winning more than 60 percent of the popular vote. But in the South, voters flocked to the Republican nominee, with Goldwater carrying five states in the region. Mississippi, the same state that had given FDR 97 percent of its votes 28 years earlier, now gave Goldwater 87 percent. That fall, Thurmond, now a senator, renounced his Democratic affiliation once and for all and signed up for Goldwater’s GOP. The realignment was well underway, and it had everything to do with race.<br> &nbsp;</p> <p>Today, more than 150 years after the Republican Party's founding, many policy positions held by conservatives in the Party stand starkly at odds with many of the positions held by Republicans during Lincoln's time. In a February 12, 2016 article, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/lincoln-modern-gop-republicans_us_56bdea90e4b0b40245c61bb5">Huffington Post</a> editor Alana Horowitz Satlin writes:</p> <p class="rteindent1">Federal Income Tax: In 1861, Lincoln&nbsp;OK’d the nation’s first federal income tax. Meanwhile,&nbsp;today’s Republicans push&nbsp;for lower and fewer taxes....</p> <p class="rteindent1"><span style="font-size: 12px;">Funding For Public Education:&nbsp;</span><span style="font-size: 12px;">In 1862,&nbsp;Lincoln signed a law&nbsp;giving states land grants which they could sell and use the money to fund old colleges or build new ones. Meanwhile, today’s Republicans have voted to cut&nbsp;crucial funding for higher education and blocked efforts to make college more affordable —&nbsp;such as&nbsp;President Barack Obama’s plan&nbsp;to make community colleges free.&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="rteindent1"><span style="font-size: 12px;">Expansion Of Presidential Powers:&nbsp;</span><span style="font-size: 12px;">The Republicans of today&nbsp;often accuse Obama&nbsp;of abusing his presidential power. Using executive action, Obama has green-lit&nbsp;gun control&nbsp;and&nbsp;immigration reforms, as well as implemented&nbsp;paid sick leave&nbsp;for federal employees and a mandate protecting LGBT workers.&nbsp;Guess who else increased the power of the executive branch and ran an increasingly activist federal government?&nbsp;Yep, that’s right: Lincoln.&nbsp;In fact, the University of Virginia’s Miller Center calls Lincoln "the most activist President in history."</span><br> &nbsp;</p> <p>While some may still call the Republican Party "The Party of Lincoln," the party's track record suggests a more complex history.</p> <h4><br> For Discussion:</h4> <ol> <li>How much of the material in this reading was new to you, and how much was already familiar? Do you have any questions about what you read?<br> &nbsp;</li> <li>According to the reading, what was Radical Reconstruction? Why might it be unpopular with modern Republicans?<br> &nbsp;</li> <li>What were some of the major historical changes that contributed to the shifting composition and political positions advocated by the Republican Party?<br> &nbsp;</li> <li>What are some of the policy positions that Republicans hold today that members of their party might have opposed in the 1800s?</li> </ol> <p style="margin-left:.5in;">&nbsp;</p> <hr> <p>&nbsp;</p> <h3>Reading 2:<br> Is a New "Realignment" Underway?<br> &nbsp;</h3> <p>The process through which parties attract new coalitions of voters and gradually shift their political positions is known as "realignment." Realignment is something that has been experienced by both major parties in the United States. It explains, for one, how conservatives in the South went from being a solidly Democratic voting bloc to a solidly Republican one.</p> <p>Realignment isn’t just something that happened in the past. The groups of voters that support each party continues to shift from time to time, as do the parties' stances on major political issues. In the past year, the presidential candidates Senator Bernie Sanders (Democrat) and businessman Donald Trump (Republican) both challenged the established orthodoxies of their respective parties. This has led some commentators to speculate that another wave of political realignment might be taking place in America.</p> <p>In a July 15, 2016 article for <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-07-15/party-realignment">Bloomberg.com</a>, journalist Peter Coy describes the concept of party realignment:</p> <p style="margin-left:35.45pt;">We like to think of the two major parties as fixed, known quantities, like donkeys and elephants. But they’ve always been chameleons. The Democratic Party traces its roots to 1792. The Republican Party goes back to 1854. They’ve survived by changing with the times, sometimes radically, even to the point of swapping positions on key issues, whether civil rights, foreign policy, or taxation. Republican hero Ronald Reagan began his political life as a New Deal Democrat. He switched his registration in 1962, before he ran for office. He always insisted he wasn’t the one who changed: "I didn’t leave the Democratic Party. The party left me."<br> &nbsp;</p> <p>In a March 11, 2016, article for the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/after-2016-will-the-political-parties-ever-look-the-same/2016/03/11/07a18da6-e709-11e5-bc08-3e03a5b41910_story.html?utm_term=.5ab24755c30b"><em>Washington Post</em></a>, journalist John B. Judis discussed how political scientists developed the theory of realignment:</p> <p style="margin-left:35.45pt;">In 1932, GOP ineptitude in the face of the Great Depression turned a solidly Republican majority into a Democratic one. After World War II, political scientists developed a theory of realignment to explain the shift. A succession of writers has attempted to refine and adapt that theory to analyze the development of American politics. It’s a useful way to understand the current eruptions.</p> <p style="margin-left:35.45pt;">The theory was born 60 years ago, in&nbsp;a paper&nbsp;by Harvard political scientist V.O. Key. In 1955, Key demonstrated that the Democratic realignment of 1932 had been anticipated by the "critical" 1928 presidential election, when Democrat Al Smith won urban, working-class parts of New England that had previously gone Republican. The predominately Catholic voters in these places would subsequently flock en masse to the Democrats. Key was among the first political scientists to document that a shift of ethnic and class voting blocs from one party to another (or the emergence of new voting blocs) could create the basis for party realignments.</p> <p style="margin-left:35.45pt;">In 1967, MIT political scientist Walter Dean Burnham built on Key’s work. In "Party Systems and the Political Process," Burnham laid out a new theory of realignments, suggesting that they’re cyclical and strike every 30 to 40 years. He called them "America’s surrogate for revolution." They could be foreshadowed by Key’s critical elections, but were precipitated by wars or depressions that exposed the inadequacy of prevailing party ideologies.<br> &nbsp;</p> <p>So, will the 2016 Presidential election prove to be another key moment of realignment? In an April 25, 2016 report, <a href="http://www.npr.org/2016/04/25/475551861/populist-candidates-appeal-to-voters-who-feel-theyre-unheard">National Public Radio</a> correspondent Mara Liasson quoted several experts who believe that the fundamental composition of the two major parties is unlikely to change in the near future. Nevertheless, internal battles within each party may effect the Democrats' and Republicans' stances on bigger issues. Liasson stated:</p> <p style="margin-left:35.45pt;">The big question is what effect this year's populist politics will have on both parties over time. In the past, populist movements have forced a realignment or a reshuffling of voters. Think George Wallace leading Southern whites out of the Democratic Party in the late '60s and early '70s. That kind of big shift in voter allegiance is probably not in the cards. There are not many socially conservative, economically populist white Democrats left that could switch to the Republicans. And there are not that many socially liberal, upscale white Republicans left who could switch to the Democrats.</p> <p style="margin-left:35.45pt;">"I think the party coalitions are pretty well defined," said Michael Lind of the New America Foundation. "The civil wars within the parties are about defining the party platforms more than the party coalitions."</p> <p style="margin-left:35.45pt;">For the Republicans, that civil war might lead to a debate about a new policy agenda, a more populist agenda that's less friendly to big business and the wealthy and more attuned to the concerns of the white working class. Henry Olsen, the author of&nbsp;<em>The Four Faces Of The Republican Party</em>,&nbsp;sees that as the lesson of this year's Republican primaries....</p> <p style="margin-left:35.45pt;">For the Democrats, populism is also here to stay even though it hasn't had the kind of seismic consequences as it has for the GOP. Bill Galston, a former Clinton White House aide, says there's a lot of economic discontent among "young adults, the working class and the middle class. So there's something real there for Democrats. And it's not going away."</p> <p style="margin-left:35.45pt;">Hillary Clinton will have to absorb some of Sanders' left-wing populism as she moves forward to the general election. She has already moved toward Sanders on expanding Social Security, if not on breaking up the big banks....</p> <p style="margin-left:35.45pt;">Trump's populist positions are challenging the Republican Party's basic DNA, its core ideology about foreign policy and trade and limited government. On the Democratic side, Sanders doesn't represent as big a break with Democratic orthodoxy. He represents a wing of the party that's always been there but has just gotten to be a much bigger part of the coalition this year.<br> &nbsp;</p> <p>Realignment illustrates that the major American political parties are dynamic entities that constantly shift based on voters' changig attitudes.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <h4>For Discussion:</h4> <ol> <li>How much of the material in this reading was new to you, and how much was already familiar? Do you have any questions about what you read?<br> &nbsp;</li> <li>According to the reading, what is the concept of realignment?<br> &nbsp;</li> <li>What do you think? Do you think the Trump and Sanders candidacies signal a realignment in American politics?<br> &nbsp;</li> <li>Are there any constituencies or interest groups in American politics that you think might benefit from changing their party allegiance, or even forming a new party? Explain your position.</li> </ol> <p>&nbsp;</p> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--uid--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig x field--node--uid.html.twig * field--node--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig * field--uid.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <span> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'username' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'core/modules/user/templates/username.html.twig' --> <span>fionta</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'core/modules/user/templates/username.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--created--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig x field--node--created.html.twig * field--node--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <span> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'time' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'core/modules/system/templates/time.html.twig' --> <time datetime="2016-10-21T13:09:46-04:00" title="Friday, October 21, 2016 - 13:09">October 21, 2016</time> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'core/modules/system/templates/time.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'links__node' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * links--node.html.twig x links.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap/templates/system/links.html.twig' --> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap/templates/system/links.html.twig' --> Fri, 21 Oct 2016 17:09:46 +0000 fionta 374 at https://www.morningsidecenter.org About Those Conventions... https://www.morningsidecenter.org/teachable-moment/lessons/about-those-conventions <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--title--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig x field--node--title.html.twig * field--node--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig * field--title.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <span>About Those Conventions...</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--body--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig * field--node--body.html.twig * field--node--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig * field--body.html.twig * field--text-with-summary.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field--item"><h4>To the teacher:<br> &nbsp;</h4> <p>This political season has generated extraordinary attention to the actual process by which presidential candidates are chosen.&nbsp; The made-for-the-media candidacy of Donald Trump and the unexpected popularity of Bernie Sanders contributed to a high level of interest for everyone--but especially among young people.</p> <p>Both the Democratic and Republican nomination processes underwent widespread examination and criticism as anti-establishment forces fought for control of their respective parties. Republicans made several last-ditch efforts to thwart the nomination of Donald Trump--the clear winner of the party's primary contest. In the Democratic Party, the role of unelected superdelegates and the Democratic National Committee’s favoritism toward Hillary Clinton led to anger among Sanders supporters.</p> <p>Leading up to the conventions, many questions were raised:</p> <ul> <li>Who makes the rules and can they be changed?</li> <li>Is it possible for someone other than the winner of the primaries to win the nomination? What would have to happen?</li> <li>Are superdelegates anti-democratic? Should they be eliminated?</li> <li>Should the party platforms reflect the views of the nominee?</li> <li>Will the factions unite sufficiently to win the election?</li> <li>Is either party facing an actual split?</li> </ul> <p>The goal of this lesson is to clarify the role of the conventions in the election process so that &nbsp;students can better understand the political maneuvering&nbsp; underneath the headlines and appreciate the historic nature of the 2016 election.<br> &nbsp;</p> <hr> <h4><br> <br> A Brief Quiz<br> &nbsp;</h4> <p>Ask students if they watched the Republican and Democratic conventions this summer. &nbsp;What’s one word they would use to describe the Republican convention July 18-20?&nbsp; How about the Democratic convention&nbsp; a week later?</p> <p>Ask them to take this brief quiz on the convention of &nbsp;"conventions."</p> <p>1. How are candidates nominated for the presidency by the two major political parties?<br> a) now it's by email<br> b) by delegates elected at state primaries and caucuses<br> c) a survey mailed to all eligible voters</p> <p>2. What happens at the national conventions?<br> a) speeches by former elected officials<br> b) official nomination process<br> c) the candidates' spouses and children talk about him/her<br> d) the Pope addresses the nation<br> e) average Americans with compelling stories praise the candidate</p> <p>3. What is a party platform?<br> a) a stage for speakers<br> b) where the important party leaders sit<br> c) the Party's policy positions<br> d) the Democrats' or Republicans' computer environment<br> e) not applicable</p> <p>4. What do Reince Priebus and Debbie Wasserman Schultz have in common?<br> a) They both won Oscars for Best Supporting Actor or Actress<br> b) They both ran for their party's nomination and lost<br> c) They were both fired by Donald Trump on "The Apprentice"<br> d) They were leaders of their party</p> <p>5. Which word or words do not belong with the phrase "Party Establishment"<br> a) Feel the Bern<br> b) super PACs<br> c) super delegates<br> d) "invisible primary"<br> e) RNC</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <hr> <h4><br> Student Reading 1:<br> About Conventions</h4> <p><br> Have the students read the following descriptions of the broad history and anatomy of the major party conventions.</p> <p><strong>What are the conventions for?</strong></p> <p>Political conventions are large meetings held by political parties to choose candidates to run for office. National conventions are held every four years to determine the parties' candidates for president. Both the major parties—Democratic and Republican—and the smaller third parties hold conventions in the months preceding the presidential elections. Though the outcome of the convention is almost always decided before the convention actually begins, the level of unity, the political positions adopted by the party, and the speakers and speeches on display to the nation sometimes make the conventions an important piece of the election process.</p> <p><strong>How did they begin?</strong></p> <p>The first national nominating conventions were held for the 1832 presidential elections. Before then, caucuses of party leaders—usually members of Congress—met privately and decided the candidates. Though the conventions brought a more open nominating process, the decisions were still being made by a small number of party leaders. Delegates were mostly chosen by party bosses and maintained their loyalty on the basis of patronage--government jobs in return for the right vote. By the late 1800s states began to institute party primaries, which gave voters the power to decide the party nominees. But it was still possible as late as 1968 to win the nomination without entering a single primary. Since then, delegates to both major parties are chosen in state primaries and caucuses, and the conventions merely make the nominations official.</p> <p><strong>What is a smoke-filled room?</strong></p> <p>In 1920, the Republican Party met in Chicago to decide their presidential nominee. Among the leading candidates, none could win a majority of the delegates. After four unsuccessful ballots, the convention adjourned and delegates met overnight in several private meetings to try and break the deadlock. At 5am, reporter Kirke Simpson filed a story which stated "Harding of Ohio was chosen by a group of men in a smoke-filled room early today as Republican candidate for President." Senator Warren G. Harding won the nomination and went on to win the election. "Smoke-filled room" went on to mean a group of influential power brokers meeting in secret to make important political decisions. (Warren G. Harding usually appears on lists of the worst presidents in history.)</p> <p><strong>How do they work?</strong></p> <p>Each party determines their own rules for how the convention operates. The national party assigns a specific number of delegates to each state—based on the population of the state and the size/winning power of the state's party membership. Each state party has its own set of rules for how the delegates are chosen.</p> <p>The conventions are four days, with the daytime agenda devoted to meetings, rallies, and speeches and entertainment from lesser-known figures. Evenings are given to nationally known speakers and celebrities—always with an eye toward the television audience.&nbsp; The formal nomination is decided by a state-by-state roll call vote. The presidential and vice-presidential nominees give their acceptance speeches on the last evening.</p> <p>During the course of the convention, committees meet to hammer out the party's official positions on national issues. (The individual issues are called "planks," and the set of political positions is called the party "platform.") In both parties, these meetings tend to be contentious affairs, with party factions arguing for different priorities and wording.</p> <p><strong>The national committees</strong></p> <p>The parties are governed by a national committee comprised of hundreds of party leaders from across the country. The national committees promote their party's candidates and political positions, raise money, and establish rules for the nominating primaries and caucuses. The Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Republican National Committee (RNC) represent the "establishment," both in the parties and in the nation as a whole. They generally locate themselves somewhere in the center of the party's ideological spectrum, are resistant to radical change, and control access to the big money contributors.</p> <p>The Democratic National Committee is made up of the chairs and vice-chairs of all the state committees, all Democratic governors and elected members of Congress, some former high officials, &nbsp;and others elected by state committees and appointed by the chair—almost 450 people in all. The DNC is supposed to remain neutral in the nominating process according to DNC rules:</p> <p class="rteindent1">"The Chairperson shall be responsible for ensuring that the national officers and staff of the Democratic National Committee maintain impartiality and even-handedness during the Democratic Party Presidential nominating process."</p> <p><strong>This year’s DNC controversy ...</strong></p> <p>During the current electoral season, Bernie Sanders ran a presidential campaign that was explicitly anti-establishment. One of the obstacles his outsider initiative faced was the early endorsement of Hillary Clinton by the Party's "superdelegates." Superdelegates are the 716 members of the nominating convention who gain their voting status through their relationship to the Democratic Party rather than through votes in the primaries and caucuses. The system of superdelegates was introduced after the 1972 election for just such an occasion—to prevent the party from nominating the "wrong" person. &nbsp;Whereas convention delegates&nbsp; who earn admittance to the convention through their state's primary results are pledged to support their candidate, the "super" delegates may vote for any candidate. All members of the DNC are superdelegates.</p> <p>The allegations of bias turned out to be true. Just before the 2016 Convention, the Wikileaks website released documents hacked from the DNC. They revealed that throughout the entire primary season, the DNC was maneuvering to sidetrack the Sanders insurgency. The chair of the Committee, Debbie Wasserman Schultz was forced to resign.</p> <p><strong>And RNC controversy</strong></p> <p>The RNC consists of three representatives from each state party—the chairperson, national committeewoman and national committeeman. The current chair, Reince Priebus, is the longest-serving chair in RNC history. Throughout the 2016 primaries, Priebus performed a delicate balancing act in maintaining impartiality in the face of a candidacy that many in the Republican establishment opposed. In a July 21 piece in Politico, Eli Stokols gives a detailed account of just how difficult it has been for Priebus (and the RNC) to manage its relationship to the Donald Trump campaign and his ultimate decision to support Trump:</p> <p class="rteindent1">But Trump’s unexpected rise last fall presented Priebus with a choice: continue to fight for the vision of the more modern, inclusive GOP he had laid out three years earlier or finish out his third and likely final term as, in the <a href="https://twitter.com/BillKristol/status/753626586348421120" target="_blank">words</a> of Bill Kristol, an "obedient, compliant apparatchik willing to subordinate a grand old party to a new strongman."</p> <p class="rteindent1">Priebus chose to stay to aid and coach a candidate who may undermine the very things he has dedicated his tenure to improving. He has staked his reputation on Trump. To some extent, the tenuous unity visible at the Republican National Convention this week may be due to Priebus’ peacemaking efforts. And Trump’s near total dependence on much of what Priebus has built has made the RNC itself more vital than ever to Republican success in November. But in bending over backward to appease Trump in an effort to make sure the GOP didn’t crack up, the man who worked to strengthen the party has become a symbol of its weakness.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <hr> <h4><br> Discussion Questions:</h4> <p><br> 1. There is usually no suspense about who the major party nominees will be, and network television generally broadcasts only a few hours of the nominating conventions. &nbsp;If you were making decisions about broadcast coverage of the conventions, which of the following would you choose? Why?</p> <p style="margin-left:.25in;">a) &nbsp;the acceptance speeches<br> b) &nbsp;celebrity endorsements<br> c) &nbsp;platform committee discussions<br> d) &nbsp;personal endorsements by everyday people<br> e) &nbsp;speeches by elected officials<br> f) &nbsp; brain surgery demonstrations<br> g) &nbsp;speeches by family members of the nominees<br> h) &nbsp;the roll call vote<br> i) &nbsp; singers, comedians and other entertainers<br> j) &nbsp; all of it<br> k) &nbsp;none of it</p> <p>2. The DNC and RNC, which operate as private clubs, decide the rules under which presidential candidates are chosen. Is this good for democracy? Is there a better way?</p> <p>3. Senator Robert LaFollette, who ran for president in 1924, defined voting rights as "the sovereign right that each citizen shall for himself exercise his choice by direct vote, without the intervention or interference of any political agency." &nbsp; What does the quotation mean and how close are presidential nominations to his ideal?</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <hr> <h4>Student Reading 2:<br> The 2016 Conventions</h4> <h4><br> Drama at the 2016 Republican Convention</h4> <p>On July 18, 2016, 2472 delegates assembled in Cleveland to begin the Republican Convention. Donald Trump went into the Convention with 300 more delegates than he needed to win the nomination. Despite Trump's apparent winning majority, the Convention began with a high level of drama. Many of the delegates who were not supporters of Trump continued their efforts to block his nomination - or at the very least, to make it difficult for an "outsider" to capture the party in the future. These efforts to change the nominating rules at the Convention were as futile as the "Never Trump" efforts before the Convention.</p> <p>Though the Republican National Committee was supporting the candidate, the Republican establishment was highly divided on how much support to give or, for some, whether to endorse Trump at all. Many of the party's top names refused to endorse Trump or even attend the convention. They object to his anti-Muslim rhetoric, anti-immigrant stances, attacks on the judiciary, attacks on fellow Republicans, erratic statements on foreign policy, intemperate manner, and incoherence generally.</p> <p class="rteindent1">"I don't want to see trickle-down racism."&nbsp;<br> -2012 Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney</p> <p class="rteindent1">"He’s a race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot. He doesn’t represent my party. He doesn’t represent the values that the men and women who wear the uniform are fighting for."<br> - Senator &nbsp;Lindsey Graham</p> <p class="rteindent1">"If we shrug at public dishonesty ?— ?if we normalize candidates who think that grabbing power makes it OK to say whatever they need to in the short-term ?—? then we will be changed by it."<br> - Sen. Ben Sasse (condemning both Clinton and Trump)</p> <p class="rteindent1">"No. I've got to mow my lawn."<br> - Sen. Jeff Flake on whether he's attending GOP convention.</p> <p class="rteindent1">"Trump’s abrasive, know nothing-like nativist rhetoric has blocked out sober discourse about how to tackle America’s big challenges."<br> -Gov. Jeb Bush</p> <p>With the two living Republican ex-presidents and&nbsp; dozens of elected officials boycotting the convention, and many others offering only tepid support, there were few really big names among the speakers. Perhaps the most illustrious speaker was Trump's nomination rival, Sen. Ted Cruz. But Cruz, incredibly, did not endorse the nominee. Instead, he urged voters to "Stand, and speak, and vote your conscience, vote for candidates up and down the ticket who you trust to defend our freedom and to be faithful to the Constitution." Cruz was booed off the stage.</p> <p>Republican senators, governors and representatives as well as entertainers, business people, religious leaders and members of the Trump family. Some of the speaker highlights include:</p> <ul> <li>Chris Christie: The New Jersey governor led the crowd through a trial of Hillary Clinton for a litany of "crimes," with the audience enthusiastically yelling, "Guilty!" for each charge.<br> &nbsp;</li> <li>Ben Carson: Trump’s former rival for the nomination spoke of the connection between Clinton and Lucifer (the Devil).<br> &nbsp;</li> <li>Melania Trump (Donald Trump's wife): What was intended to be an important introductory speech by the next First Lady turned into an embarrassing fiasco when it became apparent that parts of the speech were copied virtually word for word from Michelle Obama's 2008 convention speech.<br> &nbsp;</li> <li>Paul Ryan (Speaker of the House of Representatives):&nbsp; The speech by the most powerful Republican in the country urged support for the Republican ticket without offering any praise for the Republican nominee.</li> </ul> <p><strong>Republican Platform</strong></p> <p>The fight for the Party position on controversial political issues was not so much a battle between the establishment and Trump, as between moderates and extremists. On nearly every issue, the most conservative stance won out. This was true even when (as in the case of LGBT rights) Donald Trump's own positions were more moderate.</p> <p>Planks in the platform include:</p> <ul> <li>Opting out of all climate change agreements</li> <li>Privatizing the health insurance for older citizens--Medicare</li> <li>No amnesty for undocumented immigrants</li> <li>Building a wall along the entire Mexican border</li> <li>Supporting abstinence-only birth control programs in schools</li> <li>Supporting expansion of the death penalty</li> <li>Eliminating federal student loans</li> <li>Supporting a constitutional amendment outlawing abortion</li> <li>Opposing all campaign finance laws</li> <li>Protecting businesses that want to discriminate against LGBT customers</li> <li>Opposing regulations on the environment and in banking/finance</li> <li>Encouraging the teach of the Bible in public schools</li> <li>Ensuring that "man-made law be consistent with God-given, natural rights"</li> <li>Supporting oil exploration on public lands, fracking and coal ("an abundant, clean,affordable,&nbsp; reliable&nbsp; domestic energy&nbsp; resource")<br> &nbsp;</li> </ul> <hr> <h4><br> Drama at the Democratic Party Convention<br> &nbsp;</h4> <p>The Democratic Convention was held in Philadelphia from July 25-28, 2016. As with the Republican Convention, the final results were clear from the beginning. Hillary Clinton had the support of almost 60% of the delegates.</p> <p>The release of documents showing the DNC's anti-Sanders bias just before the convention served to further alienate the many Sanders delegates who were already reluctant to support Clinton. The Sanders forces brought their fight to the platform committee, convention floor and to the streets outside the convention. They continued their protests even after Sanders formally endorsed the front-runner. The&nbsp; Sanders supporters clashed with Clinton on many issues, including global trade agreements, climate change, reining in Wall Street, and healthcare.</p> <p>These issues were hard fought in the platform committee. The Sanders delegates did win on some issues:</p> <ul> <li>support for a $15 minimum wage</li> <li>support for a financial transaction tax on Wall St. trades</li> <li>abolition of the death penalty</li> </ul> <p>And lost on others:</p> <ul> <li>the platform will not include opposition to the TPP trade deal (the number one issue for the Sanders campaign)</li> <li>the anti-fracking plank failed</li> <li>no tax on carbon emissions</li> <li>no endorsement of a single payer health plan</li> <li>no mention of the Israeli occupation of Palestine</li> </ul> <p>Bernie Sanders endorsed Clinton on the first night of the convention. It was a move that all his supporters knew was coming, but one that many opposed. The opposition to Hillary Clinton and the anger toward the Party establishment fueled protest throughout the convention—from the chants of "Bernie!, Bernie!" and "No TPP!" to the walkouts, to the demonstrations in the streets outside.</p> <p>The speaker whose talk got the most media attention was Khizr Khan, whose son Humayun was an Army captain killed in Iraq. Khan, a Muslim, delivered a scathing reproach to the Republican nominee and offered Trump a copy of the U.S. Constitution, asking Trump if he'd ever read it. He went on to ask Trump: "Have you ever been to Arlington Cemetery? Go look at the graves of the brave patriots who died defending America — you will see all faiths, genders, and ethnicities. You have sacrificed nothing. And no one."</p> <p>Donald Trump spent the following week attacking Khan in tweets, speeches, and interviews. In&nbsp; reply to Khan's withering indictment of lack of sacrifices, Trump explained: "I think I’ve made a lot of sacrifices. I work very, very hard. I've created thousands and thousands of jobs, tens of thousands of jobs, built great structures. I've had tremendous success. I think I've done a lot."</p> <p>Other notable speeches at the Democratic convention included:</p> <p>Barack Obama:&nbsp; The president excited the audience with a speech that emphasized optimism for the country, enthusiasm for the candidate and scorn for the Republican candidate.</p> <p>Michelle Obama:&nbsp; In a compelling speech, Obama spoke of the progress the country has made, noting that her own children living in the White House as an example--and praised the nominee as a champion of children everywhere.</p> <p>Bill Clinton: Clinton gave a personal speech, seeking to humanize a candidate whose manner is sometimes perceived as less than personable.</p> <p>Rev. William Barber (leader of the North Carolina NAACP)--Barber gave a fiery speech exhorting people to stand up and join the struggle for social justice. In reaction to forces that are intent on stopping "the heart of our democracy," Rev. Barber said "We are being called, like our mothers and fathers, to be the moral defibrillators of our time."<br> <br> &nbsp;</p> <hr> <h4><br> The Vice Presidents</h4> <p><br> Both parties nominated safe, establishment-approved candidates for vice-president. Under pressure from the RNC, Donald Trump agreed to run with Indiana governor Mike Pence. Pence is a stalwart conservative who has served in Congress and as governor. He is best known nationally for his defense of Indiana's law extending legal protection to businesses which choose not to provide service to same-sex weddings.</p> <p>The Democrats nominated Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia. Sen. Kaine, also former governor of Virginia, is a political moderate from a swing state who speaks Spanish fluently. He was not favored by the progressive wing of the Democratic Party because of his support for the TPP trade deal, (anti-labor) "right-to-work" legislation and opposition to strict banking regulation.</p> <h4><br> The Grass Roots</h4> <p><br> Watching a political convention is a passive activity.&nbsp; But what happens at conventions is very much determined by the ongoing activism (or lack of activism) in the years before and after.</p> <p>Trump’s nomination was fueled by anti-establishment forces and grassroots groups on the right. Activist organizing by gun clubs, volunteer border patrols, "pro-life" activist groups, conservative evangelical churches, property rights and general anti-big government groups, and Tea Party organizations around the country largely determined the Republican Party’s anti-immigrant, anti-abortion, pro-gun platform.&nbsp; Perhaps because of Donald Trump’s erratic statements and inconsistent ideology, not all of the grassroots groups have joined the campaign. However, lacking a powerful campaign organization, the Trump campaign will be depending heavily on single issue grassroots groups.</p> <p>The Bernie Sanders campaign too benefited from&nbsp; a movement that to challenge the status quo. The "political revolution" that Sanders championed reflected widespread activism over the past few years by grassroots organizations working to close the ever-widening gap between the super-wealthy and everyone else. Their activism helped give rise to the unprecedented level of support for a candidate who describes himself as a "democratic socialist." Hundreds of local organizations advocating for the homeless, working on environmental justice, national health care and LGBT issues joined the campaign. National organizations like Fight for 15, National Nurses United, Occupy Wall Street, MoveOn, and Peace Action formally endorsed the candidate. In American politics, presidential campaigns provide a convenient vehicle for easy participation in the political process, but it's the grass roots organizations that carry on the fights every day of the year.<br> &nbsp;</p> <hr> <p>&nbsp;</p> <h4>Discussion&nbsp;</h4> <p><br> 1. Given the party divisions that were apparent at the conventions, what is the future of the Democratic Party if...</p> <p class="rteindent1">a) Hillary Clinton wins by a large margin.</p> <ul class="rteindent1"> <li>&nbsp;Will the Party establishment be in a better position to ignore the progressive/Sanders wing of the Party?</li> <li>&nbsp;Will Sanders supporters create an alternative party?</li> <li>&nbsp;Will Clinton feel free to push a progressive agenda?</li> </ul> <p class="rteindent1">&nbsp;b) Donald Trump wins the election</p> <ul class="rteindent1"> <li>Will the Republican Party establishment begin to build an alternative party?</li> <li>Will large sectors of the Party move to the Democrats?</li> </ul> <p><br> 2. In an <a href="http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/33980-bernie-sanders-and-the-limits-of-electoral-politics">article</a> examining the Sanders political revolution early in the campaign, Michael Corcoran notes the usual sad state of presidential elections:</p> <p class="rteindent1">&nbsp;Organizers work tirelessly year-round in trying to raise consciousness and fight for social justice. But every four years, the country gets consumed and distracted by the presidential election - or what Noam Chomsky&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laMs3iFRP80" target="_blank">calls</a> "a public relations extravaganza that only marginally deals with issues."</p> <p>Do you agree? Will the 2016 electoral campaign be different?</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <hr> <h4>&nbsp;</h4> <h4>Activity: &nbsp;Examine the platform</h4> <p><br> Have the class look at the platform comparison&nbsp;available from http://www.votekentucky.us/Dem%20and%20Repub%20Platform%20comparison.pdf (PDF no longer available).</p> <p>Ask students to choose one issue (e.g. abortion, marriage issues, crime and punishment, etc) to examine in detail. Read the relevant sections in the original document.</p> <ul> <li>What does the platform language actually mean?</li> <li>How do the positions differ?</li> <li>Do they call for a specific action or just state a general policy?</li> <li>Do a reality check: Is the plank more of a "wish list" position to appease a faction of the Party, &nbsp; or can the policy be enacted in the real world?</li> <li>Assuming the final platform is a compromise between competing factions of the parties, imagine the starting positions for the Sanders and DNC, and Trump and RNC delegates on the platform committee.</li> </ul> <p>&nbsp;</p> <hr> <p>&nbsp;</p> <h4>Sources<br> &nbsp;</h4> <p><a href="https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/9637980/Thompson_Primary.pdf?sequence=2">https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/9637980/Thompson_Primary.pdf?sequence=2</a></p> <p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/25/us/politics/debbie-wasserman-schultz-dnc-wikileaks-emails.html?_r=0">http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/25/us/politics/debbie-wasserman-schultz-dnc-wikileaks-emails.html?_r=0</a></p> <p><a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/07/2016-gop-convention-reince-priebus-donald-trump-214078">http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/07/2016-gop-convention-reince-priebus-donald-trump-214078</a></p> <p><a href="https://prod-static-ngop-pbl.s3.amazonaws.com/media/documents/DRAFT_12_FINAL%5b1%5d-ben_1468872234.pdf">https://prod-static-ngop-pbl.s3.amazonaws.com/media/documents/DRAFT_12_FINAL[1]-ben_1468872234.pdf</a></p> <p>https://www.demconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Democratic-Party-Platform-7.21.16-no-lines.pdf (no longer active)</p> <p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/13/us/politics/republican-convention-issues.html">http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/13/us/politics/republican-convention-issues.html</a></p> <p><a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/tim-kaine-has-a-troubling-record-on-labor-issues/">https://www.thenation.com/article/tim-kaine-has-a-troubling-record-on-labor-issues/</a></p> <p><a href="http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/33980-bernie-sanders-and-the-limits-of-electoral-politics">http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/33980-bernie-sanders-and-the-limits-of-electoral-politics</a></p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--uid--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig x field--node--uid.html.twig * field--node--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig * field--uid.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <span> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'username' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'core/modules/user/templates/username.html.twig' --> <span>fionta</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'core/modules/user/templates/username.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--created--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig x field--node--created.html.twig * field--node--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <span> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'time' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'core/modules/system/templates/time.html.twig' --> <time datetime="2016-08-16T09:17:43-04:00" title="Tuesday, August 16, 2016 - 09:17">August 16, 2016</time> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'core/modules/system/templates/time.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'links__node' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * links--node.html.twig x links.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap/templates/system/links.html.twig' --> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap/templates/system/links.html.twig' --> Tue, 16 Aug 2016 13:17:43 +0000 fionta 385 at https://www.morningsidecenter.org The Significance of Electing Women https://www.morningsidecenter.org/teachable-moment/lessons/significance-electing-women <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--title--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig x field--node--title.html.twig * field--node--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig * field--title.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <span>The Significance of Electing Women</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--body--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig * field--node--body.html.twig * field--node--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig * field--body.html.twig * field--text-with-summary.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field--item"><h4>To The Teacher:</h4> <p><br> Hillary Clinton stands on the brink of becoming the country's first female president. If Clinton secures the Democratic Party nomination and wins the general election, her victory would mark a significant moment for a country that less than 100 years ago did not even allow women to vote.</p> <p>This lesson is divided into two readings designed to have students think critically about the prospect of America electing its first woman president. The first reading provides a historical survey of women leaders in modern world politics. The second reading considers the significance of a potential Hillary Clinton presidency and weighs the debates surrounding the importance of electing a woman to the White House. Questions for discussion follow each reading.<br> &nbsp;</p> <hr> <h4><br> Reading 1:<br> Why does the U.S. lag in electing women leaders?</h4> <p><br> As the leading Democratic Party candidate in the 2016 presidential election, Hillary Clinton stands on the brink of becoming the country's first female president. If she secures the Democratic nomination at the party’s convention in late July and goes on to win the general election, her victory would mark a significant moment for a country that less than 100 years ago did not even allow women to vote.</p> <p>The United States lags behind numerous nations around the world, which long ago elected women as heads of state and government. Presently, Switzerland, Germany, Brazil, South Korea, and Taiwan all have either a female head of state or head of government. In a June 7, 2016, article, for the <em><a href="http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-women-leaders-0607-snap-story.html">Los Angeles Times</a>, </em>reporter Ann Simmons details the extent to which the United States has lagged behind the rest of the world:</p> <p style="margin-left:.5in;">Hillary Clinton is set to make history as&nbsp;the first woman to be a&nbsp;presidential nominee for a major U.S. political party and potentially becoming the country’s&nbsp;first female commander in chief.</p> <p style="margin-left:.5in;">But the glass ceiling to a nation’s top office was long ago shattered in several countries around the world, including some with nascent democracies.</p> <p style="margin-left:.5in;">"The fact that these countries have democracies that are less established may make it easier for someone outside of the conventional political norms to get elected," said Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California. The United States&nbsp;"has had two centuries to develop old-boy networks, the results of which are walls that are less easy to scale. New democracies have had less time to build such walls."</p> <p style="margin-left:.5in;">India has had the longest stretches with a woman in power, according to the Pew Research Center.&nbsp;Former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and later President Pratibha Patil served a combined 21 of the last 51 years.&nbsp;In Europe, the Nordic countries stand out in terms of electing women to their nation’s top political office, according to Pew data, barring Sweden, where a woman has never headed the government.</p> <p style="margin-left:.5in;">There are currently 18 female world leaders, including 12 heads of government and 11 elected heads of state, according to the United Nations&nbsp;(some leaders are both, and figurehead monarchs are not included).</p> <p>Hillary Clinton is already the most successful woman presidential candidate in U.S. history. However, as Julia Manchester writes in a June 10, 2016, article for <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/09/politics/hillary-clinton-women-presidential-candidates/)">CNN.com</a>, she is far from the first woman to seek the office. While women have only had the right to vote in the United States since 1920, they were running for president nearly 50 years before. Manchester wrote:</p> <p style="margin-left:35.45pt;">While Clinton and her predecessors faced similar gender barriers in the politics, the nation's earliest female politicians had an additional obstacle to overcome.</p> <p style="margin-left:35.45pt;">"You know they were running before women had the right to vote," said Debbie Walsh, the director of the Rutgers University Center for American Women and Politics. "Susan B. Anthony in the late 1800s would try to go to vote and she was jailed. So these women faced scorn and ridicule for running ... If you look at cartoons from that period, they were mocked."</p> <p>Here are some of the women who have sought the presidency:</p> <ul> <li>Victoria Claflin Woodhull, of the Equal Rights Party, was the first woman to run for president; she ran in 1872. Woodhull went on to become the first woman to own a Wall Street investment firm.</li> <li>Belva Ann Lockwood ran for president on the Equal Right's party ticket in 1884 and 1888. She later became the first woman to argue before the Supreme Court.</li> <li>In 1964, Margaret Chase Smith, a Republican, became the first woman to seek the nomination of a major political party. She lost the GOP nomination to Barry Goldwater, but did serve in the U.S. House and Senate.</li> <li>In 1968, Shirley Chisholm became the first African American woman to be elected to the U.S. Congress. In 1972, she became the first woman ever to run for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination - and the first major party Black candidate for president.&nbsp; Her campaign slogan was ‘unbought and unbossed."&nbsp; Although Chisholm ran in most of the nation’s primaries, she lost the nomination to George McGovern. &nbsp;</li> </ul> <p>Why has it taken so long for a woman to come as close to the presidency as Clinton has? According to Zack Beauchamp of <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/6/9/11884430/hillary-clinton-global-woman-president">Vox.com</a>, both structural factors and voter perceptions have hurt the chances of female candidates. As Beauchamp writes in a June 9, 2016 article:</p> <p style="margin-left:35.45pt;">A handful of women have won presidential elections — Brazil's current president, Dilma Rousseff, is one.... So it's not that gendered stereotypes make it impossible for a woman to win a presidential election; it's just a lot harder.</p> <p style="margin-left:35.45pt;">A number of factors in the U.S. make it harder still.</p> <p style="margin-left:35.45pt;">For one thing, the U.S. has an unusually low number of women in its federal legislature. Data from the&nbsp;Inter-Parliamentary Union&nbsp;finds that an average legislature is 22.7 percent female; the U.S. Congress is 19.4 percent female, ranking a dismal 97th in the world when it comes to women's representation. A smaller female legislative bench means fewer women are likely to run for president.</p> <p style="margin-left:35.45pt;">Another important factor, somewhat strangely, is the stability of the American political system. Historically, women are more likely to take over executive positions in countries that have recently experienced or are currently undergoing fundamental crises.</p> <p style="margin-left:35.45pt;">"19 percent of women came to power after a period of political transition, 45 percent came to power in countries with a recent history of instability, and 33 percent after a military takeover," University of Texas Austin's Pamela Paxton and University of Pittsburgh's Melanie Hughes write in their book&nbsp;<em>Women, Politics, and Power</em>....</p> <p style="margin-left:35.45pt;">The American political system is famously stable, with 227 years of democracy under the same Constitution. So here, would-be women presidents don't really benefit from crisis effects.</p> <p style="margin-left:35.45pt;">Finally, America's unique military might works against women candidates. The United States boasts the most fearsome military in human history. And voters think about electing a president in terms of electing a "commander in chief" with their "finger on the nuclear button."</p> <p style="margin-left:35.45pt;">These are, of course, highly gendered ideas: Leading troops into combat is stereotypically the most masculine of all masculine pursuits. People tend to envision a man in charge of the U.S. military, creating another implicit barrier to a woman being elected...</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <h4>For Discussion<br> &nbsp;</h4> <ol> <li>How much of the material in this reading was new to you, and how much was already familiar? Do you have any questions about what you read?<br> &nbsp;</li> <li>According to the reading, some women were running for president before they even had the right to vote. Why do you think they might have pursued this strategy?<br> &nbsp;</li> <li>Zach Beauchamp asserts that voters think about electing a president in terms of electing a "commander in chief" with their "finger on the nuclear button," and that "people tend to envision a man" playing this role, creating a barrier to electing a woman president." Do you agree that these sexist stereotypes and biases are still commonly held today?<br> &nbsp;</li> <li>Have you encountered people who have biases against voting for a woman for president? What arguments did they make? How did you respond?</li> </ol> <p>&nbsp;</p> <hr> <h4>&nbsp;</h4> <h4>Reading 2:<br> Does the President's Gender Matter?</h4> <p><br> The possibility of Hillary Clinton's victory has opened a debate about how much it matters to have a woman president. Some argue that the election of a woman to the highest office in the country would be a victory for women, regardless of the political policies she advances. Others contend that the actual positions a president takes are more important than her gender, and that even female politicians can support policies that hurt other women.</p> <p>In a June 7, 2016 article for <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/6/7/11879746/hillary-clinton-first-woman">Vox.com</a>, Matthew Yglesias discusses how electing a woman president would have a lasting impact. Yglesias writes:<br> &nbsp;</p> <p style="margin-left:35.45pt;">[T]here is clear and convincing evidence that [electing a woman president] does matter. Enormously. In the aggregate, women&nbsp;do&nbsp;govern differently than men, even when you control for partisan affiliation and the ideological composition of the election. But there aren't many women in the governing class. More than 80 percent of the members of the U.S. House of Representatives are men, as are&nbsp;just over 75 percent of state legislators&nbsp;and 88 percent of governors.</p> <p style="margin-left:35.45pt;">Electing Clinton would be a break from that pattern, but it would also drive further breaks. Studies show that when women achieve high office, female advancement in politics "trickles down," with a woman governor or senator inspiring a downstream boost in women state legislators. These victories would themselves carry important symbolic value, but beyond that they would generate concrete changes in the governance of the country — including more attention to issues related to child care, family life, women's health, and the needs of the neediest....</p> <p style="margin-left:35.45pt;">Tali Mendelberg, Christopher Karpowitz, and Nicholas Goedert show that "when women are many, they are more likely to voice women’s distinctive concerns about children, family, the poor and the needy." What's more, when women are more numerous and therefore more vocal on these topics,&nbsp;men become more vocal too,&nbsp;and "these effects are associated with more generosity to the poor."...</p> <p style="margin-left:35.45pt;">Women lead different lives than men, and would consequently govern differently if more of them were in office. And the evidence strongly suggests that electing women to high-profile jobs inspires more women to run for and win lower-profile jobs. The presidency is by far&nbsp;the highest-profile job in American politics, meaning a Clinton presidency would likely have a meaningful downstream impact on women's representation for years to come — with far-reaching ramifications for public policy at both the state and national level.<br> &nbsp;</p> <p>Contrary to this perspective, other commentators argue that simply electing a woman to the presidency will not necessarily improve conditions for the majority of women in America. As journalist Kate Aronoff writes in a June 10, 2016 article for <a href="http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/clintons-nomination-a-victory-for-the-womens-movement-not-women/"><em>Waging Nonviolence</em></a>, the tenures of some recent female leaders left many women worse off than before these politicians took office:<br> &nbsp;</p> <p style="margin-left:35.45pt;">Women have been all but locked out of the United States’ highest office for decades, and Clinton herself has faced a barrage of sexist attacks since long before her campaign began. That she is now a legitimate contender for the Oval Office is an unambiguous testament to the power of feminist movements throughout this country’s history, from those who came together in Seneca Falls to the women who’ve fought back against toxic birth control and forced sterilization this last half-century. Those who fought for these victories changed the political weather, and stripped away the idea that women are unfit for either high office or basic dignity.</p> <p style="margin-left:35.45pt;">Clinton’s nomination, though, can be a victory for the women’s movement without being a victory for women....</p> <p style="margin-left:35.45pt;">Clinton would not be the first woman to run a major global north country. Angela Merkel has been the chancellor of Germany since 2009. And Margaret Thatcher, of course, broke the glass ceiling at 10 Downing Street when she was elected prime minister [of the U.K] in 1979. Each have driven brutal austerity agendas that left women worse off — Merkel in Greece and Thatcher in her own backyard.</p> <p style="margin-left:35.45pt;">"For a woman to occupy that office is a tremendous moment in the country’s history," one NBC correspondent remarked when Thatcher took office. "Britain may have entered a new era today. Not just because the prime minister is a woman, but because of the strong conservative policies she intends to push."</p> <p style="margin-left:35.45pt;">The neoliberal orthodoxy Thatcher pioneered has had a devastating effect on women worldwide. In the global north, shrinking welfare states leave working mothers without access to either basic social services or common sense policies like paid family leave. The free market fundamentalism Thatcher and Ronald Reagan both evangelized lingers on, no less so than in Britain and this country’s starved social safety net. A study last summer committed by the United Kingdom’s Labor party found that of the more than $13 billion cut from families in the Conservatives’ 2015 budget $10 billion would come directly from women.</p> <p style="margin-left:35.45pt;">Cuts to services like the National Health Service and the wholesale privatization of healthcare in this country have annihilated reproductive health services and made care work — the vast majority of it done by women — both more painstaking and expensive....</p> <p style="margin-left:35.45pt;">The point here is simple: Women can back policies that are bad for women, even if the fact that they are in office at all is a win for women’s movements. Thatcher’s victory made life harder for millions of women. If her career has been any indication, Clinton won’t do any better by women simply by virtue of being one.<br> &nbsp;</p> <p>There is no doubt that a win by Hillary Clinton would be symbolically powerful, but the potential policy impact of having a woman president remains a matter of debate.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <h4>For Discussion<br> &nbsp;</h4> <ol> <li>How much of the material in this reading was new to you, and how much was already familiar? Do you have any questions about what you read?<br> &nbsp;</li> <li>According to the reading, wins by high-profile women politicians encourage more women to run for office, especially at the state and local levels. Why do you think this might be the case?<br> &nbsp;</li> <li>Matthew Yglesias maintains that&nbsp; "women lead different lives than men, and would consequently govern differently if more of them were in office." Do you think this is true?<br> &nbsp;</li> <li>At least one study shows that as more women are elected to office, they "voice women’s distinctive concerns about children, family, the poor and the needy." Do you think a woman's perspective on these issues is necessarily different from that of a man? Why or why not?<br> &nbsp;</li> <li>Some women leaders in the past have advocated for policies such as cutting social services for working mothers or families in poverty. Given this, do you believe the gender of a politician actually matters, or is their ideological orientation more significant? Explain your position.<br> &nbsp;</li> <li>What do you think? How significant would a victory by Hillary Clinton be for women in the United States?<br> &nbsp;</li> </ol> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--uid--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig x field--node--uid.html.twig * field--node--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig * field--uid.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <span> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'username' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'core/modules/user/templates/username.html.twig' --> <span>fionta</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'core/modules/user/templates/username.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--created--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig x field--node--created.html.twig * field--node--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <span> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'time' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'core/modules/system/templates/time.html.twig' --> <time datetime="2016-07-04T11:15:44-04:00" title="Monday, July 4, 2016 - 11:15">July 4, 2016</time> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'core/modules/system/templates/time.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'links__node' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * links--node.html.twig x links.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap/templates/system/links.html.twig' --> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap/templates/system/links.html.twig' --> Mon, 04 Jul 2016 15:15:44 +0000 fionta 389 at https://www.morningsidecenter.org Who Are the Libertarians? https://www.morningsidecenter.org/teachable-moment/lessons/who-are-libertarians <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--title--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig x field--node--title.html.twig * field--node--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig * field--title.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <span>Who Are the Libertarians?</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--body--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig * field--node--body.html.twig * field--node--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig * field--body.html.twig * field--text-with-summary.html.twig x field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field--item"><h4><br> Quiz</h4> <p><br> 1. &nbsp;What is Johnson and Weld?</p> <p>a.&nbsp; A manufacturer of health care products.<br> b.&nbsp; A national chain of metal fabricators.<br> c. &nbsp;A presidential ticket.<br> d.&nbsp; A pair of novelists nominated for the Nobel Prize in literature.<br> e. All of the above.</p> <p><em>Answer: c.</em></p> <p><br> 2. &nbsp;In recent 3-way national polls, which party receives 10-11% of the vote?</p> <p>a. Liberal Party<br> b. Liberation Party<br> c. Libertarian Party<br> d. Librarian Party<br> e. Liberty Party</p> <p><em>Answer: c.</em></p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <hr> <h4><br> Student Reading:</h4> <h4>Gary Johnson, William Weld &amp; the Libertarians</h4> <p><br> <strong>Who are Johnson &amp; Weld?</strong></p> <p>On May 29, 2016, the Libertarian Party chose Gary Johnson and William Weld as their nominees for president and vice president, respectively. Both are former Republican governors. The convention was sharply divided with neither Johnson nor Weld winning the nomination on the first ballot. The Libertarian Party is likely to be the only third party in the 2016 elections that's on the ballot in all 50 states. (The Green Party, by contrast, currently is on the ballot in only 20 states, though ballot access campaigns are underway in additional states.)</p> <p>Johnson started a successful construction company and was governor of New Mexico from 1995-2003. &nbsp;He ran for the Republican nomination for president in 2012, but ended up running on the Libertarian ticket. As governor, Johnson held true to his small government principles, setting records for the number of bills he vetoed (more than the other 49 governors combined). He cut taxes 14 times.</p> <p>Bill Weld was elected to two terms as governor of Massachusetts after serving as U.S. Attorney and head of the Department of Justice Criminal Division. Early in his career, Weld was a friend and colleague of Hillary Rodham (Clinton): Both were on the staff of the Nixon impeachment committee of the House of Representatives. &nbsp;Weld came from a wealthy New England family and famously replied to a reporter's question about where he got his money, "We don’t get money, we have money." Some of his "statist" positions (e.g. pro-choice, and in favor of gun control) made Weld very unpopular among the libertarians at the convention.</p> <p><br> <strong>What are Libertarians?</strong></p> <p>Many of us look at the political spectrum in a linear fashion--with the right wing at one end and the left at the other. From left to right, we pass from socialist, liberal, Democrat, Republican, and then into conservative and right-wing territory. The idea is that where we stand on political issues neatly coincides with where we place ourselves on that left-right spectrum.</p> <p>If you’re on the right, you will be more likely to oppose or want to put limits on:</p> <ul> <li>government regulation</li> <li>taxes&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</li> <li>labor unions</li> <li>drug legalization</li> <li>affirmative action</li> <li>public housing</li> <li>public transportation</li> <li>environmental rules</li> <li>abortion</li> <li>programs to assist poor people</li> <li>minimum wage</li> <li>gay and lesbian protections</li> <li>action to halt global climate change</li> </ul> <p><br> You are likely to support:</p> <ul> <li>business profits</li> <li>corporate rights</li> <li>wars and military spending</li> <li>religious rights</li> <li>private education</li> <li>capital punishment</li> <li>gun rights</li> </ul> <p><br> For the left, simply reverse the above positions.</p> <p>Of course lots of people mix it up a bit: generalizations go only so far. Not all conservatives oppose food stamps and not all liberals support labor unions. But libertarians (especially principled libertarians) <em>really</em> defy easy categorization. They are commonly associated with the far right because they are so extreme in their anti-government stances:</p> <ul> <li>The billionaire Koch brothers, who fund a vast network of conservative and right-wing candidates, university departments, think tanks and other organizations, are libertarians.<br> &nbsp;</li> <li>The Cato Institute (a libertarian policy organization) led the effort to privatize Social Security.<br> &nbsp;</li> <li>Some recent headlines from Reason.com (website of the libertarian magazine Reason): <ul> <li>"Federal Programs Keep People Poor"</li> <li>"Slow Economic Growth: It's the Regulations, Stupid!"</li> <li>"Workers Don't Need Government's Help to Earn Higher Wages"<br> &nbsp;</li> </ul> </li> <li>Libertarian congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul advocated abolishing the U.S. Departments of Energy, Commerce, Interior, Education and Housing and Urban Development.</li> </ul> <p><br> But remember, true libertarians oppose most government programs—especially the federal government. So while they reject government projects that help the poor, many libertarians also oppose government handouts to business (tax breaks, subsidies, low-interest loans, etc.).</p> <p>There are numerous other ways that libertarians confound and contradict the left/right stereotypes:<br> <br> Many libertarians believe:</p> <ul> <li>The United States should exit the United Nations, but should also abolish its CIA.</li> <li>The U.S. should avoid foreign entanglements—wars, for example.</li> <li>Drugs should be legalized.</li> <li>Government shouldn't snoop on its citizens.</li> <li>Laws shouldn't favor heterosexuals.</li> <li>Government shouldn't censor speech.<br> <br> &nbsp;</li> </ul> <hr> <p>&nbsp;</p> <h4>For Discussion<br> &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;</h4> <p>1. Based on what you know about libertarians, what is the likely libertarian position on the following issues? Why?</p> <ul> <li>Abortion</li> <li>Charter schools</li> <li>Syrian War</li> <li>Help for flood victims</li> <li>Hate speech</li> <li>Same sex marriage</li> <li>Obamacare</li> <li>Gun control</li> <li>Donald Trump</li> <li>Minimum wage</li> <li>Climate change</li> <li>Capital punishment</li> </ul> <p>2. "I do believe that the vast majority of the people in this country are libertarian; they just don't know it yet." &nbsp;-- Gary Johnson. &nbsp;What do you think?</p> <p>3. Some people talk about "left libertarianism" and "right libertarianism." Does this make sense to you? Why or why not?</p> <p>4. Can you think of a graphic representation of the political spectrum which includes not only left, right, liberal and conservative, but libertarian as well?</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <hr> <h4><br> For Further Research</h4> <p><br> Ask students to do some research: Were they were right about libertarian stances on the issues in question 1?&nbsp;</p> <p>When the class reconvenes, ask student to share what they learned.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <hr> <h4><br> Sources</h4> <p><br> <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/libertarian-party-never-trump_us_575083f1e4b0eb20fa0d34f3">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/libertarian-party-never-trump_us_575083f1e4b0eb20fa0d34f3</a></p> <p><a href="http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/pay-attention-to-libertarian-gary-johnson-hes-pulling-10-vs-trump-and-clinton/">http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/pay-attention-to-libertarian-gary-johnson-hes-pulling-10-vs-trump-and-clinton/</a></p> <p><a href="http://www.democracynow.org/2016/4/27/why_did_the_former_republican_gov">http://www.democracynow.org/2016/4/27/why_did_the_former_republican_gov</a></p> <p><a href="https://www.lp.org/platform">https://www.lp.org/platform</a></p> <p><a href="http://reason.com/archives/2016/06/02/workers-dont-need-governments-help-to-ea">http://reason.com/archives/2016/06/02/workers-dont-need-governments-help-to-ea</a></p> <p><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/Libertarian_Party.htm">http://www.ontheissues.org/Libertarian_Party.htm</a></p> <p>&nbsp;</p> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap/templates/field/field.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--uid--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig x field--node--uid.html.twig * field--node--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig * field--uid.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <span> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'username' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'core/modules/user/templates/username.html.twig' --> <span>fionta</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'core/modules/user/templates/username.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--created--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig x field--node--created.html.twig * field--node--teachable-moment-lesson.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <span> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'time' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'core/modules/system/templates/time.html.twig' --> <time datetime="2016-06-05T11:04:42-04:00" title="Sunday, June 5, 2016 - 11:04">June 5, 2016</time> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'core/modules/system/templates/time.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'core/modules/node/templates/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'links__node' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * links--node.html.twig x links.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap/templates/system/links.html.twig' --> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap/templates/system/links.html.twig' --> Sun, 05 Jun 2016 15:04:42 +0000 fionta 392 at https://www.morningsidecenter.org