Stuff You Should Consume - February 5, 2023
Welcome to this week’s edition of “Stuff You Should Consume,”— a weekly compilation of interesting political content for Message Box readers.
“Exclusive Bulwark Poll: Most Republicans Want to Move on from Trump” by Sarah Longwell, The Bulwark
Across recent polling (including ours) showing Trump losing ground, he was holding on to anywhere from 28 to 38 percent of GOP voters. So, yes, a strong majority of GOP voters is ready to move on from Trump. On the other hand, here were Trump’s margins in the 2016 early primary states:
- Iowa 24.3 percent (Trump came in second)
- New Hampshire 35.3 percent (Trump came in first)
- South Carolina 32.5 percent (Trump came in first)
“How Right-Wing Media Ate the Republican Party” interview with historian Nicole Hemmer on The Ezra Klein Podcast
NICOLE HEMMER: It’s a great question because I think this is one of those codes that the left has been trying to crack for a long time now because they see the power of conservative media to pull the party to the right, and they wonder why there isn’t something equivalent on the left.
The answer is complicated. In part, it is that from pretty much the very beginning of the Cold War conservative movement — so as early as the 1940s and 1950s — conservative activists were turning to media. Whether it was publications like National Review or radio shows like the “Manion Forum” or the “Dan Smoot Report,” they were turning to media to effect political change.
They believed that messaging and ideology came packaged together, and if you could just get it in front of enough people through magazines, through radio, through television, that you would be able to build a sizable movement that could affect political change. So there is a history of conservatives building their own media and of conservative Americans listening to conservative media as part of their conservative identity.
“Is Trump Way Up or Way Down?” by Nate Cohn, New York Times
Whether Mr. Trump is at 25 percent or 55 percent is no small matter. Believe it or not, early polling is fairly predictive of the eventual outcome in presidential primaries. It also has real-world consequences. It affects the decision-making of potential candidates, operatives and activists, many of whom have adopted a wait-and-see approach in part because there are so many conflicting signs of Mr. Trump’s strength.
And the existence of such a wide split betrays that the survey research industry may be in far worse shape than one might have otherwise guessed … Although there’s not a clear picture, a rough pattern in the data might hint at the actual state of the race. Higher-quality surveys have tended to show far less support for Mr. Trump.
“Dems launch new abortion ads in battle for state governments” by Zach Montellero, Politico
“The hidden dynamic that could tip control of the House” by Ron Brownstein, CNN
A combination of state and federal lawsuits and shifts in the balance of power in state legislatures and courts virtually ensure that an unusually large number of districts may look different in 2024 than they did in 2022, with huge implications for control of the House. “It’s just trench warfare back and forth,” says Kelly Burton, president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, the leading Democratic group involved in congressional redistricting.
The possibility that so many states could still reconfigure their House districts reflects the uncertainty looming over the political system as the Supreme Court considers momentous cases that will shape the future of voting rights challenges to congressional maps and the authority of state supreme courts to police partisan gerrymandering. “We are kind of all in a holding pattern until we determine what the Supreme Court does in those two cases,” said Nick Seabrook, a University of North Florida political scientist and author of two books on the history of gerrymandering.