Google Fires James Damore, Engineer Who Wrote 'Anti-Diversity' Memo

Well, you can't have a different opinion about such things. The guy should've known that, of course.

At Bloomberg, "Google Fires Author of Divisive Memo on Gender Differences" (at Memeorandum).

Also at Breitbart, "Google Fires Viewpoint Diversity Manifesto Author James Damore."

PREVIOUSLY: "Google Manifesto."

ADDED: Oh, the drama, at LAT, "Google employee's sexist manifesto is the latest crisis for a tech industry struggling to diversify."

Google Manifesto

I wondered what this was when tweeps were tweeting "Google manifesto." I'm like, "huh?"

At Gizmodo, "Exclusive: Here's The Full 10-Page Anti-Diversity Screed Circulating Internally at Google."

And at the Verge, "Not all Google employees disagree with anti-diversity polemic."

California State University to End Placement Exams and Remedial Classes for Freshmen

Remember my entry from a couple of weeks back, "Eloy Ortiz Oakley, California Community College Chancellor, Calls for End to Algebra Requirement for Non-STEM Majors."

The eradication of high standards for California's public education students continues apace. In a few years, students will be able to enter the university, and then likely graduate with a "four-year degree," without any foundation or completion of rigorous math, sciences, and languages.

Educational officials no doubt are dealing with a wave of unprepared students, thrust into the system by the massive open immigration we've had for the last few decades. It's really reaching critical mass. When I started teaching at Long Beach City College in fall of 2000, fully one-third of students enrolled came from a traditional white working-class background. I thought that was minuscule at the time, but now the number's down to about 13 percent white students.

There's nothing wrong with the diversity. In fact, Latinos at my college are more than half of the student population, and they're totally fine. Many, though not all, are indeed very outstanding. On the other hand, I'm having more and more students ---- including many Asians ---- who literally do not speak English. I don't know how they expect to succeed. But they're here and this is the reality in California.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Cal State will no longer require placement exams and remedial classes for freshmen":

Cal State plans to drop placement exams in math and English as well as the noncredit remedial courses that more than 25,000 freshmen have been required to take each fall — a radical move away from the way public universities traditionally support students who come to college less prepared than their peers.

In an executive order issued late Wednesday, Chancellor Timothy P. White directed the nation’s largest public university system to revamp its approach to remedial education and assess new freshmen for college readiness and course placement by using high school grades, ACT and SAT scores, previous classroom performance and other measures that administrators say provide a more accurate and comprehensive understanding of students’ knowledge.

Cal State will no longer make those students who may need extra help take the entry-level mathematics (ELM) test and the English placement test (EPT).

The new protocol, which will go into effect in fall 2018, “facilitates equitable opportunity for first-year students to succeed through existing and redesigned education models,” White wrote in a memorandum to the system’s 23 campus presidents, who will be responsible for working with faculty to implement the changes.

The executive order comes at a time when educators and policymakers across the nation are questioning the effectiveness of traditional remedial education and placement exams. At Cal State, about 40% of freshman each year are considered not ready for college-level work and required to take remedial classes that do not count toward their degrees.

Currently, students who enter Cal State without demonstrating college readiness in math and/or English are required to take up to three traditional remedial classes before they are allowed to enroll in courses that count toward their degrees. (If students do not pass these remedial courses during the first year, they are removed from university rolls.)

The problem is that these noncredit remedial courses cost the students more money and time, keep many in limbo and often frustrate them to the point that some eventually drop out, administrators said. In a recent study of similar college-prep work at community colleges, the Public Policy Institute of California found that remedial programs — also called developmental education — largely fail to help most students complete their academic or vocational programs.

Under the new system, all Cal State students will be allowed to take courses that count toward their degrees beginning on Day 1. Students who need additional support in math or English, for example, could be placed in “stretch” courses that simultaneously provide remedial help and allow them to complete the general math and English credits required for graduation.

Faculty are also encouraged to explore other innovative ways to embed additional academic support within a college-level course. A few other states have experimented with these approaches, and the results so far are encouraging, administrators said.

“This will have a tremendous effect on the number of units students accumulate in their first year of college,” said James T. Minor, Cal State’s senior strategist for academic success and inclusive excellence. “It will have an enormous effect on college affordability, on the number of semesters that a student is required to be enrolled in before they earn a degree, and it will have a significant impact on the number of students that ultimately cross a commencement stage with a degree in hand, ready to move into the workforce, ready to move into graduate or professional school."

In addition to redesigning remedial requirements systemwide, the executive order instructs campuses to strengthen their summer Early Start programs...

More.

The end result will of course be to exacerbate social inequality, not reduce it. The economically privileged will continue to have access to very high-quality education, in all aspects of rigorous training, especially math and sciences. And these kind of people will float to the top. It's a system of social sorting that's been going on for a while, made more intense by the nature of the high-tech knowledge economy.

Young Japanese People Are Not Having Sex

That's not good, heh.

At the Independent U.K., "Nearly half of Japanese people are entering their 30s without any sexual experience, leaving the country facing a steep population decline":

The country is facing a steep population decline as a growing number of youngsters abstain from sex and avoid romantic relationships.

Some men claimed they "find women scary" as a poll found that 43 per cent of people aged 18 to 34 from the island nation say they are virgins.

One woman, when asked why they think 64 per cent of people in the same age group are not in relationships, said she thought men "cannot be bothered" to ask the opposite sex on dates because it was easier to watch internet porn.

The number of births dropped below one million in Japan for the first time last year, according to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare.

Japan's National Institute of Population and Social Security Research predicts that the country's current population of 127 million will decline by nearly 40 million by 2065.

The fertility crisis has left politicians scratching their heads as to why youngsters are not having more sex...

Plus, more from Ed Driscoll, at Instapundit, "IT’S A TRICK QUESTION: THEY’RE NOT COMING FROM ANYWHERE. Question: Where do Japanese babies come from?":

Who knew how prescient the Vapors were in 1980, when they warned, “No sex, no drug, no wine, no women?”

J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy

This book's been out for over a year and it's still not available in paperback. Last I checked it was still on the New York Times bestseller list, so the publisher's going to milk it while it's hot.

Well, more power to Mr. Vance. He's going to be financially set for some time.

At Amazon, J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis.

Folks Need to Get Busy!

Lol.

At LAT, "Americans keep having fewer babies as U.S. birthrates hit some record lows":

Hey stork, you’ve been slacking off — and U.S. health officials know it.

For the second year in a row, the number of babies delivered in the U.S. fell in 2016, according to a new report from the National Center for Health Statistics. For some groups of women, the birth rate reached record lows.

The provisional figures released Friday include 99.96% of all births in the United States last year. Here’s what they show:

Overall births

The total number of babies born in the U.S. last year was 3,941,109. That’s 37,388 fewer babies than were born in the U.S. in 2015, which represents a 1% decline.

The number of births tends to rise as the population rises, so statisticians like to make historical comparisons by calculating the general fertility rate. This is the number of births per 1,000 women considered to be of childbearing age (between 15 and 44).

In 2016, the U.S. general fertility rate hit a record low of 62.0 births per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44. In 2015, the general fertility rate was 62.5.

Another useful statistic is the total fertility rate. This is an estimate of the total number of babies that 1,000 women would have over their lifetimes, based on the actual birth rates for women in different age groups.

In 2016, the total fertility rate for American women was 1,818 births per 1,000 women. That’s the lowest it has been since 1984.

In order for a generation to exactly replace itself, the total fertility rate needs to be 2,100 births per 1,000 women. The U.S. has been missing that mark since 1971 (though the country’s population has grown due to immigration).

More older mothers

The ages of women giving birth in the U.S. has been skewing older for several years, and that trend continued in 2016.

Birth rates for women 30 and older hit their highest levels since the 1960s, and women in their early 30s had the highest birthrate of any age group.

In 2016, there were 102.6 births per 1,000 women between the ages of 30 and 34. The last time it was that high was 1964.

There were also 52.6 births per 1,000 women ages 35 to 39, the highest that figure has been since 1962...

Teenage birthrates are declining, so that's good news.

But keep reading.

Daniel Bell, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Daniel Bell, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting.

Baby Boomers Aging the Nation

Heh, more power to those old coots, lol.

At the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, "Baby boomers aging the nation, and the region":

Baby boomers aging the nation, and the region https://t.co/MCs88ZUH02

— John Hielscher (@JohnDHielscher) June 22, 2017

Sarasota-Manatee’s median age keeps marching upward

The population of Sarasota and Manatee counties does not rank among the oldest in the United States but, like two-thirds of the nation’s counties, its median age keeps edging upward.

According to updated data released today by the U.S. Census Bureau, as of July 2016, the median age reached 55.6 in Sarasota County and 47.8 in Manatee.

By comparison, the nation’s median age reached 37.9 — up from 35.3 since 2000.

“Our country’s demographic profile is aging and looks a lot different than it did two decades ago,” bureau demographer Lauren Medina said in an announcement.

“The baby-boom generation is largely responsible for this trend,” Peter Borsella, a bureau demographer, added. “Baby boomers began turning 65 in 2011 and will continue to do so for many years to come.”

Residents age 65 and older now account for 15.2 percent of the nation’s population, up from 12.4 percent in 2000.

As of 2016, Maine continued to have the highest median age (44.6) — followed by New Hampshire (43), Vermont (42.7) and West Virginia (42.2). Although better known than those states as a retirement mecca, Florida ranked fifth with a median age of 42.1.

The youngest states or jurisdictions include North Dakota (34.8), Texas (34.5), Alaska (33.9), the District of Columbia (33.9) and Utah (30.8).

The acceleration of the age boom in Florida has compelled more communities here to join the Age-Friendly movement, an initiative sponsored by the World Health Organization and AARP to help populations prepare for the effects of this demographic shift. Kathy Black, a professor at University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee who is instrumental in the Age-Friendly Sarasota effort, said recently that it’s important for people to question their own assumptions about others based on age...

More.

Richard Florida, The New Urban Crisis

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Richard Florida, The New Urban Crisis: How Our Cities Are Increasing Inequality, Deepening Segregation, and Failing the Middle Class—and What We Can Do About It.

The Collapse of American Identity

Here's a great piece, from Robert P. Jones, at the New York Times (surprisingly).

Jones is the author of The End of White Christian America.

.@PatriarchTree The Collapse of American Identity: #MAGA https://t.co/eiJS0QWBgg

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) May 2, 2017

There have been other times in our history when the fabric of American identity was stretched in similar ways — the Civil War, heightened levels of immigration at the turn of the 20th century and the cultural upheavals of the 1960s.

But during these eras, white Christians were still secure as a demographic and cultural majority in the nation. The question at stake was whether they were going to make room for new groups at a table they still owned. Typically, a group would gain its seat in exchange for assimilation to the majority culture. But as white Christians have slipped from the majority over the past decade, this familiar strategy is no longer viable.

White Christians are today struggling to face a new reality: the inevitable surrender of table ownership in exchange for an equal seat. And it’s this new higher-stakes challenge that is fueling the great partisan reorientation we are witnessing today.

The temptation for the Republican Party, especially with Donald Trump in the White House, is to double down on a form of white Christian nationalism, which treats racial and religious identity as tribal markers and defends a shrinking demographic with increasingly autocratic assertions of power.

For its part, the Democratic Party is contending with the difficulties of organizing its more diverse coalition while facing its own tribal temptations to embrace an identity politics that has room to celebrate every group except whites who strongly identify as Christian. If this realignment continues, left out of this opposition will be a significant number of whites who are both wary of white Christian nationalism and weary of feeling discounted in the context of identity politics.

This end is not inevitable, but if we are to continue to make one out of many, leaders of both parties will have to step back from the reactivity of the present and take up the more arduous task of weaving a new national narrative in which all Americans can see themselves.

RTWT.

Henry Olsen, The Working Class Republican

*BUMPED.*

Excellent, excellent timing.

Available June 27th.

At Amazon, Henry Olsen, The Working Class Republican: Ronald Reagan and the Return of Blue-Collar Conservatism.

Change! Young Americans Living With Parents at 75-Year High

Thank god our long national nightmare of Barack Obama in office is almost over.

What, it's less than 30 days until the Trump administration takes power. I can't wait.

At WSJ, "Percentage of Young Americans Living With Parents Rises to 75-Year High":

Almost 40% of young Americans were living with their parents, siblings or other relatives in 2015, the largest percentage since 1940, according to an analysis of census data by real estate tracker Trulia.

Despite a rebounding economy and recent job growth, the share of those between the ages of 18 and 34 doubling up with parents or other family members has been rising since 2005. Back then, before the start of the last recession, roughly one out of three were living with family.

The trend runs counter to that of previous economic cycles, when after a recession-related spike, the number of younger Americans living with relatives declined as the economy improved.

The result is that there is far less demand for housing than would be expected for the millennial generation, now the largest in U.S. history. The number of adults under age 30 has increased by 5 million over the last decade, but the number of households for that age group grew by just 200,000 over the same period, according to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.

Analysts point to rising rents in many cities and tough mortgage-lending standards as the culprit, making it difficult for younger Americans to strike out on their own.

“I don’t think those are challenges that are going to keep young households permanently out of the housing market, but it may keep their homeownership rate near historic lows for likely the indefinite future,” said Ralph McLaughlin, Trulia’s chief economist.

The share of young Americans living with parents hit a high of 40.9% in 1940, just a year after the official end of the Great Depression, and fell to a low of 24.1% in 1960. It hovered between about 31% and 33% from 1980 to the mid-2000s, when the rate started climbing steadily.

The census data on living arrangements goes back annually to 1980, and prior to that was collected each decade.

Household formation is closely correlated with housing affordability and income. Among those aged 25 to 34, 40% of those earning less than $25,000 headed their own household. The share rose to 50% for those earning between $25,000 and $50,000, and 58% for those with incomes above $50,000, according to the Harvard Joint Center.

Census data also show younger Americans are getting married and having children later in life than previous generations. Even so, economists project the historically large millennial generation will more than double its current number of households through 2025...

More.

Rural Hispanic Voters Shifted to Donald Trump

Well, this certainly goes against the "racist" Trump voters smear.

At least 29 percent of Latinos supported Trump, which is more than those Hispanics supporting Mitt Romney in 2012.

Leftist are gobsmacked, I'm telling you.

At WaPo, "Rural Hispanic voters — like white rural voters — shifted toward Trump. Here’s why":

Fascinating: Rural Hispanic voters — like white rural voters — shifted toward Trump. Here's why. https://t.co/nVNbLdqf74 @gerry_cadava

— Kathy Cramer (@KathyJCramer) November 18, 2016

Many observers contend that Hispanic voters will shape the future of American politics. But it’s not yet clear exactly what their influence will be. There’s been debate about whether they may portend a permanent Democratic majority; vote according to ethnic backgrounds — Mexican American, Puerto Rican, Cuban American; or hold political points of view that vary by economics or region, much like other Americans.

With the 2016 election, we have a new set of data to help us investigate this question. My county-by-county comparison of election results in 2016 and 2012, drawn from data available at CNN.com, Politico.com, PBS.org and other sites, shows that rural white and rural Hispanic voters have a lot in common.

Or to put it another way, the election of 2016 revealed an urban/rural divide that was as strong as the white/Hispanic divide.

Election analysts have noted that Donald Trump ran up the vote in rural, largely white counties in the Rust Belt and the Midwest. He flipped or narrowed Hillary Clinton’s margin of victory in others. Because these rural voters came out so strongly, states that hadn’t helped elect a Republican for a long time — Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and most likely Michigan — delivered his electoral victory, however narrowly.

And here’s the surprise: many rural Southwestern counties with large Hispanic, predominantly Mexican populations, moved in Trump’s direction as well.

That wasn’t true in Southwestern states as a whole. States like New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, and Texas remained blue or became less red. Hillary Clinton got strong Hispanic turnout in Sun Belt metropolises like Las Vegas, Phoenix, and San Antonio.

But if you look closely at many largely Hispanic rural areas in these states, you find that Trump did better — and Hillary did worse — than did Mitt Romney or Barack Obama. Voting in these counties was much like that in similar counties in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

When postelection reports suggested that Trump performed surprisingly well among Hispanic voters, the polling firm Latino Decisions rejected the claim. The firm specializes in polling Latino voters, and enumerated the risks of relying on exit polls to understand that electorate’s behavior. The firm vigorously defended its own election eve polls, which suggested that Clinton would rack up historically wide margins from Latinos.

But Latino Decisions, in defense of polls it conducted leading up to the election, has focused on overwhelmingly Hispanic precincts in more urban areas, not the rural communities that tell a different story.

In dozens of rural counties throughout the Southwest, Clinton performed worse in 2016 than Obama did in 2012, as you can see in the figure below. In Guadalupe County, N.M., about an hour’s drive east of Albuquerque, she received 17 percent less of the vote than Obama did four years ago — 53 percent compared with Obama’s 70 percent. In several other counties where Hispanics accounted for half to nearly all of the population — Rio Arriba, N.M.; Costilla, Colo.; Greenlee, Ariz.; and Duval, Tex., for example — Clinton took home roughly 10 percent fewer votes than did Obama in 2012. In many more heavily Latino counties, her votes lagged behind Obama’s by 3 to 8 points.

Even in the South Texas counties that Latino Decisions has named bulwarks of Clinton support — the Rio Grande Valley below San Antonio, where she won between 70 and 85 percent of the vote — she didn’t do as well as Obama had done four years earlier. In Brooks County, which, according to the 2015 American Community Survey, is 89.5 percent Hispanic, Clinton’s tally was 3.9 percent less than Obama’s. In Zavala County, which is 93.1 percent Hispanic, it was 5.6 percent less. In Duval County, which is 88.8 percent Hispanic, it was 9.8 percent less.

Meanwhile, as you can see below, Trump did much better among Hispanics in the rural Southwest than Romney did. He received a greater share of the vote than Romney had in more than a dozen counties with large Hispanic populations: six percent more than Romney in Starr County, Tex., which is 95.8 percent Hispanic; 7.5 percent more in Costilla County, N.M., which is 63.6 percent Hispanic; and 9.1 percent more in Duval County, Texas, which is 88.8 percent Hispanic.

Clinton may have received more votes than Obama did in many parts of South Texas, where, as a politically-motivated student at Yale Law School, she knocked on doors in predominantly Mexican neighborhoods for the McGovern campaign. But Trump also received more votes in South Texas than Romney did. Clinton rallied thousands more voters, but so did Trump. His supporters there matched the enthusiasm of Clinton’s, just as they did in dozens of rural counties with large Hispanic populations in New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, and Texas.

In fact, two Colorado counties where Hispanics constitute about half the population flipped from blue to red. Conejos County, which is 53.7 percent Hispanic, went for Obama in 2012 and Trump in 2016. So did Las Animas County, which is 42.6 percent Hispanic. In both counties, turnout was lower for Clinton than it had been for Obama, and higher for Trump than it was for Romney.

To be sure, some of these rural Southwestern counties are extremely small compared with the big cities where Hispanic support for Clinton was strong. In small counties, the Hispanic vote adds up to hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands — while in cities, it totals hundreds of thousands. Therefore, rural Hispanics won’t be credited with moving the needle much in one direction or the other.

So yes, there was a Hispanic “surge” in big Southwestern cities that helped Clinton hold on to New Mexico, Colorado, and Nevada, and helped make Trump’s margin of victory in Arizona and Texas narrower than it had been for any Republican in two decades. But that ignores the vote in rural counties across the country — including those that are largely Hispanic — that led to Trump’s victory.

Why would Hispanics vote for Trump, despite his many anti-immigrant and anti-Mexican statements?

One answer: poverty. The Hispanic communities in the rural Southwest that moved toward Trump were some of the poorest in their states.

Take San Miguel, Guadalupe, and Mora Counties in New Mexico, whose populations are 77.1, 79.2, and 80.2 percent Hispanic, respectively. These three counties have New Mexico’s lowest median household income, highest rates of unemployment, and lowest rates of labor market participation. The median income in these counties for families with a head of household between the ages of 25 and 44 is between $25,000 and $30,000 per year, or about half the national median income ($55,000) for families with heads in the same age range. These counties lost, on average, about 5 percent of their population between 2010 and 2015.

In other words, they’ve suffered the same tough economic circumstances as did some of the Midwestern counties that handed Trump the election. They’re more similar to than different from other forgotten counties across the United States, where voters upended the predictions of pollsters and shouted against the status quo.

Ruben Navarette Jr. wrote in The Daily Beast that the election “boiled down to a brutish tug-of-war between Latinos in the battleground states of the West … and working class whites in the Rust Belt” — let’s add the upper Midwest — and “in the end, Trump found enough white voters to offset losses with Latinos.”

But that’s only partly true. In reality, many rural Hispanics and working class whites pulled on the same side of the rope.​

Sean Trende, The Lost Majority

Trende's writing is uncanny. It's some of the best political analysis of elections I've ever read.

At Amazon, The Lost Majority: Why the Future of Government Is Up for Grabs - and Who Will Take It.

And get a sample at yesterday's RCP:

Read @SeanTrende on The (Emerging Democratic Majority) God That Failed:https://t.co/1D1GtKhtlC

— Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT) November 16, 2016

In the Sunset of the Baby Boomers' Generation, Election Reawakens an Old Divide

I'm a boomer, born on the tail end of the generation, in the early 1960s.

At the New York Times:

8 years after Obama lamented "psychodrama of the baby boom generation" & 12 years after litigating Bush, Kerry, Nam!https://t.co/U4ZrD0vpWO

— Jonathan Martin (@jmartNYT) November 7, 2016

They came of age in the 1960s and ’70s, in the traumatic aftermath of the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. They fought and protested a war together, argued over Nixon and Kissinger together, laughed at Archie Bunker together. As children, they practiced air-raid drills; as adults, they cheered the fall of the Berlin Wall.

In the 1990s, they saw one of their own become president, watching him gain glory as one of the most gifted politicians of his time, but also infamy as one of its most self-indulgent — a poster child for the Me Generation.

They are of course the baby boomers, the collective offspring of the most fertile period in American history. At 75 million strong, they have been the most dominant force in American life for three decades, and one of its most maligned. Enlightened but self-centered, introspective but reckless, they are known among the cohorts that followed them — and even to some boomers themselves — as the generation that failed to live up to its lofty ideals, but still held fast to its sense of superiority.

If Bill Clinton was their white-haired id, Hillary Clinton is their superego in a pantsuit. A second Clinton presidency could represent a last hurrah for the baby boomers. But it could also offer a shot at a kind of generational redemption.

“There is a kind of do-over quality to it,” said Landon Y. Jones, the author of the 1980 book “Great Expectations: America and the Baby Boom Generation.” “This is their last chance to get it right.”

A shared history binds the boomers — as do, broadly speaking, some shared traits. Their parents suffered through the Depression and World War II before rearing them in the most prosperous society the world had ever seen. Inevitably, perhaps, they were guided by two polestars: responsibility and entitlement.

Those dueling impulses powered the rise of both Clintons: one impulse galvanizing supporters who deeply admired their commitment to public service, the other galling critics who saw them as playing by their own rules...

Well, if the Clintons are going to be representative of the boomers, I think it's time to pass the baton.

Frankly, even Obama's a better representative, at least in terms of family values. He does seem like he's kept and raised a nice family, which is not true for the Clintons.

ICYMI: Arlie Russell Hochschild, Strangers in Their Own Land

At Amazon, Arlie Russell Hochschild, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right.

I've got this one on order, along with J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis.

And thanks once again for shopping through my Amazon links.

It's greatly appreciated.

Orange County Could Go Democrat in 2016

The leftist hordes have stormed the barricades and breached the Orange Curtain.

At LAT "Orange County has voted for the GOP in every presidential election since 1936. This year, it could go blue":

It was the home of Richard Nixon, the cradle of Ronald Reagan’s career and, for decades, a virtual synonym for the Republican Party of California.

Now, for the first time since the Depression, Orange County stands on the verge of choosing a Democrat for president, potentially ending the longest streak of Republican presidential victories of any county in the state.

That possibility symbolizes how the American political map has been upended by Donald Trump’s campaign: He has sped up a decade-long shift in which the GOP has gathered strength in white, blue-collar regions that once routinely elected Democrats, but traditional Republican suburbs increasingly have turned blue.

From Chester County outside Philadelphia to Gwinnett County east of Atlanta and on to Fort Bend County near Houston and Tarrant County west of Dallas, big, affluent suburban regions seem likely to shift significantly toward Hillary Clinton this year, according to analysts who track county-level voting trends.

That’s an immediate hurdle for the GOP, which has long counted on suburban strength to offset Democratic votes in the cities. It could be an even bigger problem in the longer term because those suburbs are among the nation’s most economically dynamic, growing regions.

The shift reflects changing demographics: As with Orange County, many of the nation’s suburbs have become racially and ethnically diverse, shedding their status as all-white enclaves.

It has been accelerated by Trump’s weakness among college-educated, white voters. That group has sided with the Republican in every presidential election since reliable polling began in the U.S. in the 1940s, but this year it has consistently shown a Democratic majority in polls...

Keep reading.

Arlie Russell Hochschild Discusses Anger and Mourning on the American Right (VIDEO)

On Sunday I ordered Arlie Russell Hochschild's, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right.

I'm getting into the whole sociology of the disaffected white working class. I'm having the Hochschild book sent along with J.D. Vance's, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis.

And as noted, I started reading Charles Murray's 2012 book yesterday, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010. (It's a great read, by the way.)

In any case, here's Professor Hochschild on Democracy Now! She's amazingly sympathetic to the mourning Americans, even if she can't quite understand them.

Interesting:

Public Opinion on Poverty, Social Welfare, and Personal Responsibility

Opinions have changed very little since 1985, the last time thus survey was conducted.

And social welfare programs have failed to lift millions out of poverty. The number of Americans living below the poverty line is about 15 percent, and it's been stuck there since about 1970, five years after the start of the Great Society.

How much have we spent? It's in the trillions. And leftists still think we aren't doing enough. And if you look at the headline at the piece, the Times used the results to take a jab a Donald Trump's white working-class supporters. It's too predictable.

See, "How do Americans view poverty? Many blue-collar whites, key to Trump, criticize poor people as lazy and content to stay on welfare."

Must read: @latimes and @AEI revisit a landmark 1985 survey. How much as changed? https://t.co/H6VIwPzSP1 pic.twitter.com/mmL0OrxmER

— Megan Garvey (@garveylatimes) August 14, 2016

No Conspiracy: The Polls Aren't Skewed

I checked the sampling on a few of the big double-digit polls last week, and for the life of me, I didn't see much bias toward the Democrats. If anything, I expected to see more Democrats, around 35 percent, in the distributions. (Republicans should be in the high 20 percent, to be representative.)

And that's exactly what Harry Enten's arguing at 538.

I remember in 2012 when everyone thought that Romney was going to win Ohio. Gallup especially got everybody all fired up in the last few days before the election, with Romney going up to 51 percent nationally just days before the election in their presidential tracker. They're not even doing daily tracking polls for 2016, it turns out. They got burned so bad.

So, I'm just waiting to see what's going to happen. The best comment I've seen in the last week was from Lisa Boothe on Fox News the other day, when she said that Trump needed to go up with paid advertising to be able to get his message out, over the leftist media pro-Democrat spin. Frankly, for me that's the most important thing at this point in the race. If Team Trump thinks they're going to win this by earned media alone, they're delusional. If I was Trump I'd sell some real estate, or whatever, and make a $1 billion investment in my own campaign. He says he's got the money. He should put his money where his mouth is.

In any case, seen earlier on Twitter. It's worth a read:

The polls aren't skewed; Trump really is losing badly: https://t.co/ea5mFtOzVI pic.twitter.com/B0yx5wSNKw

— FiveThirtyEight (@FiveThirtyEight) August 9, 2016