White Women in Pennyslvania Still All In for Trump

Interesting.

At Vanity Fair, "“You Might See People Digging In”: Can Joe Biden Actually Sway Obama–Trump Voters?":

Think Biden has the election locked up? Travel with my friend @JAEnda1 to Northeast Pennsylvania https://t.co/ikJiyVrmo0

— Patricia Sullivan (@psullivan1) July 29, 2020

In Pennsylvania, Joe Biden is hoping to peel off just enough white, working-class voters in crucial counties to edge out the president. But the women here—waitresses, churchgoers, bingo players, lifelong Democrats—show no signs of budging, pandemic be damned. “I am 110% Trump,” says one. “I love him.”

It was a Thursday night in January, before the coronavirus shut everything down, meaning it was time for bingo at St. Andrew Parish in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Three dozen regulars—almost all of them women—filed into the church basement. Some grabbed “cuts” of pizza from the front of the room; a few lingered in the cold for one last smoke. As the clock approached 6:00, they settled into metal folding chairs, spread out their game sheets, and focused on the numbers.

The entire political world, in turn, has been focused on these women and the numbers—and potential power—they represent. The bingo players are part of the white working class, a prized group that helped elect Donald Trump in 2016. Many are Democrats who supported Barack Obama in one or both of his races and had never pulled the GOP lever before. To Republicans they represent the path to the president’s reelection. To Democrats they personify opportunity, a chance to siphon off just enough Trump votes in swing states to remove him from office. “I don’t need to win them,” said Democratic pollster Jill Normington. “I need to lose by less.”

Ever since Trump pulled off upset victories in the former Democratic strongholds of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, both parties have viewed white women without college degrees as pivotal 2020 voters. White, working-class women and men are the nation’s largest bloc of voters, especially here in the Rust Belt, and women are considered more likely to reject Trump this time around. Polls bear this out, showing that the men in this group remain overwhelmingly behind the president, while many of the women are having second thoughts. Democrats hope that just as suburban women outside cities like Philadelphia, about two hours south of Wilkes-Barre, turned on Republicans in 2018, white, working-class women will follow suit this year.

But the bingo players at St. Andrew and their counterparts in their key region of Pennsylvania may be unexpectedly resistant. In this historically Democratic bastion, where coal once ruled and black-and-white photos of JFK still adorn walls, women who voted for Trump show few signs of wavering. They applaud his brusque demeanor, or they don’t. They support his right-wing policies, or they don’t. It doesn’t matter. They think Democrats have persecuted him without justification, believe he’s doing everything possible to combat COVID-19, and generally support his “law-and-order” response to what are likely the most pervasive protests in U.S. history. They have faith that he has the business acumen to reinvigorate the economy. Mainly, they have faith in him.

They support Trump because they like him. Actually, the word many of them use is “love.”

The reason is simple: He speaks to them, not down to them, eschewing words like “eschew.” While his life experience as a New York playboy-celebrity rich kid is wholly different from their own, they feel he’s one of them. “I am 110% Trump. I love him,” Barbara Bono said as she set up her bingo cards. “I love the way he talks. I understand him more than any other president. This whole place is Trump,” she said, sweeping her arm across the room as women around her nodded.

Bono, a 63-year-old retired Lord & Taylor warehouse worker, is precisely the kind of voter Joe Biden’s campaign hopes to win over: She’s a registered Democrat and former union member who never voted Republican before casting a ballot for Trump. She is Catholic, like so many in these parts, but supports abortion rights. She thought Bill Clinton was a “wonderful” president and didn’t care for George W. Bush. She voted for Obama in 2008, but sat out the election of 2012 because, she said, his Affordable Care Act drove up her health insurance costs. Still, she didn’t support Obama’s GOP opponent, Mitt Romney, another rich guy who, it must be noted, speaks nothing like her.

“I love the way he talks! Crazy Nancy!” Bono said, echoing the president’s nickname for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the highest-ranking elected woman officeholder in the history of the United States. “I love it. He is up early in the morning...He’s always talking to the American people. He’s all about our country.

“Pelooooski,” she continued, drawing laughs from the other bingo players. Then, in the spirit of Trump: “I can’t wait for her teeth to fall out!”

Bono is like a lot of the women I met during visits to Luzerne and Lackawanna Counties in northeastern Pennsylvania, called “NEPA” by locals, in late 2019 and early 2020. She has lived in Wilkes-Barre, the county seat of Luzerne, her entire life, though she now spends part of her winters in Valdosta, Georgia. She is a high school graduate, one of the white women without college degrees whose support Trump can’t afford to lose.

During conversations spanning seven months, the women I spoke to made plain that there is little, if anything, that would make them abandon Trump. Not the emergence of Biden, who’s fond of invoking his early childhood in nearby Scranton. Not a quarantine that has cost some of them their wages. Not the ensuing economic fallout. And certainly not the Trump detractors who say he has mishandled life-and-death issues that have consumed the nation: the coronavirus, the police killing of George Floyd, and the systemic racism it brought to the fore.

“A lot of people hate him, but I don’t get it,” said Florence “Flo” Eldredge, a waitress who missed months of work because of the pandemic. “I think he’s doing the best he can under the circumstances.”

Added her next-door neighbor Linda Stetzar: “I would give him a crown.”

It’s hard for an outsider to distinguish between Luzerne and Lackawanna Counties, which share a rolling landscape in the Appalachian Mountains and in the valleys along the Susquehanna River. Many of their towns flow smoothly into one another, their Americana displayed in street banners that celebrate their war heroes. But locals know the difference between Pittston and West Pittston, Old Forge and Forty Fort. They will tell you that the Irish settled this town, the Italians that town, the Poles moved here and the Germans there. They say it while acknowledging that influxes of immigrants weren’t always made to feel welcome. Their ancestors came from Europe to mine anthracite coal, which they did for generations until the mines closed in the middle of the last century. All these years later, they wear their heritage proudly.

Families remain close. I came across more than one pair of sisters, mothers and daughters, aunts and nieces dining or working or playing bingo together. Almost all were descendants of those early miners. But in recent years, after the mines closed and lace factories came and went, more and more residents have departed. Young people who attend college leave most frequently, unable to find white-collar jobs close to home. Those who stay are mostly white and older. They are often more conservative than their children. They still attend the churches, predominantly Catholic, that their forebears built. They are courteous and unhurried, the kind of people who call strangers like me “hon.” They work for state or local government or health care providers or a local university or, increasingly, one of the numerous warehouses and call centers that have popped up along the tangle of highways that crisscross here. They don’t expect something for nothing.

“There’s that dignity piece,” Scranton mayor Paige Cognetti told me. “If mom and dad worked in coal and lace, they worked their asses off. People don’t want programs or help. They want to earn it.”

Before the novel coronavirus, the economies in these two counties had improved considerably. Though they weren’t as strong as elsewhere in the state—the median income was lower, the unemployment rate higher—people didn’t despair. In fact, in Donald Trump, a lot of them saw hope.

Trump beat Hillary Clinton by a total of just 77,744 votes in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, states once considered Democrats’ “blue wall.” More than half of that vote margin—44,292—came from Pennsylvania. And more than one third came from Luzerne County, a place that hadn’t voted Republican since George H.W. Bush in 1988 and that has voted for the presidential candidate who carried Pennsylvania since 1932. Trump carried Luzerne by 26,237 votes and had the biggest margin of victory there—19 points—since Richard Nixon in 1972. Next door, in Lackawanna County, Clinton won by a scant 3,599 votes even though she had personal ties to the area, having spent her childhood summers at a family cottage on Lake Winola, a short drive from her father’s hometown and final resting place, Scranton. Four years earlier Obama beat Romney there by 26,579 votes.

Theories abound as to why Trump did so well, particularly in Luzerne, which Pennsylvania pollster G. Terry Madonna told me was “a place where in my lifetime I never thought a Republican would win.” Madonna, director of the Franklin & Marshall College Poll, said Trump stepped into a void created by Democrats, who essentially abandoned cultural conservatives. “As the Democrats became an urban-based party, they moved away from the working-class roots that had been a part of their constituency,” he said...

Still more.

Workers Resist the Return to Work

My son quit his job at a mall retail store for health reasons. The business is a cramped jewelry store, and despite my son's repeated inquiries, he never received a formal statement on the company's COVID guidelines. There was nothing about lining up customers outside, limiting the numbers of shoppers at a time, or what not, besides a mask requirement. Plus, the unemployment insurance has been generous and my son's heading off to college in a couple of weeks. (He's moving onto campus, but his classes will still be mostly online --- his decision, not mine, lol).

In any case, at LAT, "Workers fear returning to work. Many are resisting the call":

Fear, anger, frustration: many workers push back as employers call them back to the workplace amid the COVID-19 pandemic. https://t.co/5qrp5vpRvy

— Margot Roosevelt (@margotroosevelt) July 23, 2020

A Santa Monica hotel housekeeper who works for minimum wage.

A downtown Los Angeles lawyer with a six-figure salary.

A Disneyland parking attendant who supports four sons.

A rural schoolteacher in Northern California whose husband has lung disease.

What they have in common: fear.

Also anger, confusion and frustration with California’s roller-coaster coronavirus economy — in which workplaces close and open and close again, rules for those that remain open can change by the day, and enforcement often seems lax.

Amid soaring infections and hospitalizations, Gov. Gavin Newsom this month again shut down a large swath of businesses across the state, including dine-in restaurants, bars, movie theaters, card rooms, gyms, hair salons and some offices.

Nonetheless, thousands of employees who have been furloughed or able to work from home since March are being called back to physical workplaces.

Many, especially those backed by powerful labor unions, are resisting. They cite the failure of employers over the last four months to prevent COVID-19 outbreaks, even in hospitals, nursing homes, fast-food outlets, grocery stores and warehouses where workers were deemed “essential” by the state.

“Workers who never left the workplace were often not sufficiently protected,” said Laura Stock, director of the Labor Occupational Health Program at UC Berkeley. “Now a lot of people have been forced to go back to work in circumstances they don’t feel are safe.”

Since March, more than 17,800 workplace complaints about COVID-19 have poured into the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health, known as Cal/OSHA, had received some 3,800 complaints as of mid-July.

Businesses are often less than forthcoming with workers about whether they have been exposed to an infected colleague, Stock said, and jurisdiction between county health departments and Cal/OSHA, which has long been underfunded, is unclear.

Furloughed employees called back to the workplace usually lose unemployment benefits if they don’t return. “It’s a terrible situation,” Stock said. “People have to choose between a paycheck and their health — not only their own health, but their health of their family and their community.”

On a corner of Figueroa Street in downtown Los Angeles this month, dozens of masked housekeepers and dishwashers held a lunchtime rally, waving hand-lettered signs reading, “I don’t feel safe” and “Pause reopening of hotels.”

More.

Class Differences in Education

At NYT, "College Made Them Feel Equal. The Virus Exposed How Unequal Their Lives Are":

This is a sobering piece that will give insight into the plight of those trying to improve their lot. College Made Them Feel Equal. The Virus Exposed How Unequal Their Lives Are. https://t.co/kYNuiLDp3M

— Jose de Jesus Ortiz (@OrtizKicks) April 4, 2020

The political science class was called “Forced Migration and Refugees.” Students read accounts of migrants fleeing broken economies and seeking better futures, of life plans drastically altered and the political forces that made it all seem necessary.

Then suddenly, the subject matter became personal: Haverford College shut down and evicted most students from the dormitories as the coronavirus spread through Pennsylvania.

Like many college courses around the country, the class soldiered on. The syllabus was revised. The students reconvened on a videoconferencing app.

But as each logged in, not everyone’s new reality looked the same.

One student sat at a vacation home on the coast of Maine. Another struggled to keep her mother’s Puerto Rican food truck running while meat vanished from Florida grocery shelves. As one young woman’s father, a private equity executive, urged the family to decamp to a country where infections were falling, another student’s mother in Russia couldn’t afford the plane ticket to bring her daughter home.

“Now Russia is about to close its borders,” Sophie Chochaeva told her classmates, in the days before the country did. She was one of 135 students still on campus, in a dorm room she called “the cozy foxhole,” as the world outside became a ghost town. “This crisis is exposing that a lot of people don’t have anywhere to go.”

The outbreak of the coronavirus — and the accompanying economic devastation that has left 10 million people almost instantly unemployed — has put America’s class divide on full display. Gig employees were the first to suffer, with many of their jobs vanishing without unemployment benefits. Office employees retreated to work-from-home arrangements while janitors cleaned the buildings they fled and delivery workers brought packages to their doorsteps.

But college was meant to be different. For decades, small liberal arts schools like Haverford, a short ride from Philadelphia, prided themselves on being the “great equalizer,” offering pedigrees not just to the scions of East Coast elites but also to the children of first-generation immigrants. Scholarships filled in for family money. Students ate the same cafeteria food in the morning and bunked in the same creaky beds at night.

No longer — at least not while the virus spreads through the country.

“It’s as though you had a front-row view on American inequality and the ways in which it was disguised and papered over,” said Anita Isaacs, the course’s professor who has taught political science at Haverford since 1988. The first gulf war, the Sept. 11 attacks, the Great Recession — she had seen them all through the eyes of her students.

“There’s been nothing like this before,” she said.

Several nights before the class was to reconvene online in late March, Professor Isaacs received an email from one of her teaching assistants, Tatiana Lathion, a college senior whose parents own the food truck. Their source of income was on the verge of liquidation as stay-at-home orders loomed in Jacksonville, Fla., where they lived.

“I’m not sure my savings will allow them both to survive this quarantine and still keep the business,” she wrote. She said she was thinking of getting a part-time job at a grocery store.

Wasn’t college supposed to get her away from all that?

“I have this panic moment that it’s literally for nothing now,” Ms. Lathion wrote to her professor.

Ms. Lathion had not thought she would attend college...

Still more.

Michael Lind, The New Class War

At Amazon, Michael Lind, The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Managerial Elite.

Dana Perino on 'Tucker Carlson Tonight' (VIDEO)

She's really smart, and this is a great discussion.

Obama disses Bernie and Joe.

As Homelessness Crisis Worsen, Democrat Presidential Candidates Stay Mum

You'd think homelessness would be in the Democrats' policy wheelhouse, but it's not.

And that's no surprise. Homelessness hits white working-class families particularly hard, and the Democrats hate white people.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Homelessness is a crisis in California. Why are 2020 candidates mostly ignoring it?":

When new figures released last week showed a jarring rise in homelessness around Los Angeles, the response throughout Southern California was shock and indignation.

The reaction from the crowded field of Democratic presidential candidates: silence.

While White House hopefuls crisscross the country, making big promises on issues such as college debt relief, climate change and boosting the working and middle classes, they have largely ignored an issue — the soaring number of unsheltered Americans — that has reached a crisis point in communities on the West Coast and elsewhere.

The reason, said Sam Tsemberis, is simple.

“It doesn’t have a constituency or an advocacy group that has enough money,” said Tsemberis, who leads Pathways Housing First, a Los Angeles nonprofit that works to end homelessness. “The National Coalition for the Homeless is not the National Rifle Assn.”

Not that voters are uninterested. In California, for instance, a sizable majority of likely voters — Democratic, Republican and independent — consider homelessness a big problem, according to a recent survey by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California.

But even as presidential candidates pay greater attention to California, mindful of its early March 3 primary, none has seized on the crisis as a rallying cry.

The silence is particularly notable coming from California’s Sen. Kamala Harris, who lives in L.A. Her campaign declined requests for comment on the latest homelessness figures. Harris and her rivals broadly address issues relating to homeownership or rent affordability, but offer little aimed at the desperate plight of those already living on the street.

Harris has two housing proposals: One is a subsidy for renters paying more than 30% of their income on housing. The second is a monthly cash stipend for low- and middle-income workers.

Both plans, her campaign says, would target the neediest and save people from evictions, a leading cause of homelessness.

The twin issues of affordable housing and homelessness are a “crisis [that is] not receiving the kind of attention that it deserves,” she said in a speech to the National Alliance to End Homelessness last year before she launched her candidacy.

Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, the former mayor of Newark, is the only one with a housing proposal that specifically talks about eliminating homelessness nationwide, by doubling funding to $6 billion for federal grants geared toward serving that population.

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s housing plan ties in factors like affordable-housing scarcity, housing discrimination and the needs of people who require substance-abuse treatment, all issues that influence a person’s vulnerability to homelessness.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ campaign website features his stands on 25 issues, but housing is not among them. When he ran for president four years ago, Sanders called for increased federal spending on rent vouchers for the poor, repairs to public housing projects and construction of low-rent housing.

In March, Sanders tweeted that the country has “a moral responsibility to make certain that no American goes hungry or sleeps out on the streets.”

Former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign did not respond to requests for the candidate’s plans to address homelessness.

Julián Castro, who was Housing and Urban Development secretary under President Obama, stood out among Democratic rivals by highlighting homelessness on the campaign trail. On an April visit to Nevada, he toured a storm-drain tunnel beneath the Las Vegas Strip where hundreds had set up encampments.

“This is not the kind of issue that a lot of people open their arms to, but they should,” Castro said Thursday in an interview.

He is set to release his housing agenda, including plans to reduce homelessness, in the weeks ahead...

They're all a bunch of idiots and losers.

Timothy P. Carney, Alienated America

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Timothy P. Carney, Alienated America: Why Some Places Thrive While Others Collapse.

Joan C. Williams, White Working Class

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Joan C. Williams, White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America.

Tucker Carlson's Populist-Nationalist Monologue Draws Response (VIDEO)

Abby Hunstman and Conor Friedersdorf were among some of the prominent responses. Video below:

The View's Abby Huntsman Defends Tucker Carlson's Private 'Heart of Gold' After Pay Equality Comments https://t.co/xmlOASVSiA

— People (@people) January 5, 2019

Conservatives ought to be angry when the right’s television hosts mislead the audience. https://t.co/sEee9hA2Fr

— Conor Friedersdorf (@conor64) January 6, 2019

'Roseanne' Cancelled After Stupid Tweets

Really stupid:

Roseanne Barr was dropped by ICM Partners, the talent agency that represented her https://t.co/t1RZOb8b7B pic.twitter.com/fLigtoCFrx

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) May 29, 2018

Disney Chairman and CEO Bob Iger tweeted in support of canceling "Roseanne" https://t.co/t1RZOb8b7B pic.twitter.com/YivntBtAA7

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) May 29, 2018

'Roseanne' cancellation a huge blow to ABC, but network praised for swift action https://t.co/ZHuTBTCD1X pic.twitter.com/42mAZoWbV7

— LA Unvrz (@LAunvrz) May 30, 2018

It's all political, as I was saying last night on Twitter:

See what happens when tweets and phone calls aren’t suppressed like votes??? KEEP. THAT. SAME. ENERGY. #Roseanne https://t.co/l0BHEZVyck pic.twitter.com/pJjojXHD5k

— Brittany Packnett (@MsPackyetti) May 29, 2018

ABC has done the right thing. They’ve stood up against racism. It is our country’s original sin. But this is 2018 and it has no place in the hearts of decent people. Unfortunately our president has stoked these evil fires. If he doesn’t applaud ABC, he will continue to stoke evil

— Rob Reiner (@robreiner) May 29, 2018

Roseanne’s problem turned out to be that she far too authentically represented the actual worldview of a significant chunk of the Trump base.

— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) May 30, 2018

#Roseanne effed up. She had to know what would happen by making a stupid crack like that. This is the chance the left was waiting for, and to them, its the beginning of a purge. Trump’s the ultimate target, BAMN. 🤷‍♂️ https://t.co/3H0NzqrD0z

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) May 30, 2018

ICYMI: Charles Murray, Coming Apart

*BUMPED.*

A great book, at Amazon, Charles Murray, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010.

ICYMI: Salena Zito and Brad Todd, The Great Revolt

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Salena Zito and Brad Todd, The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics.

Salena Zito and Brad Todd on Fox & Friends (VIDEO)

Their new book is out tomorrow, The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics.

President Trump gave them a huge shout-out on Twitter as well!

“The Great Revolt” by Salena Zito and Brad Todd does much to tell the story of our great Election victory. The Forgotten Men & Women are forgotten no longer!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 7, 2018

Obama Trump Swing Voters

At the New York Times, "They Voted for Obama, Then Went for Trump. Can Democrats Win Them Back?":

I interviewed 38 Obama-Trump voters. Takeaway: Most Americans are not thinking very much about politics. They have busy lives. They don't have time for Twitter. https://t.co/KAFHZqVKTB

— Sabrina Tavernise (@stavernise) May 4, 2018

RITTMAN, Ohio — In the daily race that is her life, Sharla Baker does not think about politics very much.

She rises early, drives to the gas station to buy coffee, feeds her baby, dresses her two other children, ages 3 and 2, and hustles them all off to day care. By 9:30 a.m. she pulls into a hair salon 45 minutes away, where she is training to be a cosmetologist. She waxes and cuts all day long, making only the money she earns in tips, which on a recent day last month was $8.41.

But Ms. Baker does vote. She picked Barack Obama for president in 2008 and 2012. He seemed sincere and looked like a happy family man. But most important, he was a Democrat. Her great-grandmother, who grew up poor in Pennsylvania, always said that Democrats look out for the poor people.

In 2016, though, she voted for Donald J. Trump. Yes, he was rich and seemed mean on his TV show, “The Apprentice.” But she liked how he talked about jobs and wages and people being left out of the economy.

Now, more than a year later, she is wavering.

“I voted for Trump because I wanted some change going on,” said Ms. Baker, 28. “But then again, maybe he’s going to do the wrong change.”

The swing of Obama voters to Mr. Trump proved a decisive factor in the 2016 presidential election. Of the more than 650 counties that chose Mr. Obama twice, about a third flipped to Mr. Trump. Many were in states critical to Mr. Trump’s win, like Iowa, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin.

John Sides, a political-science professor at George Washington University, has estimated that 9 percent of voters who cast ballots for Mr. Obama ended up voting for Mr. Trump. Among white voters who had never been to college, it was 22 percent.

Now, as the country lurches into another election season — this time the prize is control of Congress — a crucial question for Democrats is whether the party will be able to lure these voters back. Democrats have had some early successes. Wins in Alabama, Pennsylvania and Virginia have given Democrats hope that voters might be souring on Mr. Trump — to the point that the party might flip control of the House and possibly even the Senate. Next week’s primary races in Ohio and West Virginia, both states that went for Mr. Trump in 2016, will also serve as tests of voter enthusiasm for Democrats.

We recently asked people who cast ballots for both Mr. Obama and Mr. Trump to describe how they felt about the president and the Democratic Party ahead of the midterms. In interviews with 38 voters in 14 states across four months, a clear pattern emerged. Voters said they did not like Mr. Trump as a person and did not consider themselves die-hard supporters. Some were even embarrassed by him.

But many were basically satisfied with his policies. The tax bill was mildly positive, they said. Several had a bit of extra money in their paycheck. They liked that he was trying to address illegal immigration. Only a few regretted their vote...

More.

Our 'Cry Closet' Education System

The University of Utah has installed a "cry closet" for students to let it all out during finals week.

Funny, I don't remember needing to cry during finals. I was ecstatic the semester was coming to an end and I got some time off from school, sheesh.

Here's Mike Rowe, on Facebook, "Our Educational System is Under Attack."

And for Prager University:

Salena Zito and Brad Todd, The Great Revolt

*BUMPED.*

This one's out May 8th. I can't wait to read it.

At Amazon, Salena Zito and Brad Todd, The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics.

Orange County Faces Legal Threat Over Anti-Camping Laws

I've been blogging on homelessness quite a bit, mainly because I'm moved by the plight of the homeless and I'm flummoxed by the pathetic public policy response. In the O.C., as I noted at the time of a bogus meme going around arguing that the Anaheim Stadium encampment was populated by illegal immigrants, most of the O.C. homeless are white working-class people who've been wiped out by economic change, especially coming out of the Great Recession. So folks might see why I have quite a different take on the issue than other conservatives, such as the otherwise outstanding Daniel Greenfield, at FrontPage Magazine: "ASIAN-AMERICANS ACCUSED OF INTOLERANCE FOR OPPOSING HOMELESS."

Asian-Americans, pfft.

Where was where the mass Asian-American protests against the Chinese birth tourism hotels here in Irvine? There weren't any. The Feds had to come in and shut them down. See, "'Maternity tourism' raids target California operations catering to Chinese." According to the report:

More than 400 women associated with the Irvine location have given birth at one Orange County hospital since 2013, agents wrote in the affidavit. One of the women paid $4,080 out of $28,845 in hospital bills when her bank account showed charges at Wynn Las Vegas and purchases at Rolex and Louis Vuitton stores, the affidavit said.

Nope, no massive protests against Chinese birth tourists committing immigration fraud and cheating local hospitals out of maternity costs. And the Asian-American community has demonstrated extremely slow assimilation into American political culture. It's half Asian-American in Irvine, and the population's large presence continues to drive Anglo-American retail institutions out of the area. The 99 Ranch Market across from my neighborhood is the anchor store for a nearly entirely Asian-American shopping center. Only the McDonald's and KFC remain from a least a half a dozen American restaurants, including Baskin Robbins, Marie Calendar's, and Subway.

In any case, here's today's front-page report on the new judicial ruling barring cities from enforcing anti-camping laws against the county's homeless --- with the photograph of Diane Rutan, gathering her things from the downtown Santa Ana homeless camp. See, "Judge threatens to bar O.C. from enforcing anti-camping laws if it can't shelter homeless":

The political crisis over homelessness in Orange County approached a crucial moment Tuesday as a federal judge raised the prospect of barring local governments from enforcing anti-camping ordinances if officials cannot create temporary shelters for hundreds being swept out of tent cities.

The county for weeks has been struggling to find locations to place the homeless after removing them from an encampment along the Santa Ana River. A plan to place temporary shelters in Irvine, Laguna Niguel and Huntington Beach died amid loud protests from residents last week, and the problem is expected to get worse as officials move to clear out another tent city at the Santa Ana Civic Center.

U.S. District Judge David O. Carter expressed frustration at the political stalemate during a hearing Tuesday. He said he could not decide where the shelters should go, but said he could prohibit cities from enforcing laws that ban people from camping in public spaces such as parks and river ways. Carter said that without those laws, Orange County communities could become magnets for homeless people.

In essence, the judge said Orange County can't have it both ways.

"We can't criminalize homeless by citing them in one location, and citing them in another location simply for being homeless," Carter said.

Carter is overseeing a case brought by homeless advocates trying to stop the removal of the homeless encampments. He stressed that the shelters don't have to be fancy, only that they be able to serve those who have nowhere else to live.

"This doesn't have to be a nice thing," Carter said. "It just has to be humane and dignified. That will probably get us through this crisis."

The county's two armories, which provide temporary shelter for up to 400 homeless individuals during the winter, are scheduled to close this month — adding a new layer of urgency as space is limited in other shelters throughout the county. Fullerton officials requested to keep the armory in their city open, but it's not clear if that will happen.

Orange County Board of Supervisors Chairman Andrew Do said he is pessimistic about the county and city officials finding a solution unless Carter steps in.

"At this point, I see us — the county — and the cities being at a standstill," Do said. "With each passing day we betray our responsibility to care for all of our residents as required by law."

Residents in Irvine and other cities have said they don't want homeless shelters in their communities, which is the same argument made by neighborhoods along the Santa Ana River that prompted officials to clear out the camps in the first place.

But Carter said the situation has forced certain cities to take on a disproportionate burden. He singled out Santa Ana, home to the county's only major emergency shelter

"Santa Ana is being forced to absorb all of the homeless because they're brought to this area for assessments and services," Carter said. "It's disproportionate."

Data presented by Santa Ana during the hearing back up that claim...

Keep reading.

Pennsylvania Special Election: Democrat Conor Lamb is Apparent Winner (VIDEO)

This is all over Memeorandum, "Pennsylvania Special Election Results: 18th Congressional District."

And from Steve Kornacki's coverage at MSNBC:



BONUS: From Stephen Green, at Instapundit, "LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: PA-18 Undecided, New Boss Lady at CIA and Much, Much More."

No Party in Britain Speaks for, or Even Appeals to, the Working Class

At Spiked Online, "How the Working Class Was Shut Out of Politics."

The Prosperity Paradox

From Ronald Brownstein, at CNN, "The prosperity paradox is dividing the country in two":

"The big blue metros believe their eco success is threatened by the Trump agenda of hostility to immigration & free trade, prioritization of tax cuts over investments in education & scientific research,the stoking of racial tensions" & SALT deduction limit https://t.co/BmTuqHfZNL

— Ronald Brownstein (@RonBrownstein) January 23, 2018

While President Donald Trump relentlessly claims credit for the strengthening economy, the nation's economic growth is being driven overwhelmingly by the places that are most resistant to him.

Counties that voted for Hillary Clinton against Trump in 2016 accounted for nearly three-fourths of the nation's increased economic output and almost two-thirds of its new jobs in the years leading up to his election, according to previously unpublished findings provided to CNN by the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution.

That imbalance looks even starker when considering that Clinton won less than one-sixth of the nation's counties. Trump carried more counties than any candidate in either party since Ronald Reagan in 1984.

Yet it is the diverse major metropolitan areas that voted in preponderant numbers against Trump that have clearly emerged as the nation's engines of growth. In the process, the big blue metros have pulled further away from the small town and rural communities that provide the foundation of Trump's support.

The key to this divergence has been the large metro areas' dominance of the job opportunities created by the diffusion of digital technologies, largely in white-collar industries from business consulting to software development. Meanwhile, smaller places remain much more reliant on resource extraction (like oil and gas production), manufacturing and agriculture, which have not grown nearly as reliably, or explosively, as the digital economy.

"We have two quite different economies, and what is happening in recent years is growth is largely emanating from these big county metros," says Mark Muro, director of policy at the Metropolitan Policy Program. "These are not political trends. They are deep economic and technological long waves. And while we are in the midst of this long wave, we are not near the end of it."

These trends long predate Trump's presidency. But the President's policy agenda, which prioritizes reviving manufacturing and promoting energy development, generally favors the smaller places over the large metros -- many of which feel threatened by his initiatives, from restricting immigration and trade to limiting the deductibility of state and local taxes.

Muro, like many economic analysts, is dubious that anything Trump does can meaningfully unwind the consolidation of economic opportunity into the largest metropolitan areas. If anything, Muro says, the tilt toward the big blue metros has intensified in recent years. "We think this is a fundamental sea change," he says.

This pattern creates what could be called the prosperity paradox. Even as economic growth is concentrating in Democratic-leaning metropolitan areas thriving in the information economy, Republicans rooted in non-urban communities largely excluded from those opportunities now control all the levers of power in Washington and in most states. That disjuncture raises a pointed long-term question: How long can the places that are mostly lagging in the economy dictate the terms of politics and policy to the places that are mostly succeeding?

Generally through American history, political power has followed economic power. From the Civil War through the Great Depression, Republicans controlled the White House for 56 of 72 years as the party of the rapidly industrializing and urbanizing Northeast and Midwest. During that era, Democrats were marginalized politically as the champions of the agricultural and resource-producing South and West that felt sublimated by the Northern-based industrial and financial economic order.

In the decades just before and after World War II, Franklin Roosevelt built an impregnable New Deal Democratic coalition that married support from traditionally internationalist Eastern business and finance interests with new efforts to integrate the South and West into the national economy (through mechanisms ranging from the Tennessee Valley Authority to the World War II defense buildup). Similarly, the shift of economic clout to the Sun Belt after World War II prefigured the conservative movement's resurgence from the 1960s through the 1990s around Republicans Barry Goldwater of Arizona and Ronald Reagan of California.

Today the nation's core economic divide is less between regions than within them. After mostly declining through the late 20th century, the large metropolitan areas have restored their position as the locus of growth across the country by emerging as the epicenter of the information economy.

That advantage has allowed many metropolitan areas to achieve booming levels of growth and investment unmatched for decades: Tim Burgess, who served as acting Seattle mayor last fall, for instance, recently told me that the city is now enjoying its best economy since the Klondike gold rush in the 1890s. The intense nationwide competition for the second Amazon headquarters -- which produced finalists located solely in large metropolitan areas -- underscores how digital technologies are concentrating economic opportunity into the nation's biggest places.

Data from Muro and Brookings research assistant Jacob Whiton quantify the dramatic extent of that shift.

In 2016, Clinton won fewer than 500 counties and Trump won more than 2,600. But the counties that Clinton carried accounted for 72% of the nation's increased economic output from 2014 through 2016, the most recent years for which figures are available, according to Brookings. The Clinton counties accounted for 66% of the new job growth over that period as well.

In both output and employment the Clinton counties over that recent period accounted for an even higher percentage of the new growth than they did from 2010 through 2016, the full period of recovery from the financial crash of 2008.

The tilt away from Trump is even more pronounced at the very top of the economic pyramid. Of the 30 counties that generated the largest share of new jobs from 2014 through 2016, Trump carried only two: Collin County (north of Dallas) and Maricopa (Arizona), where Republican-leaning suburbs slightly outvoted a strongly Democratic metro core in Phoenix.

Clinton carried all the other places leading the employment growth list. That included not only such blue state behemoths as Los Angeles, Chicago, New York and Seattle, but also the economic hubs in purple and even Republican-leaning states, from Miami, Oakland County (outside Detroit), to Mecklenburg (Charlotte) and Wake (Raleigh) counties in North Carolina, and Dallas, Bexar (San Antonio) and Travis counties (Austin) in Texas.

In all, Brookings calculated, Clinton won 79 of the 100 counties that contributed the most to economic growth from 2014 to 2016, and 76 of the 100 that generated the most job growth...

These are the fault lines of the next American civil war. When and how it all goes to hell, who knows? But something this fundamentally radical will bring an eruption at some point, and those who anticipate the collapse will be better prepared for the fighting and the fallout.

Still more.