Post 2022 Election

[lpetrich]

What might be done? "Congress dorms"?

Maxwell Frost, 1st Gen Z member of Congress, denied D.C. apartment due to credit : NPR

Frost told NPR that he posted his tweet in a moment of frustration, but also to highlight this serious problem of affordability and accessibility in the D.C. political world for people who don't come from wealth. While Frost dealt specifically with a credit rejection, other incoming lawmakers and politicians —especially younger members — have dealt with Washington's lack of affordable housing in recent years.

"[Frost] just stating this publicly is kind of saying the quiet part out loud and shining a light on a reality that it's incredibly expensive to live in D.C., to be young in D.C., and then maintain it even for members of Congress," Casey Burgat, the legislative affairs program director at George Washington University.

This lack of affordability has a trickle-down effect, Burgat said.

"It makes Congress exactly what it's been for so long: A disproportionately wealthy, disproportionately white institution," Burgat said. "This is a main contributor for why people can't afford to run for office. It's not seen as a viable path. And though we're getting a little bit better at our diversity, we still have a long way to go and the cost of it is not getting cheaper."

 

[Elixir]

Hey, if these up and coming dirt poor libs want to play with the big dogs, they need to learn to lie cheat and steal like the good old boys. Anyone can do it - just ask George Tony Devolder Santos!

 

[lpetrich]

Mr. Frost Goes to Washington—and Tries to Find an Apartment | The New Republic

Frost replaces retiring Democratic Representative Val Demings, who lost her senatorial race to Republican incumbent Marco Rubio. Spanish is Frost’s first language. He was born to a Puerto Rican mother of Lebanese descent and a Haitian father but was adopted at birth by a Cuban-American mother and white father from Kansas.

“We speak Spanglish in the house, and I know that’s the same for a lot of Latino families in the district,” Frost told The Hill’s Rafael Bernal last month. “My abuela taught me early on to always look out for my community,” said Frost in a bilingual campaign ad during the primary.

Demings described Frost as “older than his years,” in a hallway interview last week at the Capitol. “He’s coming into a place that he’s never been before, but he has the skills and ability to do well here,” she said.

“I have told him to remember that everybody around him wants something,” Demings added. “That’s not necessarily a bad thing. He has the knowledge, but wisdom and experience will help him navigate the sometimes treacherous waters here. And wisdom and experience only comes with time. So he needs to listen and he’ll be fine.”

MAF formed a salsa band in school, and his band performed at Barack Obama's second inauguration.

Frost told NPR he wanted his salsa band, Seguro Que Si, to represent the Latinos at the inauguration because it was Latino voters who had elected Obama in Florida. Local news coverage of the January parade shows Frost at the drums, surrounded by his bandmates, goading the president and first lady Michele Obama to their feet with his drumstick as their float drives by the inaugural grandstand.

“We made Obama dance salsa,” laughed Frost, recalling the performance. “I used to joke that I peaked in high school, but that joke doesn’t work anymore now that I’m going to Congress.”

He then got involved in gun-regulation group March for our Lives.

Frost met his girlfriend, Jamie, a fellow March for Our Lives organizer, on the campaign trail for gun reform. “We’re both artists at heart,” said Frost. “She comes from more of the film world. I come from more of the music world.”

After nearly four years together, watching films is how the couple spends many of their date nights. Frost’s favorite lately is Nightmare Alley—a film by director Guillermo del Toro, starring Cate Blanchett and Bradley Cooper, about a Victorian con man with a mind-reading hustle.

Art policy is an area where Frost sees strong bipartisan potential in Congress. “I would like to see if we can get the Congressional Arts Caucus started back up,” he said.

Co-chaired by Democrat Chellie Pingree and Republican Elise Stefanik, the 138-member arts caucus interfaces with nongovernmental foundations like the National Endowment of the Arts to promote educational initiatives and fund the arts through grants to museums and other venues.

The people who are left out in the conversation on the Hill are the over five million people who work in the arts industry, independently, and the countless artists who spend money out of their own pocket to attempt to be a part of this world,” said Frost, who believes fighting for direct support for artists themselves is a racial and economic justice issue.

“If you look at Black and brown artists, they spent a lot more of their personal wealth to get to where they are,” he said.

 

[lpetrich]

Back in Orlando, Frost finds beauty in the staple of his district’s tourism economy. “I think that theme parks are an art form,” said Frost, whose district includes Disney World, SeaWorld, and Universal. “I’m really into live events and live experiences.”

Though he won't say which one is his favorite. He also doesn't like being called a Generation-Z leader.

Pablo Manríquez on Twitter: "> @WESH coverage of the January parade shows @MaxwellFrostFL at the drums, surrounded by his bandmates, goading the president and first lady Michele Obama to their feet with his drumstick as their float drives by the inaugural grandstand.
Video here: (link)" / Twitter
noting
Obama dances to Fla. HS band at inaugural parade - YouTube


Maxwell Alejandro Frost on Twitter: "I find it interesting that the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” people take issue with me staying with friends until I save up enough to get an apartment. Maybe I don’t fit the demographic they like to applaud " / Twitter
They also attack AOC for having been a bartender, despite their bragging about how working-class they are.

Robert Garcia on Twitter: "Will be proudly sworn-in to Congress on the U.S. Constitution. Underneath the Constitution will be 3 items that mean a lot to me personally. A photo of my parents who I lost to covid, my citizenship certificate & an original Superman #1 from the @librarycongress. (pic link)" / Twitter

 

[lpetrich]

Florida Congressman Maxwell Frost on the Power of Gen Z, Family, and Organizing | Teen Vogue

During a rally on Election Day,

As he addresses his supporters, family, and friends, Frost takes in the accomplishment, dancing on stage, fired up, smiling big. He reminds them that his fight, their fight, “isn’t about Democrat versus Republican, left versus right. This is about the people versus the problem.” His riled-up crowd, wooing and clapping, chant back his campaign maxim, “The people versus the problem!”

“Patriotism is about loving your country,” Frost continues. “It's about loving the people in your country, no matter who they love, no matter where they came from. That's true patriotism.”

As he steps off the stage, Lamar’s “Alright” blasts again. Frost raps along, feeling it, bumping to it, roaring: “Ayyeee! We gon' be alright, we gon' be alright, we gon' be alright! Ayyeee! We gon' be alright! Do you hear me, do you feel me? We gon' be alright!”

and

In 2008, during President-elect Obama’s victory speech, Patrick remembers his 11-year-old son staring at the TV screen and saying, “There’s a man that looks like me.” They each tell stories of watching young Maxwell continue to study the 44th president. “Usually you see these teenagers, you know, they have their computer on, they have a show on, or they have cartoons on,” Maritza says. “But Max, you would go in his room as he's getting ready to go to school, he's got an Obama speech going on. He was learning, learning, learning.”

That article concludes with what I find to be a good recognition of reality. One should not expect any one politician to be some savior figure.

Frost has also received a flood of letters from people, young and old, praising him and proclaiming, “You’re gonna save us!” He’s flattered, but thinks this is an idea our country needs to shake. “I’m not a savior,” he says. “There’s not one person, not one elected official, not one politician that's going to save us all. It's gonna take all of us banding together, building power, doing what we need to do.”

He associates this idea of the lone-savior politician with celebrity culture. “It’s very real in politics,” he tells me. “We want to find that one person who's gonna just change everything — our system is built that way. It's part of the reason why there's so much voter apathy.”

Voters have long bought into the old ways of politicking where candidates say, Elect me and I will take you to the promised land. “When nothing changes, people are like, ‘Guess my vote doesn't matter,’” Frost says. So he’s committed to continue being transparent with his constituents, not to lower their expectations, but to tell it like it is: “I'm not gonna promise a bill is gonna pass next year — I'm one out of 435 votes. But what I can promise is what I'm going to fight for, how hard I'm going to fight for it, how I'm going to interact with the community, and the way I'm going to be a member of Congress.” That signature real talk has been Frost's secret sauce, the key ingredient that has transformed the unexpected into hope fulfilled.

 

[lpetrich]

Maxwell Alejandro Frost on Twitter: "Had an amazing time talking politics & music + showing @MTVNEWS around Orlando. I took them to where I was teargassed and maced during the BLM protests, we went to some cool music venues, and they got to check out my swearing-in party in DC. Watch here (link)" / Twitter
noting
Gen Z Congressman Maxwell Frost on His Passion for Music, His Identity & the Beauty of Movement Work - YouTube
He credited a movement for getting him in office, must like AOC.

State legislatures need more young people, but most can’t afford to run | The Hill

About five years ago, I sat in my college dorm room and heard President Obama tell the nation that if we were disappointed in our elected officials, we should “grab a clipboard, get some signatures, and run for office” ourselves. I did just that and defeated an opponent who had been in office for longer than I had been alive.

Nearly every week, I get a call from a young person who is thinking about taking the same leap of faith I did. I share the story of how I hired my college roommate as my campaign manager, and how we helped break a tie between parties in the state senate. I tell them that I had the chance to enact free community college, and today thousands of students are pursuing a degree that they otherwise would not have been able to afford. I talk about fighting to lower housing costs as the only renter in the senate, and writing a new law to electrify school buses, remembering the diesel exhaust from the school bus I rode not too long ago.

But when young candidates ask me how to afford a campaign, I don’t have any good answers.

I won because of Connecticut’s public financing system that puts 22-year-old candidates on an equal playing field with 22-year incumbents. But most states don’t publicly finance their elections, meaning candidates turn to their personal bank accounts or wealthy networks in order to afford television ads, lawn signs, campaign staff and the myriad of other expenses that come with running a successful campaign. Those expenses lock too many people my age out of office.

...
Will Haskell was elected in 2018 to represent seven towns, including his hometown, in the Connecticut State Senate. Just a few months after graduating from college, he and his roommate-turned-campaign manager unseated a Republican incumbent who had been in the legislature for longer than Haskell had been alive. His first book “100,000 First Bosses” was published by Avid Reader Press in 2022.

 

[lpetrich]

[https://twitter.com/jamieson/status/1622984067456151552 Dave Jamieson on Twitter: "Hot new labor trend I didn't see coming: Members of Congress tearing up the National Right to Work Foundation newsletter on camera" / Twitter]

Congresswoman Summer Lee on Twitter: "EVERY worker deserves a union—whether you work in a hospital, coffee shop, newsroom, or here in Congress.
@RightToWork’s union-busting BS has no place in my office.
Solidarity to the workers. (vid link)" / Twitter
(showing her tearing up one of those)
and
Congressman Chris Deluzio on Twitter: "No way, no how. This office is pro-worker and pro-union, every way, every day. #PassThePROAct (vid link)" / Twitter
(showing him putting one of those into a shredder)

 

[lpetrich]

Safe-district Democrats got more liberal. All Republicans got more conservative. - The Washington Post

In theory, it should have been Rep.-elect Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) who was cozying up to Rep.-elect Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) as he was trying to secure the votes necessary to be elected House speaker last month. Boebert, after all, represents a narrowly Republican district in a blue state and squeaked to reelection last year by a shockingly narrow margin. Given that McCarthy’s opposition mostly came from his ideological right — and that the vote was centered on pulling him in that same direction — one might have expected Boebert to play a more moderating force.

Instead, that came from Rep.-elect Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.). Greene personifies the right-wing fringe of the Republican caucus in the House, a status she’s earned through hard work and unswerving commitment to achieving that position. Having won her own reelection bid by a yawning margin, she could well have battled McCarthy ferociously without having to worry about her constituents. But she didn’t, capping off her long effort to access the power held by the establishment by becoming a loyal ally to the eventual speaker.

The conventional wisdom, it seems safe to say, is that elected officials from safer seats are more likely to hold ideological positions closer to the extreme, meaning that a Boebert should be more moderate than a Greene. But an analysis of House elections since 1976 shows that this is only true for Democrats.

Says something about the two parties. The Democrats seem much more cowardly than the Republicans. Their leaders, at least, sometimes seem desperate to please the Republicans, a sentiment that Republicans don't reciprocate.

AOC recalled back in 2018 that she grew up with the Republicans attacking Nancy Pelosi and NP not responding. She said that she was determined not to let the Republicans do all the talking about her the way that NP let them do all the talking about her. So she's been insistent on fighting back on social media, sometimes doing very well at that.

 

[lpetrich]

Red wave? Latino Democrats made major wins in state and congressional races - Thursday November 10, 2022
noting
Julián Castro on Twitter: "Democrats are poised to pick up 7 new Latino members in Congress—making this the largest @HispanicCaucus class in history.
Their average age is 38! And includes:
-the 1st Latina to rep midwest
-the 1st Gen-Z in Congress
-the 1st Latino to rep Austin
-the 1st LGBTQ immigrant" / Twitter

It’s secularism, stupid: Why Latino voters aren’t abandoning the Democratic Party

Even so, throughout the 2022 midterm election cycle, there have been countless stories about Latinos abandoning the Democratic Party. The growth of religious conservatism in the form of evangelicalism and/or traditional Catholicism is the most common reason given for why Latinos are allegedly embracing the GOP. A recent CNN article on the power of Latino evangelicals quotes one such voter as saying, “The core values that I believe in and the Bible teaches about, [the Democratic Party] just don’t support that, and I can’t support anything that goes against my faith.” The narrative of Latino religious conservative values and their natural alignment with the Republican Party dates back to Ronald Reagan. In a famous exchange between Reagan and his Latino campaign advisor Lionel Sosa, it is said that Reagan claimed, “Latinos are Republican. They just don’t know it yet.”

...
A closer examination of the polls and questions around Latino religiosity tells a different story. One of the most surprising trends in Latino politics is not the rise of evangelicalism but the dramatic growth of non-believers. The number of Americans identifying as atheist, agnostic, or no religious preference is increasing, and Latinos are not immune to this trend. In a 2021 national survey of over 3,000 Latinos by the Pew Research Center, the second largest social identity after Catholic (46%) is secularism, or those who selected the categories atheists, agnostic and nothing in particular (totaling 25%). I suspect the number of secular Latinos could eclipse Catholicism if we included “secular religionist,” or individuals who attend religious services for cultural or social reasons yet have secular worldviews. Unfortunately, the current state of polling does not allow us to identify these respondents and they are often lumped together with those who are religious, inflating the number of religious Latinos.

Latinos Are Losing Their Religion - from 11 years ago

 

[lpetrich]

GovTrack.us: Tracking the U.S. Congress - finally has Congressmember ideology scores for 2021-22.

The 5 Main Factions Of The House GOP | FiveThirtyEight

Moderate establishment
These Republicans side with the broader GOP on most issues but are the members most likely to find common ground with Democrats. They’ve been known to attack leadership or their colleagues who are further to the right — or at least disagree with them. They’re often members of bipartisan groups like the Problem Solvers Caucus.
David Joyce OH 0.64, Young Kim CA 0.50, Nancy Mace SC 0.59

Don’t expect members of this shrinking, often quiet group to rise into notable positions of party leadership anytime soon. “It seems like they’re increasingly becoming an incredibly endangered species,” said Julia Azari, a FiveThirtyEight contributor and political science professor at Marquette University.

Case in point: If I were writing this story last year, I probably would have put former Ohio Rep. Anthony Gonzalez or Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger in this camp. But after both publicly assailed the former president and advocated for his impeachment, neither ran for another term.

Conservative establishment
They’re part of the establishment and/or party leadership but still boast conservative records. They’re sometimes willing to speak out against members to their right, but generally try to be peacekeepers. In a nutshell: These Republicans straddle the line between the moderate and pro-Trump wings of the party.
Elise Stefanik NY 0.78, Tom Emmer MN 0.70, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy CA 0.40

Far-right establishment
These are the conservatives who likely align with the Freedom Caucus ideologically but make fewer waves. They’re the preferred leaders of the Tea party conservatives and pro-Trump insurgent factions.
Steve Scalise LA 0.47, Patrick McHenry NC 0.43

Tea party conservative
Here are the Freedom Caucus members who are driven by ideology. They’re often associated with conservative groups like the Club for Growth.
Jim Jordan OH 0.52, Byron Donalds FL 0.80, Chip Roy TX 0.63

Pro-Trump insurgent
These are the rabble-rousers. They’re led by Trump but largely avoid criticizing him publicly, even if they don’t fully embrace his views. Most of them voted against certifying President Biden’s 2020 electoral victory. Their beliefs are malleable, and more motivated by grievance more than ideology
Matt Gaetz FL 0.67, Lauren Boebert CO 0.75, Marjorie Taylor Greene GA 0.54

The govtrack scores are rather odd, it seems to me.

 

[lpetrich]

The 4 Main Factions Of The House Democratic Caucus | FiveThirtyEight

Progressive Insurgents
These are the most progressive members of the Democratic caucus. They often hold very liberal beliefs on economic and social policies (e.g., supporting the Green New Deal and Medicare for All, and abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement). They’ve attacked party leadership for being too cautious and supported progressive candidates like Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont or Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts against Biden in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez NY 0.10, Cori Bush MO 0.10, Ilhan Omar MN 0.09, Rashida Tlaib MI 0.07

Amelia Malpas: Bringing the Party Home: The Progressive Insurgency in the House of Representatives and its Impact on the Democratic Party - a very good research paper on this clique

Progressive Establishment
While Democrats in the group above are probably in the headlines more, this group primarily consists of the anointed leaders of the progressive left. As such, they tend to hold leadership roles in groups like the Congressional Progressive Caucus. While these lawmakers’ views on economic, social and race-related issues tend to align with those in the first bloc, they’re not rabble-rousers — and even if they’re skeptical of the Liberal Establishment, they’re often more willing to compromise with them.
Katie Porter CA 0.14, Maxine Waters CA 0.16, Pramila Jayapal WA 0.05

Liberal Establishment
Here are the leaders of the congressional House Democrats. They are also most commonly associated with the party’s establishment wing. But their own politics can be a bit of an enigma at times: While many (like Jeffries and Pelosi) have fairly progressive voting records, lawmakers in this group often move toward the middle so they can be seen as having all members’ best interests at heart and are successful at getting deals passed.
Hakeem Jeffries NY 0.19, Nancy Pelosi CA 0.27, Jim Clyburn SC 0.26, Steny Hoyer MD 0.25

Middle-of-the-road by Democrat standards.

Centrist Firebrands
These are the most conservative House Democrats. They are generally from purple or red-leaning districts or states and tend to have more conservative views on economic and social issues.
Henry Cuellar TX 0.43, Jared Golden ME 0.42, Josh Gottheimer NJ 0.47

The most conservative Democrats in the House.


As to the Progressive Squad,

• 2018: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez NY 0.10, Ilhan Omar MN 0.09, Rashida Tlaib MI 0.07, Ayanna Pressley MA 0.05
• 2020: Cori Bush MO 0.10, Jamaal Bowman NY 0.05, (Squad-like: Marie Newman IL 0.10, Mondaire Jones NY 0.03)

 

[lpetrich]

Opinion | The Party’s Over for Us. Where Do We Go Now? - The New York Times - By Bret Stephens and David Brooks - NYT opinion columnists

David Brooks: My thinking about the G.O.P. goes back to a brunch I had with Laura Ingraham and Dinesh D’Souza in the ’80s that helps me see, in retrospect, that people in my circle were pro-conservative, while Ingraham and D’Souza and people in their circle were anti-left. We wanted to champion Edmund Burke and Adam Smith and a Reaganite foreign policy. They wanted to rock the establishment. That turned out to be a consequential difference because almost all the people in my circle back then — like David Frum and Robert Kagan — ended up, decades later, NeverTrumpers, and almost all the people in their circle became Trumpers or went bonkers.

Bret: Right, they weren’t conservatives. They were just illiberal.

Then talking about Newt Gingrich and Fox News, and then about how Republicans from Ronald Reagan to George Bush II were committed to working within established institutions. Then the establishment got discredited by its failures, like the Iraq War and the 2008 financial slump, and that opened the way for Donald Trump.

"Within a few short years, a somewhat Hamiltonian party became a Jacksonian one, with a truly nihilistic wing."
Though soon noting that President Andrew Jackson at least opposed nullification, which was South Carolina's government refusing to accept tariffs on imports. AJ stared them down with the threat of military action.

On the other hand, some Republicans who conspicuously did well in the midterms were the “normies” — people like Gov. Brian Kemp in Georgia and Gov. Mike DeWine in Ohio. It gives me hope that the fever will eventually burn itself out, maybe after a few well-earned defeats.

 

[lpetrich]

The 2022 Midterms and the American Nations: regional differences trump rural/urban divide most everywhere, with a couple of important exceptions – Nationhood Lab
By Colin Woodard, "American Nations" theorist. He proposes that the US and Canada are divided up into 11 cultural nations.

"In statewide races, Democrats often lost urban counties in “red” regional cultures and won the rural ones in “blue” regions."

The urban-rural divide is real.

To be sure, there’s a rural-urban divide in most every country. Rural economies and societies are built on the use of the land to create or extract resources, projects that often require long-term stability and predictability, generating a more conservative, risk-mitigating stance. Urban post-industrial ones thrive on innovation, reinvention, and adaptability. The latter tend to have more liberal politics in middle- and high-income countries, be it Hungary, Britain, Turkey, Mexico or Taiwan, though the differences often vanish in poorer nations and there are plenty of exceptions in rich ones (e.g., Japan.)

noting
Progressive Cities: Urban-rural polarisation of social values and economic development around the world

I’ve previously shown the enormous role of these regional cultures – “nations” if you will – over past elections, including 2011, 2012, 2013, 2016, 2018, and 2020 contests. The 2022 midterms exhibited the same regional patterning, with rural voters opting for Democrats in more socially communitarian regions, and urban ones for Republicans in legacy libertarian ones.

Like California having a Left Coast strip from north of Los Angeles to the northern border, and El Norte southern End, and a Far West interior. Oregon and Washington also have a Left Coast strip with a Far West interior, and that is evident from some easterners wanting to secede and to either have their own state or else to join Idaho.

The cultural nations' political leanings combine with density-associated political leanings.

In Pennsylvania,

In the hotly-contested Senate race between Democrat John Fetterman and Republican Mehmet Oz, Fetterman prevailed statewide by five points. He won the Midlands by 10.4, but he lost Yankeedom by 9.7 and Greater Appalachia by 28! He lost Greater Appalachia’s urban counties by 22.6. In the Midlands there was a rural/urban split – Oz won rural counties by 25.2 and Fetterman won urban ones by 14.2 – just as seen in the 2016 and 2020 presidential contests. (Why this is consistently occurring in the Midlands – and only the Midlands – is a question I’d like to find answers to.)

Pennsylvania’s gubernatorial race provided a side-by-side taste test for how people feel about a conventional, Trump-compliant Republican like Oz compared with a conspiracy-mongering Christian nationalist election denier who helped bus insurrectionists to the Capitol on Jan. 6th, Republican gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano. Statewide, a slice of Oz voters switched to Democrat Josh Shapiro elsewhere on their ballot, causing Mastriano to underperform Oz by nearly 15 points. How did people react on a regional basis? About the same, as it turns out: Mastriano lagged Oz by 9 to 11 percent in each.

Rural voters in all three regions actually preferred the radical right Mastriano to the less extreme Oz. In rural Greater Appalachia and the Midlands Mastriano outperformed Oz by about ten points, and in Yankeedom by 6. By contrast, Mastriano underperformed by 10 to 12 percent in urban counties in all three regions.

So some voters liked DM but not MO, and vice versa.

Colin Woodard then proposed an urban-rural split in the Republican Party. The more urban members prefer more ordinary or traditional sorts of Republicans, like Mehmet Oz, Kevin McCarthy, and Mike Lee. The more rural ones prefer more Trumpie MAGA ethnonationalists like Doug Mastriano, Donald Trump, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Lauren Boebert.

The more traditional sorts of R's seem willing to go along with the more Trumpie ones, however, like Kevin McCarthy supporting MTG and giving her anti-Kevin friends what they want, friends like Matt Gaetz and LB.

 

[lpetrich]

This is about some of Trump's online supporters: right-wing podcasters.

Audible reckoning: How top political podcasters spread unsubstantiated and false claims

In February 2021, Texas Senator Ted Cruz and his co-host Michael Knowles, a Daily Wire commentator, recorded a live episode of the Verdict With Ted Cruz podcast.1 In conversation about his former Senate race opponent Beto O’Rourke, the Texas Republican described his rival’s support base as primarily reporters who act like “groupies at a Rolling Stones concert throwing their underwear.” Offhandedly, he added, “If they wore underwear, yes.” With a smirk, he leaned into the microphone and asked Knowles, “Too edgy?” Knowles replied, “It’s a podcast: you can say whatever you want!”

...
Due in large part to the say-whatever-you-want perceptions of the medium, podcasting offers a critical avenue through which unsubstantiated and false claims proliferate.

The researchers found:

• The spread of unsubstantiated and false claims across the popular political podcasting ecosystem was common.
• Unsubstantiated and false claims tied to the 2020 US presidential election spiked dramatically after the election and did not abate in the following months, despite multiple failed legal challenges.
• During the first two years of the coronavirus pandemic, unsubstantiated and false claims circulated widely, but they tended to be more nuanced and less partisan than election-related claims.
• 10 prominent podcasters were responsible for sharing the majority of false and misleading content.

Then how they did their research, with the help of Snopes and PolitiFact. Both debunking sites carefully list the claims that they debunk, something very helpful.

 

[lpetrich]

"Podcasting as a primary vector for spreading unsubstantiated and false claims"

On July 2, 2021, conservative podcaster Michael Savage, whose radio show in the mid-2000s drew up to 8.25 million listeners a week, reflected on the presidency of Donald Trump using a blend of conspiracy tropes and fiery rhetoric. As a “lapsed Jew,” he was disappointed by the recent rise of “antisemitic conspiracy theories,” such as a narrative that impeachment represented a “Jew coup.” Referring to the impeachment as an attempt to “crucify Trump without any evidence,” he rejected the characterization of the supposed coup attempt as wholly led by Jews. Instead, he noted how many of the politicians pursuing Trump, “like [Adam] Schiff [and Jerry] Nadler,” were not representative of the Jewish perspective. And he asked his listeners to remember that the so-called mastermind behind this supposed plot was former House speaker Nancy Pelosi who, in Savage’s view, was “using Jewish people to do her dirty work.”

Then saying

Savage’s rhetoric represents a potent example of the type of unsubstantiated and misleading claims that spread across political podcasting, which often build on the past tactics of leading talk radio hosts (many of whom have since become prominent podcasters).

The analysis results:

Drawing on data from 36,603 episodes produced by 79 prominent political podcasters, 17,061 evaluations, and 184 key terms and phrases, this research documented the spread of unsubstantiated or false claims across the political podcasting ecosystem. The analysis found that:

• One out of every 20 episodes (1,863 episodes) in the dataset shared at least one unsubstantiated or false claim.
• More than 70% of all the podcasters (56 series) in the sample shared at least one unsubstantiated or false claim; 15% (12 series) shared 50 or more such claims.
• Even after accounting for the potential partisan skew of fact checkers (detailed below), conservative podcasters were 11 times more likely than liberal podcasters to share claims fact-checked as false or unsubstantiated.

To anyone discomfited by that result, I quote right-wing hero Ben Shapiro: "Facts don't care about your feelings."

Inside the Macedonian Fake-News Complex | WIRED
These fake newsies concentrated on Donald Trump supporters, because they were very gullible, as one of of them discovered:

For a week in July, he experimented with fake news extolling Bernie Sanders. “Bernie Sanders supporters are among the smartest people I’ve seen,” he says. “They don’t believe anything. The post must have proof for them to believe it.”

 

[lpetrich]

"Strikingly, nearly 2,000 episodes in the dataset, more than one out of every 20 episodes, shared at least one piece of false or unsubstantiated content."

"Of the series that shared five or more unsubstantiated or false claims, nearly all had hosts who were ideologically conservative."

"Notably, the perceived or real possibility of partisan bias by fact checkers does not explain differences in why conservative podcasters shared false and unsubstantiated claims more often than liberal hosts did."

Steve Bannon's podcast War ROom:

Bannon’s War Room, which produced both a high number of episodes and shared the most unsubstantiated or false claims in the dataset, topped the list, with close to 20% of all episodes assessed during this period including claims that Snopes and Politifact fact-checkers or the terms dictionary flagged as false or unsubstantiated. Seven other shows featured false or unsubstantiated claims in more than 10% of all episodes.

"Notably, the perceived or real possibility of partisan bias by fact checkers does not explain differences in why conservative podcasters shared false and unsubstantiated claims more often than liberal hosts did."

"These claims cut across the political spectrum but were skewed toward statements made by conservative public figures: conservative figures accounted for 928 fact-checked statements and liberal figures accounted for 254."

As sizable as this partisan disparity is, the right side of figure 6 shows podcast hosts endorsed or uncritically shared 42 times as many false statements made by conservative figures (a count of nearly 700 versus merely 16). Given the four-to-one partisan disparity in fact-checked statements, podcasters could in theory have shared four times as many false statements made by conservative figures due to this imbalance. Despite accounting for this disparity (by, for instance, multiplying 16—the number of false claims shared across podcasts that were made by liberal figures—times 4—to factor in the four-to-one difference in fact-checked claims of conservative and liberal figures), podcast hosts were still 11 times more likely to share claims by conservative figures fact-checked as false than such claims by liberal figures. And podcasts with conservative hosts shared the vast majority of these statements.

So a partisan discrepancy would have to be extremely large to counter the raw numbers.

 

[lpetrich]

Given that by some counts Trump made more than 30,000 false or misleading claims during his presidency, it is perhaps unsurprising that podcast hosts were more likely to both refute and share claims made by the former president that were fact-checked as false (see figure 8). Podcasters also commonly refuted false claims made by President Joe Biden, though they were not among the top ten most shared.

"Prominent political podcasters played a key role in spreading the ‘Big Lie’" that Trump did not lose the 2020 Presidential election.

In an episode that aired on January 6, 2021, titled “For the Republic,” former Trump administration chief strategist Steve Bannon encouraged his audience to keep the faith: “We’re coming in right over target . . . This is the point of attack we always wanted . . . today is the day we can affirm the massive landslide on November 3.”

In hindsight, Bannon’s podcast episode offers a chilling example of the types of unsubstantiated and false claims spread by prominent political podcasters after the 2020 election. After voters cast their ballots, podcast hosts and guests regularly promoted the lie that the election had been stolen from Trump, relying on debunked evidence, hearsay, and blatant conspiracy tropes to bolster their claims. Following the attack on the Capitol, social media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter faced more scrutiny for their contributions to spreading these narratives. At the time, podcasts barely registered as a concern.

The results of the researchers' analysis:

• One out of every seven episodes endorsed unsubstantiated or false election claims, with most of these instances coming from more conservative series that were among the most popular at the time.
  • For the most popular series at the time, election fraud claims featured in 27% of all episodes, as compared to 5% of episodes for shows that featured in the “you might also like” section or only were listed on Apple Podcasts’ top 100 list in April 2021.
• After the election, claims of election fraud rose by 600%, from 3% of all episodes between August 20 and November 2, 2020, to more than 28% of all episodes between November 3, 2020, and January 6, 2021.
  • For shows in the Apple Podcasts’ top 100 at the time, this number reached over 50% of all episodes in the period after the election.
• A total of 29 of 79 (37%) different shows shared at least one false or misleading election narrative, with nine shows sharing 25 or more claims or devoting more than 50% of their post-election episodes to election fraud.

These findings suggest that, prior to the January 6 attack, political podcasters – particularly the most popular ones at the time – served as a critical and underappreciated vector for the spread of unsubstantiated and false claims tied to the election.

Furthermore, "As figure 10 reveals, there was a massive post-election increase in podcast episodes that endorsed unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud and related narratives, with 88% of all claims about election fraud occurring after the 2020 election."

Strikingly, the post-election spike in misleading electoral claims also proved to be remarkably durable. After the Electoral College’s “safe-harbor” deadline on December 8, 2020 – when states are supposed to have finished resolving election-related disputes – and countless failed court cases, including a case rejected by the Supreme Court on December 11, observers might expect a dramatic decline in fraud-related claims across the podcasting ecosystem. Although the data registers a modest decline around the holidays, in the week prior to the Capitol assault, around five episodes per day endorsed election fraud narratives, despite these substantial legal defeats.

So it was not hard to recruit a lot of people for Trump's rally on 2021 Jan 6, people who were often willing to travel across much of the country. They heard over and over and over that the election was stolen from Trump, and here was their chance to do something about that.

 

[lpetrich]

As figure 11 illustrates, much of the content tied to election fraud was driven by a few shows that aired many episodes and frequently shared misleading narratives tied to election integrity. Although 29 podcast series shared at least one unsubstantiated or false election-related claim, nine series shared either 25 or more claims or devoted more than 50% of their post-election episodes to election fraud. Of note is Bannon’s War Room. In keeping with his Trump-era media strategy of “flooding the zone” with inflammatory information, Bannon not only devoted more than 130 episodes to promoting election fraud narratives but also did so on nearly 80% of all episodes recorded during this period.

A number of these podcasters devoted significant attention to making election fraud claims seem credible by pointing out the legal consequences of signing a false affidavit, and they highlighted the careers of Trump’s lawyers, including Rudy Giuliani (who “took down the Mafia in New York City”) and Sidney Powell (who “worked for Michael Flynn”) as a signal of their prestige. They also regularly shared some of the most implausible election fraud claims, including those that linked deceased Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez to election fraud and blamed Biden’s victory in Arizona on the distribution of Sharpie pens.

 

[lpetrich]

Then discussing "How podcasters spread unsubstantiated or false claims during the COVID-19 pandemic" - something that Donald Trump himself did some of

"A focus on unproven treatments" - like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin

"The series Bannon's War Room was responsible for nearly 70% all conspiracy claims and more than a quarter of all false or unsubstantiated COVID-claims"

"In podcasting and elsewhere, a widespread reliance on preprints as evidence was one of the most pervasive trends of the pandemic. Recent research found a huge spike in the sharing of preprinted journal articles in the early stages of the pandemic, with the largest increase in preprint shares on social media coming from conservative users."

Even though preprints cannot be called well-supported. One preprint-archive site, medRxiv, has a disclaimer: “Preprints . . . should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.”

The researchers ended wtih "Policy recommendations for the podcasting medium"