The ongoing conflict within the MassGOP between Trumpist wingnuts and politically rational conservatives is as crazy and counter-productive as virtually every political analyst has indicated. It is, indeed, absurd for state Republicans to oppose Charlie Baker’s brand of conservatism. What it is not, however, is surprising or unexplainable. The most interesting thing about anti-Baker wingnuttery…
Category: media
Twitter’s Suggestions: Evidence of Right Wing Social Media Superiority
Last summer I read an interview with Sociologist Jen Schradie about her book, The Revolution That Wasn’t. Schradie’s surprising thesis was that conservatives, not progressives, have become the dominant political activists on the internet. With far greater financial resources and a base much more focused on political power than policy specifics, conservative activists have been…
Will “Big Data” Revive the Divisive Primary Hypothesis?
Julia Azari is one of my favorite political scientists. I’m a big fan of both her work and her very entertaining Facebook posts. Nonetheless, I am not nearly as confident as she is that the crowded Democratic primary field shouldn’t worry Democrats. In her recent FiveThirtyEight.com piece Azari writes, quite correctly, that “there’s no consensus…
“A Tale of Two Bills” or “Wingnut Trolling is a Bitch to Tackle”
Thanks to my Facebook friends I was alerted to two bills filed in the state legislature that have drawn some very counter-productive attention. The first one is a bill that would make verbally assaulting someone using the term “bitch” a finable offense in Massachusetts. The second would ban organized tackle football for children not yet…
Senator Warren’s Linguistic Stand Deserves Thoughtful Attention
Is it dishonest to refuse to tell a murderer where his next intended victim is hiding and instead to explain how we can reduce murder rates? If someone did reveal such information to a murderer, would Senator Warren’s critics applaud them for “at least being honest about their plan?” The effort to discredit Elizabeth Warren’s…
CommonWealthMagazine Answers Reader Questions
Last week I posed a Reader Question to CommonwealthMagazine and lo and behold, CW answered the question. I wondered if online polls (CW had a story on one) are reliable. And the answer, according to CW’s Steve Koczela and Rich Parr, is yes. I recommend Koczela and Parr’s Polling, like everything else, is moving online…