Paul Rosenberg

@paulrosenberg

Words. At Salon: & Random Lengths News: Election take:

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Paul Rosenberg@paulrosenberg· 21d

Republicans chose preimer "constitutional sheriff" Mark Lamb, with sex scandals, abuse of power & racism. A dream MAGA candidate, as it were.

US House District 5 Republican
99% precincts reporting
Lamb, Mark 43,377 votes, 58.4%
Keenan, Daniels 30,837, 41.6%

Paul Rosenberg@paulrosenberg· 26d

that's all true, but it's also a downstream effect of what's driving declining trust & that's socio-political disintegration, as described by structural demographic theory. here's a table of SDT variables & proxies from Peter Turchin's "Ages of Discord." All but 1 turn negative circa 1970:

Table of SDT variables (wellbeing, economic inequality, social cooperation, etc) & proxies (marriage age, top 1% wealth share, real minimum wage, etc) showing all but 1 reversed from improving to deterirating circa 1970 (+/- 10 years)

Paul Rosenberg@paulrosenberg· Jul 12

My response was that falling birthrates are a problem for countries across the globe, but NOT for the US until Trump came along, BECAUSE OF IMMIGRATION. Notably missing from the op-ed, this tweet, etc: Any acknowledgement of this obvious fact.

So far the Bluesky response to my NYT op Ed has been:
1) Lyman has bad tweets
2) cancel Lyman
3) it's good birth rates are falling
4) nobody should have kids
Notably missing as a response:
Any evidence my thesis is wrong.

Paul Rosenberg@paulrosenberg· Jun 27

For generations conservatives were obsessed with high teen birthrates, blaming liberals for them. But better birth control & more feminist norms have cut teen births to 1/4 what the were in 1991 & 1/7 what they were in the 1957. So NATURALLY conservatives now want to go back to the "good old daze"!

Teen Birth Rate 1940-2023 shows dramatic decreases in birth rates for teens 18-19, 15-19 & 15-17, from peaks in 1950s & lesser peak in early 90.

Paul Rosenberg@paulrosenberg· Jun 22

Just like Donald Trump reminds me of Roy Cohn, Donald Trump reminds me of Joe McCarthy.

Trump: Just like James Talarico reminds me of Alfred E.
Neuman, Jon Osoff reminds me of Pee-wee Herman!

Paul Rosenberg@paulrosenberg· Jun 19

tbh, Barney Gumble could've told Trump that!

Simpsons' character Barney Gumble holding a beer mug.

Paul Rosenberg@paulrosenberg· Jun 7

Raman was fighting an uphill battle vs 2 candidates & moderators who framed the debate in line with Platt's campaign narrative. Raman's a leader in LA's historic charter reform effort, which was excluded from the debate, which I wrote about here: www.randomlengthsnews.com/archives/202...

For the first time in a quarter century, Los Angeles is engaged in charter reform, revising basic aspects of how city government functions to increase accountability, effectiveness, and public trust, expand the city council for the first time in a century, and double funding for city parks. But you’d never know that a major overhaul of city government was being worked on, for voters to consider in November, if you watched the televised mayor’s debate on May 6.
Instead, it was selectively framed in terms of a few headline problems, in a manner favoring sound bites and simplistic solutions that fail to come to grips with underlying causes and limitations.
In an echo of national politics, that framing favored the least qualified candidate by far, Republican reality TV star, Spencer Pratt, distracting from what could have been a highly productive debate between the incumbent, Mayor Karen Bass, and City Councilwoman Nithya Raman — previously a city planner — who was recently called “the tip of the spear in the struggle” for charter reform by the City Council President, Marqueece Harris-Dawson.

Paul Rosenberg@paulrosenberg· May 25

Google Ngram:

Paul Rosenberg@paulrosenberg· May 23

Reality. A liberal bias since pre-Socratic Greece! archive.org/details/libe...

Cover of "The Liberal Temper In Greek Politics"

Paul Rosenberg@paulrosenberg· May 21

Always has. archive.org/details/libe...

Paul Rosenberg@paulrosenberg· May 20

HS civics: (1) Congress has the power of the purse. (2) Appropriations start in the House. (3) There's a new House every 2 years. & Beyond (from Congress itself): Funding period "must be expressly provided in the bill text" www.congress.gov/crs-product/...

Congress provides budget authority in appropriations bills to be available over any of three periods: one fiscal year (one-year funds), multiple fiscal years (multi-year funds), or indefinitely (no-year funds).

One-year (or annual) funds represent budget authority available for obligation through the end of one specified fiscal year;
Multi-year funds represent budget authority available for obligation for a definite period spanning more than one fiscal year; and
No-year (or "X-year") funds represent budget authority available for obligation indefinitely until expended, regardless of fiscal year.
Appropriations law specifies that funding provided in appropriations bills is available for one fiscal year unless specified otherwise. This means that multi-year and no-year availability must be expressly provided in the bill text for a given appropriations account.

Paul Rosenberg@paulrosenberg· May 17

Admittedly cross-pressured here.

Promo poster from 1992 Aussie classic "Strictly Ballroom"

Paul Rosenberg@paulrosenberg· May 16

Heckuva job, Trumpy!

Chart showing world opinion of US, China & Russia 2022-2026. US approval drops precipitously 2024-2025 & drops more in 2026 to below Russia.

Paul Rosenberg@paulrosenberg· May 16

1950s origin of The Woke Mind Virus detected!

Black & white photo of boy & girl drinking with straws from a common unseen glass (presumably)

Paul Rosenberg@paulrosenberg· May 12

A vastly under-appreciated book that sheds some light on this is "Democracy Heading South: National Politics in the Shadow of Dixie" by Augustus B. Cochran III. Today's charismatic "outsiders" echo "populist" figures from Dixie's past as part of the pattern here. kansaspress.ku.edu/9780700610891/

In this provocative book, Cochran links regional to national politics to show how our political institutions have come to resemble those of the old Solid South. The regional politics of that earlier era, he reminds us, offered little real political choice, was dominated by one-party politics, answered to well-heeled special interests, stoutly resisted federal power, ignored the region’s festering racism, and promoted demagoguery and personality over substance and true accountability. For Cochran, the sense of deja vu is overwhelming—and alarming.

Paul Rosenberg@paulrosenberg· May 10

Off the rack.

Paul Rosenberg@paulrosenberg· May 10

Trump's in 15th place, but sure! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_...

Year Winner (nationally) Votes Percent
1932 Franklin D. Roosevelt 760348 88.06
1936 Franklin D. Roosevelt 734485 87.08
1940 Franklin D. Roosevelt 909974 80.92
1916 Woodrow Wilson 286514 76.92
1912 Woodrow Wilson 221589 72.62
1944 Franklin D. Roosevelt 821605 71.42
1884 Grover Cleveland 225309 69.26
1972 Richard Nixon 2298896 66.2
1948 Harry S. Truman 824235 65.96
1984 Ronald Reagan 3433428 63.61
1964 Lyndon B. Johnson 1663185 63.32
2004[6] George W. Bush 4526917 61.09
2000[7] George W. Bush[b] 3799639 59.3
1892 Grover Cleveland 239148 56.65
2024[1] Donald Trump 6393597 56.14

Paul Rosenberg@paulrosenberg· May 4

If you read @nikobowie.bsky.social in the NYT, you'll see that failure to go big enough in reforms was the mistake that allowed Jim Crow to be established instead of multi-racial democracy. Court expansion would be a similar mistake now. We can't afford to repeat it. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/02/o...

But Congress — distracted by postwar problems and a fiendish president, Andrew Johnson — did not take up the more enduring court reform proposals that were then before it. In the 1870s, the court re-emerged to finish what it had started. Seizing for itself the power to decide the meaning of the amendments Congress had just drafted, the court announced that it was not “appropriate” for Congress to ban lynching, racial discrimination by businesses or widespread disenfranchisement. A century-long era of Jim Crow emerged.

Paul Rosenberg@paulrosenberg· May 3

The AP report just issued certainly supports this. Trump lawlessness is empowered by SCOTUS. Their supplementary take-away ends with a Sotomayor quote on this very point: apnews.com/article/trum...

“This is not the first time the Court closes its eyes to noncompliance, nor, I fear, will it be the last,” Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in June in a dissent joined by the court’s two other liberal justices. “Yet each time this Court rewards noncompliance with discretionary relief, it further erodes respect for courts and for the rule of law.”

Paul Rosenberg@paulrosenberg· May 3

Steve's a smart, learned & very hardworking fellow, but this argument is LUDICROUS. AP just ran a report on the lawlessness of the Trump admin & one of its takeaways was that SCOTUS was helping him undermine the rule of! Sotomayor calls it out! apnews.com/article/trum...

Higher courts often sided with the White House
In 15 of the 31 lawsuits the AP reviewed, an appellate court or the Supreme Court either allowed the administration’s underlying policy, limited the district court’s efforts to correct or punish the noncompliance, or both.
Those decisions show lower court judges are overreaching, said Will Chamberlain, senior counsel with the conservative legal advocacy group The Article III Project.
Trump officials are “generally complying, appealing and winning,” he said. “If they were defying orders left and right, they’d be losing them.”
Critics say the higher courts are excusing noncompliance.
“This is not the first time the Court closes its eyes to noncompliance, nor, I fear, will it be the last,” Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in June in a dissent joined by the court’s two other liberal justices. “Yet each time this Court rewards noncompliance with discretionary relief, it further erodes respect for courts and for the rule of law.”

Paul Rosenberg@paulrosenberg· May 2

This chart reflects 3 things that the book describes: (1) the New Deal gave Democrats a healthy majority in the nation’s most rural districts, as a direct result of its policies (2) which the rise of neoliberalism destroyed, (3) but that a determined party-building effort temporarily reversed. /2

Chart: Shows Dem/Rep shares of House seats by quintile of rurality in 1992, 1994, 2008 & 2010 elections. Dems go from solid 53-33 dominance to 39-49 modest disadvantage, 45-40 slight advantage, then 15-74 wipeout.

Paul Rosenberg@paulrosenberg· May 1

Absolutely NOT! GOP power is based on minority rule & the rural/urban divide is a key driver. It flows thru multiple channels, in the Senate since 1980 GOP majorities avg 48% pop representation vs 59% for Dems, per this passage from my recent discussion of "Rural vs Urban" by @smettler.bsky.social

While a single chart captures what’s happened in the House, the full impact flows through multiple channels where matters are more opaque, and analysis requires more nuance. In the Senate, for example, citizens in small population states wield disproportionate power—41 times as much for South Dakotans vs Californians, but some small-population states like Delaware and Rhode Island are largely urban. Still population size and rurality “are fairly well correlated” and “most states tend to be more rural than the United States at large”—32 of them as of 2020. “As a result… rural people have been over-represented in more than half of all states over the last four decades,” (p. 158) despite the ongoing growth of the nation’s urban population.
Looking at the Senate from 1980 to 2024, the picture is clear. Democratic senators have always represented more people per senator, but the gap has more than doubled from 400,000 (2.5 vs 2.1 million) in 1980 to 1.1 million by 2024 (3.8 to 2.9 million). Over this time, Republicans controlled the Senate twelve times, but only twice did they represent a majority of the nation—“and by very slim margins,” Mettler notes. On average, Republican held 53 seats representing 48% of the population when they were in control, while Democrats held 54 seats representing 59% of the population.

Paul Rosenberg@paulrosenberg· Apr 30

Like ONE Dem endorsed ONE of the last 4 of them.

Chart of SCOTUS confirmations since 1981, with % of country represented & partisan breakdown of senators voting to confirm.

Paul Rosenberg@paulrosenberg· Apr 30

It's not so much newly ascendent racism as it is partisan hostility creating a permission structure for expressing such attitudes. This chart shows modest differences in urban/rural views. Doesn't include race, but immigration a good proxy. 1/2

Figure showing rural & urban non-hispanic whites' views on gun control, abortion, gay marriage, environment, immigration, with only single-digit differences, except for gay marriage.

Paul Rosenberg@paulrosenberg· Apr 30

The point is to create a new equilibrium by advancing under-developed democratic norms. The jury model is a powerful source for such norms. As background see "Democracy-Reinforcing Hardball: Can Breaking Democratic Norms Preserve Democratic Values?" 1/2 journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Abstract
The threat of democratic backsliding has prompted growing interest in “hardball,” the pursuit of legal and constitutional changes with the intended purpose of biasing outcomes in favor of one party over others. Such actions can be allowed under existing constitutional and legal rules, but are in tension with norms that these rules ought to be insulated from the contest for power. This paper provides a new definition of what I call democracy-reinforcing hardball, and a framework for thinking about when it might be successful. I show how the averting-backsliding literature’s injunction against hardball limits the feasibility of its suggested reforms. I categorize various hardball scenarios, highlighting conditions under which it might be democracy-reinforcing, and describe three cases in terms of this concept. I conclude by arguing that future research should study the conditions under which hardball might help stabilize a democratic political order over the long-term.

Paul Rosenberg@paulrosenberg· Apr 30

Of course they would. Which is why Dems have to pro-actively transform the battleground. They need to engage in "Democracy-Reinforcing Hardball" journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Paul Rosenberg@paulrosenberg· Apr 29

“As long as the divide persists, it will subject people on either side to one-party government... Most problematic, it permits minority rule through several mechanisms. Our most pressing need today, therefore, is to mitigate this divide, to restore democracy”: 27/x

“As long as the divide persists, it will subject people on either side to one-party government, with the lack of accountability that entails, and it fosters nasty and dangerous, us versus them-style politics for the nation as a whole. Most problematic, it permits minority rule through several mechanisms. Our most pressing need today, therefore, is to mitigate this divide, to restore democracy.”

Paul Rosenberg@paulrosenberg· Apr 29

“I think it is helpful to put the two books in dialogue,” Mettler said. “Many might conclude from Four Threats that what’s most needed now is institutional reform,” but, “I don’t think they are sufficient in such a highly polarized nation”: 25/x

“I think it is helpful to put the two books in dialogue,” Mettler told Liberal Currents. “Many might conclude from Four Threats that what’s most needed now is institutional reform, at least along the lines of those that followed Watergate—to give Congress a stronger voice, for example, relative to the presidency.” There’s certainly a strong desire for this—witness the “No Kings” movement. But, “While such reforms are warranted, I don’t think they are sufficient in such a highly polarized nation,” Mettler cautioned. “Until we can reduce polarization, our politics is going to be fraught, and any institutional reforms can be captured for partisan advantage rather than serving to restore the rule of law and separation of powers.”

Paul Rosenberg@paulrosenberg· Apr 29

“In terms of policy solutions, here again it will help to listen to rural voters,” Mettler said. This doesn’t mean ignoring the Democrats' more urban, more diverse base. As the New Deal showed, it’s possible to heed and tend to the needs of communities on both sides of the rural/urban divide. 21/x

“In terms of policy solutions, here again it will help to listen to rural voters,” Mettler told Liberal Currents. “Much of what rural Americans want is the same as what urban Americans want. For some issues, rural people may feel that policies need to be designed or delivered in ways that are attuned to the specific needs and characteristics of their communities and places they inhabit.”
This doesn’t mean ignoring the Democrats' more urban, more diverse base. As the New Deal showed, it’s possible to heed and tend to the needs of communities on both sides of the rural/urban divide.

Paul Rosenberg@paulrosenberg· Apr 29

Which is why it all comes back to party-building, particularly in rural counties. Rural party chairs in Georgia, like Frank Phillips, were key to electing two Democratic senators in 2020, securing a Senate majority & passing legislation with significant rural benefits: 18/x