Democratic National Research Articles

When conspiracy theorists win

ABSTRACT ‘Generalists’ hold that conspiracy theories, as a class, have epistemic defects. Well confirmed theories that invoke conspiracies, such as the theory that the Nixon administration conspired to orchestrate the break in at the Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate complex, on 17 June 1972, – the ‘Watergate theory’ – raise a problem for generalists as it’s hard to understand how such theories can have epistemic defects. The Watergate theory is often not considered a mere conspiracy theory, because it enjoys ‘official theory’ status and in folk usage that means it is not a conspiracy theory. However, most people concede that the Watergate theory was a conspiracy theory before obtaining official status. So, appealing to folk usage does not make the problem go away. Recently however, several generalist scholars including, Cassam, Mandik, Thalman and Butter, have argued that theories invoking conspiracies that enjoy official status were never conspiracy theories. I’ll consider their reasoning and show where they go wrong. I’ll work with the examples of the Watergate theory and the ‘false flag’ theory of the Mountain Meadows massacre of 1857, which has it that this massacre of over 100 people was led by white Utahn Mormons disguised as Native Americans.

Male twinning after the 2008 Obama election: A test of symbolic empowerment

On November 4, 2008, Barack Obama was elected the first Black President of the United States. His campaign and electoral win served as a symbol of hope for a more just future, fostering an “Obama effect” that appears associated with improved well-being among non-Hispanic (NH) Black communities. Situating the Obama election within the symbolic empowerment framework, we consider the potentially protective role of the Obama election on NH Black fetal death, an important but understudied measure of perinatal health that has stark racial disparities. Using restricted-use natality files from the National Center for Health Statistics, we proxy fetal death using the male twin rate (number of twins per 1000 male live births). Male twins have a relatively high risk of in utero selection that is sensitive to maternal and environmental stressors, making the twin rate an important marker of fetal death. We then estimate interrupted time-series models to assess the relation between the Obama election and male twin rates among NH Black births across monthly conception cohorts (February 2003–October 2008). Greater-than-expected male twin rates signal less susceptibility to fetal loss. Results indicate a 4.5% higher male twin rate among all NH Black cohorts exposed in utero to the Obama election, after accounting for historical and NH white trends (p < 0.005). The greater-than-expected rates concentrated among births conceived in the months preceding Obama's nomination at the Democratic National Convention and Obama's presidential win. These results suggest a salutary perinatal response to election events that likely reduced NH Black fetal loss. They also indicate the possibility that sociopolitical shifts can mitigate persisting NH Black-NH white disparities in perinatal health.

Federal Judges, States Legislators, and State Voting Rights Rollback

Abstract This article claims that recent Supreme Court decisions have allowed state lawmakers to suppress and skew but not subvert the vote. The Court relaxed federal oversight of state election administration in Shelby County v. Holder (2013), Abbott v. Perez (2018), and Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee (2021), and gerrymandering in Rucho v. Common Cause (2019), while prohibiting independent state legislative election regulation in Moore v. Harper (2023). These decisions guided state lawmakers toward vote suppression and skewing, and away from election subversion. Consequently, Republican state legislatures have passed state constitutional amendments and statutes limiting ballot access and reforming state redistricting practices. While some Democratic state legislatures have protected ballot access and independent redistricting, these recent Supreme Court decisions help Republicans win a disproportionate share of state legislative seats. National courts thus help preserve the national party coalition by opening subnational jurisdictions to party entrenchment.

Reconsidering the “Southern Veto”: The Two-Thirds Rule at Democratic National Conventions, 1832–1936

Reconsidering the “Southern Veto”: The Two-Thirds Rule at Democratic National Conventions, 1832–1936

THE USE OF MODALITY IN BIDEN’S DNC SPEECH 2020: AN INTERPERSONAL METAFUNCTION ANALYSIS

This study is aimed to describe and analyze the interpersonal meaning of Biden’s DNC speech in 2020. From the perspective of interpersonal meaning, the users of language establish and maintain their position in the social relationship. This study focuses on the analysis of the usage of modality and the value of modality in expressing interpersonal meaning. This study was conducted by using qualitative. The theory applied in this study is Interpersonal meaning from the Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) by M.A.K. Halliday and supported by other Systemic Functional Linguists’ theories. The results of this research showed that the high value of modality is applied in the texts in order to convince the listeners to vote for him, and to show status, power, relationship among them.&#x0D; Key words: interpersonal meaning, modality, SFL(Systemic Functional Linguistics), DNC (Democratic National Committee)

Molly Dewson, the women's division, and grassroots presidential campaigning during the New Deal

AbstractIn the 1930s, Molly Dewson built the Women's Division of the Democratic National Committee into a central cog of FDR's presidential campaigns. She leveraged her personal friendship with the Roosevelts to develop a connected, national network of women who became the foot soldiers of the Democratic Party. By designing structures that made women the eyes and ears of the New Deal at the local level, the tactics and organizations she established persisted after her retirement and were copied by Republicans. Dewson ushered in a 30‐year period when women were at the center of presidential campaigns

State Parties, the Democratic National Convention, and Civil Rights Liberalism

Abstract What explains variation in how committed postwar Democrats were to civil rights? I use evidence from state delegation behavior at national party conventions to assess this. I examine two types of issues: challenges to the credentials of all-white southern delegations and efforts to change the platform language on civil rights issues. While the latter is widely known, the former are more obscure but, I argue, important indicators of how strongly committed some state delegations were to civil rights. I use archival materials to trace the story of how these issues came onto the party committee’s agenda in the first place and then assess the correlates of state delegation voting behavior. In 1948, the strongest predictor of being willing to unseat the all-white Mississippi delegation was the increase in Black population percentage in a state. More states, however, were willing to strengthen the civil rights platform language, and here state population size was the strongest predictor. These results, though, obscure important variation, with a number of relatively smaller, whiter states in the upper Midwest playing a key role. Taken together, these findings elucidate variation in the civil rights preferences of non-southern Democrats, shed new light on debates about the civil rights realignment, and demonstrate the potential of using state delegation voting behavior as evidence.

Christian Socialist Kim Chang‐joon's Path to Liberation and the Reunification of Korea

This paper examines the life of Christian Socialist Kim Chang‐joon and explores the themes of independence, liberation, reunification, and peace between both Koreas. It divides Kim's life into four stages: his participation in the March First Movement, his involvement in Christian socialism, his practice of social thought in Manchuria, and his activities toward reunifying the two Koreas after liberation from Japanese colonial rule. In the first phase, Kim became an active nationalist. His national consciousness developed into Christian socialism through his pastoral work. When he experienced Japanese colonial oppression while working with this ministry, he abandoned religious life and focused on socio‐political activism in Manchuria. He founded the Christian Democratic Alliance and participated in the Democratic National Front to reunite the two Koreas after liberation. This article demonstrates how Kim set an example for how churches and Christians can strive for and attain liberation, reunification, and peace in the Korean context.

Harry S. Truman: An Ordinary Man, His Extraordinary Journey. Harry S. Truman Library &amp; Museum, Independence, MO

<i>Harry S. Truman: An Ordinary Man, His Extraordinary Journey</i>. Harry S. Truman Library &amp; Museum, Independence, MO

Walk with Me: A Biography of Fannie Lou Hamer by Kate Clifford Larson

Reviewed by: Walk with Me: A Biography of Fannie Lou Hamer by Kate Clifford Larson Leigh Ann Wheeler Walk with Me: A Biography of Fannie Lou Hamer. By Kate Clifford Larson. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021. Pp. viii, 322. $27.95, ISBN 978-0-19-009684-7.) More than forty years after it ended, Fannie Lou Hamer’s remarkable life is being rediscovered by scholars and filmmakers. Kate Clifford Larson’s Walk with Me: A Biography of Fannie Lou Hamer joins this wave of recent biographical attention to the inimitable civil rights leader, songstress, and maker of what fellow activist John Lewis called “good trouble.” The book [End Page 185] opens with Hamer’s inauspicious beginnings as the twentieth child of tenant farmers in order to highlight the unlikelihood of her later rise to local and national prominence. But even as Larson chronicles Hamer’s improbable trajectory, she emphasizes Hamer’s ordinariness as one of countless women whose grassroots organizing and everyday leadership made the civil rights movement in Mississippi. Hamer’s mother, Ella Townsend, set an example for her daughter that prioritized faith in God, pride and self-respect, storytelling and education, and protection of her family—by gun if necessary. But like so many Black children in the rural South, Hamer came up poor and left elementary school for field work. And like so many Black women in the rural South, Hamer found that she had been sterilized without her consent after seeking gyneco-logical care. It was to this experience—her “Mississippi appendectomy”—that Larson traces Hamer’s enraged political awakening, which Hamer enacted first through working with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, in the 1950s, and later with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Council of Federated Organizations (p. 48). Threats of violence, acts of actual violence, and injuries resulting from violence shadowed the rest of Hamer’s life. The brutal beatings she endured after being arrested for attempting to integrate a segregated bus depot in Winona, Mississippi, left her emotionally scarred and physically maimed but more determined than ever. Over and over again, she told her story, sharing excruciating details with the world when she testified on behalf of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in 1964. Larson skillfully explains the complex political maneuverings that under-cut the MFDP in 1964 but shows how early failure laid a foundation for greater success in 1968, ultimately feeding into a major party realignment that she alternately celebrates and laments. Even as the Democratic Party transformed from a “status-quo-oriented political machine into a multiracial and progressive voter movement”—a development that led to the election of a Black president and vice president in the twenty-first century—the Republican Party adopted a surprisingly durable “southern strategy” rooted in white fear of civil rights and Black voters that continues to shape conservative politics today (pp. 4, 223). Feminism and concerns about gender as it intersected with race also inspired Hamer’s activism. Aware that Black men faced greater and more certain violence, Hamer and other Black women often assumed positions of leadership in order to protect their men. Hamer also argued for gender equality at the DNC and extended that effort by joining with other women’s rights advocates to found the National Women’s Political Caucus in 1971. Hamer did not embrace all aspects of the day’s feminist agenda, however, and she made no secret of her opposition to birth control and abortion. Larson’s is not simply a cradle-to-grave treatment of Hamer’s life; it situates Hamer’s story in context, providing the reader with a rich understanding of relevant local and national events—including the impact of New Deal policies on Black tenant farmers in Mississippi and the effects of World War II [End Page 186] service on returning veterans—as well as events more directly related to civil rights. Walk with Me concludes on notes of despair but also hope. Hamer “waged a battle that cost her almost everything,” Larson admits, including “her health and personal relationships” (p. 4). On the upside, Hamer’s life shows us that...

Attitude Analysis of Michelle Obama’s Speech on the Opening Day of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia in 2016

This study aims to analyze Michelle Obama&amp;rsquo;s speech on the opening day of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia in 2016 using the appraisal system. The data were obtained from the internet using the document method. Qualitative and descriptive approaches were undertaken to achieve the desired objectives. The results show that Michelle applied all the positive judgment tools in her speech to show a positive attitude toward Hillary (i.e., 22% normality, 50% capacity, 9% tenacity, 7% veracity, and 10% propriety). Conversely, Michelle applied negative judgments in her speech (i.e., 12% normality, 12% capacity, and 75% propriety); thus, Michelle did not apply tenacity and veracity while implicitly referring to Donald Trump. Michelle demonstrates that she is a skilled public speaker who can articulate her point of view clearly and persuasively. Her words reveal her thoughts and feelings about the future of her country and the upcoming presidential election. In future studies, other discourse semantic systems should be considered to analyze Michelle Obama&amp;rsquo;s speeches.

Lietuviškų organizacijų ir partijų Rusijoje 1917–1918 m. politinės veiklos reikšmę atskleidžiantys dokumentai LMA Vrublevskių bibliotekoje / Documents from the Holdings of the Wroblewski Library Reveal the Significance of Political Activity of Lithuanian Organizations and Parties in Russia (1917–1918)

After the start of the February Revolution, Lithuanian refugees, exiles, and soldiers in Russia developed a wide spectrum of organizations and political parties ranging from the extreme left to conservative Christian democracy. Despite major ideological disagreements, the Petrograd Seimas succeeded in adopting a resolution proposed by the right wing, which advocated a neutral and independent Lithuanian state. The Lithuanian community in Russia contributed to the creation of a new, independent, Lithuanian state by coordinating activities, forming new political structures, and cooperating with other nations, and became even more involved in this work after returning. Documents kept in the Wroblewski Library reveal the dynamics of the political activities of Lithuanians in Russia in 1917-1918. The Lithuanian Society for Aid to War Victims was involved in relief efforts, education, and mobilization of war refugees and exiles towards national activism and state-building. These activities are reflected in the documents kept in Collection F70 of the Manuscript Department which still has a Soviet-age disguise name of Societies of the Vilnius Region and other Lithuanian Societies, since the Lithuanian Society for Aid to War Victims continued operating in the Vilnius region in the interwar period under the name of Vilnius Lithuanian Charity Society. Numerous documents from the period of the Russian revolution are kept in the personal archives of the founder of the Santara party, Petras Leonas, (F117) and the Social Democrats Vladas Požela (F237) and Česlovas Petraškevičius (F238). Individual documents from that periods are dispersed across numerous personal collections, as well as collections of various societies and parties from the holdings of the Manuscripts Department of the Wroblewski Library. Keywords: February Revolution; Lithuanian Society for Aid to War Victims; Lithuanian Care to Provide Assistance to Our Captive Lithuanian Brothers from Prussian Lithuania; “Grūdas” (“The Grain”); Ateitininkai; Aušrininkai; civic activists; Lithuanian Christian Democrat Party; Party of National Progress; Democratic National Freedom League (Santara party); Lithuanian Popular Socialist Democratic Party; Social Democratic Party of Lithuania; Bolsheviks (communists); Council of the Lithuanian Nation; Petrograd Seimas; Supreme Council of Lithuanians in Russia.

Galvanizing Grief: Black Maternal Politics, Respectability, and the Pursuit of Elected Office

ABSTRACT In the aftermath of public outcry of multiple high-profile killings of Black teens at the hands of police or under the auspices of stand-your-ground laws, several bereaved mothers became symbols of resistance to white supremacist policing and surveillance. Known as the “Mothers of the Movement,” this paper traces three of these women (Sybrina Fulton, Lucy McBath, and Lezley McSpadden) from the national stage at the Democratic National Convention in 2016 to the transition to candidates themselves. Their engagement in maternal politics is part of a long lineage of Black maternal activists that have sought justice for their fallen children through public advocacy. While McSpadden, Fulton, and McBath all lobby against white supremacist violence, they are most politically successful when they make their case from a rhetoric that affirms a respectability politics that measures the value of Black citizens in their ability to comport themselves within middle-class cultural standards.

White masculinity in the “New Cold War”: reading Rocky IV and White Nights as multidirectional memories

ABSTRACT Studies of films of the 1980s have noted a tendency towards “ideological conglomeration”—the presence of multiple contradictory ideological registers. This article argues that 80s films’ “ideological conglomeration” is made legible and coherent through Michael Rothberg’s (2009, Multidirectional memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the age of decolonization. Stanford University Press) concept of multidirectional memory. It thus proceeds to apply a theoretical framework of multidirectional memory to the analysis of two “New Cold War” films—Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky IV (1985) and Taylor Hackford’s White Nights (1985). Reading Rocky IV through a lens of multidirectional memory allows us to perceive links between the “New Cold War,” U.S. racializing logics, and the racializing schemas of the Nazi regime. In White Nights an analytic of multidirectional memory foregrounds the connections between Little Rock, Arkansas, the 1968 Democratic National Convention, and the displacement of the associated discourses of state brutality, racism, and accountability onto the Soviet Union. The article concludes that multidirectional memory offers a generative theoretical framework for the study of the cinema of the “New Cold War” that illuminates how films link U.S. Cold War and racial logics to secure the hegemony of white masculinity.

해방 이후 교육이념 정립 과정에서 민주주의와 민족주의의 관계

Several objections were raised during the National Assembly discussion before the ‘humanitarianism’ was adopted as the Korean educational ideology. There were concerns that it could limit the values of democracy and liberalism and become a fascist logic, but there was generally a consensus that the universal (Western) value of ‘democracy’ should be transformed (ethnic) according to our situation. Therefore, the ‘democratic national education theory’ could be proposed by Ahn Ho-sang, the first Minister of Education. Ahn Ho-sang argued that he avoided both the exclusivity of nationalism and the visa nature of democracy and combined it into “democratic national education.” However, it was fascistic in that it filled the empty space with the people and the state by denying most of the existing political ideologies.BR Through the presentations of the Democratic National Education Research Conference held in March 1949 and a book called Democratic National Education Theory, we could get a glimpse of how education officials and field teachers accepted Ahn Ho-sang’s Democratic National Education Theory. Education officials basically recognized democracy and nationalism as conflicting and contradictory concepts, but took a passive attitude to suture the two concepts. Like Sa Gong-Hwan, director of the Higher Education Bureau, there were cases where “democratic national education” was justified by weaving nationalist historical perceptions such as Shin Chae-ho, Ahn Ho-sang, Ahn Jae-hong, and Son Jin-tae. There was also a contradiction that the social life and contents newly established to introduce American-style democracy of the time fell into “organic nationalism.”BR Field teachers also often sympathized with the (guardian) theory that individualistic education and class education should be denied, and that individuals should sacrifice for the people, citing the succession of the Hwarangdo spirit and the Samil independence movement spirit. Some people asked what was essentially the core of “democratic education” and diagnosed that excessive “national education” was being advocated as a reaction to the U.S. military government education policy, but only a few. Education expert Oh Chun-seok also consistently opposed the ‘democratic national education theory’. He criticized that the theory of nationalism education was actually based on a fascist worldview. As a result, however, it did not go further from the level of awareness that seeks the possibility of harmony between democracy and nationalism and concerns about the exclusivity of nationalism.

The Militant Young Minister

During 1940–1950, Reverend Clayton D. Russell was a leading African American pastor in Los Angeles and one of the city’s most prominent “race men,” advocating for African Americans in jobs, transportation, civil rights, and education. He also ran for public office and served as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention. His primary platform was the pastorship of the People’s Independent Church of Christ. He also headed the Negro Victory Committee, which was both an advocacy group and a protest organization; and served as president of the Negro Victory Markets, a food cooperative for African Americans in Los Angeles. Russell’s ministry served both the sacred and the secular interests of African Americans in Los Angeles during the 1940s. He was very successful in using his radio ministry to speak to and advocate for African American interests.

Re-examining the notion of local economic development (LED) post democratization: anticipated outputs, impediments and future expectation(s)

This article critically assesses the notion of Local Economic Development (LED) and utilizes South Africa as a case of reference, through which the conceptualization and underpinnings, associated with LED, are understood. South Africa has come through what one may call three waves of development change, which comprise the apartheid period (1949–1990), the transition period (1990–1994) and the post-apartheid era (1994–present). During both the apartheid and transition period, South Africa was at war with itself and neighbouring countries and economic growth, resources, employment and service delivery were scarce, particularly to the black majority because of the apartheid regimes destabilization policies. Post democratization, and with the inauguration of the democratic elected African National Congress (ANC) government, there were envisioned blueprint frameworks that ought to reverse the erstwhile apartheid regimes policies of racism, inequality and segregation. These were earmarked to alter South Africa’s development and economic growth landscape through the lens of LED. Hence, the promotion of LED was identified as a noteworthy strategy that can ultimately lead to community development, economic growth and poverty relief.

THE SHARECROPPER AND THE PRESIDENT: TWO LEADERS AT THE CROSSROADS OF DEMOCRACY

AbstractThe author discusses the civil rights leadership of Fannie Lou Hamer, who rose from humble beginnings as a “poor, Black, Mississippi sharecropper,” to deliver “searing testimony at the Democratic National Convention during a hearing in front of the national party’s Credentials Committee” on August 22, 1964. The author calls leaders like Hamer “natural born,” and contends these leaders “do not follow the traditional path to positions of power and influence—they don’t have access to the best schools, employment opportunities, financial resources, or powerful interpersonal relationships and connections that position them for leadership.” Hamer was “poorly educated and raised in extreme poverty in an era when African Americans were denied equality and basic citizenship rights.” She “developed literacies distinctly separate from the spotty education she received in underfunded and segregated Black schools in Mississippi…her leadership sparked a dramatic movement forward in the fight for civil rights. In 1968, at the DNC convention in Chicago, Hamer’s state delegation was seated on the floor and Mississippi’s all‐white party was turned away. When she stood at the podium as a delegate from Mississippi, she received a standing ovation. That year a record 340 Black delegates and alternates from across the country sat and voted for the party’s nominees.”

ВИСВІТЛЕННЯ «ГОЛОСОМ АМЕРИКИ» РОБОТИ УКРАЇНСЬКОГО ДОСЛІДНОГО ІНСТИТУТУ У ГАРВАРДІ У 1998 РОЦІ. ОСНОВНЕ З МОГО РЕПОРТЕРСЬКОГО ВІДРЯДЖЕННЯ

Marking the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, next year, we publish the article of Adrian Karmazyn, a member of the Ukrainian Association of American Studies, a historian and journalist, expert in American media and strategic communications, who worked for the Voice of America for more than 25 years and served as the Chief of the VOA Ukrainian Service (2005 – 2015). This is the third in a series of articles illustrating the type of reporting Adrian Karmazyn was engaged in as a radio journalist with the Voice of America’s (VOA) Ukrainian Service in the 1990s. Previously, he have written about his 1993 reporting assignment in then-newly independent Ukraine [2] and his 1996 reporting assignment at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago [4]. A collection of VOA Ukrainian Service recordings is preserved at the Ukrainian Museum-Archives in Cleveland [5]. Adrian Karmazyn’s memoir about his career at VOA is included in a collection of articles, published in conjunction with the 70th anniversary of VOA’s Ukrainian Service [3]. The Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University (HURI) is one of the most powerful and oldest centers of Ukrainian studies in America. It serves as a focal point for graduate and undergraduate students, fellows, and associates pursuing research in Ukrainian language, literature, and history as well as in anthropology, archaeology, art history, economics, political science, sociology, theology, and other disciplines. Most of the interviews for this story about HURI were conducted in English and then translated into Ukrainian for broadcast to Ukraine. For this article, the Ukrainian versions of interviewee comments were translated back into English.

We Shall Overcome Some Day…but Not Today: Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee and the 21st Century Version of Jim Crow

We Shall Overcome Some Day…but Not Today: Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee and the 21st Century Version of Jim Crow