Democratic Opponent Research Articles

The Rise or Decline of Social Acceptance? Perspective from U.S. Presidential Elections, 2012 to 2020

Recent acts of racial violence, the growing visibility of nationalized white power movements, and a drift toward a number of more restrictive laws and Supreme Court rulings have raised troubling questions about the significance and influence of social acceptance in the United States. Focusing on voters and elections, an important strain of scholarship has argued that declining acceptance of minority groups and marginalized communities contributed to the political rise of Donald Trump and his 2016 election to the presidency. However, the argument that low levels of social acceptance benefited Republican candidates is premised on a basic yet untested assumption: that social acceptance has decreased over the time period covered by the past several elections. In this study, we offer a new and systematic evaluation of this assumption through an analysis of change in the level of social acceptance within the American electorate and its political influence from the 2012 through 2020 elections. The analysis focuses on key target groups that include racial minorities, women, immigrants, and gay and lesbian individuals. We find that voters adopted more supportive and inclusive positions toward these marginalized social groups, resulting in a substantial increase in social acceptance over time. Contrasting further with much of the commentary regarding the rise of Donald Trump, our analysis indicates that these trends in social acceptance served to hurt Trump and to help his Democratic opponents. Supplemental analyses find little evidence that social desirability influences the measures of social acceptance or their estimated influence on voter choice.

Mark O. Hatfield: Oregon Statesman by Richard W. Etulain

Reviewed by: Mark O. Hatfield: Oregon Statesman by Richard W. Etulain Laura Jane Gifford MARK O. HATFIELD: OREGON STATESMAN by Richard W. Etulain University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 2021. Illustrations, bibliography, index. 232 pages. $24.95 paper. Historians are not, as a general rule, inclined toward the counterfactual. Exercises in what might have been stand at odds with historians’ commitment to facts, themes, and context. Nonetheless, a brief foray into the land of “what-if” illustrates in glowing relief the poignancy of a Mark Hatfield biography in this third decade of the twenty-first century. Speaking of Hatfield’s also-ran status among contenders for the Republican vice-presidential nomination in 1968, Richard W. Etulain observes that had Richard Nixon chosen the Oregon senator, he [End Page 103] “may well have become president in 1974” (p. 156). With apologies to Gerald Ford, an upstanding citizen in his own right, if only we had been so lucky. Love him or dismiss him — and Etulain clearly loves him — this newest biography of Hatfield illustrates well the longtime Oregon politician’s most compelling quality: in the words of then-president William Clinton at Hatfield’s 1996 retirement, he was a man “who has lived his convictions as well as any I have known in public life” (p. 177). Hatfield was not perfect, and to his credit, Etulain is willing to share both Hatfield’s strengths and his weaknesses. In today’s era of strife, polarization, and growing threats from White Christian nationalism, however, Hatfield’s life in public service reminds us that our political and cultural landscape need not look this way. Etulain’s concise prose chronicles both prosaic struggles over state budgets during Hatfield’s time as governor and the many courageous stands the World War II veteran took, sometimes alone, against military expansionism and the war in Vietnam. As a Republican state legislator, secretary of state, and governor, Hatfield was often viewed as more liberal than his Democratic opponents — a helpful reminder that our partisan categories have not been static over time. He was an early and committed advocate for civil rights in a state with a notoriously racist history. As a five-term senator during the years when the Religious Right gained an ever-stronger foothold in GOP politics, Hatfield’s evangelical Christian convictions led him to support social programs and oppose increases in defense funding. This brief volume favors accessibility over documentation; there are no footnotes, although Etulain includes a brief essay on sources and his bibliography is comprehensive. The book would have benefitted from more careful fact-checking; while the prose is sound, the reviewer noted a series of minor errors ranging from confusing I-84 with I-80 to situating Hatfield’s 1964 GOP convention keynote speech in 1965. More glaring is a recurrent infatuation with spouse Antoinette Kuzmanich Hatfield’s “sparkling prettiness,” “bright eyes,” and vivaciousness (pp. 59, 91). Perhaps the author intended this as counter-point to his frequent references to Hatfield’s youth and handsome visage. Both contribute to an overriding sensation that the book was written much earlier than 2021. Etulain focuses most of his time and attention on Hatfield’s years as a state official. He notes in the preface that while he initially planned a more comprehensive biography, continuing restrictions on the largest archive of Hatfield materials rendered a broader project infeasible. The recent opening of Hatfield’s primary manuscript collection at Willamette University, and newly accessible oral histories at the Oregon Historical Society, present important new opportunities to make deeper forays into Hatfield’s life and work. Now more than ever, we need to learn from the wisdom of statesmen like Mark Hatfield. Laura Jane Gifford Portland, Oregon Copyright © 2023 Oregon Historical Society

The Whigs' America: Middle-Class Political Thought in the Age of Jackson and Clay

In The Whigs' America, Joseph W. Pearson seeks to explore and explain “the deeply felt, shared cultural soil” underlying the politics of the Antebellum Whigs (p. 1). He argues that one of the most illuminating ways to understand both Whig policies and their fundamental assumptions about the country is to see them as reflections of a bourgeois or middle-class mentality. Pearson's Whigs were not all middle class in narrow economic terms but, more generally, in how they celebrated the virtues of thrift, prudence, and self-control. In contrast to many of their Democratic opponents, most Whigs were optimistic about the future of the young republic and were more at ease with the impersonal, contractual cash economy taking shape amid the market revolution. Pearson describes the Whig world view as “built from the past they sought to escape, the present that they hoped to improve, and the future that they hoped to build” (p. 8).

There is no capitalist conspiracy and the rich are not all‐powerful

There is no capitalist conspiracy and the rich are not all‐powerful

Kathryn Ciancia. On Civilization’s Edge: A Polish Borderland in the Interwar World.

Kathryn Ciancia. <i>On Civilization’s Edge: A Polish Borderland in the Interwar World.</i>

Andre E. Johnson, No Future in This Country: The Prophetic Pessimism of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner

<i>Andre E. Johnson</i>, No Future in This Country: The Prophetic Pessimism of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner

Mental health concerns raised over Parental Rights legislation

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on March 29 signed into law the “Parental Rights in Education” legislation that is causing concerns among advocates, parents and Democratic opponents who have deemed it the “Don't Say Gay” bill.

Solving the security–democracy dilemma: the US foreign policy in Tunisia post-9/11

Scholarly consensus postulates a sharp contrast exists between liberal values and realist interests in US foreign policy in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, which finds its expression in the ‘security–democracy’ dilemma.​ This means the US rhetorical determination to abide by the values of a ‘liberal’ foreign policy is neutralised by the ‘realist’ priority of maintaining US strategic interests, which requires support for friendly authoritarian rulers. Scholarship tends to apply this reasoning indistinctly to the entire region, providing an encompassing framework of analysis for understanding US foreign policy, which is valid across time and space. This study challenges this theoretical assumption and argues that while the US might indeed have a comprehensive regional approach in the MENA, the resulting foreign policy follows country-based trajectories that respond to national specificities and the perceived implications for US strategic interests. Exploring US foreign policy in the MENA after 9/11, the article demonstrates that while the US emphasis on liberalism crumbled when faced with security issues, the US liberal approach to Tunisia unfolded more consistently. Although the US continued formal cooperation with Ben Ali’s regime, it empowered at the same time a coalition of democratic opponents, solving the security–democracy dilemma and positively influencing the Tunisian democratisation.

توظيف شبكة « تويتر» في الحملات الإنتخابية للرئاسة الأمريكية 2016 تغريدات المرشح الأمريكي دونالد ترمب «نموذجا»

This study aimed to identify the employment of the social networking platform «Twitter» in the 2016 presidential campaign led by the Republican candidate, Donald Trump; and analyse his tweets through his personal account on «Twitter» for the period from: 10/ 8/2016 to: 11/ 8/2016 which represents the last month of the election campaign. The study belongs to the type of descriptive studies using the analytical method through an analysis index that includes sub-categories and other secondary categories. The research has adopted the ordinary unit of information material (tweet) as an analysis unit for this purpose. The validity of the tool was verified by a precise definition of the units of analysis and the analysis tool was presented to a group of experts for arbitration. The Holistic Equation was, in addition, used to verify the reliability of the analysis tool. The results showed that the field of elections is the most focused area on which President Trump focused. The domestic policy issues came second, while the content of encouraging participation in the elections came out the contents covered by the tweets. Accusations of corruption by Trump against his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, came second in the category of contents. As for the targeted parties, the study showed that the American voters are the most targeted group followed by the personality of Hillary Clinton. In the category of techniques, it appeared that the technique of encouragement is the most used. Then, it was followed by the technique of criticism. As for the means of support, it was noted that the most used was the image, then the websites link.

Owning your message: Congressional candidates’ interactivity and issue ownership in mixed-gender campaigns

ABSTRACTWhen candidates lose, they must decide which campaign strategies to keep and which to abandon if they run again. Republicans Mia Love and Scott Brown had to make this decision after losing in 2012 and running again in 2014. This study examines Love, Brown, and their Democratic opponents to assess how they changed and potentially optimized their Twitter strategies in back-to-back mixed-gender elections. Results revealed two patterns. First, textual and visual interactivity were prevalent campaign strategies. Second, effective campaign strategies incorporated issue emphases that aligned with the candidate’s party- and/or gender-based political ownership, while simultaneously complimenting the nation’s economic conditions.

How Artificial Intelligence is Reshaping Repression

Around the world, artificial-intelligence (AI) systems are showing their potential for abetting repressive regimes and upending the relationship between citizen and state, thereby accelerating a global resurgence of authoritarianism. China is driving the proliferation of AI technology to authoritarian and illiberal regimes, an approach that has become a key component of Chinese geopolitical strategy. The significance of this technology for authoritarians around the globe, as well as for their democratic opponents, is growing ever clearer. To counter not only the spread of high-tech repression abroad, but also potential abuses at home, policy makers in democratic states must think seriously about how to mitigate harm and to shape better practices.

The Australian Right in the “Asian Century”: Inequality and Implications for Social Democracy

ABSTRACTThis article analyses the policy discourse of Australian right-wing governments, exploring how such governments have combined neo-liberal economic policies with social conservatism, populism, cultural nationalism and forms of authoritarianism. It also examines the resulting response of social democratic political parties. As a predominantly Western country situated in the Asia-Pacific region, Australian experience offers interesting insights into the domestic politics of right-wing governments facing the changing geo-political and geo-economic imperatives of the “Asian Century.” Conservative Australian governments have reasserted traditional Anglo-centric national identity and used competition from key Asian countries to further justify market-driven policies, reduced welfare benefits and reduced industrial relations standards. The social democratic Australian Labor Party has responded to right-wing government policy by placing an increased emphasis on challenging social and economic inequality. However, Labor’s own plans for equitable economic growth potentially underestimate the challenges posed by the intermeshing of the Australian and Asian economies and provide insights into the dilemmas that a changing geo-economics poses for Western social democracy more broadly. Meanwhile Australian conservatism is facing not just challenges from its social democratic opponent but also from far-right populist forces critical of globalisation.

WANTED: Hillary Clinton, Suspect Citizen

“Lock her up! Lock her up! Lock her up!” This battle cry erupted at one Donald Trump rally after another throughout the 2016 presidential campaign. Trump even threatened to jail Hillary Rodham Clinton (HRC) if he won the election. “Crooked Hillary” emerged as Trump's disparaging nickname for his Democratic opponent. Taking a further moralistic step, Trump equated HRC with pure evil, calling her the “devil” at an August 2016 campaign rally in Pennsylvania.

James A. Rhodes: Ohio Colossus by Tom Diemer, Lee Leonard, and Richard G. Zimmerman

Reviewed by: James A. Rhodes: Ohio Colossus by Tom Diemer, Lee Leonard, and Richard G. Zimmerman Herb Asher Tom Diemer, Lee Leonard, and Richard G. Zimmerman, James A. Rhodes: Ohio Colossus. Kent: Kent State University Press, 2014. 256 pp. $34.95. Of the numerous books I have read about Governor Rhodes, James A. Rhodes: Ohio Colossus is the best for a number of reasons. It is the most comprehensive book covering Rhodes' upbringing, his early political experiences, his four successful runs for governor and his unsuccessful 1986 campaign for a fifth term. The book also details the initiatives and accomplishments of the four Rhodes' administrations and discusses the occasional political and policy setbacks. The reader also gets an intimate sense of Rhodes' administrative and management style and of how important a few key staff aides were in keeping the administration on track. For Rhodes, the three key cabinet departments were the Ohio Department of Development, the Ohio Department of Transportation, and the Office of Budget and Management. These three were the departments most relevant to the governor's focus on jobs, economic development, and, often, capital construction bond issues to foster jobs and economic growth. For the other cabinet directors, it was generally sufficient to appoint good people and let them run their departments without much oversight or control—unless they messed up. Both as a candidate and as governor, Rhodes often operated separately from the Ohio Republican Party. The book also covers Rhodes's activities in the four years (1971–1974) between his terms as governor and his post gubernatorial career from 1982 on. The reader learns that Rhodes was an incredibly creative person with ideas galore, an entrepreneurial figure, a dreamer, and a savvy businessman. The [End Page 74] book does a masterful job capturing Rhodes' political philosophy or, perhaps better, his approach to government and politics. When he ran against his Democratic opponents, he would accuse them of having raised taxes and being tax and spend liberals. But after he was elected, he would happily spend these tax dollars on projects and programs. Critics of Rhodes attacked him as a "borrow and spend" governor because he routinely promoted bond issues to be on the ballot to build capital construction projects. The book is more than a descriptive history of the life of Jim Rhodes and the Rhodes era; it is also analytical and interpretive. One gets a good sense of what motivated the Governor. Rhodes understood that government impacted people and that many Ohioans were hurting economically. For Rhodes, the best remedy for that hurt was a job. Indeed, "jobs, jobs, jobs" and "jobs and progress" became the overarching rationale for Rhodes' successful and unsuccessful initiatives. Rhodes believed that Ohioans voted for hope. The book also details some of the problems and setbacks of the Rhodes administrations including the killing of four students at Kent State University during the era of Vietnam War protests. One of the major policy rejections the governor suffered was the overwhelming defeat of his proposed Ohio Bond Commission amendment to the Ohio Constitution. This proposal would have established a "gubernatorial-controlled development bank with the authority to raise, without a further vote of the people, capital improvement funds using long term mortgage financing" (50). This audacious proposal was rejected by the voters by a two to one margin in 1967, but that did not deter Rhodes from successfully advocating for future capital improvement bond issues. The authors treat Governor Rhodes a bit gently in a number of areas. Certainly their discussion of Rhodes' role in the Kent State tragedy is less critical of him than many other narratives on the topic. And repeatedly, the authors are somewhat soft on some of the aspects of development deals that the Governor promoted such as the successful attempt to attract Honda to Ohio. Often, as a facility or a manufacturing plant was being sited, it turned out that friends and supporters of the Governor "had the good fortune" to own land adjacent to these facilities, land which, of course, became much more valuable. And the treatment of how the Governor obtained his real estate license was probably too forgiving, although that story is now firmly...

U.S. Senators on Twitter: Asymmetric Party Rhetoric in 140 Characters

The U.S. Senate is a party-polarized institution where divisive political rhetoric stems from the partisan divide. Senators regularly chastise political opponents, but not all senators are equally critical. Research finds that elite party polarization is asymmetrical with greater divergence by Republicans, so I expect Republican senators to mimic that trend with higher levels of partisan rhetoric. To assess the variance in partisan rhetoric, I catalogue senators’ Twitter activity during the first 6 months of the 113th and 114th Congresses, and find that Republicans are more likely to name-call their Democratic opponents and to make expressions of intraparty loyalty, particularly when they are the minority party.

Subpartisan Cues and Ideological Distinctions: The Effect of the Tea Party Label on Voter Perceptions of Congressional Candidates*

Objective We aim to fill a gap in the voter heuristic literature by estimating the impact of subparty cues—labels that connect candidates to an intraparty faction—on perceptions of candidates’ ideological positions. We argue that the Tea Party label acts as a subpartisan cue, and should affect perceptions of both Republicans and their Democratic opponents. Methods We measure ideological perceptions using data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES), and measure Tea Party “saliency” based on how often candidates were linked with the Tea Party in news media. Using probit regression, we estimate the impact of Tea Party saliency on ideological perceptions of candidates. Results We find that Republican candidates often associated with the Tea Party are more likely to be perceived as conservative or very conservative, even when we control for candidate and voter ideology, while their Democratic opponents are perceived to be more moderate. Conclusion The results suggest that extremizing cues like the Tea Party label can have a moderating effect on opponents. These findings shed new light on the role and interaction of party-related voting cues, and have important implications for elections, campaigns, and voter opinion and behavior.

Uma pátria obscura: o que resta da anistia

This article explores certain links between Contemporary Brazilian Art and the 2013 and 2015's events in the country, when a parcel of the population occupied the streets in protests against the president. The conciliation settlement, that would establish an agreement between the dictatorship defenders and their democratic opponents, reaches to instill a kind of social amnesia that kept latent the conflict. I analyze three works: Fabio Tremonte's Redflag, Clara Ianni's Apelo and Anita Leandro's Retratos de Identidade. These videos point to the history's silence and beg for memory.

Extradition, the Mormons, and the Election of 1843

IN JUNE 1843, A SPECIAL TERM OF THE DAVIESS COUNTY, Mis souri, Circuit Court indicted leader Joseph Smith for treason against state of Missouri during Mormon War of 1838.1 After learning of charge from Missouri governor Thomas Reynolds, Illinois governor Thomas Ford issued a warrant for Smith's arrest on June 17, directed that he be delivered to custody of Jackson County, Missouri sheriff Joseph H. Reynolds, whom Governor Reynolds had appointed to convey Smith to Missouri.2 Six days later, on June 23, Harmon T. Wilson, deputy sheriff of Hancock County, Illinois, Sheriff Reynolds arrested Smith near Dixon, Illinois-some 130 miles northeast of Smith's home in Illinois-while he his family were visiting his wife's relatives who lived in area.1 News of arrest touched off a massive rescue effort in Nauvoo that ended with Reynolds Wilson, much against their will, riding with Smith into Nauvoo on June 30 surrounded by his friends supporters. The Nauvoo Municipal Court formally discharged Smith from arrest at a habeas corpus hearing following day, by which time Reynolds Wilson, feeling that they had been deprived of their prisoner illegally, had gone to Carthage, Illinois, to petition Ford to send a detachment of state militia to arrest Smith.4 Ford denied request, Smith remained a free man.5Six weeks later, on August 7, 1843, elections were held in Hancock County (where Nauvoo was located) for U.S. representative for sixth district congressional seat various county offices. During weeks leading up to election, many in area thought Mormons would vote for Whig congressional candidate Cyrus Walker, a lawyer who had helped represent Smith at July habeas corpus hearing in Nauvoo who had received Smiths personal pledge of in upcoming election. Two days before election, however, Smiths brother Hyrum reportedly told a crowd of church members that had revealed to him that Mormons must support Joseph P. Hoge, Walkers Democratic opponent.6 The following day-the day before election-Smith told a similar gathering that he had just learned of Hyrum's testimofnjy that it will be better for this people to vote for hoge, that he never kn[e]w Hiram say he ever had a revelation & it faild. Smith reiterated his personal promise to vote for Walker, but effectively threw behind Hoge: Let God speak, he told congregation, and all men hold their peace.7 The following day Hoge reportedly received about three thousand votes-considered an overwhelming majority by one source-and won election by a mere 574 ballots.8 The Mormons' apparent political capriciousness was not without its consequences. Whig papers were quickly loaded with accounts of wickedness, corruptions, enormities of Nauvoo, Ford remembered, the whigs generally, a part of democrats, determined upon driving Mormons out of State.9Basing their narrative on two main sources, several historians have argued that Mormons' (and especially Smith's) initial pledge to Cyrus Walker Whigs in this election, last-minute switch to Joseph Hoge Democrats, were both a result of events associated with earlier effort to extradite Smith to Missouri. According to this argument, Walker had agreed to represent Smith after his arrest in Dixon in exchange for Smith's in upcoming election. The Mormons later threw their behind Hoge Democrats when they heard that Ford, a Democrat, might send militia to arrest Smith after his release in Nauvoo (as Wilson Reynolds had requested) unless they did so.10 The two sources upon which this interpretation relies are History of Church, written compiled by various clerks historians between June 1839 August 1856, Thomas Ford's 1854 History of Illinois. …

The Policy of Strategic Demobilisation: The Social Policy of the Christian Democratic–Liberal Coalition, 2009–13

This article addresses two research questions: which course did the CDU, CSU–FDP coalition government choose to follow in social policy from 2009 to 2013? And what relationships exist between social policy in this period and the Bundestag election in 2013? The analysis of primary and secondary data reveals both continuity and discontinuity in social policy in the 17th legislative period of the Bundestag. The decisions and non-decisions on social protection and labour market regulation in this period mirror a wide variety of determinants. These include partisan effects, electoral cycles, co-governing judges and anonymous social policy of market forces. The data also suggest that the CDU/CSU has been relatively successful in its strategy of ‘asymmetric demobilisation’, the strategy of changing its social policy profile to one more similar to that of its social democratic opponent, in order to demobilise the SPD's voters rather than mobilising them. More ambivalent has been the electoral outcome of the FDP's role in social policy. The FDP's first foray into leading a large welfare state ministry, the Federal Ministry of Health, in 2009 to 2013 did not prove to be a winning proposition for the Liberals electorally. Social policy in general and welfare state recalibration in particular thus seem to be an electorally especially risky project for a liberal party such as the FDP.

The Death of President Warren G. Harding

Warren G. Harding, the 29th President of the United States (Figure 1), died in office in 1923, at age 57, of “natural causes,” the 1st to do so since Zachary Taylor in 1850. He had been a popular President, elected 3 years earlier by a wide margin over his Democratic opponent. 1. Ferrell R.H. The strange deaths of President Harding. University of Missouri Press, Columbia (MO)1996 Google Scholar , 2. Dean J.W. Warren G. Harding. Henry Holt & Co., New York2004 Google Scholar , 3. Murray R.K. The Harding era. Warren G. Harding and his administration. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis (MN)1969 Google Scholar , 4. Russell F. The shadow of blooming grove: Warren G. Harding in his times. McGraw-Hill Book Co., New York1968 Google Scholar , 5. Anthony C.S. Florence Harding: The First Lady, the jazz age, and the death of America's most scandalous president. William Morrow & Co., New York1998 Google Scholar His death was presented to the press and the public as an unexpected acute event that occurred during his ambitious cross-country tour by special train and then by ship to Alaska. This was called a “voyage of understanding” to meet the American people. He died in a San Francisco hotel room of an illness diagnosed 1st as food poisoning, then as “apoplexy” and still later as a “heart attack.” After his death, his reputation was marred by financial scandals involving cabinet members and other high-ranking officials and by damaging revelations about Harding's personal life. The nature and management of his illness stirred great controversy at the time, and many unresolved issues remain even now. 5. Anthony C.S. Florence Harding: The First Lady, the jazz age, and the death of America's most scandalous president. William Morrow & Co., New York1998 Google Scholar In this report, we will review the available clinical data, attempting to make a diagnosis in modern terms and to evaluate the quality of his medical care.