It's Labor Day, so we're taking time off and running an excerpt from a recent Monkey Cage post

Sociologists Jasmine Kerrissey and Judith Stepan-Norris, co-authors of “Union Booms and Busts: The Ongoing Struggle over the U.S. Labor Movement,” look at the state of unions America and, for the first time in a long time, find reason for optimism.

It was 1894, the Gilded Age — a time of extreme inequality, foul working conditions, worker unrest and violent strikes. Congress created Labor Day, a national holiday celebrating workers and labor union

Labor Day alone didn’t change much. But from the 1930s through 1950s, labor unions were on the rise. One in every three workers were unionized, ushering in a new middle class, safety procedures and a voice at work, before membership declined again for decades. Today, only 1 in 10 workers are organized, and one-third of the country’s workers earn less than $15 an hour. Research suggests that union decline has contributed significantly to the rise in inequality.

But this Labor Day, for the first time in almost 25 years, union elections — events in which workers vote on whether to form unions — have increased significantly. Workers file for elections with the National Labor Relations Board, which governs most private-sector employees. Union election filings with the NLRB increased by 58 percent in the first three quarters of fiscal year 2022 (October-June), compared with the same period in 2021. Already, recent tallies estimate that more than 1,250 elections were held from October to August, more than were held during all of 2021. And unions have won the majority of these elections.

...

This past year has been different: Support for unions is surging. Both general approval of unions and union elections has been rising. In 2022, Gallup found that 71 percent of Americans approve of labor unions, the highest percentage since 1965. Gallup also found that over 40 percent of nonunion workers have some interest in joining one.

And workers are taking action. Interestingly, many are organizing in industries and companies that previously avoided union representation. Megacorporations, especially in retail, tech and service, have long kept out unions — until now.

 

 

Why read about Pauline Kael when you can read Pauline Kael?

 Andrew Gelman has a post up on his blog discussing a new book by Louis Menand that includes the following quote:

"Kael’s contention that serious movies should meet the same standard as pulp—that they should be entertaining—turned out to be an extremely useful and widely adopted critical principle. . . ."

 I'm not familiar with Menand, but I am up on my Kael and I assume he's referring to this passage from the essay "Trash, Art and the Movies."

Keeping in mind that simple, good distinction that all art is entertainment but not all entertainment is art, it might be a good idea to keep in mind also that if a movie is said to be a work of art and you don’t enjoy it, the fault may be in you, but it’s probably in the movie. Because of the money and advertising pressures involved, many reviewers discover a fresh masterpiece every week, and there’s that cultural snobbery, that hunger for respectability that determines the selection of the even bigger annual masterpieces. In foreign movies what is most often mistaken for “quality” is an imitation of earlier movie art or a derivation from respectable, approved work in the other arts — like the demented, suffering painter-hero of Hour of the Wolf smearing his lipstick in a facsimile of expressionist anguish. Kicked in the ribs, the press says “art” when “ouch” would be more appropriate. When a director is said to be an artist (generally on the basis of earlier work which the press failed to recognize) and especially when he picks artistic subjects like the pain of creation, there is a tendency to acclaim his new bad work. This way the press, in trying to make up for its past mistakes, manages to be wrong all the time. And so a revenge-of-a-sour- virgin movie like Truffaut’s The Bride Wore Black is treated respectfully as if it somehow revealed an artist’s sensibility in every frame. Reviewers who would laugh at Lana Turner going through her femme fatale act in another Ross Hunter movie swoon when Jeanne Moreau casts significant blank looks for Truffaut.

In American movies what is most often mistaken for artistic quality is box-office success, especially if it’s combined with a genuflection to importance; then you have “a movie the industry can be proud of” like To Kill a Mockingbird or such Academy Award winners as West Side Story, My Fair Lady, or A Man for All Seasons. Fred Zinnemann made a fine modern variant of a Western, The Sundowners, and hardly anybody saw it until it got on television; but A Man for All Seasons had the look of prestige and the press felt honored to praise it. I’m not sure most movie reviewers consider what they honestly enjoy as being central to criticism. Some at least appear to think that that would be relying too much on their own tastes, being too personal instead of being “objective” — relying on the readymade terms of cultural respectability and on consensus judgment (which, to a rather shocking degree, can be arranged by publicists creating a climate of importance around a movie). Just as movie directors, as they age, hunger for what was meant by respectability in their youth, and aspire to prestigious cultural properties, so, too, the movie press longs to be elevated in terms of the cultural values of their old high schools. And so they, along with the industry, applaud ghastly “tour-de-force” performances, movies based on “distinguished” stage successes or prize-winning novels, or movies that are “worthwhile,” that make a “contribution” — “serious” messagy movies. This often involves praise of bad movies, of dull movies, or even the praise in good movies of what was worst in them. 

In particular, the phrase "readymade terms of cultural respectability and on consensus judgment (which, to a rather shocking degree, can be arranged by publicists creating a climate of importance around a movie)" is more relevant in an age where streaming services spend hundreds of millions on PR firms and billions on marketing. 

I'm not a big fan of most of the cultural commentary I occasionally see in the mainstream press (which isn't much since I don't seek out things that annoy me). This is partially because so much of it still feels like a bad Kael imitation. (Though, to be fair, Denby managed to be a pretty good Kael imitator.) As with so many things, if I want criticism that's insightful, honest and free of herd mentality, I'm more likely to go to a favorite blog or YouTube channel. On a good day, I'd put Bob Chipman up against anyone working the same beat at the New Yorker or the Atlantic. 

One warning about these essays. You will find yourself violently disagreeing with some of her takes on various movies, particularly those she dislikes. I'm OK with that. If you're not then you should probably stop here.

Otherwise, start with either Trash or Kane, and see what the original was like.

Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Essential Kael

I have a couple of posts in the draft stage and a few more in the back of my head that center on either quotes from Pauline Kael or discussion of the New Journalism movement that involve her. I thought it might not be a bad idea to do a quick introductory post because Kael is one of those writers who does need an introduction.

Part of the problem is that, when you say "critic," most people think "reviewer."  Probably the easiest way to explain the distinction is in terms of audience. Criticism is written for people who know a work; reviews are written for people who are thinking about trying it. Kael was, at best, a deeply problematic reviewer. She could wildly oversell films she felt were particularly deserving. Other times, she would simply use the film as a jumping off point for an essay on films or culture or politics. She almost always had something interesting to say, but little that was useful when you were trying to decide which movie to see.

My advice for those new to Kael is to start with the essays, then check out the full (not the capsule) reviews of films you've seen, then stop.

Here are four to get the ball rolling.

Raising Kane
 The New Yorker, February 20, 1971 and February 27, 1971

Kael's best known essay and my favorite. Also her most controversial, though not always for the reasons normally given (see below). The piece is difficult to describe, part critical essay, part historical narrative, part reflection on American culture, but the unifying thread is the story of the East Coast writers and artists who came to Hollywood. By turns affectionate, insightful and sad. At least part of the vitriol it inspired can be attributed to the people she had pissed off a few years earlier with...



Circles and Squares
Film Quarterly (01/Apr/1963)

A relentless dismantling of the American take on auteur theory, particularly that of Andrew Sarris. In addition to pointing out the various contradictions and logical flaws in the standard arguments of the time, it digs into the dangers of praising works and congratulating ourselves just because we catch various allusions and influences (decades before anyone had heard of Tarantino). It may not be a coincidence that many those who came off worst in this piece (particularly Peter Bogdanovich) were among the most vocal of Welles "defenders" after the release of "Raising Kane."



Trash, Art, and the Movies
Harper's, February 1969

Addresses the fundamental paradoxes of taking pop culture seriously. It argues that we should acknowledge the pleasures and the vitality of a good trashy movie without trying to project upon it artistic qualities and deeper meanings to justify our approval. At the same time, we shouldn't equate the lack of trashiness with great art, particularly when it means praising the boring and the high-minded.




Why Are Movies So Bad? Or, The Numbers
The New Yorker, June 23, 1980

A prescient take on the end of the Young Turk era of American film. Kael didn't care for auteurism as a critical theory but she tended to like auteurs, particularly the big visionary directors like Welles and Kurosawa and Huston. She looked upon the late 60s and early 70s as a golden age with films like Bonnie and Clyde and directors like Altman.

Kael openly viewed herself as an advocate for what she considered important films and visionary filmmakers, and she was willing to cross ethical lines to promote her favorites (such as when she wrote an ecstatic review of Nashville based on a private screening of a rough cut).

The end of the Young Turks era (combined with a brief stint working in Hollywood) left her bitter and pessimistic about the future of American cinema, which led to this 1980 essay. By far, my least favorite  of the four. The topic is too depressing for her to have any fun with and too narrow for her to make the interesting connections that mark the other three pieces. Worse still, the few films of the period she did like are overpraised to the point of exhaustion. That said, the observations on corporate culture are sharp and the predictions about pre-novelization perfectly describe franchises like I am Number Four.

Very smart post on causal inference

This is Joseph.

Andrew Gelman has a very nice piece on the challenges of causal inference over on his blog, looking at the discussion between Noah Smith and Bret Devereaux. As a conflict avoider of heroic stature, I don't like people I follow fighting but, in this case, it is bringing up some good points. 

But going back to just understanding patterns is also a very important step in epidemiology as well and there is a new movement towards trying to do more rigorous descriptive work. For example, this paper by Catherine R Lesko, Matthew P Fox, and Jessie K Edwards. I have some disagreements with the authors but it is a fantastic piece to get epidemiology thinking clearly about these issues. 

Not doing things is a nonrival good (and while we're on the subject, can you have a nonrival good with a monopsony?)

As mentioned before, Matt Levine has become on of the essential writers on the business and finance beat and I strongly recommend that everybody sign up for Levine's free Money Stuff newsletter mentioned at the bottom of the post.

Here's a choice bit from the August 30th newsletter. 

The most interesting field of economics might be the economics of not doing things. The main way that people make money, in the world, is by doing things that other people want: drilling oil, brewing coffee, maintaining social media sites, writing newsletters. But there are a few lines of business where you can get paid for not doing things that you’d otherwise do. Blackmail, for instance, is a classic: “I will go around distributing these compromising photos of you, unless you pay me money, in which case I will do nothing.” Coasean bargaining: “I will build a smelly polluting factory on my land next to yours, unless you pay me money not to, in which case I will leave it undeveloped.” Demand response in electric grids: “I will turn my lights on and use electricity, unless you pay me not to, in which case I will use less electricity.” And, in the modern world, all sorts of environmental credit schemes: “I will chop down these trees, drill this oil, etc., unless you pay me not to, in which case I won’t do anything at all.”

There are so many ways in which the economics here are unintuitive. Consider the oil market. There is some demand schedule for oil; people will use more of it at lower prices and less at higher prices. There is also a supply schedule: Some oil is cheaper to drill than other oil, so when oil prices are low only the cheapest-to-extract oil will get drilled, but when prices get high people will drill in more difficult environments because it becomes worth it. But then consider the market for not drilling oil. If you own a bunch of oil fields, and someone will pay you $5 per barrel not to drill oil, you should start your not-drilling in the most-expensive-to-drill places. “Good news,” you say, “I have decided not to drill in this field that costs $150 per barrel to drill, now pay me my $5.” You could expand on this theory. If you don’t own any oil fields, you could walk into the offices of some environmental-credits company and say “if you pay me $5 per barrel not to drill oil, I won’t go around buying oil fields and drilling them.”

Also consider the demand schedule there. If you promise me not to drill for oil, I might pay you $5 per barrel for the oil you don’t drill. But you could go to someone else and promise not to drill the oil, and they might pay you $3 per barrel. For the same barrels. “Not drilling oil” is a non-rival good; you can not drill the same barrel of oil as many times as you like, and sell it to a different person each time.

Or consider blackmail. If you get some compromising photos of me, and I pay you not to publish them, then you won’t publish them (let’s assume). But what are your long-term incentives? The way to succeed in the business of not publishing compromising photos is by taking lots of compromising photos and repeatedly threatening to publish them. If I paid you $100 not to publish the photos, and you were like “right, good, I get paid not to publish photos, I will stop taking the photos,” you would be deeply misunderstanding your business. You are not being paid to not publish photos — anyone can not publish photos! You are being paid to credibly threaten to publish photos, and then not publish them.

This has important implications for the environmental credit schemes. You don’t get paid for not drilling oil or not cutting down trees; you get paid when there is a credible threat (from you or someone else) to drill the oil or cut the trees, and you prevent it. You are in the credible-threats business.

You can probably guess where this is going.

One of the counterintuitive aspects of this having a well functioning market with multiple buyers and sellers actually leads to worse outcomes in this case. You're better off having few sellers and only one buyer. Take one of the more successful examples, programs where the federal government pay framers to leave land fallow.

hi
1. my newsletter is still free
2. it is called Money Stuff
3. you can sign up for it here https://t.co/mTlB1XlfU7

— Matt Levine (@matt_levine) May 9, 2018

 

Student loan forgiveness

This is Joseph.

Mark mentioned this briefly yesterday but I thought it was worth a full post. 

In the United States there has been some controversy about student loan forgiveness and the modest amount of debt relief that was recently given. I understand the reasons why it was good to do something and also why the time isn't optimal as it could have an inflationary impact. Still, the amount of inflation, according to Paul Krugman, is about 0.2% and much larger sums were forgiven for business support in covid-19. It is quite reasonable that the lockdown could have made student loans worse than expected for some people and so forgiveness is a reasonable policy.

It was then attacked for funding very left wing educational opportunities -- the exact phrase being "lesbian dance theory". Now, one thing to consider is that very few students take classes in identity. Here is a statistics from the far more left wing province of Ontario in Canada:

That's less than 1%. As expected, in the United States it is even lower:

There are more philosophy majors than in these fields!

Looking at the linked tables from the Department of Education (USA), we see that the top two majors are business and health sciences, together making up 32% of bachelor degrees (that is 1/3). There are five times as many students studying agriculture than "Area, ethnic, cultural, gender, and group studies" which is lumping a lot of different things together (are Russian studies and women's studies really appealing to the same students?). Now it is true that 4.5% of degrees go to visual and performing arts (which would include dance) but also things like acting, painting, and film school. Maybe it is or is not the optimal vehicle for teaching these skills  but there are also a lot of students taking degrees in "Homeland security, law enforcement, and firefighting" (about 2./3 this total) which is also a case where the applied and theoretical pieces might be quite different. 

And this ignores the engineers, computer scientists, and mathematics degrees. Now, it is true, that a system where students pick what they want to study does occasionally result in bad decisions that compound. But this is also true of health decisions, employment decisions, and financial decisions -- we are not considering regulating those, either. 

If the student loan program is seen as a type of covid-19 relief than it isn't a bad program. It will help most those students who started a degree and did not finish due to the world changing -- most defaults are for small amounts and students who did not finish their degrees. This also addresses the question of whether it is only backwards looking -- it is, but the justification is reasonable and it matches other parties who borrowed money and had it forgiven due to covid-19 impacts. 

Now I agree with Dean Dad that a forward looking policy is overdue. But that doesn't mean that this plan is without merit and the general idea seems to be justifiable.

Tuesday Tweets and another reminder that Republicans were counting on an election about Biden and inflation, not about Trump and abortion

Listing "inflation" and "cost of living" separately is a bit of a stretch, but at least it's better than "inflation and high gas prices."

Barrett said he was unaware of the change, adding that they try to keep website current with most important issues — and abortion, he says, isn’t one.

An interesting statement, given that Michigan voters identified abortion as their top issue in not one but two polls this week. https://t.co/30MWmej3yo pic.twitter.com/UK1QF0mp8S

— Jonathan Cohn (@CitizenCohn) August 28, 2022

(And given that we're talking about Michigan, I assume he's talking about the security of the Canadian border.)

I wonder if they left in Masters' opposition to a right to contraception.

In Arizona, Blake Masters backtracks on abortion, scrubs campaign website

"I am 100% pro-life," Masters' website read as of Thursday morning.

That language is now gone.

Also deleted: support for "a federal personhood law"

via @akarl_smith @MarcACaputo: https://t.co/ckS3gPPvp4

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) August 25, 2022

 And in related news.

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers called an emergency special session of the GOP-led legislature to repeal the 1849 ban on abortions even for rape & incest

The GOP Senate president gaveled the session in & out in 14 seconds—The Assembly did the same in 25 seconds https://t.co/wY62hZkktq

— Steven Greenhouse (@greenhousenyt) August 13, 2022

New poll: 82% support abortion rights in Ohio. Yet the legislature denied a 10-year-old rape victim that option. This shows how gerrymandering subverts democracy and enables extremism. https://t.co/1360ltxZ0Q

— Jane Mayer (@JaneMayerNYer) August 10, 2022

Fox News poll: “The shift in vote preference mainly comes from women. They preferred the GOP candidate by 1 point in May and now go for the Democrat by 6.” https://t.co/p8IbhFbvd6

— Josh Kraushaar (@JoshKraushaar) August 12, 2022

Of course, changing the subject is easier when everyone reads the memo.

You guys notice how calm and composed DePerno sounds in this opposition ad as he says he goes on to say that he doesn’t think a woman should be allowed to get an abortion if her life is at threat pic.twitter.com/PJea2PHP9v

— umichvoter 🏳️‍🌈 (@umichvoter) August 10, 2022

Someone seems to be under a bit of stress.

this is truly bonkers pic.twitter.com/T7BkXq61E4

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 29, 2022

And though you've been told different, this remains Trump's party.

When asked if Trump will be the nominee in 2024, CPAC’s Matt Schlapp takes it even further, “it’s an unshakable bond. It’s always like, people ask the question - is he the leader? .. Yes, and I think he will be until he takes his last breath.” pic.twitter.com/EgF2ZDKlWo

— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) August 8, 2022

 

I've heard so many versions since 2020 of "Trump can't win the nomination again because R voters don't want a loser and they don't want to risk nominating a candidate with lots of legal issues." But the party is making it near impossible to argue from either premise.

— Benjy Sarlin (@BenjySarlin) August 10, 2022

 

Built around a cult of personality.

Ricky Shiffer, the armed man in body armor who was just killed trying to breach an FBI office, had the most active Truth Social account I've ever seen. His last two non-reply posts: https://t.co/Dv0yWkzl0m pic.twitter.com/eCFmJfF0en

— Drew Harwell (@drewharwell) August 11, 2022

No matter how much parts of the mainstream press dislike talking about it.

I read this with a question pending. As he examined the high-risk decision to search Mar-a-Lago, how would Times analyst @shearm describe the risk to the country in letting Trump's conduct go uncharged? A "news analysis" allows for that. https://t.co/eU7wzkWriw

No mention of it. pic.twitter.com/DmPf1TUmmZ

— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) August 10, 2022

Remember how David Brooks spent the early part of 2016 touting Rubio as the sane alternative to Trump?

Cascading layers of bullshit here. But it’s worth noting that his argument is that it doesn’t matter if Trump is likely to have committed a crime. Republicans will manufacture a prosecution as payback. He’s basically saying, that’s who we are, of course we’ll do that. https://t.co/8Fj5fQS4Su

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) August 10, 2022

God, this one breaks my heart.

"The kids ask me, 'Can I go get a book?' They're so excited, and I have to say no."

WATCH: “Tennessee teachers, you know why I’m in my classroom on a Saturday — TN passed a law, my kids are asking if they can read books and I’m having to say NO until I catalogue everything and get it all approved.”😳

Underappreciated. Underpaid. Untrusted. #GOPTeacherShortage pic.twitter.com/2sBOnCmBka

— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) August 14, 2022

The teacher was told to remove images of notable Black American leaders, like former President Obama, from his classroom because they were deemed "age-inappropriate".

This is what's fueling Florida's teacher shortage.https://t.co/aDXgcL0vHy

— Florida House Democrats (@FLHouseDems) August 10, 2022

You know Biden's foreign policy is going well when OAN switches from "this would never have happened if Trump were in power" to "this is only happening because Russia and China are afraid of Trump coming back to power"

“Russia could’ve taken Ukraine inside of 3 weeks but didn’t. They’re holding back, why? China is too scared to invade Taiwan, why? The reason is because they don’t know what Trump is going to do with them in 2025 .. Trump remains more powerful than anyone in 4 generations.” pic.twitter.com/TuLrzCljv3

— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) August 29, 2022

I did not expect her to work NIMBYs into this one.

1: stigmatize low-income welfare programs, stop indexing them to inflation
2. valorize home ownership as a democratizing vehicle for economic security
3. create new poor and middle class NIMBYs (and aspiring homeowners in those demos) who will fight against high-income taxes pic.twitter.com/cyBENbt5ox

— Rachel Cohen (@rmc031) August 27, 2022

Before I could get around to making fun of Neumann's follow-up to WeWork, it collapses and he gets another $350 million for the next fiasco,

And yet A16Z just dumped another $350M on this clown. I swear A16Z can't make money except through securities fraud these days, and have now run up against a grifter smarter than they are. https://t.co/3RUVzZUbAo

— Nicholas Weaver (@ncweaver) August 15, 2022

In my latest @businessinsider piece I rant about why the hell anyone would give WeWork's Adam Neumann $350M for anything, let alone a real estate venture. https://t.co/ZyEiHHnLY9

— Linette Lopez (@lopezlinette) August 18, 2022

Remind me kids, whose behavior should we try to emulate if we want to be successful in this life?

*kids voices rise in inspiring crescendo of innocent certainty* ADAM NEUMANN!

— E.W. Niedermeyer (@Tweetermeyer) August 15, 2022

Though Utah is still a fairly safe seat, the fall-out from Jauary 6th continues to reverberate.

.@SenMikeLee has tried to downplay his central role in Trump’s coup attempt for MONTHS—and now he's started threatening to sue me in the hopes that I'll keep quiet ...

Well, his own words speak for themselves. Let’s take a look👇

— Evan McMullin 🇺🇸 (@EvanMcMullin) August 15, 2022

From the feral disinformation files.

Gillespie County, TX: Population 27,000.
Trump received 79% of the vote in 2020 out of ~16,000 votes total.

It'll be very interesting if no one is able to vote this November & Beto O'Rourke ends up winning the state by ~10,000 votes or so. https://t.co/GYdlG4PFm5

— Charles Gaba 🇺🇦 (@charles_gaba) August 14, 2022

This is what an actual never-Trumper looks like.

Nope. As I’ve said often, I will not support ANY Republican who voted for Trump in 2020. That’s virtually EVERY Republican, including DeSantis. So I may never vote Republican again. Our ONLY job now is to defeat this authoritarian party. That means vote Democrat. @RadioFreeTom. https://t.co/kfe0SzyTaj

— Joe Walsh (@WalshFreedom) August 13, 2022

Sure it sounds bad, but...

Buried in the story is Trump having an emissary reach out to Merrick Garland to basically blackmail the AG with the fury that Fox had whipped up with the Trump base. pic.twitter.com/jMcjvDHt0I

— Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffe) August 13, 2022

...that's just Trump being Trump. Surely no respectable Republican would say something like...

“Everyone knows the old mob-speak trick of cloaking threats in the guise of faux-innocent ‘predictions.’” And Trump re-sent the Graham threat on his own social media platform. https://t.co/oRg32LeuvK
https://t.co/oRg32LeuvK

— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) August 29, 2022

One case where Russia's media being untrustworthy is kinda reassuring.

I’m not saying Trump let Russia see our nuclear secrets - Russia is saying Trump let them see our nuclear secrets. https://t.co/eVmhSLrKFc

— Mike Madrid (@madrid_mike) August 13, 2022

The anti-anti-Trump left has now crossed the "Marjorie Taylor Greene is right" threshold.

BJG: MTG has become America's favorite broken clock, & it's that time of day where she's regretfully 100% right.
Trump could possibly spend 33 years in prison if charged with Violations of the Espionage Act, obstruction of justice/criminal handling of classified nuclear documents pic.twitter.com/Rczmt5FfIw

— Matthew Dimitri 🐍🧪 (@themattdimitri) August 12, 2022

The Overton window on nuclear power appears to be moving.

Excellent overview of Diablo Canyon nuclear plant’s life extension push, by @Sammy_Roth https://t.co/MKkGC1CNBt

— Russ Mitchell (@russ1mitchell) August 14, 2022

On the student debt debate.

All the crude stereotypes about higher education are way out of line with reality.

There were literally 7,767 degrees awarded in area, ethnic, cultural, gender & group studies in 2019-2020 out of 2,038,041 degrees.

That's 0.4%. Not 4%. Not 40%. 0.4%.https://t.co/r0aX62jNKt https://t.co/jtKTSjTtWF pic.twitter.com/ocWX38PhuH

— Brendan Nyhan (@BrendanNyhan) August 28, 2022

Person who is mad about “degrees without marketable skills” happens to have one of those degrees pic.twitter.com/tI1V6yvSXn

— Sean Kennedy, MPH (@phealthsean) August 29, 2022

Well, no one saw that coming.

Investors that bought metaverse land with the hopes of leasing it to retailers have seen the value of their holdings collapse.https://t.co/eb9nO6yNyn pic.twitter.com/VaTPmjSdCL

— The Information (@theinformation) August 3, 2022

And Misc.

I love the phrase “Mandatory Option” https://t.co/iTMHssMKNi

— Grady Booch (@Grady_Booch) August 11, 2022

Web3, illustrated. https://t.co/RpUOLxhKY2

— Grady Booch (@Grady_Booch) August 15, 2022

“When you steal from one author, it's plagiarism; if you steal from many, it's research.”

- Wilson Mizner (American playwright and entrepreneur) pic.twitter.com/kZUu7DOVa6

— Fermat's Library (@fermatslibrary) August 9, 2022

instant classic https://t.co/HryOCgHQKO pic.twitter.com/yhPbfNMrrV

— Rebecca Ungarino (@ungarino) August 10, 2022

When it comes to conventional wisdom, always check the numbers

Here's a quote from an otherwise pretty good CNN political analysis.[Emphasis added]

The onus is on Demings to prove she -- or any Democrat -- can win statewide in a state that has overwhelmingly backed Republicans for years. But Democrats got a morale boost recently: The National Republican Senatorial Committee came in with an ad campaign for Rubio while Demings was widely outspending the Republican. 

There is no question that the GOP has had a hell of a run in Florida recently, currently controlling all of the statewide office, but there's an widespread misconception (at least based on a very small and non-random sample). When the subject of DeSantis's 2018 election comes up, even people who  follow politics closely tend to be surprised at the actual results. 

 

 The last senate race results were similar. 

Of course, 2018 was a good year for Democrats, but in 2014, Scott beat Crist by a relatively tight 48% to 47% and that was a pretty good year for Republicans.

Not all of these races have been close -- Rubio had a solid win in 2016 -- but if you have to generalize. recent Florida politics seems to mainly be stories of Republicans pulling out narrow wins in big state elections, not of voters "overwhelmingly" supporting the GOP

None of this necessarily tells us anything about the upcoming mid-terms -- we are so far out of the range of data that you'd have to be an idiot to make predictions -- but the narrative lots of people have been telling themselves doesn't fit the data. 

 

The essential Columbo

Something lighter for the weekend.

One of the consequences of the rise of streaming that everyone should have seen coming (but almost no one did) was the rediscovery of classic shows. The pandemic accelerated the process, possibly because people sought out the familiar. 

One of the shows that has been finding a new audience is Columbo. Joe Dator of the New Yorker had a ten panel appreciation of the show and the phenomenon back in 2020.

 

The show was part of a wheel series where various shows shared the same time slot. As a result, there are very few episodes for such long running show -- less than fifty if you don't count the reboot -- we made it easier to keep the quality high and to line up A list talent for the guest murderer slot.

These things make Columbo relatively easy for new viewers to get into, but as with any TV show, there are high points and low points. Here, more or less in order, are the episodes I'd recommend starting with.

These are all available on Amazon's ad supported service, Freevee.

1. "Murder by the Book" The first episode of the series after the first two TV-movies. Set the mold (and the standard). A career making show for Stevens Spielberg and Bochco. All this and Jack Cassidy too.

2. "A Friend in Deed" Directed by Falk buddy Ben Gazzara   Richard Kiley is smug and despicable. Twisty, inventive murder. One of the best endings. Perhaps the ultimate example of the lowly lieutenant bringing down the rich and powerful.
      
3. "Candidate for Crime" If not for the previous title on this list, I might call it the definitive episode. Another one of the best endings. Story by B-movie legend Larry Cohen;

4. "Suitable for Framing" Ross Martin was always fun. Good story. Memorable closing shot.

5, "Blueprint for Murder" Falk's directorial debut. Patrick O'Neal was born to play a Columbo villain. Ripped off by the Mentalist (as was the original TV movie).

6. "Identity Crisis" Columbo vs. the Prisoner (directed by McGoohan).

7. "The Conspirators" Interesting friendly relationship with Irish poet/IRA terrorist Clive Revill. Great closing line for the series finale.

Honorable mention

"Étude in Black"    Neither the murder nor the solution was that interesting, but it's Cassavetes and Falk

"Any Old Port in a Storm" Fine work from Donald Pleasence, with a genuine friendship between cat and mouse.

"Negative Reaction" Good resolution and how often is Dick Van Dyke the bad guy?

"A Stitch in Crime" Good work by Nimoy and Will Geer is always fun.

"The Most Dangerous Match" For Laurence Harvey fans

"Prescription: Murder" A good detective movie but neither Falk nor the creators had a firm handle on the role (which had previously been offered to Lee J. Cobb and Bing Crosby).

"Ransom for a Dead Man" Lee Grant was wonderful as always in a not-that-memorable story. Great closing scene, though.

Return of the Petruchio liberal

Incredibly weak. It's every bit the joke we expected. It will do virtually nothing for a large number of borrowers, will build very little goodwill, and yet will still manage to make everyone angry. A perfect Democratic party policy

— Spencer Thomas (@spencer_th0mas) August 24, 2022

Who’s more irritating?
—Those demanding 100% of ALL student debt be forgiven for EVERYONE no matter what & they won’t vote for Dems if it doesn’t happen
—Those saying NO debt should be forgiven for ANYONE and they won’t vote for Dems because some of it is being forgiven

— Charles Gaba 🇺🇦 (@charles_gaba) August 25, 2022

Wednesday, November 2, 2016

Petruchio liberals

As Shaw observed, Taming of the Shrew can be difficult for modern sensibilities (Benedick and Beatrice, by comparison, stand up well and are still being repackaged by comedy writers), but recently one particular element of the story has been coming to mind.

In Verona, Petruchio begins the "taming" of his new wife. She is refused food and clothing because nothing – according to Petruchio – is good enough for her; he claims perfectly cooked meat is overcooked, a beautiful dress doesn't fit right, and a stylish hat is not fashionable.

There is a certain type of vocal liberal, almost always white and reasonably affluent, who insists on blocking virtually every viable attempt to advance a progressive agenda because nothing meets his or her standards. They feel enormously proud of themselves for refusing to compromise, despite the fact that the price of their principled stands are invariably paid by the most disadvantaged.

Lawyers, Guns and Money has spent the past year or so dismantling this silliness.

Here's Scott Lemieux:

There should be a fancy Latin term for “arbitrarily chosen deal-breakers selected to reverse-engineer a justification for not voting for a candidate you’ve decided a priori you don’t want to support.” People who actually care about how the next president will affect environmental policy evaluate the candidates on environmental policy. People who want to effectively ignore environmental policy focus solely on fracking.

Her laundry list also serves to illustrate the utter stupidity of “dealbreaker” logic. “If Hillary Clinton favored a $15 minimum wage that won’t pass Congress, I might support her. But since she only favors a $12 minimum wage that won’t pass Congress, I’ll take my chances on Trump winning.” “I used to be a Democrat, but when I found out that Hillary Clinton is insufficiently woke on GMO labeling I can live with several decades of a Supreme Court where the median justice would have to turn to the left to see Antonin Scalia.” OK.
...

First of all, with the FBI director having decided to try to throw the election to Trump, this is an odd characterization. Clinton remains a favorite and probably an overwhelming favorite, but it would be wrong to say that Trump has no chance, and if Stein got any real traction he certainly would. But, hey, not only will it not be Sarandon who might die because she can’t get medical care or be unable to get an abortion or lose her legal marriage privileges or lose her welfare assistance or have no remedy for discrimination or be denied the vote if Trump wins, she stands to gain considerably from the Trump presidency she’s urging her fans to make more likely.

And it’s worth noting again that what utter chickenshit the qualifier is. At least the “heighten-the-contradicitons” crap she was peddling earlier is an argument — a really terrible argument in the vast majority of circumstances including this one, but an argument. “Vote Stein because it won’t matter anyway” just makes you a free rider patting yourself for what a special snowflake you are. Lamest. form. of. masturbation. ever. If you think that we can’t have an omelet without Trump breaking America’s most vulnerable then own it, and if not spare us.

I shouldn't have to say this but a 49-25 poll is not good news for the 25 (and it gets worse)

First off, the decision of the New York Times to even conduct a presidential poll more than two years before the election is irresponsible and bad for for Democracy. It distracts from important conversations and, since the data are largely worthless,  its main function is to introduce noise into the conventional wisdom. 

 But while the data are not worth wasting any time analyzing, the analysis in the NYT piece by Michael C. Bender is worth talking about, and I don't mean that in a good way. This represents a disturbing throwback to the wishful analytics of the second half of 2015, showing that many data journalists and the publications that employ them have learned nothing in the past seven years.

Back in the early (and not so early) days of the last Republican primary, 538, the Upshot, and pretty much everyone else in the business were competing to see who could come up with the best argument for why being consistently ahead in the polls was actually bad news for Trump. These arguments, as we pointed out at the time, were laughably bad.

Just as being ahead in the polls was not bad for Trump in 2015, the results of this poll (to the extent that they have any meaning) are not bad for Trump in 2022. When elections approach, parties tend to converge on whoever has the clear plurality, and 49% is a big plurality, particularly when a large part of it consists of people who are personally loyal to Trump rather than to the GOP. On top of that, 53% of self-identified Republicans had a "very favorable" opinion of the former president and 27% were "somewhat favorable."

80% favorable is a good number.

Politically, this is a time of tumult, and all predictions at this point are little more than educated guesses, but given the losses and scandals Trump had seen by the time this poll was taken, his support was remarkably solid, which is the opposite of how Bender spun it.

And it gets worse

Here's the headline and the beginning of Bender's piece. [emphasis added.]

Half of G.O.P. Voters Ready to Leave Trump Behind, Poll Finds

Far from consolidating his support, the former president appears weakened in his party, especially with younger and college-educated Republicans. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is the most popular alternative.

By focusing on political payback inside his party instead of tending to wounds opened by his alarming attempts to cling to power after his 2020 defeat, Mr. Trump appears to have only deepened fault lines among Republicans during his yearlong revenge tour. A clear majority of primary voters under 35 years old, 64 percent, as well as 65 percent of those with at least a college degree — a leading indicator of political preferences inside the donor class — told pollsters they would vote against Mr. Trump in a presidential primary.

Notice the phrase "GOP voters." That 49% refers to the respondents who said they thought they would vote in the Republican primary. Among that group, those who identified as Republicans went for Trump over DeSantis 56% to 21%.

If we're talking about who is likely to be nominated (which is, as mentioned before, an incredibly stupid and irresponsible question to be asking more than a year before the election), people who say they are going to vote in the primary are a reasonable group to focus on, but they cannot be used interchangeably with Republicans, which is exactly what Bender does.

While we're on the subject, this was a survey of 849 registered voters, so when we limit ourselves to those who said they were going to vote in the Republican primary then start slicing and dicing that, we are building big conclusions on a foundation of very small numbers.

And it gets worse. [Emphasis added]

While about one-fourth of Republicans said they didn’t know enough to have an opinion about Mr. DeSantis, he was well-liked by those who did. Among those who voted for Mr. Trump in 2020, 44 percent said they had a very favorable opinion of Mr. DeSantis — similar to the 46 percent who said the same about Mr. Trump.

Should Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Trump face off in a primary, the poll suggested that support from Fox News could prove crucial: Mr. Trump held a 62 percent to 26 percent advantage over Mr. DeSantis among Fox News viewers, while the gap between the two Floridians was 16 points closer among Republicans who mainly receive their news from another source.

Here's a fun bit of context. Fox has been maxing out its support of DeSantis for years now.

Steve Contorno writing for the Tampa Bay Times

(from August of 2021):

The details of this staged news event were captured in four months of emails between Fox and DeSantis’ office, obtained by the Tampa Bay Times through a records request. The correspondences, which totaled 1,250 pages, lay bare how DeSantis has wielded the country’s largest conservative megaphone and show a striking effort by Fox to inflate the Republican’s profile.

From the week of the 2020 election through February [2021], the network asked DeSantis to appear on its airwaves 113 times, or nearly once a day. Sometimes, the requests came in bunches — four, five, even six emails in a matter of hours from producers who punctuated their overtures with flattery. (“The governor spoke wonderfully at CPAC,” one producer wrote in March.)

There are few surprises when DeSantis goes live with Fox. “Exclusive” events like Jan. 22 are carefully crafted with guidance from DeSantis’ team. Topics, talking points and even graphics are shared in advance.

Once, a Fox producer offered to let DeSantis pick the subject matter if he agreed to come on.

If I were DeSantis's campaign manager, this poll would scare the shit out of me. Fox has pushed him to a degree unprecedented for a politician at that stage of his career. He has also gotten tremendous (and appallingly credulous) coverage from the mainstream press, but he just doesn't register. I know political scientists and data journalists don't like to talk about things like personality, let alone charisma, but for whatever reason, DeSantis has not made much of an impression.

It's possible cataclysmic events (of which we're seeing a definite uptick) will hand the Florida governor the nomination or maybe even the presidency, but if this poll had any meaning, it would be bad new for him and good news for Trump.

And it gets worse.

This wasn't just an article based on worthless data sliced ridiculously thin wishfully analyzed to get conclusions completely at odds with the actual numbers; this was an influential and widely cited article based on worthless data sliced ridiculously thin wishfully analyzed to get conclusions completely at odds with the actual numbers. It instantly became a fan favorite among political journalists.

The article was published on July 12th and immediately became part of the conventional wisdom. A little less than a month later, the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago, and the "Republicans are moving on from Trump" voices suddenly grew quieter, as even the highest ranking party members responded with unhinged accusations and threats of retribution. Though the pundits desperately wanted to believe otherwise, they  had to acknowledge that the GOP still belongs to Donald Trump.

Our condiments don't explode is a pretty good sales slogan

I always assumed concerns over preservative were a post-war thing. Lots of other things feel modern about this too, like the way companies use research findings to build brand and attack their competitors.

From Sam Lin-Sommer:

Fermentation also sped up a more dangerous process: Occasionally, bottles of fermenting ketchup would explode. In 1895, the New York Sun reported, “A bottle of catsup exploded on the dinner table of a family at Michigan City, Indiana, recently, and the force knocked all of the dishes off the table.” A 1903 headline in the Saint Paul Globe read, “BOTTLE OF CATSUP EXPLODES IN HER HANDS: Twelve Year Old Emma Setley Is Badly Cut By Flying Glass.”

To protect customers and their bottom lines, ketchup companies embraced chemical preservatives. Smith cites turn-of-the-century studies in California, Connecticut, and Kentucky that found that the majority of commercial ketchup samples contained some form of antiseptic.

Then, in 1883, a man named Dr. Harvey Wiley became chief of the Division of Chemistry of the United States Department of Agriculture, where he fought preservatives with the religious zeal of a man raised evangelical in rural Indiana. Born in 1844 in a log farmhouse, he spent his childhood tending to his family’s crops, then earned chemistry and medical degrees before shifting the Division of Chemistry’s focus to the food-safety problems that plagued the nation.

For the next two decades, he proposed countless Congressional bills on food safety, each of which was killed. But in 1904 he formed “The Poison Squad,” enlisting a group of healthy, young, male volunteers—mostly his colleagues at the Department of Agriculture—to eat all of their meals at work and ingest increasingly large quantities of preservatives. The results read like the last 10 seconds of a modern-day drug commercial: stomach cramps, headaches, sore throat, dizziness, decline in appetite, and loss of weight. Multiple trials stopped when participants became too sick to continue. Sensationalized in the press, “The Poison Squad” shifted public opinion against preservatives.

At a meeting of the U.S. regional canners associations in 1907, Wiley called for a ban on the use of benzoates, the preservative of choice for the ketchup industry. But executives were not convinced; Wiley couldn’t come up with an alternative to prevent ketchup bottles from souring and, occasionally, exploding.

But then Wiley gained a powerful ally: Henry Heinz, owner of the H.J. Heinz Company. Once a teenage horseradish peddler, by the age of 52 Heinz helmed a condiment firm with offices in London, Antwerp, Sydney, and Bermuda. But it wasn’t until the early 1900s, when he removed preservatives from his ketchup line, that he became the largest tomato-ketchup producer in the world, Smith writes in Pure Ketchup.

Heinz supported Wiley’s food-regulations movement, according to Heinz’s biographer Robert C. Alberts, because of “idealism and noble purpose compounded with self-interest.” Heinz stood at the forefront of food hygiene, so regulations would only help the company command high prices and maintain its reputation.

...

Thanks in part to high-quality ingredients, Heinz’s new tomato ketchup cost two to three times more than its competitors. But the price increase also paid for the largest advertising campaign the industry had ever seen. In one of several advertisements to grocers, “Heinz stated that grocers should ‘get rid of any chemically preserved foods’ before they were confiscated by the government,” Smith writes. Heinz took out a two-page spread in the Saturday Evening Post that shouted, in block letters: “WARNING! THE U.S. Gov’t Says benzoate of Soda in Foods Produces Injury to Digestion and Health.”

In response to Heinz and Wiley, a cabal of ketchup companies formed a fierce pro-benzoate lobby. In meetings with President Theodore Roosevelt, they argued that an anti-benzoate law would destroy the ketchup industry. American grocery stores stocked few preservative-free, shelf-stable ketchups, so the lobby said that Heinz’s claims were impossible, and they spread rumors about ketchup bottles exploding without preservatives. According to Smith, an industry journal reported that “a priest in Washington, Pennsylvania, ‘was hauled across the room and struck his head against the door’ because of an explosion caused by the lack of preservatives.”

...

In 1908, a board of scientists created by President Roosevelt ruled that benzoate of soda was harmless if consumed in quantities of less than a half of a gram per day. But this didn’t matter: Wiley and Heinz continued their campaign on public opinion, and Americans soured on preservatives. By 1915, Smith writes, most major ketchup companies stopped using them altogether, and those that didn’t lost many of their customers. It helped, too, that the thick consistency of Heinz’s preservative-free ketchup allowed it to cling tenaciously to the hot dogs, hamburgers, and french fries that swept the nation in the 1900s.

We live in an age of mad kings

“Let’s talk about something other than women driving. The NEOM project, the futuristic city that he (the crown prince) plans to invest half a trillion dollars in. What if it goes wrong? It could bankrupt the country.”

 Jamal Khashoggi, June 2017

 We've talked over the years about the damage done by futuristic bullshit, how it dumbs down the conversation, takes oxygen away from real innovation, forms the basis of bubbles and Ponzi schemes. These are not trivial things, but the stakes get much higher when a head of state buys into the bullshit, particularly if he happens to be a murderous sociopath.

From Scott Alexander:

You really want to watch this video. I had read a few other articles on Neom, thought I understood what level of craziness we were talking about here - but no, this is much, much crazier. I didn’t understand the full scale until they gave their proposed dimensions: a structure 500 meters tall, 200 meters wide, and (wait for it) 170 km long.

500 meters is about the height of One World Trade Center, the tallest building in the US. 170 km is about the east-west length of the Republic of Ireland. So the Saudis are going to build something . . . as tall as the World Trade Center . . . and . . . as long as . . . Ireland? That’s their plan? Yes, says the video, that is their plan.

Is this just some crazy attempt to build hype, like when Elon Musk says the next Tesla definitely will have full-self-driving ability? I don’t think so. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is obsessed with Neom and very vain; I don’t think he would deliberately promise impossible things knowing that he will be embarrassed later when they don’t work out (and he says it will be done by 2030, so we’ll know the results relatively soon). Also, the government has earmarked $500 billion to $1 trillion for the project - around the GDP of Sweden - which sounds kind of like being serious. Also, they’ve already started on important Saudi construction preliminaries, like murdering the people who previously lived in the area. Also, they’ve already set up on-site camps for the construction workers (source):

...

…the Bloomberg article offers some tantalizing clues:

Among the misdeeds most likely to anger Al-Nasr, the former employees say, was failing to spend enough money. Three of them described Al-Nasr keeping a diagram showing which department heads were disbursing less than their budgets allowed, which the ex-staff half-seriously referred to as a “wall of shame.”

Maybe if you demand grander and grander plans, and have a reputation for killing anyone who opposes you, then eventually you get a really grand plan and nobody has the guts to tell you that it’s impossible.

 

This is how you review something not worth reviewing

Jared Kusher's new book is of no value to anyone. Here's why we decided to review it.

— New York Times Pitchbot (@DougJBalloon) August 17, 2022

 

Dwight Garner's review is getting a lot of praise which I can only put down to the NYT halo effect. There are no real insights here and the wit is mainly Maureen Dowd style pop culture jokes ("With or without you, Bono.").  This is not the second coming of Dorothy Parker.

It does, however, raise the question how do you review something completely without interest or value without, in a sense, dignifying it with your response? This video by Bob Chipman is probably the best approach to the problem I've seen. The most notable part starts at 2:47 but you should take a few minutes and watch the whole thing.

Carpetbagging?

This is Joseph.

I think that this tweet gets the dynamics of the situation incorrect:

I think that this misses just how much restraint there actually has been. Dr. Oz was born in the United States but did his military service in Turkey to retain citizenship. Note that the attacks on Dr. Oz have been all about his living in New Jersey despite the dual citizenship issue being right there.

Nor is this concern unique to Dr. Oz. Ted Cruz felt it necessary to renounce his Canadian citizenship due to being a US senator. Rishi Sunak, a UK politician running for leader, returned his US Green Card after he joined the cabinet. Yet this has been a very understated vision. Instead the focus has been on the person in question not being resident in the state. 

To address the Ilhan Omar point: if she chose to run as a senator in North Dakota, because there was a promising opening there, without relocating then I am quite sure that people would ask whether that made her a good representative for a state in which she has no personal stake. Or consider Michael Ignatieff -- a former leader of the Canadian liberal party. He left Canada for the UK as a young college graduate and ended up at Harvard University. After 27 years abroad, he returned to the University of Toronto and then became the head of the Liberal Party. He was promptly beaten in the subsequent election, it being a very bad outcome, resigned, and then, two years later, he went back to the US. His lack of time in Canada was a big deal:

Ignatieff was also subject to scathing attack ads by the Conservative Party, slamming him as "Just visiting" Canada for the sake of political advancement

So one should be prepared for these issues when running for political office.

Has it been done well? Yes, look at Hilary Clinton. After her husband finished as president, they were inevitably going to move somewhere. They picked New York, where she decided to run as a senator. She bought a house in New York in 1999 that remains a primary residence to this day. She visited the entire state as a way of showing her interest in it and directly engaged the outsider issue. This was a white person born in Chicago who did her university work in New England. 

So, I think that this is a reasonable and common line of attack. Politicians for the senate are elected, so far as I can tell, on: a) Party loyalty, b) Policy positions, and c) Are they a good fit to represent the people of a state. The questions being asked now are really relevant and Dr. Oz needed to act like Clinton and get ahead of the issues (by a couple of years) by carefully planning his argument for how he makes a good representative. Also, when there is a weak point, you should lean into the other issues but I don't see a lot of policy that he is well suited to go after. His website says things like:

Dr. Oz seeks to rebuild the middle layers of society – institutions like family and community – that have been hollowed out by failed policies, narrow thinking, and toxic culture wars. He knows that no government can substitute for the dignity of work, the security of health care, and the spiritual support of our family

Worthy goals but what about Dr. Oz makes him uniquely suited to helping the middle layers of society? The recent grocery store video looked like an out of touch rich guy. Now maybe this is unfair but these issues continue to enhance the representation piece, without any comment on his background (for the record, he was born in Ohio). 

So I think the effectiveness of this line of attack is due to a lack of careful pre-emption and that this is just a really basic point that candidates need to think carefully about. 

Are the Republicans more vulnerable to the internal veto problem than the Democrats?

This is a follow-up to Monday's repost "The GOP needs the crazies more than the crazies need the GOP. " The whole piece is relevant, but in terms of this discussion, here's the money shot.

 Probably since 2008 and certainly since 2012, pretty much every nontrivial faction of the GOP has held veto power which means the question is no longer who has it, but who is willing to use it. The Tea Party was the first to realize this. Now the alt-right has caught on to the dynamic as well.

Andrew Gelman wasn't convinced:

I see your point, but given that the 2 parties have approximately equal support (OK, maybe the D's have 51% and the R's 49%, but it varies from election to election and they're both close to 50%), doesn't your argument apply to the Democrats as well? Indeed, wouldn't it apply to both parties most of the time for the past few decades? I agree there's something new in recent years with the crazies and the Republican party, but I can't see how it could be simple math. 

Let's see if I can shore up my claim.

                                            Sometimes 50 x 100% > 100 x 50%. Sometimes it's not.

Though I'm tempted to push back a little bit more, we can let the equal support stand for the sake of argument, but what exactly do we mean by the term? Are we talking about a hypothetical voter in an election where everyone participates or are we talking about actual voters who show up at the polls? And if so, which polls?

One of the great insights of the conservative movement was that most elected offices were undervalued. For instance, it was in many ways better to control the majority of state legislatures than it was to control the White House. Therefore, a substantial block of voters who will make it to the polls for every single election and reliably pick members of your party are especially valuable, valuable enough to justify losing a few other members to keep the loyal ones happy.

There are a lot of examples but the first that comes to mind is white evangelicals. 

From sociologist Lydia Bean:

Back in October 2014, pollster Robert Jones pointed out that white evangelicals were declining as a percentage of the U.S. population, even in the South – which could have been bad news for Republicans who count on loyal support from white evangelical voters. Starting in November 2014, Jones predicted, evangelical population decline could start tipping close races to Democrats in Bible Belt states like Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, and North Carolina. But Election Day on November 4th proved Jones wrong. White evangelicals turned out at high rates and played a major role in handing Republicans decisive victories in Senate races across the country. White evangelicals may be declining as a percentage of the population, but because they flock to the polls when Democratic constituencies often stay home, they still rule the midterms.

The group is shrinking (they now make up just under 15% of the population), but the reliability of their support has made them indispensable to the GOP, and recently they have come to realize the power they wield. They, along with other factions, have started demanding that the party make costly concessions. In its current incarnation, this dynamic started with the Tea Party.

By comparison, we haven't seen anything that like with the Democrats for a long time.  I think you'd have to go back before the Clinton administration to find examples of factions using the "I'll take ball and go home!" tactic to force the party into taking massively unpopular positions (at least not on the level we've seen on the other side). That doesn't mean there haven't attempts but none have gone anywhere.

One possible explanation is that the Democrats tend to rely more on the soft support of large groups (young people, non-white voters). These voters will be more likely to stay home if you take a toxic position and can fill in the hole with with higher turn-out if a fringe group bolts.