The Intersection of the Conventions and the Protests; Daniel's Debut; Beshear's Blockers

The Democratic Party’s convention last week featured an appearance from George Floyd’s family and a lot of talk about fighting racial inequality. But the party made sure not to allow anyone to speak of more aggressive ideas to reform policing that don’t poll well, like reducing funding for police departments or disbanding local departments. At their convention this week, the Republicans are still suggesting that the Democrats are anti-police---even though Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have gone out of their way to argue that they are not. The Courier-Journal Tuesday morning published an article on Breonna Taylor that included an unnamed law enforcement official who was quoted saying that while Taylor did not deserve to die, “criminal activity always has consequences.” The paper at first took down the article and yesterday afternoon published a version of the story that did not have that quote. 

Meanwhile, protesters were all over Louisville yesterday demanding charges be filed against the officers who killed Taylor. There was a huge police presence in response, and dozens of protesters were arrested. In Kenosha, Wisconsin, the police shooting of a black man named Jacob Blake on Sunday has led to protests and rioting and police use of tear gas on protesters. 

I linked all of these incidents together because they illustrate the complexity of what’s happening in America right now. The multi-racial, multi-generational protests all over the country and the world in June in the wake of Floyd’s death and the polls showing Americans across racial and even partisan lines expressing more concern about police violence and racial inequality suggested a great racial awakening had hit America. In some ways, it had. 

But now, some of the easy steps have been taken. Companies have started their new racial justice initiatives, hired a few more black employees and/or started a speaking series on anti-racism. Politicians have passed bills banning chokeholds and taking down Confederate monuments. Democrats probably picked Harris for vice-president in part as a nod to the movement in the country--even though she was eminently qualified and perhaps the most logical person for vp before the protests even started. 

Now, we are facing the harder questions. Do leaders in the Democratic Party want to defend the way the police currently operate? If the answer is no, can they continue to insist on piecemeal reforms that don’t seem to be stopping the police from shooting unarmed black people and firing tear gas at protestors regularly? Is their real position that they might support comprehensive changes to policing as long as they don’t have to announce that position in the months before a national presidential election? Can Republicans continue to enthusiastically defend the police while also bemoaning incidents like what happened to Floyd? Is the media, which tends to repeat the narratives of powerful officials (who are usually white) and tends to have lots of white and very few black employees in its leadership ranks, ready for constant coverage of racial incidents? Will Joe Biden-style Democrats and John Kasich-style Republicans chose to align themselves with a protest movement that wants to radically overhaul how America views racial inequality, policing and well just about everything, try to defend a status quo that may not be untenable or embrace more unabashedly pro-police, anti-Black Lives Matter views like Trump? 

The protesters have some unpopular positions. I don’t think it’s worth asking, “Will the protesters compromise on their goals?” They won’t. And it’s not clear that’s really the role of a protest movement anyway. They are not legislators. And as one of my former colleagues wrote a few years ago, protests are always unpopular--people wouldn’t be protesting if their goals were easy to meet! 

“As the Washington Post noted last year, most Americans didn’t approve of the Freedom Riders, the March on Washington in 1963 or other similar protests. In fact, many Americans thought that these protests would hurt the advancement of civil rights,” Harry Enten wrote back in 2017.  

“In addition, many Americans held mixed-to-negative views of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. In a 1966 Gallup survey, 63 percent of Americans gave King a negative score on a scale from -5 to +5. Now, the civil rights marches are viewed as major successes, and just 4 percent of Americans rated King negatively on that same scale in a 2011 Gallup poll,” he added.

“The majority of people opposed slave abolition. The majority of people opposed civil rights. Why the hell do we care if the majority of people currently oppose abolishing the police & what does that have to do with the fact that we’re being relentlessly killed & brutalized?,” activist Bree Newsome Bass wrote in a Twitter message yesterday. 

Daniel’s Debut 

Attorney General Daniel Cameron didn’t say anything particularly interesting or surprising last night. His speech was basically Abraham Lincoln was really great and a Republican, today’s Republicans and President Trump good, Joe Biden and the Democrats bad. He mocked some of Biden’s gaffes in talking about racial issues, declared himself a “proud supporter of Donald J. Trump,” criticized “the anarchists tearing up American cities,” and said, “Let’s be honest--no one is excited about Joe Biden.” Cameron invoked Taylor’s name and said that, “Republicans will never turn a blind eye to injustice,” while adding that he opposed an “all-out assault” on American values. 

It was probably more significant that Cameron spoke in the first place than what he said. Getting a prime-time convention speaking slot is a big deal for someone who isn’t a former or sitting governor, senator, presidential nominee or first lady--even if it’s for a presidential nominee who is likely to lose and is controversial enough that many in his party probably declined opportunities to speak (or weren’t asked because they would decline.) The Republican Party really wants to feature its non-white figures--and Cameron is seizing this opportunity. He has assessed, correctly in my view, that associating with Trump is a smart move if you are an up-and-coming Republican politician, even though the president is fairly unpopular and very controversial. 

This speech is the easy part for Cameron. The hard part is what to do about the officers who killed Taylor. There are legal questions for sure. But there are also political and electoral ones for Cameron---who probably sees himself as a future governor, senator or perhaps even vice-president or president. How does whatever decision he makes on this case affect his standing with the police, who are often aligned with the GOP? How does his decision affect his standing with black people and even politically-moderate non-black people? Republican Party officials probably know Cameron is not going to win the party a ton of black voters but will likely be wary of featuring him as a symbol of the party’s diversity in the future if he exonerates all the officers and then becomes a pariah among black people across the country. 

Is Andy Beshear Going to Be A One-Year Governor? 

Damon Thayer, the No. 2 Republican in Kentucky’s state senate, says his party is, “united in limiting this governor’s executive authority. That will be a big focus of the 2021 session,” according to a story written by the Lexington Herald-Leader’s Jack Brammer that was published earlier this week. Brammer was writing about Republicans’ anger at Beshear’s removal of a Bevin appointee who had been the executive director of the Governor’s Office of Agriculture Policy. That job is a political post, and previous governors had replaced their predecessor’s choice with their own--so the GOP complaint here is essentially nonsense. Republicans are suggesting they will pass legislation shifting this post from the governor’s purview to the Department of Agriculture--which is run by Ryan Quarles, a Republican. 

Thayer and other Republicans have been signaling these intentions for months now--they basically can’t wait for next year’s legislative session to start so that they can start stripping powers from Beshear. They are deeply frustrated that he has taken command of the state amid the COVID-19 outbreak. As I have written before, whether you agree or disagree with all of his decisions, Beshear seems to erring on the side of trying to save people’s lives and prevent the spread of the virus, as opposed to prioritizing in-person meetings of churches or bars being open. That seems to be a logical approach. 

It’s likely Beshear’s aggressive handling of the virus outbreak has saved lives. And Kentuckians seem satisfied with him. A Quinnipiac University poll conducted July 30 to August 3 found that 63 percent of Kentuckians had a favorable view of Beshear’s performance as governor, including 66 percent of independents and even 36 percent of Republicans. In that same survey, 43 percent of Kentuckians said they had a favorable view of Rand Paul’s performance as a senator, 46 percent had a favorable view of Mitch McConnell’s performance and 49 percent had a favorable view of Trump’s performance as president. Polling by a consortium of experts at several universities shows that around 60 percent of the state’s residents have approved his handling of the COVID-19 outbreak--a higher standing than all but six of the nation’s governors. 

That said, Republicans control both houses of the Kentucky legislature and can override a governor’s vetoes with a simple majority. So the question is likely how many executive powers Beshear has stripped from him next year, not whether he loses any. The big question is whether he is severely weakened in the final three years of his term by the legislature. 

“Recency bias” and “sensational, exceptional, negative, and current events.” 

If you hate the news media, I think this article explains a lot of the reasons why. I’m really trying to stop falling into these patterns.