Scattered across the United States, your faithful Mischiefs crew watched the last two days of presidential debates and formed some opinions. We offer those here.

Julia Azari

Identity politics was the winner of the debates.

This is a loaded phrase and I use it deliberately and advisedly. One big question in a field of 20+ candidates — perhaps half of whom are qualified and potentially viable — is which kinds of fault lines will arise. Tension between economic populism and (for example) racial justice has been part of the party’s move to the left.

No one really explicitly addressed that tension in the debates, but it’s notable that the two standard-bearers for left positions on economic issues did not shine on the more identity-related questions. Elizabeth Warren was basically left out of the immigration discussion in the first debate, with Julián Castro setting the agenda and forcing others to respond to him. Bernie Sanders was also tangential to the heated exchange of the second night, in which Kamala Harris took Joe Biden to task for both recent comments and past actions on racial issues. Buttigieg’s answer to questions about his record as mayor of South Bend and a recent incident of police violence is another standout moment of the second night.

Candidates also positioned themselves on gender and LGBT issues. Booker and Castro both mentioned the needs of transgender Americans on the first night. The discussion on Wednesday night also featured the candidates jockeying for who could most forcefully come out in favor of abortion rights and against the Hyde Amendment. On the second night, candidates pushed the envelope less but embraced liberal positions in clear terms. Kirsten Gillibrand highlighted women’s issues (using fairly traditional, gender binary language, in a stark but probably unintentional contrast with Castro). Buttigieg talked about his marriage in his closing statement.

Each night, the candidates answered questions about health care, the overall orientation of the economy (phrased in the second night in terms of socialism), and the need to address the needs of middle class and working American — whatever those terms may mean. The debate structure probably shaped this. If Warren had been on the second night with the other major players, she might have pushed them to address more economic questions and the populist framework in which she (and Sanders) present them. Similarly, if Warren and Sanders had been on the same stage, we might have seen an exchange between them about how exactly the rich and the corporations are messing everything up, and what to do about it.

It’s also worth noting that identity and economics don’t operate in parallel in real life. Marginalization and underrepresentation have economic consequences. But for right now, the discourse in the Democratic primary still kind of treats these as separate tracks, and this week’s debates brought the identity questions into the spotlight. 

Jonathan Ladd

In a crowded presidential field (and this is an extremely crowded field), the first task for most of the candidates is to be considered one of the top three or four contenders. You need to get voters to see you as a serious candidate so you are worth investing attention in learning about, and supporters will not be wasting their votes. 

So the big task for all of the candidates except Joe Biden is getting noticed by viewers and getting attention in post-debate news coverage. No matter how much people like your position or your ability to defeat Trump, you can’t ask people to throw their vote away. In that regard, in the first debate, Warren, Castro, and Booker did what they needed to do, and in the second debate so did Harris, Buttigieg, and Sanders. Add Biden to these six and it’s hard to see how the remaining 13 candidates can get attention going forward.

Kamala Harris’s performance stood out from all 20 candidates over these two nights. That is very hard to do in such a big field. But her ability to clearly press her points, which she has shown as a prosecutor and in Senate hearings, was on display here. Harris, Warren, Castro, and Booker were all able to clearly explain their plans in very limited time. But only Harris showed that she could also effectively go on the attack. Her attack on Biden’s record working with segregationists in the Senate and opposing busing worked both to hit Biden on a weak point and build up her own appeal to the African American community, given that some on the left have criticized her previously as being too aggressive as California Attorney General.

Finally, this was a bad night for Joe Biden. It was completely predictable that he would be attacked. Yet when he was attacked on his most obvious weaknesses — his age, his record on race, and his 2002 vote for the Iraq War — he had no good response to any of them. Compared to the others onstage, especially Harris, his answers were unfocused and his tone was tentative. These weaknesses have the danger of playing into concerns about his age.

Will this hurt Biden in the polls? It’s hard to say. It seems like his African American support is particularly vulnerable to the kind of attacks Harris laid on him. Time will tell. Debates often don’t lead to any movement in the polls, but Biden’s campaign can’t be happy with his performance last night.

Seth Masket

Overall, I didn’t see a lot from these two debates to shake up the larger presidential field. The real action was centered on a handful of candidates: Biden, Booker, Buttigieg, Castro, Harris, Sanders, Warren, maybe Klobuchar, and maybe O’Rourke. These candidates, for the most part, are the ones who have some party support behind them, in terms of endorsements, money, staff, etc. 

I’ll note that the candidates who stand to benefit the most from these debates — especially Booker, Harris, and Warren — are the ones who have been standing out in my surveys of early-state activists but not necessarily dominating public opinion surveys. The strong public performances we saw onstage this week are similar to what those activists have seen in the candidates; they’re just now being made available to the rest of us.

The other candidates got in a few good moments and few did anything to actually embarrass themselves, but they didn’t really do anything to destabilize the rankings, either. Swalwell got in an effective dig at Biden’s age, but that is likely to hurt Biden more than it helps Swalwell. My guess is that this bottom tier of candidates will have a harder time qualifying for later debates as more donors and backers concentrate their support on the upper tier.

It was hard not to be impressed by the exchange between Harris and Biden. Biden’s greatest strength so far in this contest has been his perceived electability; even those who do not necessarily prefer him as a nominee have been willing to support him because they believe he’s the most likely to defeat Trump. Harris, by sharply critiquing him on his recent comments regarding his collegiality with his segregationist colleagues, not only attacked him on an issue of great importance to a vast segment of the Party, but also made him look vulnerable and defensive about his record. His nomination may well still happen, but its aura of inevitability was punctured.

Hans Noel

The last two nights have revealed a new model for debates, building on the foundation that the Republicans began last cycle. Two debates, without even a hint of a top tier and an “undercard,” is the way to go. Even with a field as small as eight or 10 people, I think it makes sense.  

Some worried that spreading the debates over two nights, without an obvious top tier, would be trouble. Would it matter who you were drawn against? I don’t think it was a problem at all. 

Presidential nomination debates have never really been debates, in the sense of conflict over a proposition. They’re definitely not like high school or college competitive debates, or even a legislative debate, where different sides of an issue clash against each other. They have always been more like side-by-side press conferences, especially when there are more than two candidates.

So why not just have a series of press conferences? The “debate’’ format allows for accountability. While journalists can ask follow up questions in a town hall meeting, they often don’t. There is nothing like the incentive of an opponent to make sure a candidate doesn’t get away with anything. When Beto O’Rourke touted his plan for immigration reform, Julián Castro called him out over the details, notably Castro’s call for repealing Section 1325. If the moderators won’t ask Joe Biden about his record on race, Kamala Harris can do it.

None of this requires that all of the candidates be present. At this stage, all we want is to sort out the candidates who deserve more attention from those who do not. If Tim Ryan can’t stand up to criticism from Tulsi Gabbard, he should probably drop out. 

If everyone were on the stage at the same time, or if the “top’’ candidates were together, I don’t think my conclusions would change about who deserves more attention (Harris, Castro, Klobuchar, Gillibrand) and who does not (O’Rourke, Ryan, Yang, Williamson, and, yes, Biden).

We’re going to have a lot more debates, both this cycle and — probably even with reforms to the system — into the future. The split format is a great way to handle a field of eight or more. 

Richard Skinner

These were two bad nights for two old men. Biden and Sanders both looked and acted their age and then some. Biden began well by seeming above some of the squabbling among the other candidates and continually tying himself to Obama. But as the debate went on, he just seemed older and more sluggish. We’ll see how people react to the substance of the Biden-Harris exchange (I’d be pretty surprised if Harris talks about bringing back busing), but their optics were obvious: Harris seemed young, energetic, and unintimidated, while Biden appeared old, defensive, and caught off guard.

Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders kept shouting about the same handful of topics that have always obsessed him. Red-faced and surly, he was probably the most unpleasant presence onstage. Biden seemed like an out-of-touch grandfather whose time has passed, while Sanders was more like an ill-tempered neighbor yelling on his front porch. Everyone will probably forget Wednesday night’s debate, but the candidates who did best were generally the most liberal — Elizabeth Warren, Julián Castro, Cory Booker — and perhaps will compete with Sanders for support.

Kamala Harris put on one of the best debate performances I have ever seen. Sharp, energetic, well-informed, immaculately prepared, she seemed ready to take on Donald Trump. (Her experience as a prosecutor clearly has its advantages). Her attack on Biden’s record on race was expertly choreographed and beautifully delivered. (Smart move making it more about empathy than policy).

Before this debate, most Democratic voters liked Harris but relatively few supported her. This debate could change that. She’s already received an impressive number of endorsements; will her performance garner more? Two potential problems for her: Her call for ending private health insurance could be a real liability in the general election (will she flip-flop again?) and older voters may react differently to her exchange with Biden than did the throngs on Twitter. This could mean that her appeal will be less to the older moderates who currently back Biden and more to the younger liberals who like some of the other candidates.

Oh, there were other candidates? Pete Buttigieg seemed polished and well-informed, but the racial tensions in South Bend are clearly a lingering problem for him. Michael Bennet knew his stuff and made pointed criticisms of the two old men. But I doubt many will remember him. Andrew Yang mercifully said little, while Marianne Williamson not-so-mercifully did not. Eric Swalwell kept trying to make “pass the torch” happen. (Harris could have told him about exploiting the generation gap: “Show, don’t tell.”) Kirsten Gillibrand and John Hickenlooper performed well enough but were dwarfed by the bigger egos onstage.   

Debates rarely have a huge impact, but these may end up boosting Harris and perhaps some of the other mid-range candidates (Warren, Booker, Castro, Buttigieg), while dinging the support of Biden and Sanders. (Does Biden have anyone on his staff who can talk frankly with him about his performance?) I don’t think any of the candidates in the bottom half of the field got much out of these debates, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see many not qualify for the third round in September.

Jennifer Nicoll Victor

The Democratic Party’s first debates are a peek inside the sausage factory of American electoral politics. The process now playing out in public view is one that Democrats have done mostly behind closed doors for the last several generations. Winnowing a wide field of candidates to a single nominee is a complex process involving political connections, experience, policy knowledge, fundraising, and, of course, charisma. Democrats came under fire for following an elite-driven, somewhat closed process in 2016, and as a result they are airing their laundry now to settle on a candidate to oppose Trump. 

On Wednesday night, candidates concentrated on introducing themselves and displaying their qualifications. On Thursday, we saw more candidates position themselves vis-à-vis one another and Trump. The most meaningful exchange of the night was between Harris and Biden on the topic of civil rights. Harris directly challenged the frontrunner using a personal anecdote laced with experience and knowledge. Her example both dated him and exposed a fissure in the Democratic Party that she is trying to use to her advantage: How far are Democrats willing to go to correct civil rights injustices? Importantly, race is also the issue Donald Trump uses to appeal to supporters. In this way, Harris challenged the frontrunner in her party and previewed how she might confront the president.

The last two candidates Democrats have nominated are Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama: big-city, over-educated, policy-wonkish, non-white-men. Of the current field, candidates like Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Julián Castro, and Elizabeth Warren look most like the party’s most recent choices.

But prior to the debates, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders were clear frontrunners. While they performed fine in Thursday’s debate, they did not shine. Candidates like Harris and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg were notable breakouts. Biden is already well known, and so is Sanders to some extent, so the early debates cannot help them that much. But for lesser-known candidates like Harris, Warren, and Booker, the debates can move their needles.

Debates are not likely to shake up the rankings in the field too much because the debate audience is primarily made up of people like those who write for and read Mischiefs of Faction. But, if Kamala Harris becomes the nominee, everyone will point to Thursday’s debate as a key moment on her road to success. 

If you are a fan of movies or stories where a clever protagonist uses cunning strategy or the tools of science to outmaneuver an opponent, then you’re going to love Volume 2 of the Mueller report. Special counsel Robert Mueller released his report Thursday in two volumes. Volume 1 is all about the connections between the Trump campaign and Russian agents, businesses, or government actors. Volume 2 is all about the possibility that President Trump engaged in the criminal act of obstruction of justice during the investigation about his campaign.

The maneuver that Mueller uses in Volume 2 is extraordinary. It’s a social scientist‘s delight and should be used as a case example in research methods classes. Special counsel Mueller uses the logic and procedure of the scientific method to arrive at his conclusion in his investigation about the possibility of obstruction of justice. This is unusual because it is not the typical route that an attorney would use in building a case or preparing an investigatory report. In short, rather than providing evidence to support a claim of obstruction, Mueller essentially sets out to falsify a null hypothesis that obstruction did not occur.

The double-negative language that describes this procedure can be confusing. Here’s how it works. The scientific method that all scientists, natural or social, use involves a process called falsification. The method was popularized by a philosopher named Karl Popper, who in the mid 20^th century wrote a book called The Logic of Scientific Discovery. Popper argues that in science it is not possible to “prove” anything; rather, scientists seek to theorize all the possible explanations for a phenomenon, and then seek evidence to disprove as many of those explanations as possible.

It’s a process of elimination. And this is exactly what Mueller does in his report. Mueller does not set out to prove that the president engaged in obstruction of justice; rather, Mueller recognizes that he is bound by the Attorney General’s interpretation of the law, which says the sitting president cannot be charged with a crime. In light of this legal interpretation, it would be futile for Mueller to build a case and demonstrate that the president should be charged with the crime of obstruction. So Mueller does something incredibly clever: He falsifies all of the alternative explanations.

In his report, special counsel Mueller walks through at least 10 specific instances in which the president or his staff may have engaged in obstruction of justice. Because his intent is not to frame the president or prove his wrongdoing, Mueller lays out all the possible explanations for what the president and his allies did. Then, one by one, Mueller provides the evidence showing that each of Trump’s associates who may have aided in obstructing justice in fact did not do so. The report exonerates these actors on this charge.

The report does not exonerate the president. But it goes much further than that. The report falsifies all of the possible reasons the president should be exonerated and shows each one of these claims to be false.

Using Karl Popper’s method of elimination, when all possible explanations except for one have been eliminated, then the remaining explanation must be true. This is the power of logic. Of course, it is possible that one might not imagine all of the possible explanations, or might not be able to test all of them. In Mueller’s case, he appears to have made an exhaustive search for explanations on the question of obstruction and he appears to have eliminated all of those explanations except for one.

In short, the only conclusion one can reasonably draw from the evidence Mueller presented is that the president in fact engaged in obstruction of justice. Mueller demonstrates the president’s culpability without making the case against the president directly, or providing supporting evidence that would accompany a criminal charge, because the law prevents the president from being charged with a criminal act as president. Mueller does it by proving that all the alternatives are false.

Attorney General Barr was right. Mueller does not prove the obstruction case. In fact, he proves that all the possible claims about the president not obstructing justice are false. By proving false all the claims that could exonerate the president, Mueller implicates his crimes without directly proving them.

I’m not a lawyer, but it seems that while President Trump may not be indictable now, the evidence in the Mueller report could be used as a basis of impeachment, as some Democrats are now investigating, or as a basis for charging the president when he is out of office.

The Mueller report turns out to be a crime novel, philosophy of science text, logic game, and strategic maneuver all at once. While many have pointed out that the report is essentially a Rorschach test of partisanship (Republicans see exoneration; Democrats see criminality), regardless of which color glasses you view it through, you have to admire the cunning of Robert Mueller.

This post is part of Mischiefs of Faction, an independent political science blog featuring reflections on the party system.

There has been a fair amount of public discourse lately about democratic reforms. Pundits, bloggers, and editorials have discussed the substance and importance of topics such as the Electoral College, the presidential nomination system, slavery reparations, and the balance of power between the executive and legislative branches. We here at the Mischiefs of Faction have a lot of thoughts about the fundamental building blocks of American politics and government. So today we are rolling out a series of short blog posts offered by a number of writers on our permanent staff and a few guests. The question we will speak to: Which parts of the Constitution have aged least well?

In this series, you can expect to hear from:

• Jennifer Victor on slavery and suffrage (in the post below)
• Seth Masket on the national popular vote movement
• Julia Azari on the presidency and problematic amendments to the Constitution
• Greg Koger on the malapportionment in the Senate
• Jonathan Ladd about the problematic elements of the Electoral College and the US Senate, and how they aren’t the same problem
• Hans Noel on the possible motivations of reformers
• Richard Skinner on the natural born citizen requirement
• Zach Elkins (MoF guest) on how US constitutional elements fare relative to other democracies’

I (Jennifer) am going to start off the series by picking on two parts of the US Constitution that have not held up well over time: slavery and suffrage.

The framers of the Constitution famously punted on the question of slavery. During the deliberations at the Constitutional Convention, it became obvious that if the republic was going to stand together as one nation, there would have to be a compromise regarding slavery.

Representatives from the South were simply not willing to join a nation that outlawed the source of their fortune. Abolitionists decided to choose the republic over the enslaved people and agreed to a compromise that accepted their status as less than full humans. It was an immoral and repugnant choice that has scarred the nation permanently.

By punting on slavery, the framers set the stage for the American Civil War to take place 72 years later. It remains the deadliest war in US history, taking more than 650,000 Americans’ lives, which was around 2.1 percent of the population at the time. That’s what happens when your own citizens are on both sides of a violent four-year war.

There are those who argue that the framers’ punt on slavery was worth it; that the republic known as the United States of America would probably not have been formed if they hadn’t. This is a subjective judgment, and no one knows what the counterfactual universe would be if things had gone differently in the Constitutional Convention, but it’s important to note that such a view is a decidedly white perspective. Those whose ancestors did well under the republic that formed are much more likely to see the slavery trade-off as having been worth it, but if your ancestors were enslaved, or perished in the war, your view of the compromise may be much different.

Either way, slavery remains America’s “original sin,” and we have never fully compensated or shown appropriate contrition for the role the US played in the human calamity that is institutionalized human slavery. Many scholars have shown that the roots of much of our politics today, particularly on matters of race, can be traced back to this original tragedy. The fact that the framers did not outlaw slavery in the Constitution has left a lasting legacy of social strife, violence, racism, and inequality that we have not yet escaped.

Another part of the Constitution that has not aged well is suffrage. The right to vote is fundamental to a democracy, but the Constitution did not guarantee voting rights for its citizens. Rather, it allowed states to set their own voting rights rules. At the time of ratification, most states only allowed white male landowners the right to vote. By some estimates, this was about only about 6 percent of the population. Through the first half of the 1800s, most states lifted the restriction on land ownership, which expanded suffrage to most white males in most places.

In 1870, the 15th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, technically expanded the right to vote to formerly enslaved people who were newly freed, but the era of Jim Crow laws in the South, where most African Americans lived (and still live today), prevented much of this population from exercising their suffrage rights.

Wyoming was the first state to grant women the right to vote, which they did first as a territory in 1869 and then as a state in 1890. While some states granted women the right to vote through the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, suffrage was not guaranteed to women until the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920, and when it was ratified, it really only applied to white women.

By 1965, when the Voting Rights Act was signed into law, suffrage finally expanded to disenfranchised African Americans and the right to vote became more fully enshrined and enforced in the US Constitution and law.

In 2013, the Supreme Court ruled in Shelby County v. Holder (570 US 529) that some parts of the Voting Rights Act were no longer necessary. The Court ruled that parts of the 1965 law were unconstitutional and lifted the restriction on some states that had been required to receive federal approval before making changes in their voting laws. Since then, several Southern states have made changes to their voting laws, and suffrage is again threatened in the American South.

Some scholars define democracy by the proportion of a country’s citizens that have voting rights. It is not unreasonable to argue that the US reached peak democracy between 1965 and 2013.

With regard to slavery and suffrage, it may be more accurate to say that the US Constitution was too silent, rather than wrong, but our modern politics makes it abundantly clear that the Constitution did not provide the best footing on these most fundamental rights in a republican democracy. On these topics, the Constitution has not aged well.

This post is part of Mischiefs of Faction, an independent political science blog featuring reflections on the party system.

Election Day is nearly upon us, and it’s time for Americans to once again drink from the fountain of democracy as they enter their polling booths for this semi-regular ritual — or opt not to.

It’s worth pausing to as: What purpose do elections serve? Even a shallow dive into modern political science demonstrates that only Kool-aid flows from the democratic fountain; elections do not do what most people believe they do.

What we think elections do

The conventional way of thinking about elections is that they are a mechanism of accountability. The logic goes like this: Politicians seek to be elected (or reelected) and therefore they need to make their constituents happy. Constituents evaluate the performance of their representatives and reward those who are doing well, and vote against those who are not.

The desire to be reelected, and the ability of voters to hold the elected accountable, is seen as the critical mechanism that makes democracy work.

Political scientists Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels call this the “folk theory” of democracy. We think elections are the mechanism by which citizens select and remove government representatives, giving politicians strong incentives to do right by their constituents.

But elections are not a great mechanism for holding politicians accountable.

The barriers to electoral accountability

Elections are a necessary but flawed system in democracy. There are good reasons to vote and good reasons to hold elections, but “because that’s how we hold representatives accountable” is not one of them. There are at least three big reasons why elections are imperfect mechanisms of accountability: limited agency, limited cognition, and oversensitivity.

Limited agency: “Agency” is the term social scientists use to mean that individuals have the capacity to act on their own. Americans tend to have strong cultural connections to the idea of individual agency.

The American dream is that an individual can work hard (“pull themselves up by their bootstraps”), be recognized as valuable, and earn rewards or status in exchange. Having individual agency is strongly connected to the idea of a meritocracy, where the deserving are granted rewards.

But what if our success is not a function of what we do as individuals, but a function of the position we hold in society’s strata?

Studies show that college students whose families are in the top income quartile are five times as likely to graduate compared to college students whose families are in the bottom quartile. This means graduation rates are not only a matter of grit and hard work, they are also a function of one’s status and position in society.

The attainment of a college degree is, to some extent, a function of broad socioeconomic patterns. The idea that college students’ success is dependent on individual agency is a myth, and the same is true for voting.

We all may think that our choice about whether to vote, and for whom to vote, is a matter of our own individual agency, but it’s not. Despite a strong streak of individualism and fiercely protected individualistic identities, all humans are products of the social systems in which they live.

Social science research by scholars like Meredith Rolfe, Betsy Sinclair, and David Nickerson, shows that your decision to vote, and your decision about how to vote, is a function of the context you live in.

Do the people you live with vote? How will your co-workers vote? Which candidates are people talking about at the gym? Our daily exposures to (or from) politics strongly affects our individual choices about whether and how to participate in politics.

You can continue to think that your political preferences are entirely decisions that you came to all on your own, but you’d be wrong. Your parents, children, friends, neighbors, colleagues, teachers, and peers’ political attitudes affect yours. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s what makes you human.

But if elections are about individuals holding elected officials accountable, we have to let go of the idea that individuals make political choices that are independent of one another.

So maybe “I,” as an individual, cannot hold someone accountable — but maybe “we” can?

Limited cognition: Since the 1960s, political scientists have understood that all voters (a.k.a. people) have a limited cognitive capacity for processing information about politics. Most people are not highly attuned to political events and use various cognitive shortcuts to help them make rational choices while voting, anyway. Individual people hold conflicting views about politics that they try to rationalize, but people make regular cognitive errors.

For some time, scholars wondered if people were just too dumb to have democracy. Does democracy require citizens to be highly educated, rational, and informed? Not really.

No one defines democracy as a system where all the participants are well-informed. Frankly, given the complexity of issues in today’s world, it’s impossible for anyone to know everything about politics, policy, and government.

Some level of common information, education, logic, and shared facts are essential, but it would be unreasonable to expect democracy to require all people to know everything about all issues and candidates at all times. It’s not only impractical, but our brains just aren’t designed for that type of data storage.

We have cleverly designed all sorts of institutions to help us overcome our cognitive limitations, political parties being the most important of these. Parties are institutions that provide us with immediate and accurate cues about what a candidate or issue is all about. As partisanship has become more essential to our identity, as shown in research by Liliana Mason and others, we can make even quicker judgments about who or what to trust. In some ways, this is incredibly useful and efficient. 

Until it’s not. When we hold our party identification so closely that we fail to evaluate any evidence, and begin to see the other side as dangerous, we run into problems with extreme polarization. When party organizations no longer have control of what their party stands for or who it nominates, parties become a liability for democracy, rather than an organizing feature.

Our political group identities are therefore also getting in the way of us using elections to hold politicians accountable.

Oversensitivity: Let’s suppose I’ve found a way to accept and overcome the previous two limitations — I understand that it’s not just me that makes choices about whether to reelect my representative, but it’s people like me who do. I also understand that I may not have all the information, but I trust that I’m reasonably smart and informed, and can get the information I need to discover which candidate is worth electing when the time comes. Now can I believe that elections are a good way to help us hold elected people accountable?

Not really. Elections are fragile things. They are sensitive to weather events, freak occurrences, and what cognitive psychologists call “recency bias,” where we overvalue options we have seen most recently. On Election Day, my vote may be influenced by my general mood, how I feel about how breakfast is settling, or the bad thing I heard about a candidate yesterday.

Essentially, because I have less agency than I like to think — meaning I’m strongly influenced by the people I interact with — and I have less cognitive capacity to handle the deluge of information thrown at me about the election, the chance that I might make my selection in the polling booth based on something whimsical is real.

This is why when former FBI Director James Comey presented his letter about his investigation into candidate Hillary Clinton’s email just a few days before the 2016 election, it may have had an effect on the election outcome.

The choices we make in elections can be complicated and “over-determined” by so many factors that it’s hard to pinpoint any one thing that caused us to vote the way we did. The complexity of election decisions is why recency bias can make elections oversensitive to events nearest in time to the vote. 

The famous political scientist Morris Fiorina wrote that politicians are held accountable in elections because voters use “retrospective” evaluations of their representatives. But how can our evaluations be genuinely retrospective when our choices are affected by what we heard yesterday, what our spouse said about the candidate, and the truly limited information we have about the candidate?

If voters could be truly retrospective, there is a case to be made for elections to be mechanisms of accountability, but it seems like the evidence for such a mechanism just isn’t there.

If elections aren’t for accountability, what are they for?

Democracy does not depend on our ability to use elections to hold politicians accountable. All sorts of institutional features are making it harder and harder for regular citizens to praise politicians they like, and vote out the ones they don’t. From changes in campaign finance law to changes in the congressional calendar, accountability is not a particular strongpoint in American government these days.  

Some will say that elections are about “finding the will of the majority.” But this is another false flag because in any large group of people trying to make a choice about something complicated, there are multiple majorities.

Consider a large class of students trying to order pizza. There are a thousand combinations of pizza toppings and dozens of preferences and priorities among the students. The idea that a single majority exists to support one, and only one, option is absurd.

There will be one majority of students who like pepperoni; another majority that might be made up of some from the first majority, who like ham and pineapple; and another majority, made up of a separate but overlapping group, who like peppers and onions.

Democracy is a pizza order on steroids. The mathematics of combining millions of people’s preferences over hundreds of options (i.e., candidates and policies) means that there is no such thing as a majority will. There are many majorities. The idea that elections are the means by which we find the majority, as if there were only one, is the stuff of fairytales.

So if elections aren’t about accountability and they’re not about finding the will of the majority, what are they for? Here are three possibilities:

1) Elections help us generate community and feel connected to people who are like us. There is nothing more natural in human instinct and behavior than to establish ourselves as a part of some group. We endlessly identify ourselves as parts of groups we value or see as like us. We publicly signal our gender, our team loyalty, our occupation, our income status, and even our political party, to those seeking to figure out how to categorize us.

By participating in elections, we can be a part of a community. We can participate in an event that our neighbors are participating in. We can identify ourselves as part of a group that we value (whether that’s voters, Democrats, Republicans, or people who like donuts on Tuesdays). Elections give us a way to be a part of something, and this is an essential part of being human.

2) Elections help us participate in civic culture. Civic culture includes any activity that goes on in the place where you live that affects how you live. Whether you are skeptical of the civics around you and seek to change them, or you value the civics around you and want to encourage them, the institutions that make up your community are a part of your civics.

Elections are a way to engage with those institutions and participate in key aspects of your well-being. Midterm elections are not one election, but 10,000 local elections held by every community in the country at the same time. This is a powerful opportunity to connect to the people around us.

3) Elections are a means of individual and group expression. The right to express oneself is deeply embedded in American culture. The First Amendment to the Constitution talks about a right to individual speech and expression, and it’s one of the most valued rights Americans have.

When one cannot freely express themselves, they are restricted, restrained, or censored in a way that is antithetical to a free society. Expression comes in many forms, and whether it’s truly a function of individual agency or not, it’s an important component of human experience.

Elections are the key mechanism we have to express ourselves. Even if those feelings are misguided, based on falsehoods, fickle, or fleeting, the opportunity to be counted is strongly valued and has a revered place in America.

This is not enough, you say? Then consider not voting, and everyone you know not voting. Imagine what it would feel like to try to accept the results of an election or policy change in the absence of any opportunity to have expressed a preference. The result would lack authority or legitimacy. Voting does not create legitimacy, but not voting guarantees illegitimacy.

Elections simply cannot do what we ask them to do. Accountability may be possible through some government institutions, and may be somewhat possible through elections, but it is not at all clear that elections are the appropriate way to hold politicians accountable for their actions.

But elections have great value anyway. Like democracy itself, elections are a terrible mechanism that cannot ever hope to achieve its promise. But as Winston Churchill said, the alternatives are all worse. Elections are valuable and important.

Vote because it makes you feel like you’re a part of something. Vote because you were told to. Vote to show you care. Vote to show you’re angry. Vote to show you’re excited. Vote because you think that your vote matters. These are worthy reasons to vote.

It’s okay that elections probably do not provide accountability. There are other ways of holding elected people accountable (if they are operational). So don’t vote because it makes democracy work; vote because you want to live in a democracy, and if you don’t vote, it won’t be one anymore.

When the US Senate cast its votes on Saturday on Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court, the outcome was known in advance because all the pivotal players had announced their intended votes. However, there was a dramatic and unusual thing that happened during that vote. Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski (AK) defected from her party and voted “present” rather than “yes” or “no.” What was that? 

Turns out it was a black swan.

It’s was a savvy, strategic, complex move, filled with contradictions. It was both partisan and rebellious. It was courageous and cowardly. Feminine and feminist. 

The decline of paired voting in Congress

Murkowski used a procedure that used to be more common in the Senate called “pairing.” Pairing occurs when two senators make an agreement to allow their votes to cancel each other out. In Murkowski’s case, she had paired with Montana Republican Steve Daines, whose daughter was getting married on Saturday. Daines could not return in time for the vote without missing his daughter’s big day, and the party leadership did not want to hold the vote longer than was necessary. 

But it turned out that neither Murkowski’s or Daines’s votes were critical to the outcome. Kavanaugh would be confirmed regardless of what either of them did. So Murkowski offered to pair with Daines so that he could attend the wedding and the vote could proceed as scheduled Saturday afternoon. By voting “present” Murkowski gave Daines some political cover for missing the vote, since his absent “yea” didn’t hurt the party cause. Murkowski didn’t need to vote “nay” to achieve the desired effect, although functionally she might as well have, since her action did not help the candidate. But it did help Daines.

Many have decried the decline of comity in Congress in recent years and might see Murkowski’s gesture as a tip to the old-fashioned days where politicians showed more humanity toward one another than we’re used to seeing today. And it’s reasonable to see Murkowski’s courtesy toward Daines as an altruistic act, in that sense. 

But recent political science research may help us to see it in a different light. Research by Patrick Rickert, a PhD student at Washington University in St. Louis, shows that the rate of pairing has declined as Congress has become more polarized. See the figure below that shows the rate of pairing across time.

Rickert explains that the decline of pairing is the result of party polarization. As parties become more internally homogeneous, there is less opportunity for pairs to form within a party because, by definition, pairs must be votes cast in opposite directions.

In addition, as the two parties have diverged from one another, there is less opportunity for cross-party pairing to occur. Since modern political parties are both more polarized and more internally homogenous, we don’t observe pairs very often anymore, so maybe Murkowski was acting out of the kindness of her heart.

One vote, many meanings

Maybe it was kindness. But it’s also the case that this pairing serves her political ambitions rather well. Her decision to buck her party and vote “no” on Kavanaugh indicates that she felt considerable pressure from Alaskans on this topic. Reporting showed a surprising number of Alaskans who went to Washington to make their case in person. Opposing the nomination is consistent with a progressive, perhaps feminist viewpoint that she determined was more in line with her electorate than the party’s preferred stance. 

By pairing with Daines she gave political cover to him for missing the vote, but also some for herself. An act of kindness toward a co-partisan is a sort of feminine care-taking gesture that just might take the edge off the rebelliousness of bucking the party, to the eyes of a more traditional voter. And because Daines is also a Republican, her act allows her to both defect from the party while helping a co-partisan — a rare act indeed.

One might say that voting “present” rather than “no” is a cop-out, but it’s harder to see it that way in the broader context of why she did it, and given her open statements about her intention to oppose the nominee. 

If Murkowski had not paired with Daines, the outcome would have been the same (the vote would be 50-49, rather than 50-48). If McConnell had held the vote, everyone would have stayed late or come back on Sunday and the vote would have been 51-49. It’s possible Murkowski feared a delayed vote and saw the pairing as another way to hasten the end of Kavanaugh confirmation debacle.

She may have paired out of kindness to her colleague, or she may have paired out of some expediency for herself. Further interviews with her may reveal this over time. Either way the move was strategic and smart.

Since congressional parties are still moving further apart from one another, while showing less intra-party diversity, we should not expect pairings to make a comeback. And when we do see them, we should not read too much into these rare events, as if to lull ourselves into thinking congress may be becoming more humane and functional. 

Sometimes political circumstance presents the right mix of instrumental incentives, personal connections, and opportunity to show kindness that the result is a black swan.

The Supreme Court nomination process for Judge Brett Kavanaugh has been tumultuous and unusual. There are two aspects of the process that together signal a significant weakness in American democracy — one that will metastasize if he is seated on the Court.

These include his overt display of partisanship at his second hearing, and the accusations of sexual assault and misconduct that have come forward against him. As described below, the explicit display of bias on behalf of a Supreme Court justice is historically associated with systemic violations of civil rights. The behaviors Kavanaugh has been accused of indicate that victims of sexual violence can reasonably expect fewer protections under his watch.

This would represent a massive shift in the number of Americans who expect government to protect their basic rights and would be a significant degradation of democracy.

Judges are expected to be impartial, not partisan

America has had Supreme Court justices in the past who have been explicit partisans. In 1836, Roger Taney became the chief justice under unusual circumstances and presided for 28 years over a Court that ruled in some of the most controversial cases in our nation’s history. Taney wrote the Dred Scott decision in 1857, which ruled that African Americans could not be considered citizens because the framers of the Constitution considered African Americans to be inferior. The case proved to be a critical precursor to the Civil War that resulted in the deaths of more than 600,000 Americans. See this recent piece by Calvin Schermerhorn for more historical context on Taney and others.

Recent social science evidence and research shows that when the public perceives the Court as engaging in actions that serve a political cause, or some specialized minority, the public loses faith in the body as an impartial arbiter (but see this).

Even when the Court has ruled in decisions that have had explicit consequences for elections and political parties, such as Bush v. Gore in 2000, the Court has done so in a way as to not break that fourth wall. While many people viewed that decision as a partisan one, the Court went to great effort to maintain some semblance of judicial integrity and impartiality. They understood the importance of delivering the decision so that it would be accepted by the public. The alternative is constitutional crisis. There also seemed to be consensus that there was no way to avoid some sense of partisanship. The urgency of providing a conclusion to that bizarre election was paramount.

But even in those circumstances, the Court did its best not to look directly into the camera. While political science research has shown that justices have ideological preferences that strongly affect their decision-making, the veil of impartiality is part of the magic that provides the Court its authority. It’s not much different from our collective belief that the dollar has value. After all, the dollar is just a green piece of paper. Like the Court, it only has value because we all agree that it does. If this belief goes, so does the institution.

Kavanaugh shows his stripes

Last Thursday, Judge Kavanaugh publicly revealed his partisan sympathies. He explicitly criticized Democratic members of the panel, suggested that his nomination process was stalled due to a conspiracy dating back 20 years to his time working on the Kenneth Starr investigation of President Bill Clinton, and showed antipathy and animosity toward groups strongly associated with Democrats.

This was highly unusual behavior. The modern period has not seen a Supreme Court nominee break this fourth wall. The power, authority, and legitimacy of the Supreme Court rests solely in the belief of the general public that decisions made by the Court are just. Without this support, the institution cannot serve its role as the third branch of government.

Public support for government institutions is essential to all the branches of government to some extent. However, the executive and legislative branches have an electoral process that provides a direct link between citizens and their representatives.

The judicial branch is different. It is not designed to be a representative branch. It has no electoral connection to the public. These features might make it seem like it should be more difficult for the judicial branch to have the support of the public that provides it legitimacy and that gives its rulings public acceptance; however, historically, the Supreme Court has enjoyed a greater sense of support and faith from the public than its two counterparts.

The Gallup study above shows that the public generally has more faith in the judiciary than the other branches, despite (or maybe because of) its lack of electoral accountability.

When Kavanaugh used overtly partisan rhetoric at his hearing this week, he revealed his bias. His condemnation of those who oppose him showed him as an arbiter with preconceived notions of right and wrong that are outside of the concept of blind justice. Those who see Kavanaugh as someone who is not their ally may not have faith in the decisions and rulings he writes. This alone creates uncertainty and instability quite different from what we’ve seen in the past five decades of the Supreme Court.

The question, then is do Kavanaugh’s overt partisan statements shake some Americans’ faith that the Court can be an impartial arbiter? If so, how many Americans might feel that way? What proportion of Americans is it? And with what intensity might they hold that view?

This is where the allegations of sexual assault come into play.

The Kavanaugh cloud of doubt

Judge Kavanaugh has categorically denied participating in any inappropriate sexual behavior as a teenager or college student, despite several unrelated accusers coming forward with similar stories. His defensive attitude and outright rejection of the claims have led him and his supporters to blame those victims for “derailing” his confirmation process.

However, for people who have experienced sexual harassment or sexual assault, or who are highly sympathetic toward those who have, his defensive attitude and callousness toward victims renders him unrelatable at least, and threatening at worst. It’s not unreasonable to think that those who are sympathetic to victims of abuse would see Judge Kavanaugh as someone who is not like them, who cannot relate to them, and who would not protect them. This population may have a hard time accepting the fairness and legitimacy of his decisions because they do not see him as someone who would protect them.  

Now consider that half the population of America is female. In this population, 81 percent of women experience sexual harassment and about half of women experience unwanted and inappropriate sexual touching sometime during their lives. About 20 percent of women are victims of sexual violence at some point in their lives, and the rates are higher among women of color.

A sizable portion of the population therefore may look at Kavanaugh and his judicial choices with a high degree of skepticism. If he’s lost the trust of this population, which may be a majority of country, his judicial decisions will lack authority and his participation in the Supreme Court will threaten the institution’s legitimacy.

The quality of democracy in America is an individual experience, not a collective one

America has suffered through explicit partisans on the Court before. It resulted in great civil rights abuses of people who lack political power. America has also seen those accused of sexual harassment on the Court before. Kavanaugh is different because not only has he shown himself to be a strict partisan, but he’s also been accused of sexual assault, rather than harassment. He may therefore not be viewed as an impartial arbiter and protector by most Americans. More importantly, those who view him as biased or threatening are not likely to be in positions of power. Women and people of color are not the favored groups in the hierarchy of power. It’s the Court’s job to protect vulnerable populations.

If history is our guide, the explicit display of partisanship by a Supreme Court justice signals a willingness to put the rights of advantaged populations above those of vulnerable populations. The sexual assault allegations show us a population he may be willing to subjugate. Together, these two insights into this nominee are a foreboding preview of what his role on the Supreme Court might look like.

The experience of watching Christine Blasey Ford and Judge Kavanaugh provide testimony last week caused many Americans to relive their own experiences with sexual violence. If Kavanaugh is confirmed by the Senate, this population and those who sympathize with it may find Kavanaugh’s rulings and Court participation to lack authority and legitimacy. These Americans may feel like they live in a country that does not protect their rights as much as it did before Kavanaugh’s seating. This is exactly what political scientists mean by “democratic demise.” For this population, democracy is less secure because their individual rights are less protected.

By this account, the state of democracy in America is not a universal condition experienced equally by all Americans. Rather, one’s level of privilege, status, and identity with in-groups of power determine the level of democratic protection a person enjoys.

Any American who has suffered injustice at the hands of their government may already feel this way. This is the nexus of the Black Lives Matter movement, and other movements for racial and social justice. What we’re experiencing with the Kavanaugh appointment expands populations who are in a vulnerable class, and who perceive themselves to be vulnerable. As the population of citizens who sense that democratic institutions do not protect them expands, democracy weakens for everyone.

The benefits of using big data to glean insights has been around since the digital age advanced to the point of everyday people being able to manage many gigabytes of data on personal computers. This strategy was made famous in the 2004 book Moneyball by Michael Lewis, which Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin adapted into a screenplay that became a popular movie (2011), starring Brad Pitt, Robin Wright, Jonah Hill, and Philip Seymour Hoffman.

In politics, Nate Silver rose to fame by applying the same principles beyond the sports arena and making highly accurate forecasts of presidential elections. The algorithms used by Silver and his team at FiveThirtyEight have been highly transparent and useful, and their work has in many ways transformed the ways pundits and scholars view the horse race of campaigning.

The practice of using big data to forecast election outcomes has also been criticized. Some have questioned whether forecasting itself can affect election outcomes. While there is heavy skepticism about the magnitude of any impact, the idea is that real-time, publicly available information about who is leading at any given point in a campaign may have outsize influence on voters’ and candidates’ strategic choices about whether to vote and to whom to campaign, respectively.

But what if making predictions is the wrong goal? It’s very human to want to know who or what will win a contest. Humans can be naturally competitive and even voyeuristic, characteristics that have helped our species thrive. I totally get that predictive knowledge is enticing and exciting. It’s like the dopamine rush from licking the buttercream icing straight off the cake. 

I have no problem with the horse race, and I certainly have done my share of consuming plenty of predictive analyses. But I find that I’m often left with more questions than answers. Sometimes, the predictive information is dissatisfying.

When we find it dissatisfying, it may be because what we really seek is understanding, or information about how to influence outcomes.

When social scientists use big data to engage in analyses of this type, the primary goal is to explain rather than predict. Prediction is fun but may not allow us to understand the underlying causes of a phenomenon or outcome. This is where the dissatisfaction comes in. Using the data to focus on developing a clearer understanding of how the world works, how humans interact in it, and how these interactions produce outcomes, can provide enlightenment. Ultimately, this enlightenment can arm us with higher quality information than prediction alone.

For those who seek to use these tools for influence, or to help achieve particular policy outcomes, wouldn’t it be better to know how and why something works, rather than whether or not it is likely to happen?

I admittedly come at this with the bias of a social scientist, and my scholarly field is charged with providing explanations about how the world works. I certainly don’t expect or want the fun predictive stuff to go away. But if it seems lacking, then it could be because we are asking the wrong questions. Rather than asking, “Who will win?” or “Which will pass?” perhaps we should ask, “Why is one candidate ahead?” and “What are the conditions that make a policy gain traction?”

Big data can help us do both. Finding causal mechanism and developing plausible explanations are challenging, and may be more work than building predictive models. But if we use our masses of data to help us engage in both of these, we can have our cake and its icing.

Extraordinary investigative reporting, published today at USA Today, shows that CEOs and lobbyists are paying for access to President Donald Trump by becoming members of his golf clubs and seeking interactions with him there. Trump spends considerable time at his own resorts, and the patterns developing as a result of his ownership of these clubs is raising the eyebrows (and maybe the blood pressure) of government ethics watchdogs.

There is a big difference between the type of “money buys access” claims that we’ve typically seen in the past few decades and what’s happening with President Trump. In short, the president is receiving personal profit, rather than campaign support, for the financial relationships being forged between him and those seeking access to him.

We can gain some insight into what’s happening with Trump by comparing it to what typically happens in politics, and looking at these events through a historical lens. The sources of money are largely the same as ever; they are CEOs, lobbyists, wealthy business leaders who seek government support or policies that favor their businesses or organizations. The big difference we’re seeing is the destination of the money.

Previously, the money would go into politicians’ campaigns, the PACs that support them, or be spent on behalf of the politician in a way that supports their reelection. In other words, the money was all going to help get someone into office, or stay in office. Donors are presumably willing to do this when they believe the politician is sympathetic to their goals.

In Trump’s case, it’s entirely different. The money being used to buy access to Trump is a part of his personal profit. Of course, he may self-fund his next campaign and so one might think of the exchange as being very similar to what we’ve seen before. But the fact of the matter is, it’s his money and he can do with it what he pleases.  

The reporting from USA Today shows that wealthy donors (who are behaving perfectly legally and rationally, I might add) have an exceptional opportunity to make very large, very direct donations to the president’s personal profits. Memberships to his golf clubs, I understand, run around $100,000 annually. Then there’s all the fees and other expenses to use the club.

It’s unprecedented that certain classes of citizens can literally buy a membership to the president’s club and the payment personally enriches the president.

To be clear, there is nothing illegal about this arrangement. It’s probably not impeachable or even particularly un-American, insomuch as we’ve been here before (100 years ago). But it meets the definition of unethical and has all the right features for corruptibility.

This form of corruption is highly problematic for a healthy system of government. Politicians are supposed to want to please constituents, pass policies, and solve problems. The incentives to get and stay in elected office are supposed to entice leaders to build coalitions to provide public goods that people cannot create on their own. However, President Trump’s system of listening to business leaders who pay to access him is largely inconsistent with the benevolence of providing public goods. In addition to being a starkly unfair system of running government, history shows it’s also unsustainable. We’ve been here before.

American politics in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was ripe with corruption at nearly all levels of government. It was the way things were done.

There are two key elements of our political history that limited this type of corruption from happening. The first was created by government. Congress passed laws that regulated campaign finance, attempted to outlaw direct quid-pro-quo corruption where donors paid politicians so they could win government contracts, and anti-trust laws that curtailed the power of large corporations.

The second came from political parties. The progressive reforms enacted in the 1920s changed the way political parties nominated candidates and used political patronage, and effectively destroyed many local party machines. In particular, governments transitioned to a professional civil service, handing out desirable government jobs based on merit rather than partisan loyalty.

Together these laws and party reforms were successful at curtailing much of the corruption that plagued late 19th and early 20th century American politics.

One hundred years later, we’re seeing some of the same corrupt practices that vexed us before because some of the legal and party institutions that prevented it before have broken down.

On the legal side, campaign finance laws, despite the objectives of many reformers, are failing to curtail the outsized influence of a small subset of the donor class. Efforts to reform campaign finance in recent decades have focused more on strengthening the relationship between citizen donors and candidates, rather than political parties (see excellent research on this by Ray La Raja and Brian Schaffner). These reforms allow greater access for some citizens, but have had negative consequences for the power and ability of parties to coordinate candidates and policies.

On the parties’ side, President Trump, while the leader of his party, was elected in a primary and general election process that did not make him beholden to the traditional interests in his party. He operates more like a party boss than a party leader. He makes appointments based more on personal loyalty than merit or expertise. He appears to value media attention over policy achievements and he’s openly critical of other leaders in his party.

In the party machine days of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, politics and business were codependent. The government was the party, and vice-versa. Trump’s use of his own business interests as a means for citizens to access government is exactly parallel to the corrupt practices America largely escaped a century ago. If history is to be our guide, we should look to make legal changes that outlaw these entanglements, and demand that our political parties enact changes to their leadership and candidate selection that create incentives for them to focus on policy goals and building coalitions to achieve them.

Rather than be discouraged that we’ve been doomed to repeat a corrupt part of our history, I’m encouraged that history leaves us a blueprint for how to get out of it.

[Special thanks to Julia Azari for feedback on ideas presented here. All errors remain mine.]

I’ve been teaching American politics at the collegiate level for nearly two decades. Entering the classroom this fall will be unlike previous semesters. The Trump presidency is unprecedented in many ways, and forces educators to rethink the way we approach teaching government and politics (as well as many other subjects, I’m sure, with which I am less familiar).

I’ve written before about one of the primary ways teaching about Trump can be challenging for political scientists. Most people assume (fairly) that professors tend to be politically liberal, but it is not ideologically liberal tendencies that make it difficult to teach about Trump. I recall no consternation about teaching politics during the George W. Bush administration, for example. Rather, President Trump presents challenges for two primary reasons. 

First, a scientist’s job is to be detached from her subject, and that is difficult in the current era of hyperpartisanship and outrageous events. Like most of my colleagues, when I’m in the classroom I encourage objectivity, curiosity, neutrality, and a nonjudgmental point of view. Such dispassion is necessary in the scientific process. As teachers of politics, this can be a challenging perspective to impart on students who select to study the topic because of their political passions, but this is a normal part of being a political science professor that many of us enjoy.

However, the challenge of getting students to take a detached, nonjudgmental viewpoint on current events is maximized in the Trump administration. How can one be dispassionate in the face of a leader who aligns himself with white supremacists? While commitment to scientific principles remains priority, it would be unethical and morally irresponsible not to express judgment against repugnant behavior that is baldly bigoted. As a social scientist, I can talk about the president breaking with democratic norms and precedent, but as a human being, I also want to expose the dehumanizing effects of vitriolic language and the violence it encourages. 

My strategy in class this semester is to be both scientific and human. We can retain a commitment to social science by analyzing behaviors in the context of strategic behavior, institutional incentives, social influences, individual psychology, or any other typical and academic way of examining politics. We can respond as humans by openly noting when behavior is inhumane, immoral, unethical, or racist. American political scholars may be less accustomed to doing the latter when discussing current events and the US president, and instructors may feel like they are breaking scientific practice to do so, but we need only look to our colleagues in other subfields for guidance. 

Comparativists do not wince at describing despotic regimes. They do just fine objectively identifying authoritarian, tyrannical, or violent leadership. No one accuses scholars in international relations as being ideologically motivated for observing warmongering or international exchanges that threaten American security. Americanists simply need to do what comparativists have been saying for years: treat the US as a single case, not a special one. 

Calling out policy proposals that dehumanize classes of people is more of a normative discussion than I typically have in my courses on American political institutions, but not doing so would be irresponsible and naive. Allowing for some humanity does not invalidate the objective perspective I bring to 95 percent of my course material. If you include lectures on civil rights and the civil rights movement, for example, in your classes, you already have practice integrating humanizing and social scientific content.

To be fair, it’s different when it’s your own country. It’s easier to appear to be a neutral observer when one is not enmeshed in the society of study. But it’s not impossible, and we might seek advice from some anthropologists for further advice. 

This is the second reason dispassionate study of Trump is challenging: He’s one of us. We participated in a voting system that selected him, and we must expect that we have colleagues and students who have, and may still, support him. We have to insist that critical observation of the president is not the same thing as supporting or opposing him as president. The nature of modern partisan polarization, and the extreme nature of negative partisanship in current American politics, means that criticizing Trump sounds an awful lot like expressing a partisan preference for Democrats, but it need not, and teachers should push back hard against this interpretation. 

Even though our politics is governed right now by extreme partisan identity, and citizens are using party ID to decide their preferences over everything from candidates to vacation spots, this does not invalidate a social scientist’s observations about partisan behavior. If we teach about the powerful effects of negative partisanship and show a willingness to be challenged on our objectivity, we can teach our students to view politics with the same critical eyes we use, and not the partisan-dominated lens promoted in media. Further, doing so does not mean ignoring politicians’ morally reprehensible behavior. 

To that end, here are some of the additions I’ll be making to my opening-day lecture in Introduction to American Politics this term. First, I’ll encourage students to develop a consciousness about whether they are viewing an event using a partisan filter. I want students to observe news, rather than react to it. Avoid the temptation to immediately agree or disagree with what you read, and resist the urge to respond emotionally to every headline. It helps to consume news from sources that aim for objective reporting rather than emotional responses. Evaluate the quality of news sources and aim to get most news from outlets with high integrity. Favor sources with the following characteristics:

• Opinion pieces are clearly designated as opinion-editorials and are segregated from news articles.
• News stories avoid opinion-oriented language, adjectives, and superlatives.
• The source uses a systematic, regular, and easily accessible accounting of errors made in prior reporting (e.g., it has a clearly visible “errata” section).
• Links in the article go to other reputable sources.
• Claims made in the article are generally backed with evidence or quotes from experts.
• The tone of news items is objective, and the aim is informative versus emotional (e.g., if the goal of the piece is to generate outrage, sympathy, action, or advocacy, it may not be objective).

My aim is to encourage social scientific thinking while maintaining a commitment to humanity. Students can develop greater self-awareness about their own news consumption habits and how they may affect their attitudes, and we can help them through modeling and instruction. 

No one has to give up their social scientist card for calling out behavior or events that contradict American values or democratic norms. It may not always be straightforward, but I’m committed to doing both.