Omar Wasow Profile picture
10 Feb, 8 tweets, 4 min read
”Economic anxiety” arguments haven’t held up well but this is noteworthy: ”The group’s bankruptcy rate — 18% —was nearly twice as high as US public. A quarter of them had been sued for money owed to a creditor. And 1 in 5 of them faced losing their home…” washingtonpost.com/business/2021/…
”Nearly 60% of people facing charges related to Capitol riot showed signs of prior money troubles, including bankruptcies, notices of eviction or foreclosure, bad debts, or unpaid taxes over past two decades according to an analysis of 125 defendants…” washingtonpost.com/business/2021/…
Private jet lady? ”Ryan had struggled financially for years. She was still paying off a $37,000 lien for unpaid federal taxes. She’d nearly lost her home to foreclosure before that. She filed for bankruptcy in 2012 and faced another IRS tax lien in 2010.” washingtonpost.com/business/2021/…
At the same time, ”In Capitol attack, business owners and white-collar workers made up 40% of people accused of taking part, according to a study by the Chicago Project on Security & Threats at the University of Chicago. Only 9% appeared to be unemployed.” washingtonpost.com/business/2021/…
Both joining the insurrection and having a history of bankruptcy could also simply reflect an underlying taste for risk and tendency towards reckless behavior. As @elliotforhan comments, that would make these folks a lot like their hero, Trump.
While there is an active debate in political science, the bulk of the evidence explaining why people voted for Trump points to non-economic factors. ”Trump voters weren’t driven by anger over the past, but rather fear of what may come.” nytimes.com/2018/04/24/us/…
”Economic hardship. Notably, while only marginally significant at conventional levels (P<0.1), being in fair or poor financial shape actually predicted support for Hillary Clinton among white working-class Americans, rather than support for Donald Trump.” prri.org/research/white…
Prior evidence finds middle & upper-income White folks without college degrees overindexed in support Trump. That’s a group likely includes a lot of small business owners. As @BCHenrock notes, declaring bankruptcy is not uncommon for small business owners.

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More from @owasow

7 Feb
”Microhousing allows people to live in places they’d otherwise be priced out of; but Seattle’s policies thwart this low-cost home type.” The city has mostly ”killed off congregate housing as a source of more affordable market-rate homes.” sightline.org/2021/02/04/whe… via @danbertolet
It’s not just Seattle that uses zoning regulations to restrict access to affordable, market rate microhousing. Los Angeles could benefit enormously from better zoning policy, too. See this thread summarizing a paper on the benefits of micro-units for LA.
We can do better. “Tokyo saw construction of 145,000 new housing units started in 2018—more than NY, LA, Houston & Boston combined. Nationally, Japan has managed to add close to same amount of new housing as US, despite having about half the population.” reason.com/2019/04/02/nim…
Read 7 tweets
6 Feb
Talking about racism is not the same as saying something racist. The meaning and power of statements also depends on their content, context and intentions of the speaker. Patterns matter, too. There may be more here than we know but, by those criteria, this is not proportionate.
A decade ago Harry Reid was in hot water for saying Sen. Barack Obama had better chances of winning the presidency because he was “light-skinned” and didn't speak with a ”Negro dialect.” Then as now, I argued for looking at content, context and intention. theroot.com/why-michael-st…
Reid’s language was archaic but the substance of his statement was White voters have biases that favor Black candidates who look & talk more like White people. First, this is *describing* racism, not endorsing it. Second, social science shows he was right. theroot.com/was-harry-reid…
Read 5 tweets
30 Jan
Striking how the outside-the-system vigilante wing of the far-right are being arrested and charged with serious crimes while inside-the-system elected officials who encouraged vigilante violence are living their best lives & have faced almost no social or political consequences.
What’s the professional price for endorsing violence against your political opponents and calling deadly school shootings ”‘false-flag’ operations”? A seat on the House education committee and continued support from many big donors. georgiarecorder.com/2021/01/28/big…
Drawing on research by @daschloz & @sam_rosenfeld, @ThePlumLineGS notes ”the GOP and conservative movement have allowed the boundary between fringe and mainstream to remain ‘porous’ going back through Joe McCarthy’s anti-communist crusades in the 1950s.” washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
Read 9 tweets
28 Jan
”Observers commented on the jarring mixture of symbols: Christian crosses & Jesus Saves banners, Trump flags & American flags, fascist insignia & ‘Camp Auschwitz’. Some saw apples & oranges. But it was really a fruit cocktail: White Christian Nationalism.” nytimes.com/2021/01/28/opi…
What distinguishes Christian nationalism from traditional doctrine? ”Christian nationalists use a language of blood and apocalypse. They talk about blood conquest, blood sacrifice, and blood belonging, and also about cosmic battles between good and evil.” nytimes.com/2021/01/28/opi…
The American version of civil religion ”draws on the social justice tradition of Hebrew prophets, and the civic republican tradition… This tradition sees Christianity and democracy as potentially complementary, rather than inherently opposed.” nytimes.com/2021/01/28/opi…
Read 6 tweets
28 Jan
”Patriot Prayer and the Proud Boys are part of a trend of Far Right organizing that departs from explicitly White nationalist contemporaries, and often fuses antiracist language into otherwise nationalist, misogynistic, libertarian & xenophobic platforms.” escholarship.org/content/qt1q86…
”When asked to respond to antifascists’ charge that Patriot Prayer is racist, Joey Gibson, [who is Japanese-American] said, ‘Why is it we have way more [people] of color than they have?…I am darker than 90% of those people that are calling me a racist.‘” escholarship.org/content/qt1q86…
Some far-right groups are explicitly ”Aryan,” others ”align with White nationalist politics on some principles but embrace a broader notion of America-first nationalism, which doesn’t discriminate on race, as long as other far-right principles are shared.” escholarship.org/content/qt1q86…
Read 9 tweets
10 Jan
To make sense of the pro-Trump attack on the Capitol, many folks have analogized to military conflicts like the War of 1812. A better analogy is rooted in our long history of racial authoritarianism. This wasn’t war, this was a lynch mob. 1/ 👇🏽
Reuters News Pictures Editor @jimbourg tweeted “at least 3 different rioters at the Capitol say they hoped to find Vice President Mike Pence and execute him by hanging him from a Capitol Hill tree as a traitor.” 2/ mediaite.com/news/trump-rio…
Elements of the mob were also clearly targeting Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. 3/
Read 22 tweets

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