by James Hohmann (The Washington Post)

The second fundraising quarter ends at midnight Tuesday. Matea Gold  who covers money and influence for The Washington Post, has been gearing up for a stream of filings from campaigns, super PACs and other entities that will shine a spotlight into an often secretive element of the silent primary. On the eve of the disclosures, she pulled back the curtain on her reporting and drew on her expertise to answer six of our questions.

What are the Q2 fundraising numbers you are most excited to learn?

For those of us who track money in politics, FEC filing deadlines are red-letter days. After months of speculation and prognostication and expectation-setting, we will finally be able to dive into real data and get our first look at the financial strength of the 2016 candidates. And the way that will be measured in this race will be different than in any other. For the first time, every top White House contender has a personalized super PAC that can raise unlimited donations from individuals and corporations. That makes big money more central than ever.

Some of the questions I’m eager to answer: Does the pro-Jeb Bush group break $100 million? How far behind are the super PACs backing Marco Rubio and Scott Walker? Do any surprise billionaire super PAC patrons emerge? How successfully has Hillary Clinton built up a small donor base – and how does hers compare to that of Bernie Sanders? And on the spending side, it will be fascinating to compare the early burn rates. How much are the top strategists making, and who has staff in which states?

There will be a lot of comparisons in coming weeks between how much candidates raised during April, May and June compared to how much they raised in 2011 or 2007. How much stock should we put in such comparisons? Why is that like comparing apples to oranges?

There is no recent corollary to the current state of presidential fundraising. This time around, many White House contenders have put a premium on raising money for their super PACs  before announcing their bids. That means we can expect to see lopsided totals, with super PAC hauls surpassing those of the official campaigns. The campaign committee totals in this first fundraising quarter will likely be substantially smaller than those posted in first real fundraising quarter of 2007, for example, when Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both raised close to $26 million, Mitt Romney posted nearly $21 million and Rudy Giuliani pulled in $14.6 million.

George W. Bush raised nearly $29 million in his first quarter as a presidential candidate in 1999. That spooked John Kasich, who withdrew from the race. Jeb Bush is expected to raise around $100 million, but his haul has not spooked Kasich this time. He’ll announce on July 21. It hasn’t scared anyone else either. Why do you think that is?

One fascinating development we’re seeing is that as campaign finance restrictions have loosened, money has in some ways become less determinative than in past races. Because of the primacy of wealthy donors and the potential in online fundraising, the donor universe has expanded. It’s no longer the case that one well-connected candidate can lock up a party’s top bundlers and freeze out his or her rivals. Now, a presidential aspirant with one deep-pocketed patron or a passionate small donor base can stay alive for quite a long time. As we’ve written, the escalating financial arms race could fuel a protracted GOP primary season similar to the one in 2012 — exactly what party leaders were hoping to avoid.

Super PACs don’t technically need to file their numbers until July 31. Do you think some might “coincidentally” release them in tandem with the campaigns they were set up to support? What are the advantages to doing so?

There’s no question. Super PACs are functioning as de facto extensions of the official campaigns this time around. And since many of the candidates have invested their energy this spring into bringing in big checks for their allied super PACs rather than official campaign committees, the hauls by those groups will be viewed as a measure of their success in the money race.

It’s worth noting, however, that the unlimited contributions that flow into super PACs are not as valuable as small-dollar donations that go directly to a campaign. That money is not only directly controlled by the candidates and his or her team, but it can go a lot further than that of outside groups, since candidates can buy television advertising at a much cheaper rate.

We’ve heard a lot about staff turnover at Priorities USA, the pro-Clinton super PAC. Guy Cecil, the newish head of the group, just replaced the finance director, the latest in a string of shake-ups. How much do you think that has impacted their fundraising?

The retooling at Priorities reflects a sense of urgency by Clinton’s allies that they need to get more competitive in the super PAC game. Democratic donors have been historically reluctant to write these kind of checks – a distaste that made it difficult for Priorities to fundraise in the 2012 race, when it was supporting President Obama. There is a more pragmatic attitude this time around, but earlier this spring, big givers did not have a clear sense that Clinton wanted them to back the super PAC. The arrival of Cecil, who was a key player on Clinton’s 2008 campaign, was meant to send a strong signal that donors should step up. But the dynamics are tricky: Clinton has made reducing the influence of big money in politics one of the planks of her bid this time. There is sensitivity among her allies of having a super PAC raise more money than by her actual campaign in this first quarter.

Campaigns love to brag about how many contributors they had who gave $200 or less. Hillary Clinton’s team has said that she’s working hard to cultivate such donors. Why do candidates care so much about building this kind of donor network?

President Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns demonstrated the power of a small donor operation. If you can get thousands — or millions! — of people to give you $25 again and again, you have a rich, self-replenishing funding resource (and one that requires much less of the candidate’s time than those pricey fundraising dinners). And it also offers a way to demonstrate your success among grassroots activists. More than 60,000 donors gave money to Clinton during her first fundraising quarter in the 2008 race. We’re sure to see her campaign make a big deal of the number of individual contributors supporting her this time around.

 

 

 

by Olga Bugorkova and Ghada Tantawi (BBC News)

It was wildly popular, but not everybody likes Facebook’s pro-gay marriage photo filter – it’s prompted a backlash in Russia and across the Arab world.

If you went on Facebook over the weekend you may have seen friends’ profile pictures turned multi-coloured. Maybe you even tinted your own pic. A rainbow filter tool was introduced by the company after last week’s landmark Supreme Court decision which cleared the way for same-sex marriage across the US. But in some areas of the world the response to the initiative was less than enthusiastic – and even downright hostile.

In Russia, several filters were created which splash the colours of the national flags rather than rainbow banners across a picture. One such app has been downloaded more than 4,000 times. “Our response to the rainbow world ‪#‏Proudtoberussian,” said one typical comment by Moscow resident Elena Starkova.

Russia has controversial laws which ban providing information about homosexuality to people under age 18, and a recent poll showed that more than 80% of Russians oppose legalising same-sex marriage.

Despite this, some Russians back lashed against the backlash. Anna Koterlnikova, who had changed her profile pic to a rainbow flag, commented: “Sorry! I’m straight and Russian but I’m not a homophobe!”

In the Middle East, many social media users also came out strongly against the rainbow flag. “It’s a message that it hurts me,” said Egyptian Twitter user Sharif Najm, while Rami Isa from Syria tweeted: “Damn you and your marriage. You have distorted our innocent childhood [symbol], we used to like the rainbow.” Ahmad Abd-Rabbuh, an Egyptian political science professor, said that gay marriage “is not in harmony with society and culture.”

“I know that I will make many of my friends angry,” he commented.

In Egypt, around 2,000 tweets mentioned the rainbow motif, most of them critical. Some users even went so far as to sarcastically blame a weekend storm on users who turned their profile pics multi-coloured. But not all reaction was negative. Egyptian TV presenter Muna Iraqi commented: “[I support people’s] right to live and love freely, without any persecution.”

Of course, it also should be noted that same-sex marriage is by no means universally popular in the US – about two-fifths of Americans oppose it, according to the Pew Research Center.

“I’m 100% against gay marriage,” tweeted Joshua Taipale. “I have gay friends and they’re great ppl; it’s not personal. But U.S. can’t decide. Should be state-by-state.”

And some transsexual activists continue their criticism of Facebook – which sponsors San Francisco’s gay pride parade – for its “real name” policy. 

 

 

 

 

by Nick Bryant (BBC News)

Does history change all at once? June 2015 certainly had its singular historic moments – but almost all were the outcome of long-term forces and long-fought battles, say Nick Bryant.

The shelves of American bookstores almost buckle under the weight of titles identifying a single year, season, month, week, day or hour as essential turning points in history’s long march.

So one would imagine that publishers are already being inundated with pitches for books bringing together the events of the past few weeks, perhaps under the working titles of “Ten Days in June”, “America’s Liberal Spring”, “The Summer of Love” or “June 2015: The month that changed America.”

The narrative almost writes itself. It opens with the cover of the June edition of Vanity Fair, which featured an alluring photograph of Caitlyn Jenner dressed in a silk bodysuit. Jenner, of course, is a one-time Olympic champion, formerly called Bruce, whom most Americans are more used to seeing in an athletics singlet and shorts.

It would encompass two momentous Supreme Court decisions – the first in defence of Obamacare, the second in support of gay marriage. Both were not just victories for President Barack Obama but also triumphs, more broadly, of progressivism.

It would also take in the massacre in Charleston, and the dramatic impact it has had on the long-running Confederate flag debate.

Not only did the governor of South Carolina Nikki Haley call for the flag’s removal from the capitol grounds in Columbia. The governor of the Deep South state of Alabama, the Republican Robert Bentley, actually ordered all Civil War era colours to be hauled down in Montgomery, a city with a long history as a bastion of resistance.

In the space of a few historic weeks then, America witnessed the most thrilling moment yet for its transgender community, the biggest-ever victory for the LGBT movement, a major, probably decisive, win for healthcare, and, arguably, the final surrender of the American Civil War.

With it came an instant iconography: that Jenner portrait by the photographer Annie Leibovitz, the debate-transforming images of alleged killer Dylan Roof brandishing the Confederate battle flag, the pictures of the White House floodlit in the colours of the rainbow flag.

The month also came with its own soundtrack – the relatives of the Charleston killings personally telling Roof during his court appearance that they were prepared to forgive him, the cries of rapture from gay activists outside of the Supreme Court, the utterances of President Obama, who began last week using the “N-word” and ended it singing Amazing Grace, the climax of a presidential speech unlike any other in American history.

American progressives not only celebrated Obamacare and same-sex marriage but the re-emergence of a figure seldom seen over the past seven years, the Barack Obama who electrified American politics during the 2008 campaign.

In Charleston on Friday, when he delivered an expansive eulogy to Clementa Pinckney, he scaled old rhetorical heights. Many regard it as the finest piece of oratory of his presidency.

With the Republican-controlled Congress granting the president fast-track trade authority, the Trans-Pacific Partnership is now within his grasp. That will give meaning to his much-vaunted “Asian pivot”.

This was certainly the best week of Obama’s second term, and probably of his entire presidency.

However, it would be an exaggeration to describe this as the belated realisation of his “Yes We Can” America.

Same-sex marriage can hardly be chalked up as an Obama triumph, however hard the White House tried to place itself at the centre of the celebrations.

 After all, the president only voiced support for same-sex marriage in 2012, and four years earlier he was publicly opposed. On this issue, the president followed rather than led.

To argue that June saw a clean sweep triumph of progressivism also ignores the nettlesome fact that America’s gun controls are exactly the same at the end of the month as they were at the beginning, and will remain so for the foreseeable future.

Ruminating on gun violence in the immediate aftermath of the Charleston massacre, Obama had the weary air of a president resigned to defeat. And with good reason. Here the forces of conservatism are unassailable.

The paradox is that Obama’s best week was not necessarily the Republican party’s worst.

Rather, there are many in the party who quietly welcome these defeats in the culture wars because they should persuade the party to move away from battlefields where they keep losing, social tolerance and healthcare, and to focus instead on areas of traditional strength, the economy and national security.

There are historical precedents for speedy comebacks. The humiliating rout suffered by the Republicans in the 1964 presidential election, when Lyndon Johnson trounced Barry Goldwater, implied that liberalism was ascendant.

But that landslide election paved the way for the Republican revival, which lasted, almost uninterrupted, from 1968 to 1992.

During that entire period, the Republicans relied on the “southern strategy”, an appeal to socially and racially conservative whites alarmed by the rapid pace of change, many of whom clung to symbols of southern heritage like the Civil War colours.

The coming down of the Confederate flag surely marks the final symbolic end of that era.

For sure, there are “No Surrender” Republicans, like Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum, seeking to mobilise the Republican base with continued attacks on Obamacare and the Supreme Court.

Yet June could go down not as only as the month that changed America but the month that changed the Republican party. But that is a rational view in a party not always known for its rationality.

The events of the past month also lay potential traps for the Democrats. It would be dangerous, for instance, to interpret them as America lurching dramatically to the left.

The electorate has punished the Democrats in the past for liberal over-reach, as it did at the congressional elections in 1994 and 2010, after two years of Bill Clinton and two years of Barack Obama, and would presumably do so again.

True, the Democrats have been dominant in presidential politics in recent cycles, as I argued here, but victory in 2016 is by no means assured.

 Transformative though these past four weeks have been, it is also the case that justices on the US Supreme Court and conservative politicians in the states of the old Confederacy finally caught up with cultural and demographic shifts that have been reshaping this country for much of the past decade.

Even before last week, for instance, it was possible to argue that the opponents of same sex marriage had largely lost, though not yet possible to declare its champions as outright winners.

So while June was a dramatic month, it was noteworthy most of all for codifying changes that have been overtaking America for years.

That doesn’t make for such a snappy book title, but history generally defies neat packaging.

by Richard Cohen (The Washington Post)

If you’re old enough to recall how the landslide election of Lyndon Johnson over the hapless Barry Goldwater supposedly spelled the end of the Republican Party, or how Ronald Reagan’s election amounted to a revolution that put the Democratic party on the mat until — more or less — the end of time, then you will understand my caution in saying that while the Republican Party may well survive its recent difficulty, Republicanism itself is dead. I think.

The recent difficulties consist of taking the wrong side in the great health-care debate, not only opposing what came to be called Obamacare, but also refusing to produce an alternative. People are worried about their health, and the party comes up with buffoons such as Sarah Palin who invents death panels and trivializes the whole debate. Obamacare is not only the law of the land, but it is also the inevitable next step toward universal health care — just like many countries have, even the poorer ones.

The party’s other recent difficulty is being on the wrong side of just about every social issue you can think of. The Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage throughout the land, and Republican after Republican stepped forward to denounce the decision and prattle on about what God intended — as if any of them know.

Some, such as Chris Christie, reached for that hoary cliche about unelected men in black robes. Christie is hardly the first person to discover the awesome power of the American judiciary and, when you Google the matter, he turns out to be using similar language as school desegregation opponents did in 1954. Then, too, an alleged and simply horrible dictatorship of the judiciary was denounced — but the nation moved on.

Opposition to social change is but one pillar of contemporary Republicanism. The other was best articulated by one of the many Bushes in American life, George H.W., who vowed at the 1988 GOP national convention, “Read my lips: No new taxes.” This was a clear — if extorted — articulation of the First Principle of Republican Life as received, possibly in fire and other Cecil B. DeMille effects, by Grover Norquist.

The no-new-taxes mantra has now been applied in several states and found wanting. In Kansas, Gov. Sam Brownback has taken a weed whacker to the tax code, lowering rates and waiting for the promised economic miracle to occur. It didn’t, and now he’s working on raising some revenue — through the sales tax, for instance — because there’s a hole in the budget.

Something similar has happened in Louisiana. There the governor, Bobby Jindal, is the personification of contemporary Republicanism. He’s opposed to same-sex marriage, abortion rights, the teaching of evolution in the schools and, of course, a reasonable fiscal program. His state is about $1.6 billion in the red, his popularity has plummeted, and in a  recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News Poll , he scored a zero as a presidential candidate. Perhaps he can carry Louisiana, where polls suggest most voters would like to see him somewhere else.

Not all Republicans are so doctrinaire in the application of the anti-government, anti-tax dogma. But the notion that government should be as small as possible and do as little as possible is generally accepted as undebatable. It persists even though America is in desperate need of repairing or replacing its sagging infrastructure. The country has Third World airports, highways and bridges as well as a groaning electrical grid that strains if too many people toast their English muffins at the same time.

The cost of revamping, repairing, restoring and just plain creating a 21st-century infrastructure is staggering — an estimated $3.6 trillion by 2020. But huge construction projects would put huge numbers of people to work and would, in the long run, result in savings. It costs money for a truck to sit idle in traffic. We do an awful lot of idling in this country.

Size can be a problem. Large government is inevitably inefficient, but so, too, is large private enterprise. (See the GM bankruptcy.) Much worse than the unavoidable inefficiencies of large government is the failure to fund the government we need. Private enterprise cannot rebuild the nation’s infrastructure or keep our research institutions vibrant. Government must do what only it can do. Only a semi-mystical Republicanism, deluded by its own dogma, cannot see the future. That’s why it may not have one.

by Stephen Battaglio (LA Times)

NBC Universal delivered a message to Donald Trump over his recent remarks regarding immigrants: You’re fired.

The company announced Monday that it was severing ties with the outspoken real estate mogul and reality star who is pursuing the 2016 Republican nomination for president. He will no longer be a part of the NBC series “Celebrity Apprentice,” and his two beauty pageants, Miss USA and Miss Universe, will no longer air on the network.

It was more bad news for “The Donald” since coming under fire for his June 16 presidential campaign announcement in which he made derogatory comments about Mexican immigrants while criticizing U.S. government efforts to secure the U.S.-Mexico border. Spanish-language broadcaster Univision, which also broadcasted the pageants, severed ties with Trump last week.

“At NBC, respect and dignity for all people are cornerstones of our values,” the company said in a statement. “Due to the recent derogatory statements by Donald Trump regarding immigrants, NBCUniversal is ending its business relationship with Mr. Trump.”

NBCUniversal and Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, operated the pageants in a joint venture, which started in 2002. NBCUniversal said it would continue to work with Mark Burnett’s United Artists Media Group, which produces “Celebrity Apprentice.” The series, which featured Trump and his two children, will probably air with another high-profile entrepreneur as the star, according to an NBCUniversal executive unauthorized to discuss the matter publicly.

The firestorm began when Trump described the U.S. as “a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems” adding: “when Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”

Univision was the first to take action, announcing it would not air the Miss Universe pageant scheduled for July 12 even though it had already paid a $2.5-million license fee for the event. The network had recently signed a five-year deal to carry the pageant. Trump has said he would sue Univision for breach of contract.

NBC Entertainment Chairman Bob Greenblatt was ready to pull the plug on the network’s relationship with Trump immediately after his comments, according to people inside the network familiar with the discussions. They said the company is still looking at how to legally extricate itself from its business relationship with Trump, but informed him of its intentions Monday morning.

Trump could retain full ownership of the pageants and sell the broadcast rights to another TV outlet. He did not mention legal action when the NBC announcement was brought up during his appearance at a City Club luncheon in Chicago, and suggested he understood the company’s decision.

“As long as I was running for president, they were not happy with it,” Trump said. “They wanted me to do ‘The Apprentice.’ And now with my statements on immigration, which happen to be correct, they are going to take a different stance so that’s OK…. I think as far as ending the relationship, I have to do that, because my view on immigration is much different than the people at NBC.”

However, Trump took a tougher stance in a statement issued by Trump Organization, which said “violating closure of Miss Universe/Miss USA will be determined in court.”

He added a shot at disgraced NBC News anchor Brian Williams, who was recently demoted from his job at “NBC Nightly News.” The network “will stand behind lying Brian Williams but won’t stand behind people that tell it like it is, as unpleasant as that may be,” the statement read.

Although Trump has a strong showing in early polls among the crowded field of Republican presidential candidates, his campaign appears to be having a negative effect on his business.

One former NBC executive estimated Trump is earning roughly $2 million an episode for his services on “Celebrity Apprentice.” But the promotional exposure from a regular TV show and the pageants provided even greater value and recognition for the Trump brand name.

If NBC had kept Trump as the star of “Celebrity Apprentice” and his pageants on the air, the network probably would have faced a consumer boycott led by Latino groups angry over his remarks. Such an outcome would have made it difficult for NBC to sell commercials on the programs and ultimately turn them into money losers.

NBC’s move was applauded by Janet Murguia, president and CEO of the National Council of La Raza.

“NBC deserves an enormous amount of credit for reaffirming what their company stands for and, as importantly, what it does not stand for,” she said in a statement.

Murguia said Trump has a right to express his opinions “however reprehensible and just plain false they may be … but no one is immune from others exercising their own 1st Amendment rights to criticize or object to those opinions. And no one has a ‘right’ to a television show.”

by Robert Schlesinger (US News)

 It is a rare day indeed that I find myself agreeing with former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, but I applaud this sentiment about the Supreme Court’s affirming marriage equality in Obergefell v. Hodges: “Now is the people’s opportunity [to] respond because the future of the institution of marriage is too important to not have a public debate.”

I agree. Bring it on. Love is love – and if the GOP wants to go to war over that, well that’s just fine.

Of course Santorum isn’t a lonely cultural revanchist. Most of his fellow 2016 aspirants have trashed the decision. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee – a happy warrior before the changing national landscape highlighted his angry crusader side – railed against an “imperial court” and called for supporters to “resist and reject judicial tyranny.” Former. Florida Gov. Jeb Bush was more circumspect, saying he supports traditional marriage and that the court was wrong, but avoiding inflammatory rhetoric of resistance and rebellion. “In a country as diverse as ours, good people who have opposing views should be able to live side by side,” Bush said in his statement.

The degree to which GOP presidential wannabe response to the decision is unhinged seems indirectly related to their standing in the polls – the closer they are to bottom, the more hysterical their histrionics. Which makes sense for two reasons: The Huckabees and Santorums of the field are desperately trying to make the top-10 cut for the first debate, on Fox in August. The easiest way to do that is to claim the mantle of most outraged culture warrior. On the other end of the spectrum, people like Bush who stand a chance of being the nominee don’t want Obergefell to become their 2016 version of Mitt Romney’s “self-deportation” – a debate moment that long outlives its utility and becomes an anchor in the general election.

The problem with Huckabee, Santorum and the other members of the righteous GOP who were so quick to issue statements of condemnation is that they are trying to refight the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s but seem incapable of grasping that the nation has changed.

President Barack Obama this morning aptly compared the decision to “justice” arriving “like a thunderbolt.” The storm that produced that thunderbolt gathered with shocking speed. Who would have believed 11 years ago that the GOP’s shameless 2004 campaign strategy – using anti-gay marriage ballot initiatives to rally its base – would prove to be a fleeting high water mark before the tide of public opinion and then, following it, the la

]When Gallup asked respondents in 2005 whether same-sex marriage should be legal, a mere 37 percent answered in the affirmative. As recently as 2010 the polling organization found that only 44 percent believed it should be legal. Last month that number had rocketed from minority to supermajority – by 60 percent to 37 percent Americans believe that marriage equality should be legal.

Now the Supreme Court has ruled – correctly – that the Constitution’s equal protection clause does apply, well, equally – that law in this case happily conforms to the beliefs of the American people. If the leaders and would-be leaders of the Republican Party wish to spend the next year lecturing the public about why it’s wrong, then by all means they should go right ahead.

The conservative columnist (and as a New York Daily News columnist, my corporate cousin) S.E. Cupp was visibly moved on CNN this morning discussing the ruling. She gave an eloquent warning to her party: This isn’t a moment in history, she said, it’s the future. She’s right. The Pew Research Center has tracked the same evolution on the issue as Gallup and has broken it out by age group. They found that your likelihood of supporting marriage equality is directly related to your age. The younger you are, the more likely you are to support it – and support has been growing across all age groups. Here’s the Pew chart:

As Cupp said, this isn’t a data point, it’s a trend. It’s the future.

You can’t fight the future, but the Republican Party is certainly welcome to try. 

A deep dive on Jeb’s business record — “Bush dogged by decades of questions about business deals,” by Robert O’Harrow Jr. and Tom Hamburger: “Records, lawsuits, interviews and newspaper accounts stretching back more than three decades present a picture of a man who, before he was elected Florida governor in 1998, often benefited from his family connections and repeatedly put himself in situations that raised questions about his judgment and exposed him to reputational risk. Five of his business associates have been convicted of crimes; one remains an international fugitive on fraud charges. In each case, Bush said he had no knowledge of any wrongdoing and said some of the people he met as a businessman in Florida took advantage of his naiveté … He has brokered real estate deals in Florida, arranged bank loans in Venezuela, marketed industrial pumps in Thailand, wholesaled shoes in Panama, promoted a building-materials company to Mexican interests and advised transnational financial services firms.”

Marco Rubio is playing to win The Sheldon Adelson Primary. The Florida senator, who has relentlessly sought the billionaire casino mogul’s backing for 2016, co-sponsored a bill yesterday afternoon to ban online gaming. It is not only Adelson’s top legislative priority, it could significantly boost his company’s bottom line. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), another presidential hopeful who has assiduously courted Adelson over their shared hawkishness on foreign policy, is the lead Republican author on the legislation for a second year in a row.

 

by Janell Ross (The Washington Post)

An overwhelming majority of Americans say they believe protests against unfair government treatment make the United States a better country.

Unless, that is, the protesters are black.

A new Pubic Religion Research Institute poll asked whether protests against government mistreatment always improve the country, and a full 67 percent of white Americans strongly or at least partially agreed. But when it asked a separate sample whether black Americans protesting government mistreatment always makes the country better,  just 48 percent of white Americans agreed.

That’s two-thirds, versus less than half.

And the racial differences didn’t end there. In fact, non-white Americans are more likely to believe in the benefits of black Americans protesting Americans writ large. Among non-white Americans, 56 percent agreed that protests against government mistreatment are good for the country, but a full 65 percent said the same when the people protesting were black.

The gaps, as the chart below shows, are clear and remarkable.

“We expected to see some differences along racial lines when we asked these questions, but we certainly had not expected a gap that size, a gap that large,” Dan Cox, research director at Public Religion Research Institute, told me.

White Americans made up the lion’s share of those polled in the survey — 709 of the 1,007 people surveyed. Pollsters also talked to 109 black Americans and 121 Latinos for the same survey. Those who responded were asked about range of issues shaping the country, including religion, race, language, patriotism and immigration.

Pollsters often worry that the people contacted for surveys will, because they are human, give in to the instinct to give the “right” or “admirable” answer rather than an honest one, Cox told me. They call this phenomenon the “social desirability bias.” And that bias certainly makes the work of polling  challenging.

To subvert this problem, the PRRI asked a randomly selected half of the 1,007 people polled the question about whether protests against government mistreatment always improve the country. They asked the remaining half whether protests against government mistreatment by black Americans always improve the country. And the results were clear.

“Most white Americans generally believe that protests are good for the country, but they hold significant reservations about protests led by African Americans,” Robert P. Jones, chief executive of the Public Religion Research Institute, said in a statement released Tuesday along with the polling data. “Among white Americans, strong support for protesting government mistreatment drops dramatically when protesters are identified as black Americans.”

The PRRI/RNS Religion News Survey was conducted by the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute in partnership with Religion News Service. The nationwide survey of 1,007 adults was conducted from June 10 to June 14, 2015, in English and Spanish.

The date range of the poll is significant because pollsters finished their work three days before a white gunman fatally shot nine African Americans in a Charleston church, setting off a new round of public debate about race and mistreatment and protests against the Confederate flag in South Carolina. But those polled would, quite probably, have been aware of recent events in Ferguson, Mo.; New York City, North Charleston, S.C.; and Baltimore that led to large protests.

In each of these cities, largely black (but certainly not exclusively black) groups of protesters took to the streets. Some marched in support of a growing national movement organized loosely around the slogan “black lives matter.” In two of these cities, protests at points grew violent and devolved into riots. In Ferguson, police used military equipment, including tanks, to try to corral and quell protests, even before rioting or looting erupted.  

Cox thinks that it is quite likely that protests against alleged police misconduct and excessive use of force were on the minds of those polled by the Public Religion Research Institute in June. But he also thinks that it was not simply the protests themselves but the way they were covered that might explain the nearly 20-point gap in the way that white and non-white Americans view the effect of protests involving black Americans.

News coverage of the protests and later rioting in Baltimore focused far more attention on the burned CVS store and disrupted sports events than on more complex and less visual issues such as the array of social and economic disparities that have created pockets of deep poverty in predominantly black neighborhoods in Baltimore.

What is clear is that Americans who generally support protests against government mistreatment aren’t nearly as supportive if the ones doing the protesting happen to be black.

 

 

By Paul Steinhauser (NH1 News).

CONCORD – Jeb Bush narrowly sits atop a very crowded pack of Republican presidential candidates and contenders in a new New Hampshire poll, with real estate mogul Donald Trump in second place.

According to the Suffolk University survey released Tuesday morning, 14 percent of those likely to vote in next February’s Granite State GOP presidential primary say they’d back Bush for their party’s nominee, with Donald Trump at just under 11 percent. The survey was conducted last Thursday through Monday, in the days following the official announcements from Bush and Trump that they’re running for the White House.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s in third, at 8 percent, with Sen. Marco Rubio Florida at 7 percent, famed neurosurgeon Ben Carson at 6 percent, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie under 5 percent, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky at 4 percent, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina each just under 4 percent, and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee and Ohio Gov. John Kasich each with roughly 2 percent.

Former New York governor George Pataki and former Texas governor Rick Perry are each around 1 percent, with former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal all registering less than 1 percent support.

The poll’s sampling error is plus or minus 4.4 percentage points, which means there’s no real frontrunner in the battle for the GOP nomination in the first-in-the-nation primary state. Nearly three in ten voters polled were undecided.

 “There are two types of contenders right now in New Hampshire — those that are widely popular, and those that have some popularity with higher negatives but loyal followers,” Suffolk University Political Research Center Director David Paleologos told NH1 News.

The popular crowd, he said, includes Rubio, Bush, and Walker. The candidates with a committed base of supporters, but a higher unfavorable rating overall, include Trump, Paul, Huckabee, and Christie.

“In the short run, these candidates are competitive because their negatives are spread out among many others. But in the long run it will be harder to grow voters as the field of candidates is reduced and the negatives become more visible and a disqualifier,” said Paleologos.

While Bush tops the list, 62 percent strongly disagree with his position on immigration, with another 18 percent saying they somewhat disagree. Bush’s stance on immigration policy, as well as his backing of Common Core educational standards, put him at odds with much of the conservative base.

The poll also sends some mixed signals for Trump. While roughly 11 percent say they’d vote for him in the GOP primary, his favorable/unfavorable rating is underwater: Thirty-seven percent said they have a favorable opinion of the real estate mogul and reality TV star, with 49 percent saying they see him in an unfavorable light – the highest unfavorable rating of any GOP presidential contender.

Still, 60 percent of Republican voters surveyed said they would like to see him on the debate stage.

The Suffolk University phone poll of 500 likely New Hampshire GOP primary voters was conducted June 18-22, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percent.