<![CDATA[JONATHAN MCDONALD LADD

<![CDATA[JONATHAN MCDONALD LADD - Blog]]>Sun, 11 Oct 2026 18:10:56 -0400Weebly<![CDATA[These Two Big Unknowns Make the 2022 Midterms Unusually Unpredictable]]>Fri, 04 Nov 2022 07:00:00 GMThttps://www.jonathanmladd.com/blog/these-two-big-unknowns-make-the-2022-midterms-unusually-unpredictableOriginally published in the Mischiefs of Faction blog.

By Jonathan M. Ladd

Here are a few things to keep in mind about the next week's midterm elections.

Let me start with a preface. The Democrats could do fairly badly on Tuesday yet still better than presidential parties have historically performed in similar situations. This could be true without the election providing a clear message about which party or ideological faction is following the best political strategy. Pundits and politicians like election results to send a clear message about which political factions are right and wrong. People want elections to provide lessons. I'm not sure this one will. We'll see. There are many potential results "in the middle," where Democrats lose seats but not as many as parties in their position usually do, which won't provide an unambiguous lesson.

But regardless, the bottom line is that the president’s party always loses House seats when presidential approval is in the 40s. Since modern polling was invented, presidents have only gained seats in midterms when their approval was in the 60s. However, there are two unusual things happening in 2022 that lead me to think it is at least possible that 2022 will fit the historical pattern poorly. Or it might fit the pattern perfectly! Who knows! Either way, these two things greatly increase uncertainty.

First, no one knows exactly how much the Republicans' new lower education, lower social trust voting base will turn out without Trump on the ballot or in the White House. Will relying on these voters make it harder for Republicans to get the typical midterm out-party bump? Can only Trump, or the excitement of a presidential campaign, get them to the polls in high numbers? Usually, part of the out-party advantage is that they are relatively more energized than the in-party. Will this advantage be smaller because Republicans now rely more on Trump voters?

Second, another typical reason that the out-party has an advantage in midterms is that the president’s party has moved policy in its direction in the past 2 years. This creates a type of “thermostatic” backlash, in political science terminology. Both policy preferences and political participation react against policy change. No one knows if the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade will disrupt this. But it might. Despite the Democrats controlling the presidency and Congress (albeit precariously in the Senate), one of the major policy changes since Biden took office was in the conservative direction, with many states using their new discretion to pass much more conservative abortion laws. It is rare for policy to move so far against the preferences of the president’s party on such a salient topic. We don’t know how that will disrupt the normal pattern of thermostatic midterm backlash.

These two sources of uncertainty make it especially hard to predict races that are very close in the polls. Small differences in turnout and enthusiasm could determine whether there is a “polling error” in the Democrats' or Republicans’ favor. This is why Nathaniel Rakich is correct when he says that, with polls as they are, this election could plausibly be a significant win for either party.

]]><![CDATA[Remove Trump Immediately]]>Thu, 07 Jan 2021 08:00:00 GMThttps://www.jonathanmladd.com/blog/remove-trump-immediatelyOriginally published in the Mischiefs of Faction blog.

By Matt Green, Gregory Koger, Jonathan M. Ladd, Seth Masket , Hans Noel, Richard Skinner, Amy Erica Smith, and Jennifer Victor

We at the Mischiefs of Faction join our colleagues in political science in calling for the immediate and constitutional removal of Donald Trump from office.

We hasten to note that we are all committed to unbiased research and education and that we are reticent to endorse candidates or advocate the appointment or removal of government officials. However, as this week’s actions at the U.S. Capitol and elsewhere make clear, this is not a matter of preferring one party or candidate or another, but rather of protecting American democracy from a very clear, present, and ongoing danger.

It was one thing for Trump to claim that his election loss last November was fraudulent; he claims this about every contest he loses. It was one thing for Republican elected officials and conservative news personalities to baselessly echo the President’s false assertions about the election; they have done this about a great many of Trump’s statements.

But on the morning of January 6, Donald Trump addressed a long-planned gathering of his supporters near the White House, declaring that he would never concede the election, calling on them to show “strength” and to march on the Capitol as members of Congress were counting Electoral Votes, and pressuring the President of the United States Senate to act outside his prescribed Constitutional role and overturn the presidential election two weeks before his term ends. He told attendees he would walk with them as they marched.

Trump’s supporters followed his instructions, marching to the Capitol in vast numbers, overwhelming Capitol Police, breaching the building, occupying members’ offices and legislative chambers, causing widespread destruction of property, and resulting in at least four deaths, all while carrying the flag of an enemy nation. Reports also indicate that President Trump initially blocked the Defense Department from sending the National Guard to protect the safety of members of Congress and the Vice President. This was an insurrection. It was an attempted coup. The end of yesterday’s occupation of the Capitol should not give us relief. And until its participants, leaders, and collaborators are brought to justice, the insurrection is ongoing.

We recognize that there are less than two weeks remaining in Donald Trump’s term. However, he has demonstrated that he can not be trusted with the office, and he will continue to perceive personal advantage in promoting insurrection. The person inciting insurrections can not also be the person in charge of federal law enforcement. This is how democracies die. To boot, one government watchdog group has already downgraded the US to a status that is below the threshold for democracy. Trump cannot be trusted to step down peacefully on January 20th.

There are two constitutional and peaceful ways to remove him from office, either of which we support. One would be via the impeachment and removal process, by which a majority of the House would impeach (again) and two-thirds of the Senate would vote to convict and remove. The Constitution is vague on the explicit processes for running this procedure and it could certainly be done within a day should a sufficient portion of the Congress support doing so.

The other method would be via the 25th Amendment, by which a majority of the Cabinet would vote to remove Trump. This amendment was certainly not intended for the removal of a conscious president. Trump could appeal the decision and it would require two-thirds of both chambers of Congress to sustain his removal. However, given the short remainder of Trump’s term, it would potentially be possible to postpone this appeal until January 20th, or to invoke the 25th while Congress proceeds with impeachment and removal.

We do not make claims about the feasibility of these solutions. To be sure, no president has been removed by them previously. But these are not ordinary times. The President instigated an assault--a literal, physical assault--on the U.S. Congress and on the American electoral system. For the system to simply try to run out the clock is insufficient and would tell future would-be authoritarians that there is no price to pay for insurrection.

Moreover, if those who participated in the insurrection avoid consequences, then there is no reason to expect it will not be repeated. To be clear, without punishment, we will likely see more of what we saw on Wednesday. In addition, if elected officials who condoned the insurrection face no accountability, the government will have blessed its own demise. In this way, the insurrection remains an active threat to the nation.

Democracies maintain rights and freedoms for their citizens through publicly accountable institutions. The US will remain on insecure ground until our institutions are reinforced and those who violate the rules and norms of democracy are held accountable through elections or legal action.

]]><![CDATA[There Is an Opportunity to Challenge Clinton From the Left, But It Is on Education, Not Economics]]>Thu, 30 Oct 2014 04:00:00 GMThttps://www.jonathanmladd.com/blog/there-is-an-opportunity-to-challenge-clinton-from-the-left-but-it-is-on-education-not-economics

Logo of the National Education Association

Originally published in the Mischiefs of Faction blog.

By Jonathan M. Ladd

American political parties are coalitions of interest groups (or "policy demanders"). Parties usually select presidential nominees who are acceptable to all the major groups in that party's coalition. Assuming she decides to run, Hillary Clinton is the early favorite for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination. The press has also already starting speculating about possible rivals, including perhaps Vice President Joe Biden, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, or even Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley. Do any of these rivals have a chance, or is a Clinton nomination a forgone conclusion?

Political science suggests that it is not just the political skills of these challengers that will matter, but also if any major Democratic Party faction chooses to support them. Factions will make choices based on whether the challengers have electioneering skills, but also whether the faction is disgruntled enough with the Democratic Party establishment's policies to back an insurgent. Currently, the major organized Democratic Party constituency that is most disgruntled with the policies of the Obama administration is public school teachers unions. Other factions, like industrial and service unions, are organized and not happy with everything the Obama administration has done, but nowhere near as alienated as the teachers unions. Others, like leftist economic policy activists (e.g., Occupy Wall Street) are nowhere near as large or organized.

Teachers unions are a core Democratic constituency. In my own analysis of General Social Survey data, I find that, in presidential elections since 1988, 71% of teachers union members have voted Democratic, compared to 51% in the rest of the population. [1] But even more consequential is the representation of teachers unions among Democratic activists and the party's interest group coalition. The "The 2012 Convention Delegate Study" conducted by Kimberly Conger, Rosalyn Cooperman, John Green, Richard Herrera, Kerem Ozan Kalkan, Geoffrey Layman, and Gregory Shufeldt found that 16.4% of all Democratic Party National Convention delegates were teachers union members. [2]

Yet the current Democratic administration has pursued an education policy that teachers unions oppose, often in harsh terms. [3] The 2001 No Child Left Behind law requires that by 2014 every public school will be declared a failing school unless 100% of its students are proficient in reading and math. This is an almost impossible standard to meet. Pretty much everyone agrees that some modification of the law would be helpful. But gridlock between congressional Republicans and the Obama administration prevents legislation on almost any topic from enactment, including updates to NCLB. This stalemate has given the Obama administration a lot of power to shape education policy by giving states waivers from unrealistic NCLB requirements. In exchange for waivers, the administration insists that states evaluate teachers in part based on student test scores and implement the Common Core curriculum. Several states, including California, Oklahoma, Vermont, and Washington, currently do not have waivers because they have refused to adopt these policies. In addition, as part of the 2009 Economic Recovery Act, the administration awarded $4.35 billion in educational grants to public schools across the country, but they gave priority in the grant competition to school systems that evaluated teachers based on student test scores, increased the number of charter schools (which almost always have non-unionized teachers) and implemented the Common Core.

Evaluating teachers based on students test scores has long been opposed by teachers unions. And charter schools are an existential threat to teachers unions. Imagine a Democratic administration demanding that Ford set up parallel non-unionized factories to replace its current unionized ones. Whether you agree with their views or not, you can understand why unions have opposed Obama's policies. Finally, unions were further angered this June when Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Democratic Rep George Miller (CA) publicly supported a Los Angeles judge's ruling that California's tenure laws were unconstitutional.

The two largest national teachers unions, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, have been increasingly vocal in opposing the Obama administration's policies. In July, the NEA, the largest and historically more moderate of the two, passed a resolution at its national convention calling for Education Secretary Arne Duncan's resignation. It also elected Lily Eskelsen Garcia as its new president, who promised a more aggressive stance against the types of education reforms the Obama administration supports. In her speech at the convention, she railed against "stupid testing," the "phony" evaluations systems based in it, and said that "I’ll be damned if I will sit quietly and play nice and say diplomatic things about something that has corrupted the profession I love." In a recent AP interview, she complained about "toxicity of this testing insanity."

At its own July convention, the AFT also called on Duncan to resign if he doesn't follow an "improvement plan" that includes abandoning the administration's No Child Left Behind and Race To The Top "test and punish" teacher accountability systems. The resolution that the AFT passed went on to say:

[Duncan] has aligned with those who have undermined public education, with those who have attacked educators who dedicate their lives to working with children and with those who have worked to divide parents and teachers... He has failed to bring parents, students, teachers and community members together to improve the quality of public education for all children, and he has promoted misguided and ineffective policies on deprofessionalization, privatization and test obsession.

At the convention, AFT President Randi Weingarten said,

Make no mistake about it: There’s a lot of hurt that has been expressed from the floor – the feeling that the Secretary of Education doesn’t walk in the shoes of public educators or provide the support and resources necessary to ensure all children have a high quality public education.

This intra-Democratic Party fight has been brewing beneath the surface for Obama's whole presidency. A much more minor, but illustrative, example was Matt Damon speaking at a "Save Our Schools" rally against Obama's policies in 2011. The Obama administration asked Damon to meet with Secretary Duncan before the rally so that they could try to win Damon over, but Damon refused to meet with anyone from the administration.

If it appears that a Clinton administration would continue Obama's education policies, and a different candidate embraces the teachers' critique of that policy, the challenger could give Clinton a serious fight. Clinton will likely still win anyway, because there are no signs that any other major party faction is poised to oppose her. But teachers unions could give a challenger campaign volunteers and a political organization in many states across the country, which could be translated into votes and delegates.

For now, potential rivals for the nomination have differentiated themselves by being more liberal than Clinton on economic issues like regulating Wall Street and income inequality generally. But we will know if one of them is serious if he or she also gets to Clinton's left on education and makes that a centerpiece of the campaign. This is because ultimately an insurgent candidate must not just be personally skilled to have some success in the nomination process. He or she needs support from one or more major organized factions in the party. The teachers unions look like the Democratic interest group most predisposed to join an insurgency. There is an opportunity to challenge Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton from the left. But that opportunity is mainly in education policy because that is where there are interest groups to back the challenge.

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[1] I pool votes for president in the 1988 through 2012 elections in order to get the sample size of teachers union members large enough to draw meaningful conclusions. I measure teacher union membership by combining the Census Occupation Code (1980 format) variable ("occ80") with the union membership variable ("union"). The same pattern holds in party identification as in vote choice. 57% of teachers union members identify as Democrats compared to 46% in the rest of the population.

[2] Data provided by investigators.

[3] For a more detailed and theoretically rich description of changing party positions on education policy over time, I strongly recommend Christina Wolbrecht and Michael T. Hartney's (2014) article, "Ideas about Interests": Explaining the Changing Partisan Politics of Education," in Perspectives on Politics.

]]><![CDATA[Why Do U.S. Political Parties Lie About Their Histories?]]>Tue, 16 Sep 2014 04:00:00 GMThttps://www.jonathanmladd.com/blog/why-do-us-political-parties-lie-about-their-histories

The RNC website's party history timeline.

Originally published in the Mischiefs of Faction blog.

By Jonathan M. Ladd

This weekend, Seth pointed out that the Democratic Party blatantly lies on its website about the Party’s historical commitment to civil rights, which was small before 1960 and almost nonexistent before President Harry Truman. (Even most New Deal programs were initially designed and implemented in a discriminatory manner.)

And if we turn to the Republican Party's web page, we find a similar lack of acknowledgment that since the early 1960s the Democrats and Republicans have switched geographic constituencies and positions on racial and women's rights issues. Here is the RNC's timeline of major Republican accomplishments.

No mention of Nixon's Southern strategy, or the party opposing the Equal Rights Amendment for the first time ever in the 1980 platform, or campaigning against welfare queens and prison revolving doors, or the five Republican-nominated Supreme Court justices striking down the main enforcement mechanism of the Voting Rights Act. Earl Warren and Ronald Reagan are presented as a unified list of Republicans all pushing the same agenda.

I won't elaborate here on how this (and the Democrats official version of their own history) completely glosses over how the positions advocated by leading Republicans and Democrats have changed. (Seth already does a great job on this. See also here, here, here and here.)

I want to discuss why both parties hide their ideological evolution and just emphasize the positive. Why doesn't the Democratic Party say something like this on its website?: "We were founded by a group of (mostly) southerners supporting white supremacy and skeptical of federal power. Despite being the party of racial reactionaries for the majority of our history, about 50-80 years ago we saw the light and now support egalitarian policies and a robust welfare state."

I think it has to do with voter psychology. If people voted purely based on policy, the history of the parties shouldn't matter. All that should matter is the positions of the current leaders of the party and what they will do in office if elected.

But public opinion doesn't work that way. This isn't why people hold party affiliations. People largely don't come to see themselves as a Democrat or Republican because they agree with the party's current positions, but because of a more abstract psychological bond. People affiliate with a political party because they feel that people "like them" are members of the party. The social groups they associate with the party are groups they like or belong to. This is why, on most issues, when people discover that their personal opinion differs from their party's position, they change their opinion rather than their partisanship.

The fact that our party attachments are emotional bonds rather than simply a way to enact policy is why parties don't want to air publicly their historical dirty laundry. You attract and hold party adherents by building positive psychological associations and avoiding negative ones. How you feel about the history of your party can plausibly affect your psychological attachment to it, even if history is irrelevant to the party's current policy agenda.

Connected to this is research showing that people's evaluations of candidates and even parties are not just influenced by things that they currently remember. Instead, people engage in "online processing." If people's attachments to parties adjust via "online processing," people may learn new information that changes their feelings toward a party. Then, when making a political choice, they may remember their new feelings toward the party, but not the information that changed those feelings. (See here, here, here, here and here.)

In the case of the Democrats, if people learn (or are reminded) that they once supported slavery, Jim Crow and the Trail of Tears, their emotional evaluation of the Democrats may become more negative, but later they may not remember that the reasons they have more negative feelings toward the Democrats are out of date. And for the Republicans, why risk describing your ideological evolution over time when you can just list a string of associations with positive historical events? In this way, you increase the likelihood that people will develop (or maintain) positive emotional association with your party brand.

Not only does the academic research indicate to me that people's party attachments are not purely meant to achieve current policy goals, my own personal interactions support this as well. I have talked with lots of even high political awareness people (even some political science PhDs) who feel the need to defend their chosen party's entire historical record. In my experience, it is rare to encounter someone who will come out and say: "I'm a strong Democrat. Even though for most of its history it was a white supremacist party." People don't talk like that or think like that. Even as I write this, it feels somehow strange for me to think that, even though I am now a Democrat, if I lived in an earlier era I should have been (based on policy) a Republican or a Whig. Thinking this way goes against something basic in human psychology. People are tribal. They want to embrace their tribe and all things connected to it, including its history.

]]><![CDATA[Ezra Klein Gives Political Scientists Some of Their Own Medicine]]>Tue, 02 Sep 2014 04:00:00 GMThttps://www.jonathanmladd.com/blog/ezra-klein-gives-political-scientists-some-of-their-own-medicine

This isn't exactly ironic. But Alanis was never a stickler for definitions.

Originally published in the Mischiefs of Faction blog.

By Jonathan M. Ladd

In recent years, political scientist have gained more influence over how journalists cover national politics. One of the central differences between political scientists and old fashioned political journalists is that political scientists are much more likely to attribute political events to the structure or environment in which political conflict takes place, not the actions of individual politicians. For instance, political scientists say election outcomes are mostly determined by the state of the economy and how long the president's party has been in office, rather than campaign tactics and charismatic candidates. The president's legislative success is determined by the preferences of members of Congress, not the president's speech-making ability. Members of Congress are more extreme and uncompromising not because there aren't any reasonable people left in America, but because members that do compromise are now very likely to lose in primaries.

In Vox today, Ezra Klein has a very nice item describing how political scientists' way of looking at the world became much more influential in the past 9 years. But to what does he credit this new intellectual dominance? Was it the amazing work of John Sides and his team at The Monkey Cage blog? Was it the founders of our humble blog? Was it the political scientists who wrote books that were accessible and extremely illuminating? Or was it maybe even the rise of intellectually curious young journalists like Ezra?

No. While Klein acknowledges these variables, he credits most of the increasing importance of political science in Washington journalism to... wait for it... structural factors! It is not all the hard work done by political scientist and journalists, but rather the increase in polarization itself that has led journalists to embrace political science. Klein argues that when politicians' ideologies were less extreme and the parties less ideologically sorted, it was more plausible to believe that the skills of a specific politician might make a difference. But in the modern polarized era, it is much more obvious to journalists that political outcomes are beyond one man or woman's control.

So congratulations, political scientists who are trying to improve journalism! You have been hoisted by your own petard!

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