Brendan Nyhan

From my new column for GEN, the new site on politics, power, and culture from Medium:

Does Donald Trump present a threat to American democracy, or is the system restraining him? As last week’s debate over the Census citizenship question illustrates, the answer is often both. That’s why it’s so difficult to reach a consensus about the nature and magnitude of the danger he poses.

A typical controversy in the Trump era starts when the president or an administration official challenges some previously uncontroversial democratic norm. This challenge becomes fodder for anti-Trump forces, who present it as an imminent threat to democracy as we know it. Bureaucratic and legal resistance then frequently limit the scope of what Trump can ultimately achieve. Many observers declare the threat thwarted at this point, suggesting that the president has failed to achieve his objectives and bashing critics for overhyping the threat in the first place. But such dismissals overlook the more subtle ways that Trump is changing our politics even in defeat.

From my new column for GEN, the new site on politics, power, and culture from Medium:

Do the polls really show Donald Trump is headed for big trouble in his reelection campaign? That’s what you might think from watching coverage of early polls of the 2020 general election. In reality, though, it’s just too early to learn much from surveys testing how Trump would fare against various Democrats. Unfortunately, media reports frequently fail to convey this uncertainty, which may lead people to underestimate Trump’s chances.

From my new column for GEN, the new site on politics, power, and culture from Medium:

Late Monday night, the Democratic leadership in the House decided to delay a vote on a spending measure that would reinstate a cost-of-living adjustment for members for Congress. Their reasoning was simple: bad optics.

Though congressional salaries have been frozen since 2009, even this modest pay increase was immediately demagogued by legislators on both sides of the aisle. Republican Senator Richard Shelby denounced the proposal, stating, “To go out and say we’re going to get a pay raise, that’s the wrong message and that’s not going to happen.” His GOP colleague Ben Sasse went even further: “Instead of writing a budget or reforming our bankrupt entitlement programs, House Democrats are angling for a pay raise,” the Nebraska senator said in a statement. “These jokers couldn’t hold down a summer job at Dairy Queen pulling this kinda crap.” Vulnerable House Democrats like Cindy Axne and Tom O’Halleran quickly disavowed the provision as well.

But this disparagement belies an uncomfortable truth in Washington, one that few people want to admit: Congress is wildly underpaid, a fact that has important repercussions for how our country is governed.

From my new column at Medium:

One of Donald Trump’s signature moves as president is to act as both arsonist and firefighter, taking credit for resolving pseudo-crises that he in fact initiated. The latest example came Friday, when Trump declared another immigration crisis at the country’s southern border with Mexico, and threatened to impose tariffs on all goods imported from the country if it didn’t take action to stem the flow of migrants. This latest escalation will likely end in Trump taking credit for an expected decline in immigration.

These tactics, of course, are not without precedent. Politicians frequently claim there is a crisis when they want to change public policy around an issue. Incumbents everywhere present themselves as responsible for the status quo when times are good. But we’ve seemingly never had a president who so frequently declares a crisis or even starts one — and then takes credit for solving it.

From my new column at Medium:

The greatest danger of Donald Trump’s presidency is that seemingly abnormal things become seen as normal. After more than 10,000 false or misleading claims, even the president’s outrageous assertions that Democrats support the murder of live infants barely seem newsworthy.

What’s even worse, however, is that other political actors have started to normalize this behavior and adjust their expectations accordingly. First, Republicans acquiesced to Trump’s controversial campaign in 2016. Most stood by when Trump fired the FBI director for investigating him, said there were very fine people on both sides of a white nationalist protest in Charlottesville, and endorsed the physical assault of a journalist. And now, even House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — a Democrat who vehemently opposes Trump — is taking behavior that should be unthinkable for an American president as a given.

From our new report:

Prior to the release of the Mueller report and subsequent escalation of conflict between the executive and legislative branches, Bright Line Watch conducted a new wave of surveys on the quality of democracy in the United States. From March 12–21, 2019, we fielded our eighth survey of academic experts and sixth survey of the general public. Since we began these surveys in 2017, assessments of U.S. democratic performance had generally declined among both groups. In the March 2019 surveys, our first since the 2018 midterm elections, we identified a substantial reversal of that trend (albeit one that is likely already eroding). This survey also includes our first expert ratings of the quality of democracy at the level of state government. The key results from these surveys are:

• Ratings of overall democratic quality increased among both experts and the general public between October 2018 and March 2019 (before the Mueller report’s release).
• When we examined specific democratic principles separately, the biggest increases in perceived performance during the October 2018-March 2019 period were on items that include the effectiveness of judicial checks on executive authority, protections from political violence, and the impartiality of investigations.
• Trump supporters and opponents continue to have starkly different views about the state of American democracy. Overall increases in performance ratings prior to the Mueller report were driven by those who disapprove of President Trump. Within this group, the biggest perceived improvement was on Congress’s ability to check the president. By contrast, Trump supporters believed that U.S. democratic performance on that principle had, in fact, declined since before the 2018 midterm elections.
• Assessments from our expert sample showed substantial variance in democratic quality at the state level. States rated highest tend to cluster in New England and on the West Coast, whereas many of those ranked lowest are in the South.

From my new column at Medium:

As the political world anxiously awaits the release of Robert Mueller’s report Thursday morning, much of the focus has been on what we won’t see. It’s quite likely the version that’s released to the public will be heavily redacted. Though legitimate reasons exist for the government to excise sensitive information from a public document, any omissions threaten to inspire conspiracy theories about why parts of the report was suppressed, particularly after Attorney General William Barr rushed out his own interpretation of Mueller’s findings — which favored President Trump — in a letter to Congress within 48 hours of receiving the document.

From my new column at Medium:

For anyone concerned about democratic norms and the rule of law, the 2016 election offered a clear lesson: Parties need to exercise more control over candidate selection. In this era of high partisanship, the official party nomination puts any candidate within striking distance of the presidency. This great power thus carries a profound responsibility: to deny the party endorsement to would-be demagogues. So why are Democrats reducing the role of party elites in the primary process this time around?

From my new column at Medium:

Even now, more than two years after the 2016 election, the debate over the influence of social media on our political system still relies largely on scary anecdotes (Twitter’s 50,000-plus impostor accounts are sowing chaos!) and speculation (YouTube is turning our younger generations into conspiracy theorists!). As a result, governments around the world are taking actions to counter misinformation campaigns, many of them based on flawed understandings or illiberal impulses. It’s time for this debate to get serious and start drawing on actual research and evidence.

From my new Upshot column:

Social media companies face increasing scrutiny for amplifying fringe anti-vaccine sentiment amid measles outbreaks in several states like Washington. In response, Facebook, YouTube and Pinterest recently made headlines by announcing initiatives to reduce vaccine misinformation on their platforms.

But the focus on anti-vaccine content on social media can obscure the most important factor in whether children get vaccinated: the rules in their home states, which are being revisited in legislative debates across the country that have received far less attention.