There were three main story-lines that came out of this weekend’s Value Voters Summit, an annual gathering of cultural conservative (and mainly conservative evangelical) folk sponsored by the Family Research Council, the Heritage Foundation and the American Family Association that has also become an obligatory stop for Republican presidential candidates.
The first, and perhaps least interesting, is that Ron Paul’s supporters again packed the room and won a straw poll. Paul is by all accounts running a more formidable campaign than he did in 2008, but these straw poll showings have little or nothing to do with it (notably, in the two major straw polls this year where Paulites couldn’t just show up at the last minute and dominate the balloting, the Ames Iowa GOP event in August and the Florida “P5” event in September, Paul did not win).
The second story-line is that a prominent Texas preacher known for his anti-Mormon sentiments introduced Rick Perry and then gleefully gave interviews repeating his belief that the LDS faith is a “cult,” getting Mitt’s religion back into the immediate consciousness of the conservative evangelical voters and opinion-leaders most likely to pay attention to the event, while also probably scandalizing Republican elites who don’t like religion-talk generally.
The third story-line is that Herman Cain again gave a rapturously received speech, another version of the same speech he’s been giving for months.
It’s debatable at this point whether the second (the nasty Romney-Perry rivalry) or the third (the Cain surge) story matters most. But the underlying story is that three candidates who had an early advantage in Christian Right support–Gingrich, Bachmann, and Santorum–have become semi-invisible, while a fourth–Tim Pawlenty–has withdrawn altogether.

This item is cross-posted from The New Republic.
The latest big phenomenon in the Republican presidential nominating contest is the sudden collapse of Rick Perry, who looked to be consolidating a formidable lead just a month ago. The consensus opinion is that Perry lost his way in back-to-back candidate debates where he came across as an inarticulate yahoo that Republicans could not trust to hold his own against Barack Obama–an impression deepened by the most recent controversy over the name of his family’s leased hunting retreat.
If that is indeed the case, it would be highly premature to write Perry off, since there’s nothing about his image that could not be cured by a strong performance in future debates and judicious use of the $17 million the Texan has raised since entering the race in August. But there is an alternative theory about Perry’s decline that creates a less optimistic scenario for the governor, while raising some hard-to-answer questions about the direction of the GOP. There is abundant evidence that Perry’s problem is less a matter of style than of substance, and more a matter of ideology than of electability. To put it simply, the man who announced his candidacy with a fiery right-wing speech at a gathering of the fiery right-wing RedState community is rapidly alienating his hyper-conservative base, and may have real trouble getting back his wingnut mojo.
Recent polls illustrate the problem clearly. The percentage of GOP voters supporting Perry in the ABC-WaPo survey dropped from 29 percent to 17 percent between early September and the end of the month. But look at the internals:

The falloff for Perry against other announced candidates has been particularly steep among those aligned with the tea party movement. In early September, Perry had a 3-to-1 advantage over any other candidate among those “strongly” backing the tea party, but his support has plummeted from 45 percent to 10 percent in this group.

Similarly, a new CBS poll that shows Perry dropping from 23 percent to 12 percent among all Republicans during the last two weeks has him dropping from 30 percent to 12 percent among Tea Party supporters, a 60 percent plunge. He now ranks not only behind Cain and Romney with the Tea Folk, but behind Newt Gingrich as well.
In other words, Perry’s plunge has been disproportionately strong among conservatives, and according to ABC/WaPo, catastrophic among hard-core conservatives. At a time when the same survey says Republicans care more about a candidate’s agreement with them on the issues than about their relative electability by a 73-20 margin, it appears unlikely that Perry’s alienation of his erstwhile fans is primarily a function of his debating style or his appeal to swing voters.
It is generally understood that Perry’s positioning on immigration, and specifically his continued championship of a program that offered in-state tuition to the children of illegal immigrants, has proven problematic to conservatives (the new CBS poll showed 86 percent of Republicans disapproving of Perry’s program). But the extent of the offense has been underplayed by political observers for whom it is gospel that issues other than the economy don’t matter to voters this cycle. Evidence to the contrary, however, is right there in the ABC/WaPo survey. Offered a list of issue positions which might make Republican voters more or less likely to support a candidate, “supports in-state tuition for undocumented immigrants” elicited far and away the most powerful negative response, with 53 percent saying it made them “much less likely” to support the candidate promoting that heresy (the same percentage, it so happens, as those saying “wants to repeal new health care law” made them “much more likely” to support the candidate). The poll didn’t ask what voters would think of a candidate who called them “heartless” for feeling that way, but presumably the numbers would be even more emphatically negative.
The really bad news for Perry is that the worst may be yet to come, once his positions and record on issues other than immigration come fully to light and are exploited by rivals. Michele Bachmann tried to turn his handling of the HPV vaccination controversy into an example of Perry’s “crony capitalism,” but her attacks backfired thanks to her foolish embrace of the idea that the vaccine might cause mental retardation. Other Perry initiatives in Texas, though, show more obvious vulnerabilities, particularly his fondness for using state funds to subsidize private companies–some with links to him personally and others whose executives have turned up as Perry campaign donors–in the name of economic development. This was the topic of an early Wall Street Journal op-ed blasting Perry for “crony capitalism.” And you can bet rival campaigns are digging into the ground already turned by TNR’s Alec MacGillis in his examination of the state’s Enterprise Fund, the Emerging Technology Fund, and the OneTexas Foundation, along with private contracts awarded by the Perry administration for major public services like Medicaid. At a time when Republicans are in full cry about the Obama administration’s alleged habit of picking “winners and losers” in the private sector in areas ranging from the auto industry to clean energy, there is an obvious opening for tarring Perry with similar practices.
MacGillis has suggested that Republicans don’t really want to “go there” when it comes to Perry because their corporate allies won’t like it. But in the heat of a competitive presidential campaign, Perry’s rivals will be strongly tempted to pick up any rock they can find to hurl at him, particularly if it can be used to undermine the “constitutional conservative” credentials that bind him to the Tea Party. And anyone who thinks Perry will get a pass on all these ideological questions should note the challenge, just issued by RedState’s Erick Erickson, for all the candidates to submit to an individual “conversation” based on the concerns of “conservative activists.” Wildfires in Texas gave Perry an excuse to skip the last such ideological inquisition, sponsored by Jim DeMint on Labor Day. But that one lasted about twenty minutes per candidate. Erickson wants two hours. No stone will be left unturned. And unlike the occasion of Perry’s announcement speech to Erickson’s group in August, he won’t be able to spend his time ranting and strutting and whipping the crowd up into a frenzy against Barack Obama. He’ll have his own right flank to cover.

This item is cross-posted from Salon.
The national trauma of the 2000 presidential election and its messy denouement in Florida and the U.S. Supreme Court made, for a brief moment, election reform a cause célèbre. The scrutiny of election administration went far beyond the vote counting and recounting that dominated headlines. The Florida saga cast a harsh light on the whole country’s archaic and fragmented system of election administration, exemplified by a state where hundreds of thousands of citizens were disenfranchised by incompetent and malicious voter purges, Reconstruction-era felon voting bans, improper record-keeping, and deliberate deception and harassment.
The outrage generated by the revelations of 2000 soon spent itself or was channeled into other avenues, producing, as a sort of consolation prize, the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002, an underambitious and underfunded law mainly aimed at preventing partisan mischief in vote counting. The fundamental problem of accepting 50 different systems for election administration, complicated even more in states like Florida where local election officials control most decisions with minimal federal, state or judicial oversight, was barely touched by HAVA. As Judith Browne-Dianis, of the civil rights group the Advancement Project, told me: “The same cracks in the system have persisted.”
But most politicians in both parties paid lip service to the idea that every American citizen had a right to vote, and that higher voting levels of the sort taken for granted in most democracies would be a good thing. “Convenience voting” via mail and early on-site balloting, or simply liberalized “absentee” voting, spread rapidly throughout the last decade, often as a way to minimize Election Day confusion or chicanery. In Florida itself, Republican Govs. Jeb Bush and Charlie Crist relaxed and then abolished the state’s practice of disenfranchising nonviolent felons for a period of time after their release.
No more. In the wake of the 2010 elections, Republican governors and legislatures are engaging in a wave of restrictive voting legislation unlike anything this country has seen since the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which signaled the defeat of the South’s long effort to prevent universal suffrage. This wave of activism is too universal to be a coincidence, and too broad to reflect anything other than a general determination to restrict the franchise.
Millions of voters are affected. In Florida new Republican Gov. Rick Scott signed legislation reversing Crist’s order automatically restoring the voting rights of nonviolent ex-felons. In one fell swoop, Scott extinguished the right to vote for 97,000 Florida citizens and placed more than a million others in danger of disenfranchisement. In a close contest for the Sunshine State’s 29 electoral votes, such measures could be as crucial to the outcome as the various vote suppression efforts of 2000.
As Ari Berman explained in an excellent recent summary of these developments for Rolling Stone, restrictive legislation, which has been introduced in 38 states and enacted (so far) in at least 12, can be divided into four main categories: restrictions on voter registration drives by nonpartisan, nonprofit civic and advocacy groups; cutbacks in early voting opportunities; new, burdensome identification requirements for voting; and reinstitution of bans on voting by ex-felons.
While new voter ID laws have clearly been coordinated by the powerful conservative state legislative lobbying network ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council), other initiatives have spread almost virally. Virtually all of these restrictions demonstrably target segments of the electorate — the very poor, African-Americans and Hispanics, college students, and organizations trying to register all of the above — that tend to vote for Democrats.
Virtually all have been justified by their sponsors as measures to prevent “voter fraud,” a phenomenon for which there is remarkably little evidence anywhere in the country. As Tovah Andrea Wang, an election law expert at Demos, has concluded: “[L]aw enforcement statistics, reports from elections officials and widespread research have proved that voter fraud at the polling place is virtually nonexistent.” The Bush administration’s Justice Department tried to a scandalous degree to find cases of voter fraud to prosecute, and failed.
But as Marge Baker, executive vice president of People for the American Way, observes:

So-called anti-fraud laws are almost always thinly veiled attempts to prevent large segments of the population from making it to the ballot box … low-income voters, college students, people of color, the elderly. The people behind these laws know that there is no “voter fraud” epidemic. They just want to make it as difficult as possible for certain types of people to vote.

Read more…

This item is cross-posted from The New Republic.
We’re at a very strange juncture in the 2012 presidential contest. Rick Perry continues to struggle, as Mitt Romney savagely exploits his offensive-to-conservatives position on immigration and the Texan deals with new, potentially damaging revelations of a racially insensitive name for a hunting camp rented by his family. But Romney’s not benefitting much in the polls, and he remains a persona non grata to many conservatives. And the candidate with the current buzz, Herman Cain, is many miles away from being taken seriously by GOP elites as a potential nominee.
Politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum. Late last week Reuters reported that influential conservative activists upset about Perry’s performance were begging Mike Huckabee to reconsider his decision to give 2012 a pass. (Huck quickly denied he was listening to such pleadings, but not that they were being made.) Chris Christie, meanwhile, is reportedly struggling with demands that he repudiate his own assessment of himself as “not ready” to serve as president and jump into the race. But if Christie doesn’t answer the bell, is there any doubt a certain universally known, beloved-of-the-base politician will hear her name on the restless wind and give fresh consideration to the prospect of “going rogue” and running for president? Yes, this could be Sarah Palin’s moment to confound her critics, to send the GOP establishment types she hates even more than liberals into frantic hysteria, and most of all, to gain the attention she craves.
At this late stage, it’s become impossible not to understand that time has all but run out on potential last-minute candidates–except for those with universal name ID, massive fundraising potential, and a plausible path to the nomination. Florida’s decision to move its presidential primary to January 31, followed by South Carolina’s move to January 21, means that the formal nominating process will almost certainly begin in Iowa on January 2–less than three months from now, if not earlier.
Palin has long been written off as a possible 2012 candidate by pundits who look at her terrible general-election poll ratings and her questionable work ethic and conclude her chronic refusal to rule out a run is no more than a ruse to keep her name in the news. She hasn’t made any effort to put together a skeleton organization or to sustain any sort of continuous presence in national political discourse. But throughout the “invisible primary,” Palin has consistently said that if she wanted to, she could run the kind of wildly unconventional campaign that makes polling, organization, and the attitudes of elites completely irrelevant. It is perhaps worth considering the possibility that she believes what she is saying. If she does, the current situation must look tempting indeed.
Just look at Iowa. The winner of the Ames Straw Poll, Michele Bachmann, whose early success was thought to represent a conclusive preemption of any Palin candidacy, is now, to quote one prominent report, “running on fumes” in her native state, reduced to campaigning in a few major cities and handing out leftover literature asking voters to show up in Ames. Cain never much set up an Iowa campaign to begin with. Romney seems determined to avoid the commitment to Iowa that tripped him up in 2008. And Perry’s immigration heresy is clearly hurting him in a state where nativist champ Steve King is a political icon. Is there any solid reason to believe Palin couldn’t leap into the race in the first-in-the-nation caucus and become a serious competitor? Similarly, there is no way to anticipate how rank-and-file conservatives might react to the kind of mammoth, sustained news-cycle-dominating mockery and vilification Palin would immediately attract were she to finally take the plunge. At least initially, a Palin candidacy would all but blot out the sun.
Might this scenario be irresistible to St. Joan of the Tundra, for whom resentment at mockery by elites has always been the source of her unique bond with the conservative base? That’s hard to say. In a recent interview with her buddy Greta Van Susteren, Palin said her main concern about running for president is that she wasn’t sure the job would give her any more influence than she has today. She also said that over half the electorate was composed of independents who were tired of the existing Republican field’s “bickering” and were mainly concerned about finding a champion to oppose Obama’s “socialist policies.” Clearly, she lives in a world characterized by different facts and different assumptions about politics than most of us. But so, too, do many of the grassroots conservatives who will determine the GOP presidential nomination. A new Washington Post poll shows that 83 percent of self-identified Republicans, and 91 percent of Tea Party supporters, believe that the Republican candidate, whoever it is, will defeat Barack Obama.
In other words, these are not people obsessed with “electability,” or who give much credence to current polls showing Obama actually leading every named GOP candidate other than (occasionally) Romney. They want a conservative champion, and with anti-Washington and anti-politician sentiments at all time highs, maybe even somewhat a bit “mavericky.”
Of course, maybe Chris Christie will jump into the race and become for many Republicans the liberal-baiting champion they crave–at least until, like Perry, he has to undergo a close analysis of his heterodox positions and utterances. But if Christie takes a pass, don’t be too surprised if Palin sees an opening to dominate the political airwaves and internet for weeks and months to come. And don’t be too surprised if a shocking number of Republican voters forget about her allegedly toxic persona and respond to her primitive cry of defiance of everyone who has ever underestimated her–or taken them for granted.

The minute the Washington Post ran a big story about a racial epithet gracing (or rather, disgracing) the entrance to a Perry family hunting retreat in Texas at some, debatable point in the not-too-distant past, I heard a number of progressives asking the question: “Is Perry finished?”
I didn’t think so then, and after a day of fervent conservative reaction defending Perry, I sure don’t think so now. So programmed are conservatives to deplore any intimations of racial insensitivity by their ideological fellows as “playing the race card” that the furor may actually be helping the Texan. Here’s a good explanation from Dan Amira at New York magazine:

[Y]ou have to consider that there are two things Republicans hate more than anything. One is being accused of racism, which has happened with increasing frequency since President Obama became president, and, if you ask Republicans, is never, ever justified. Two is unfair treatment by the allegedly biased mainstream media. So among Republicans, the widespread response to the Post story was not, “wow, Rick Perry messed up.” It was, “the liberal media is smearing another Republican as a racist!”

But that’s only half the story of how the Texas revelations might wind up helping Perry: in the richest of ironies, the saga is probably going to hurt, perhaps seriously, the campaign of African-American Herman Cain, who had the temerity to criticize Perry for apparent racial insensitivity. Amira’s piece features a number of tweets from erstwhile Cain fans going ballistic on him for colluding in a “smear” of Perry. Paul Waldman explains how Cain is going to wind up being accused of a racist attack on the Texan:

Cain hasn’t been shy about talking about race, and has offered himself as a living rebuke to the idea that black people should automatically support Democrats. But he apparently didn’t quite get that he’s become Republicans’ New Black Friend. A big part of his job is to show the world, just by his presence, that conservatives aren’t racists. But that means buying into the prevailing conservative narrative on race, which says that anti-black racism is a thing of the past, and the only racism that exists anymore is racism directed at white people. And the critical corollary is that there is no more vile kind of racism than white people being falsely accused of racism.

With Cain palpably taking support away from Perry over the last couple of weeks, this weird dynamic could go a long way toward ending Perry’s free-fall in the polls. If you didn’t know better, you’d almost suspect one of Perry’s Texas buddies planted the whole story in the Post.

The campaign of the swaggering front-runner for the presidential nomination is suddenly a mess. Mitt Romney’s running a really nasty attack ad against Perry which ought to cost Mitt dearly with Hispanic voters if he is the nominee. Chris Christie says he’s not running, but is wondering if not running is “arrogant” and “egomaniacal” of him, and is reconsidering. Now Mike Huckabee is also reconsidering his non-candidacy, or at least considering a reconsideration.
For dessert, Florida’s decision today to hold its 2012 primary on January 31 in defiance of national party rules has thrown a huge monkey-wrench into the nominating contest calendar, probably moving everything up about a month. And on top of everything else, conservative opinion-leaders who are supposed to keep Republicans obsessed with the task of nominating the strongest possible candidate to face the president next November just can’t keep themselves from saying out loud they think Obama’s toast and they can nominate any damn lunatic they want.
Regular readers know I like to mock the idea so many Democrats and MSM types have of the Republican Party as a highly disciplined, hierarchical “daddy party” where everybody knows his or her place and everybody follows orders. This week ought to take care of that stereotype for a while.
UPDATE: Huckabee’s PAC says reports of his reconsideration of non-candidacy are bunk. Too bad. But if there is indeed a group of panicky ideologues roaming the landscape looking for a new, pure candidate to run against Romney and Perry, how long will it be before you-know-who hears her name on the restless wind? After all, if Krauthammer is right and any old Republican can beat Obama, why not St. Joan of the Tundra?

This item is cross-posted from The New Republic.
Former pizza magnate Herman Cain’s upset victory in the September 24 Florida Republican straw poll, and his subsequent rise to a competitive third place position in at least one national poll, are being generally interpreted as a function of GOP voter unhappiness with previous “top-tier” candidates (Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, and arguably Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul). In particular, Rick Perry’s series of ever-deteriorating debate performances have apparently made more than a few conservative base voters restless, creating at least a temporary opening for the smooth and genial Cain, who has always been popular with the Tea Party crowd.
But something a bit more profound than happy feet (and the perpetual desire to refute “liberal media” claims of latent racism) may be driving Republicans in Cain’s direction. His relentless advocacy of a comprehensive overhaul of the federal tax code, bearing the catchy moniker of “9-9-9,” is getting serious attention in the conservative chattering classes. That’s happening for two pretty obvious reasons.
First, the increasing nastiness of the Romney-Perry competition, and perhaps even some fatigue with the entire field’s monotonous Obama-bashing, has created a natural desire for a more positive campaign focused on what Republicans propose rather than what they oppose. As conservative opinion-leader Erick Erickson argued after Cain’s Florida straw poll win:

They voted for Herman Cain because he is not running against Barack Obama so much as he is running for an America he believes in and that other people can get excited about. People love Herman Cain’s optimism. They love his vision. They love his 9-9-9 plan.
The last is key. Herman has an articulated, easy to remember plan for economic recovery in his 9-9-9 plan. Quick! What is Mitt Romney’s plan? Jon Huntsman’s? Rick Perry’s? Michele Bachmann’s? They all, more or less, have them, but they are not readily memorable or easy to understand.
Herman Cain is consistently conservative, he is running for something, not against someone, and he is the most optimistic candidate on stage.

Second, Republicans are sensitive to Democratic claims, amplified recently by Barack Obama’s attacks on Republican obstructionism, that their party has no real plan for reviving the economy. Obama’s consistent lead in the polls against all the Republican candidates (with the occasional exception of Mitt Romney) even as his approval ratings sink has to be alarming to conservative elites who are smart and honest enough to acknowledge that the president is beginning to succeed in his efforts to make 2012 a “comparative” rather than a “referendum” election. Hence, even for Republicans who don’t take Cain seriously as a viable presidential candidate, praising him for being a candidate of great substance with very specific plans for the economy is good for the cause.
The plan itself is a variation on the “Fair Tax” concept, which would replace existing payroll and income taxes with a flat national consumption tax. This hardy perennial of conservative tax schemes, which experts, even on the right, tend to deride as impractical and impossibly regressive, remains popular with the conservative rank-and-file. Cain has long been a Fair Tax fan, and frankly describes 9-9-9 as a way station to ultimate establishment of a Fair Tax.
Specifically, 9-9-9 would replace the current federal income, estate, and payroll taxes with a 9 percent corporate tax, a flat 9 percent income tax, and a 9 percent national sales tax. So it would simultaneously achieve a number of conservative goals in tax policy: abolition of the “death tax;” elimination of progressive income tax rates; and a general shift from taxes on income to taxes on consumption. A friendly Washington Times guestimate suggested that 9-9-9 would “only” reduce current total federal revenues by about $360 billion. Whether that’s accurate or not, by eliminating the earned income and family tax credits, and by imposing a national sales tax, Cain’s plan would without question boost taxes on the working poor to a very significant extent. The impact of a national sales tax on already-struggling state and local governments that rely on the same type of taxes is impossible to calculate, but would be considerable as well.
And that helps explain a third and less obvious appeal generated by Cain’s 9-9-9 plan: It uniquely scratches an itch among conservatives for a tax code that not only reduces taxes on businesses and high earners, but also demands more from those “lucky duckies” (as the Wall Street Journal once famously called them) at the bottom of the income scale who don’t currently pay income taxes. Those who watched Rick Perry’s August announcement speech in South Carolina may recall the odd moment when the Texan paused in the midst of a tirade against taxes of any kind to rail at the “injustice that nearly half of all Americans don’t even pay any income tax.” This reverse-class-warfare battle cry has also been a staple of Michele Bachmann’s rhetoric. So now comes a candidate with an actual “plan” to accomplish this purpose–with the added bonus that he happens to be an African-American, providing protection against liberal suspicions that conservatives are turning the working poor into the “welfare queens” of the 21st century.
Of course, none of these attractions are enough to make Herman Cain the Republican presidential nominee. He doesn’t have a lot of money or organization; has less experience in public office than Sarah Palin; has been known to commit gaffes and exhibit ignorance of foreign policy; and has yet to get the kind of scrutiny and criticism that has already knocked Rick Perry down a notch or two. But his current bout of popularity is not just a matter of conservatives punishing Rick Perry for his bad debate performances or his criticism of his rivals’ “heartless” attitudes towards the children of illegal immigrants. At the moment, Cain is the man with the plan.

It’s not often these days that you read a newspaper editorial worth republishing. But Newark’s Star-Ledger, which obviously follows New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie pretty closely, provided a tart and important response to Christie’s blast at the president for “class warfare” during his Ronald Reagan Library speech earlier this week. It’s worth quoting at length:

Clue phone for the governor: America is not demoralized by the notion of increasing taxes on top earners. Polls show that big majorities support the idea. Some even show that most Republicans do.
And the reason is not that rich people are evil. Obama never suggested that. And few Americans think that.
The reason is that we need the money. We are entering a period of national sacrifice and most feel it should be shared. Obama is drawing a line on that, saying he’d veto big cuts in middle-class programs such as Medicare unless Republicans agree to this shared sacrifice.
It’s remarkable that Christie can look across the American landscape today and conclude that our priority should be to protect the interests of those at the top of the pyramid, the one group that is doing okay.
What about the middle class? Their productivity at work is rising steadily, feeding growing corporate profits. But their incomes are dropping like rocks. And poverty is surging.
It is not class warfare to point out these facts. It is class warfare to ignore them while fending off any attempt to ask more from top earners.
It is especially galling to hear this from Christie, who raised taxes on the working poor by cutting their tax credits. Are they better able to take the blow?

Pols like Christie cannot have it both ways. They cannot thrill centrist pundits by calling for “shared sacrifice” and then turn around and insist that means imposing still more sacrifices on the low-to-moderate income Americans already being buffeted by the Great Recession, while insulating the wealthy, who are doing extremely well at the moment, from any “sacrifice” on grounds that they need to be rewarded for having, as Christie puts it, “achieved the American dream.”
If Christie really wants to show some courage in attacking “class warfare,” he could take a few shots at those Republicans who deeply resent what Rick Perry has called the “injustice” of the working poor not owing federal income taxes. So long as conservatives think “shared sacrifice” means making the tax system even more regressive even as economic inequality reaches unprecedented levels, they truly do need a “clue phone” from the real world.