“how did Georgia go from light red to blue — or at the very least, purple?
The answer is pretty simple: The Atlanta area turned really blue in the Trump era. Definitions differ about the exact parameters of the Atlanta metropolitan area, but 10 counties1 are part of a governing collaborative called the Atlanta Regional Commission. Almost 4.7 million people live in those 10 counties, or around 45 percent of the state’s population.
Until very recently, the Atlanta area wasn’t a liberal bastion. There was a Democratic bloc that long controlled the government within the city limits of Atlanta and a Republican bloc that once dominated the suburbs”
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“suburban Atlanta is trending blue”
“In the lead-up to the election, there were plenty of signs that Biden’s support among Latino voters in key swing states might be weaker than Clinton’s in 2016, but some of the shifts wound up being very large. In Florida’s Miami-Dade County, for instance, which is 68 percent Hispanic, Trump narrowed his deficit by 22 percentage points between 2016 and 2020; in Texas’s Starr County, which is 99 percent Hispanic, Trump improved by a stunning 55 percentage points.
However, as the chart below shows, Trump’s gains among Latino voters were hardly universal. In fact, the places where Trump appears to have gained the most support were largely in rural areas or among more conservative Latino voters like Cuban Americans. In suburban and urban areas, the story was much more mixed. (And, to be clear, Biden still won the overwhelming majority of Latino votes.)
One important factor to keep in mind here — which is partially why some of these shifts toward Trump seem so pronounced — is that Trump did really poorly with Latino voters in 2016. According to pre-election surveys, he won just 18 percent of Latino voters in 2016 but 27 percent this year, putting him back in the territory of other recent Republican presidential nominees.
Additionally, part of what we’re seeing here isn’t necessarily something unique to Latino voters at all, but an extension of America’s growing urban-rural divide.”
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“The education split has been especially significant among white voters, and this rift appears to have widened as Trump lost ground in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, especially in areas where many white voters have four-year college degrees.”
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“Part of what is happening, according to Arlie Hochschild, a sociologist at the University of California who has written extensively about conservative voters, is that many less educated white voters have come to see Trump as their champion. “They feel that Trump is making them great again — their social class and their identity as whites,” she said. “Many of them feel that as white [people], they’re discriminated against.” She added that even if Biden might have personally appealed to those voters, it might not have been enough to overcome their suspicion that the Democratic Party as a whole was hostile to their worldview.
Importantly, Trump’s gains among white voters without a college degree were less substantial than his losses among educated white voters, and that appears to have cost him in these three states. This was most stark in Wisconsin, where Trump’s margin improved in 39 of the state’s 72 counties, but fell in 31 and didn’t change in two. The counties where he lost ground tended to be bigger and more well-educated, while the ones where he gained were generally smaller and less well-educated. In aggregate, these shifts added up to a narrow loss in Wisconsin for Trump in 2020 instead of the close win he achieved in 2016.”
“America’s security and economy increasingly depend on the exotic metals and minerals that go into high-tech manufacturing, from batteries that will be crucial to Joe Biden’s climate plan to the high-power magnets needed for the Pentagon’s precision-guided weapons.
And they’re largely controlled by China, the leading economic and military rival to the United States.”
“Donald Trump became the first Republican presidential candidate to win Zapata County’s vote in a hundred years. But it wasn’t its turn from a deep-blue history that seemed to be the source of such fascination but rather that, according to the census, more than 94 percent of Zapata’s population is Hispanic or Latino.
Zapata (population less than 15,000) was the only county in South Texas that flipped red, but it was by no means an anomaly: To the north, in more than 95-percent Hispanic Webb County, Republicans doubled their turnout. To the south, Starr County, which is more than 96-percent Hispanic, experienced the single biggest tilt right of any place in the country; Republicans gained by 55 percentage points compared with 2016. The results across a region that most politicos ignored in their preelection forecasts ended up helping to dash any hopes Democrats had of taking Texas.”
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“The shift, residents and scholars of the region say, shouldn’t be surprising if, instead of thinking in terms of ethnic identity, you consider the economic and cultural issues that are specific to the people who live there. Although the vast majority of people in these counties mark “Hispanic or Latino” on paper, very few long-term residents have ever used the word “Latino” to describe themselves. Ascribing Trump’s success in South Texas to his campaign winning more of “the Latino vote” makes the same mistake as the Democrats did in this election: Treating Latinos as a monolith.
Ross Barrera, a retired U.S. Army colonel and chair of the Starr County Republican Party, put it this way: “It’s the national media that uses ‘Latino.’ It bundles us up with Florida, Doral, Miami. But those places are different than South Texas, and South Texas is different than Los Angeles. Here, people don’t say we’re Mexican American. We say we’re Tejanos.””
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“Nearly everyone speaks Spanish, but many regard themselves as red-blooded Americans above anything else. And exceedingly few identify as people of color. (Even while 94 percent of Zapata residents count their ethnicity as Hispanic/Latino on the census, 98 percent of the population marks their race as white.) Their Hispanicness is almost beside the point to their daily lives.
In the end, Trump’s success in peeling off Latino votes in South Texas had everything to do with not talking to them as Latinos. His campaign spoke to them as Tejanos, who may be traditionally Democratic but have a set of specific concerns—among them, the oil and gas industry, gun rights and even abortion—amenable to the Republican Party’s positions, and it resonated. To be sure, it didn’t work with all of Texas’ Latinos; Trump still lost that vote by more than double digits statewide, and Joe Biden won more of the nationwide Latino vote than Hillary Clinton did in 2016. But Trump proved that seeing specific communities as persuadable voters and offering targeted messaging to match—fear of socialism in Miami-Dade’s Venezuelan and Cuban communities, for example—can be more effective than a blanket campaign that treats people as census categories. And in the end, it was enough to keep Florida and Texas in his column.”
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“by pursuing the coveted “Latino vote” nationally, the Biden campaign created a massive blind spot for itself in South Texas, where criticizing Trump’s immigration regime and championing diversity just does not play well among a Hispanic population where many neither see themselves as immigrant or diverse.”
“the world Biden will inherit is a far cry from the one he occupied when he was the vice president, or during the 1990s when he chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. America’s unipolar moment has long been relegated to the dustbin of history. China, in the Pentagon’s parlance, is a peer competitor. Other powers, both large and small, including Russia, Iran and North Korea, can easily frustrate U.S. ambitions. Rarely has the environment for international cooperation seemed more challenging.
The president-elect has said repeatedly that his primary goal abroad is to put American back at “the head of the table” because “the world won’t organize itself.” But the shape of that table has changed profoundly. A global pandemic has laid bare the limits of globalization and multilateral diplomacy and accelerated the demise of the liberal international order that America created and that sustained its primacy; it has also exacerbated preexisting trends toward renewed geopolitical competition and heightened sensitivities about national sovereignty on issues from border security to the economy and health care. A powerful China and a declining yet still determined Russia have conspired successfully to oppose Pax Americana.”
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“The Trump administration has failed to realize any of its objectives with China and has driven the bilateral relationship into a ditch by demonizing China and blaming Beijing for Trump’s own failures in responding to the pandemic; hyperventilating about the Chinese threat; hinting at a goal of toppling the regime and recognizing Taiwan as an independent country; and embracing reckless trade and technology policies that hurt the U.S. more than China and threaten to “decouple” the world’s two largest economies. Not surprisingly, Trump imagines that the U.S. and China are locked into a zero-sum game and that U.S. cooperation on issues of mutual concern is for suckers and losers.
Some of China’s behavior—its predatory trade and technology policies and repression at home, are two examples—warrants a more muscular American response. And Trump deserves credit for raising political consciousness of these obnoxious Chinese practices. But the Biden administration, notwithstanding its hard-line rhetoric during the campaign, will need to hit the reset button with Beijing. There are several steps the new administration can take to halt the downward spiral in the U.S.-China relationship.”
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“should end the feckless and counterproductive tariff war with China, which according to several studies cost U.S. businesses $46 billion and the U.S. economy 300,000 jobs and roughly 0.5 percent of GDP growth.”
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“The Trump administration’s policy of applying “maximum pressure” on Iran has also been a complete bust. Iran has not agreed to renegotiate an agreement with more stringent restrictions on its nuclear program, and it now possesses 12 times the amount of weapons grade material it had when the nuclear deal with Iran was signed in 2015. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard has not reduced its “malign” activities in the region nor curtailed its ballistic missile programs; sanctions have not hastened the collapse of the regime; the U.S. is more isolated diplomatically than ever from its allies; Iran has been able to increase oil revenues by evading sanctions; and the administration’s unsuccessful efforts to isolate Iran have handed both China and Russia a golden opportunity to forge closer relations with Tehran.”
“If the global community doesn’t come together, China will assume economic dominance of Artificial Intelligence applications, be in a position to spy on much of the world, and leverage international organizations to “make the world as a whole safe for authoritarianism,””
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“China has successfully shifted focus away from manufacturing — which it now dominates globally — towards higher-value tech sectors via a “Made in China 2025” policy focused on AI, robotics, quantum computing, new materials and high speed transport.
Whether ranked by market capitalization, revenue or employees, China’s large tech companies now outnumber those of all countries except the U.S. Chinese adoption of AI technologies is faster than in all other countries. Faced with a growing number of countries banning Chinese telecom giant Huawei and the acceleration of digital transformation demanded by the Covid-19 pandemic, China increased state investment — from both local and central government — in semiconductors and artificial intelligence by more than $1 trillion in its latest Five-Year Plan.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee worries that “due to its sheer size” China “already has an inherent edge” in new technologies, projected to overtake U.S. research and development spending by 2030.
China is formally creating the sort of military-industrial complex that exists informally in the U.S., — ”mobilizing all aspects of national power for science and technology””
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“Chinese companies are adept at delivering convenient tech-enabled services that range from AI-powered traffic management systems to eCommerce software. Companies such as GTCOM enable parts of those services. In GTCOM’s case by offering machine translation of text in 2.500 pairs of languages.
On the surface that may sound simply like a Chinese version of Google Translate. The potential problem is that military grade intelligence can now be created out of the sort of data that feeds GTCOM’s services. Natural language processing tools can identify extreme language or measure public sentiment. Location can be used to map people’s movements: potentially indicating social unrest or pinpointing political opponents. Unlike Google, companies like GTCOM exist to provide that sort of information to the Chinese state.”
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“China’s cyber espionage is increasingly spilling out into the open. In 2018, Le Monde reported that Chinese firms had not only built but systematically bugged the new headquarters of the African Union. U.S. intelligence agencies have identified Chinese hackers as responsible for data breaches involving the majority of Americans: from 22 million government records held by the Office of Personnel Management to Equifax credit reports for 147 million Americans. Canada’s 2020 Cyber Threat Assessment published Wednesday put China at the head of a short list of “greatest strategic threat” countries engaging in state-sponsored cyberattacks on Canada’s critical infrastructure and citizens.
The U.S Department of Justice charges that Huawei is so brazen in its pursuit of stolen intellectual property that it offered “bonuses to employees who succeeded in stealing confidential information from other companies.” U.S. agencies estimate the economic damage may range anywhere from $225 to $600 billion a year.”
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“Key to China’s success is heavy technology investment — signaling that any attempt to outpace China will require industrial policy investments. French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire Wednesday urged the EU executive to make funding cloud technology a priority.
Another solution: Bans and sanctions that limit the ability of Chinese companies to grow and improve their technology. India took that approach in June, banning TikTok, WeChat and dozens of other Chinese-owned app, saying China stole user data in a way that “ultimately impinges upon the sovereignty and integrity of India.”
Others options include directly enhancing defense capabilities: Boris Johnson this week announced the establishment of a U.K. national cyberforce to protect the UK against cyber attacks, and a new AI agency to develop autonomous weapons systems. Russell Haworth, CEO of Nominet — which manages the U.K.’s internet domain system — backed Johnson’s moves. “China’s role has been well documented. The variety of attacks against an ever growing list of targets necessitates investment,” he said.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/11/20/john-harris-barack-obama-memoir-438594
https://www.yahoo.com/news/israels-stunning-assassination-al-qaeda-165018351.html
“The United States is finally punishing Turkey for purchasing a Russian missile defense system, a long-anticipated move that is likely to increase tensions with a NATO ally.”
“the Trump administration imposed sanctions on Turkey for its purchase of the Russian-made S-400 surface-to-air missile defense system. The administration ordered the penalties under a section of the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), which gives the president the power to sanction people or entities that do business with Russia’s intelligence or defense sectors. The sanctions specifically target Turkey’s defense procurement agency, known as the Presidency of Defense Industries (SSB), and its senior officials.”
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“Turkey acquired the defense system last year, after repeated warnings by the Trump administration not to do so because they do not want a NATO ally relying on Russian systems. US officials also said Turkey’s use of the S-400 jeopardized America’s F-35 fighter jet program, over fears the Russian system’s radars could collect intelligence on the F-35s.
In response, the US removed Turkey from its F-35 fighter jet program, which barred the country from getting the jets and restricted any Turkish personnel from working with the planes. Still, bipartisan members of Congress continued to push for harsher punishment of Turkey, including sanctions.
Turkey’s decision to purchase the Russian system further strained relations between Washington and Ankara. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has consolidated power in recent years, becoming more explicitly authoritarian and cracking down on dissent, including by jailing journalists and others he perceives as his political enemies.
Erdoğan was angered by the US’s decision to ally with the Kurds in the fight against ISIS in Syria, as Erdoğan associates them with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, a terrorist group that’s waged attacks in Turkey. He has also bristled at the US’s refusal to extradite a US-based cleric whom Erdoğan blames for a 2016 coup attempt.
Beyond Turkey’s flirtation with Russia, Turkey has also tried to exert its regional influence in places like Syria and Libya and the eastern Mediterranean Sea, where its gas exploration efforts have increased tensions with Greece and other NATO allies in the European Union, too. (The EU is also considering sanctions against Turkey.)
But despite issuing lots of admonitions, the Trump administration didn’t move forward with the CAATSA sanctions. Some attributed Trump’s refusal to do so to his personal affinity for Erdoğan.
Then in October, Turkey tested the S-400 system in defiance of US warnings, making it much harder for the US to ignore.
And this month, Congress, in its annual defense authorization bill, included mandatory sanctions against Turkey for its Russian defense shopping spree. Though Trump has threatened to veto the bill for lots of reasons, the administration’s move to sanction Turkey on Monday may have been an attempt to get ahead of that requirement.”