December 8, 2020 – Second Reading Podcast

[0:00:00 Speaker 0] welcome to the second reading podcast from the University of Texas at Austin. The Republicans were in the Democratic Party because there was only one party. So I tell people on a regular basis, there is still a land of opportunity in America. It’s called Texas. The problem is these departures from the Constitution. They have become the norm. At what point must a female senator raised her hand or her voice to be recognized over the male colleagues in the room on Welcome Back to the second reading podcast for the week of December 7th, 2020. I’m Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas in Austin, joined again this week by Josh Blank, research director of the Texas Politics Project. How is our holiday interregnum going, Josh? Not a holiday, but, yeah, that’s a good way to put it. I e feel like I’ve been struggling with that definition of where we are right now, and I mean, and it’s both. I think, you know, the normal period of year, but also, like during Cove it and then I think, you know, I mean, not that you asked me a question. I know we want to get through things fast. I don’t care. I’m just gonna keep talking. But I think about that picture yesterday of the woman in Britain getting the first code vaccine. At first I thought, Oh, this is stupid. Why are they putting this around? And then today I’m walking the dog and I think to myself, What would life look like after Cove it? And now I were allowed to fantasize, That’s a good That’s a good walking. The dog question that is a good walking. The dog question a zoo. You’re avoiding neighbors on the sidewalk. It’s probably too early. Um, it ISS So given all that contemplation, we’re going to contemplate some other things also today that we will circle back to Cove it if we can stay on schedule. I wanted to start today with some national election news that’s coming out of Texas late last night in the wee hours. And that’s the complaint that was filed by the state of Texas with the Supreme Court against the states of Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin states. We’ve heard a lot about states with close elections, all of which, completely coincidentally, Donald Trump lost in the presidential election on did, and this complaint from Texas is trying to get the election results nullified. And what the complaint basically says is that the state’s behaved illegally when you know they changed the election laws outside of legislative purview, in most cases of some kind of an emergency measure is that they treated voters differently. And, you know, we’re treating some groups of voters more favorable than others. In this case, Democrats, Democrat voters, Democrat voters per the language of the complaint quote unquote Democrat. The continuing tribute to Newt Gingrich’s effect on political language. Do Yeah, yeah, it came from the Gingrich advice when, during the Gingrich insurgency mobilization, Um, and then just a general claim that there were voting irregularities that were unconstitutionally relaxed, you know, ballot integrity, protections that those states were obligated to follow. So in other words, what they want them to do that you know they want. They basically want the election results thrown out, and they want the election and the choice of the electors thrown to their each of the states respective legislatures so that they would point presidential electors on a manner consistent with one of the you know the weirdo provisions of the U. S. Code that regulates elections. So you know what? What is that? What does it all mean? It means what we’ve heard before Texas is throwing in with what we’ve heard was a rumor. Trump’s strategy to get Republican led state legislators in these swing states that Trump lost to throw out the electors that were chosen by the voters and to choose them and have alleges the Republican majorities choose what would presumably be pro trump electors. Now, on one hand, we’ve kind of heard this was coming. It’s just one mawr of the the kind of bizarre strategies that have been emanating out of the White House and out of Trump allies and and right wing media for a while, you know? But I think for our from our perspective, you know, what do we make of the fact that that, you know, essentially the state of Texas meaning Attorney General Ken Paxton? And you know, certainly he seems complicity by his silence thus far. Governor Greg Abbott, What do we make of this now? You know, there’s a lot of things we could say in the short term. It appears to be a last ditch vehicle for plaintiffs. That air losing in all of that have been losing court battles. And all of these states to try to challenge the election is we get very close to, ah, point of no return for them. And it’ll also stoke more media coverage for Trump. You know, I’ve been, I’ve been still reading at the Woodward book, and there’s some really great stuff in Bob Woodward’s rage about just how confident the Trump team feels in and how in particularly how confident Trump feels in his ability to do things that just drives the national media coverage. I think this will likely be one of those things, and if you’re that and if you’re one of the Texans involved in this, particularly if you’re Ken Paxton, there’s really nothing wrong with that. I think the other thing you know, we have to sort of note and we could go into some of the polling date on this From a Texas perspective, this is something that the Texas base of the Republican leadership is going to be open to, or at least it’s It’s probably not gonna ring very many negative bells as we’ve you know, said many times and written many times before. You know, this plays into rhetoric from Texas Republican officials that predate Donald Trump by a pretty long time. You know, Texas Republican leaders have long stoked these attitudes of skepticism toward the election process among GOP rank and file. You know, to the extent that these attitudes air now pretty prevalent among those voters, right? If the Republican leader stoked these attitudes, Trump is inflamed them and he continues to do so. And it’s hard not to look at this and see that everybody is doing this at this point, more or less in their self interest. With that, with not much chance of a substantive victory on the merits or the substance of the case, it seems to me, Yeah, I mean, I think I think, you know, we sort of talked about what the implications and fall out here. And this is certainly a short term, you know, implication. But also, you know, it keeps this issue on the table for future use. I mean, you know, I think the thing that sort of was has been interesting from a very detached perspective in this sort of the assault on the Democratic process that’s been taking place is the fact that it was being done with zero evidence. And so it didn’t matter how many court cases Trump Legal Team has filed. It doesn’t matter how many states or venues that they filed them in. They have overwhelmingly been turned away. And the reason that they have been overwhelmingly turned away is lack of evidence. I mean, you had to bring another Texan into the mix. Your lieutenant governor offered ah, million dollars of his own money for someone to bring him evidence of fraud, Which is curious. Yeah, Pennsylvania, but which you know. But I mean But I would say, you know, this is curious again, given the fact that you know, and I think the odds of this lieutenant governor said before the election that Democrats wouldn’t Texas would only be because they stole it again. For a state that is, you know, has very strict laws has continually, you know, based on this idea of fraud, continue Thio to make the laws stricter around voting. It’s kind of remarkable that people can’t, you know, that the people can’t marshal evidence from the past of significant voter fraud. And in a moment in which the president, the Attorney general, Right. Uh, you know, a separate legal team. Republicans in every state are looking to find voter fraud under a national spotlight, and they can’t. So on the one hand, you’d say, Well, does this mean we’re gonna be done with this? And the answer clearly is No, we’re not, because evidence is not a requirement, right? I think that’s a good point. And, you know, it’s basically keeping the discourse going. And, you know, I think there’s a real convergence of interests here again that I, you know, I sort of lumped with the general term self interest. But you were generous and calling Trump’s legal team a legal team. Well, they have given them they were accepted by a bar somewhere. I mean, well, I mean, yes, talk about a low bar, E. I guess team might not be there anyway. Yeah, so But, you know, I mean, there’s a lot of things, you know? I mean, we said that this resonated with, and I just want to claim that with, without evidence, I’m offensive to bars and teams everywhere. It’s just Sorry, guys. Um, guys and gals, Um, but, you know, when we asked if people would trust the results of the presidential election regardless of who wins before the election, a big chunk of people wouldn’t say yes, right? That is. And and we should say that was both Republicans and Democrats. But at this moment, the doubts that are being played upon or the doubts of Republicans and what 61% of Republicans, uh, in October said that they wouldn’t trust the result of the presidential election. So that tells me that when you’re out there, you know, kind of stoking this doubt and filing these lawsuits that, you know, from, um or so we say mainstream perspective. I’m not sure that’s exactly right. You just call it what it is from a democratic perspective. I mean, this seems crazy, right? And and and destructive. But I think it’s not just a democratic perspective, as you say, given the preponderance of evidence. So you know, from the from the fact based perspective, let’s put it that way. Well, And the point is, is that the inverse is crazy to Republicans. Ultimately, you know, when we asked in that same October polling. Whether votes being counted inaccurately would be, you know, a problem. 81% of Republicans. That would be an extremely serious or somewhat serious problems. So, you know, and we talk about this kind of stuff all the time and way, I mean I mean, in some ways we’re very e serve. I reflect on it’s almost funny, but it’s sort of, you know, I almost I almost feel bad for politicians in the sense that, you know, if you were a Republican elected official who felt like you know all this, all this, you know, searching for voter fraud is you know, let’s say it’s bad for the process is bad. Let’s say you have some riel you know, misgivings about the trump legal strategy and the overall, you know, context of what we’re talking about right now. It’s pretty hard to go out and they say, Well, you know what? 81% of my voters think this thing, and I’m going to tell them they’re wrong. Good luck. And so I think that’s what you get is young and so that the best you really get his nervous silence. Yeah, nervous silence or or sort of, you know, the types of acknowledgements of the electoral outcome that air so carefully crafted. So is to allow someone to be unsure about what you’ve said or for you to be able to say so, Yeah, and I think the you know, the information kind of environment around this or the you know, the kind of political information world that we live in now, you know, makes it very hard to figure out how to get out of this. I mean, this strategy works. It drives liberals and Democrats crazy. But in some ways that’s exactly the point. And it drives reporters in the media crazy who you know are looking, you know, to make judgments of fact. And so, you know, the media has to continually refute claims, and they’re doing it in increasingly clear and dismissive terms. You know, it’s it’s almost quaint to think back to the early days of the Trump campaign and then the early days of the Trump presidency. I don’t you know, when there was this big debate over, you know, whether you could say the president quote unquote lied. Remember that, You know, it seems almost quaint now where, you know, I mean, you can’t really turn on. At least you know, some of the cable news or and even the major network news Now, without reporters and and even anchors who and you know, the president’s claiming this and it is untrue or the president lie, you know, said this and he is lying about it. You know that that Norm has been shattered, but the point being that the more that that norm is shattered the mawr, it feeds the partisan view among Republicans among at least a lot of Republicans that the media is completely in the tank against Trump. Yeah, you know, And by extension against them, you know, there’s one other point I think you know we want to make about this maybe before we move on so we can get to another topic. But I mean, you know, I don’t also think you can’t really discount the value of this legal case that we’re talking about here. So Texas’s attempt to overturn other states results to the current attorney general, can packs and given his recent legal troubles and ethical lapses, at the very least, if not other problems, right? I mean this is being sort of at the forefront of this. That was very dainty of you. I’m working on it. I’m practicing, being at home a lot. You don’t get us much practice but your dainty nous, but right. I mean, you know, a few weeks ago, the speculation in Texas was focusing on whether he was going to survive. You know, this latest round of scandals, right? You know, relationships with an awesome real estate developer on the one hand, and then and, you know, it acknowledged at least toe multiple staffers. Ah, fair with a former staffer in the Texas Senate who then went to work for the real estate developer, apparently allegedly completely separately. We’ll just leave that alone. I mean, talking about anything else is good for Ken Paxton, but I think it also speaks, you know, just just as a sort of an observation. I think it also speaks to why the trump strategy is not working. You know, ultimately the trump strategy to overturn the results. And I sort of was, you know, this is like an argument I have in my driveway with my dad kind of thing. But the trump strategy to sort of, you know, the idea that, you know, especially the liberals were terrified of that. You know, basically, regardless of the election results, all these state legislatures, we’re gonna come in and decided to invalidate the results and give the electors some else. And my, you know, thing from the outset was boy, that would require a lot of coordination and shared self interest And what you’re seeing right now, I think on on the range in which Republicans are laying themselves is, you know, sort of where they put themselves in the strategic self interest of how they want to orient themselves to the post trump world. And for some people, that is a continued leaning into this for a long as possible again based on their own circumstances. On the one hand, for others, it looks a lot more like silence, you know? And then you’ve got some very lawyerly statements in between. And so, you know, again Then there’s a few people who would, you know, sort of are on the other side of their outliers. Who would say, Yeah, Joe Biden won. Let’s move on. Right, E. I think that’s sort of the other piece to this, you know, is that I mean, you look at these actions. You can’t help but think about individual self interest here. And not only is this something, you know, this is the the attorney General’s name popping up on Google, you know, related to something other than his troubles, his multiple troubles. It’s something that you know, you know, conservatives, like in his base, likes and and, you know, in a lot of ways, I mean, I think that, you know, is people discuss the attorney General’s prospects. Shall we call them? I think one of one of his assets in this very difficult position is that he is, you know, well appreciated by, you know, the kind of far right activist wing of the Republican Party in Texas. Thes are the same people that were going to view this kind of action, as you know, as a positive thing is not giving up sticking up for Donald Trump. As you know, fighting against the you know, what they see is that the corruption of the system, Yeah, I think that’s where packs in his really, really well positioned himself, you know, and I’ll put this in quotes I’m not saying this per se, but like I think of the word would be. But he’s positioned himself as a warrior like Trump in some ways, right in the sense that regardless of you know past statements, you know, reasonable nous, whatever. If he believes in something, whether it’s for especially like the faith based community or the most committed Republican voters, you can expect the attorney general to make a move, and he’s continued to do that. And so I think that’s, you know, to some degree, really insulated him from a lot of his other troubles in the same way that it’s really insulated. Trump, really within the e thought it was interesting and was never really very convinced. I mean, when this last round of stories broke, you know, there were some people that were, you know, very much said, Hey, look, he’s going, he’s going to resign. How does he survive something like this? You know, I mean, his wife is It’s Senator, you know, there’s just, you know, there’s just no way that you know he’s gonna be able to survive this, but the environment on, you know, surviving these kinds of scandals has changed. And I think it has to do with partisanship and polar, you know, and more intense, you know, polarization, you know, And it would take some of his fellow Republicans to really be want, you know, to try to push him out. And even then again, remember, this is an elected office. I you know, I don’t know that I don’t know that you’re gonna you’re gonna do that. We’re branching off, but the, you know, well, but it relates to the next topic, though, right? I mean, ultimately, the context of the environment here, Matt right? And so it’s not. I mean, it is about out partnership. It’s about the, you know, dislike of the other party. It’s about, you know, really circling the wagons. That kind of. But we’re also environment now, where when somebody clearly does something wrong, right, you know, I feel comfortable saying that because ultimately state law actually dictates that a bunch of whistleblowers have been fired. And actually, actually, it’s incumbent upon the Attorney General’s office now to prove that they didn’t do that. So right now, just so I feel like that’s a fair enough statement, but I mean, we’re in environment now, where even when you’ve clearly done something wrong or could be perceived to be wrong by a large number of people, it’s a question about whether you’re going to take responsibility for that or whether you should even acknowledge wrongdoing. And that’s part of the political environment now. I mean, I think something that we’re gonna carry going forward and we’re seeing more of that well and whether and the other piece of that is and whether people will try to exact some degree of accountability regardless of partisanship, well, it’s hard. I mean, this is we should stop. But I was like, It’s hard to imagine how that happens in a Republican primary in Texas. Given Ken Paxson’s position amongst the most conservative voters in the state, he’s not gonna get challenge from the right. Someone’s gonna kind of have to come in as a moderate reformer, beat him in a Republican primary and who that is gonna be, whether they’re going to get any. You know who those men? Yeah, who were those voters who you know, where you gonna find you? Know what, 8 900,000 voters You’re going to need to be calm Paxton in a primary in a Republican primary. Now this all points, you know, as we talk about Republican primaries, is we talk about the way that Republican officials in this state are reading the future and reading and and and very explicitly, I think, reading the post 2020 election post trump in the White House future. Wherever Trump winds up, it really does point to what we’ve been seeing on the handling of the, you know, the biggest issue for our future right now, which is the Kobe 19 pandemic. How we deal with, you know, all of it really was getting you know, I mean I mean, the way it looks right now is really an issue of, you know, we know that you know that there appears to be vaccines that work that will beam or it’s now a matter of getting the vaccines to people, which by all accounts a za result of various decisions. It was also news on that on that this week, you know, is going to take a while, right? It’s a logistical challenge, to be fair. Yeah. I mean, you know, I mean, I heard in a couple of different venues that nobody really expected even begin on the civilian population until March. Yeah, there’s a lot of, you know, information floating around. I heard that both in in Senate testimony yesterday and in Texas Senate testimony yesterday and from, you know, national medical figures. But closer to home, I mean, this really came home to roost in the has come home to roost this week, or really thrust both Theis issue of the Legislature, kind of stirring in advance of this session and the question of you know how Cove it is gonna be treated in that context. When the Health and Human Services Committee in the Texas Senate held two days of hearings on co vid 19 this week, the first day was largely about handling the pandemic itself. Looking at best practices, talking about therapeutics and and therapeutics in particular was on the agenda. And I think for reasons I’ll explain Oh, postulate in a second how to treat coat quote unquote treating coded 19 patients at each state of the disease and to talk about the vaccines and how they were going to be distributed. And actually those those parts of the the hearing where we heard from Dr Heller Stat, the head of state sell services, and Cecile Young, the commissioner of HHS, were actually fact very factual and helpful and clear. I provided interesting information. They were clear. They’re very clear eyed assessments in otherwise political context. Yeah, I think that’s right. And then there was a lot of discussion Monday about collecting, modeling and reporting data on test hospitals, civilizations, etcetera and examining who was doing what and all that. You know, state agencies, local governments, private entities and in the burr under the saddle. There honestly was the quality of the data and the data reporting, particularly early on. And then today and I had to turn it off for us to record this focused on evaluating the effects of cove it on public health writ large. And there was a lot of attention today and, you know, various invited testimony on behavioral health, mental health, child abuse, family violence, long term care residents and the impact of delayed medical care. Now, you know, as I said, there were elements of this, I think, where everybody played it reasonably straight. Mhm. You know, a lot of recapping and updating on, you know, where we are at this moment, some discussion of where we had been. But you and I were about talking about this and, you know, it also suggested, Not surprisingly, but again, we like toe wait for evidence before we make suppositions on this podcast. Anyway, um, it also suggested that the partisan politics that we’ve seen frankly cripple the national in this state. Responses while the ledge has been out of session are are going to be alive and well in the ledge, right? I mean, you know, the Republican share in the co chair low school course, and and Senator Charles Perry, respectively. You know, we’re pretty diplomatic and acknowledging the fact of the of the public health emergency, I don’t think anybody could walk away and say they don’t think it’s happening or their denial ists or anything like this. But, you know, if you watched this for any length of time, they were also pretty clear in their desire to pick around the edges of the sense of of catastrophe here, you know, they made efforts to highlight, you know, the data reporting efforts, for example, in ways that I thought were likely to reinforce the doubts of people that were already inclined to be skeptical of seriousness. And there’s, you know, a lot of talk about the trade offs and health and health outcomes, for example, in limiting elective procedures. Now, you know, I wanna be quick to say there’s nothing wrong or even inaccurate about those two areas of questioning. The data reporting early on was pretty terrible, right? The data after effort to collect and report this data is complicated, and there’s a lot of things going on. But I think that, you know, the tone of this resonated with the partisan patterns in public opinion we’ve seen. That’s right, Yeah. I mean, I would agree with that, you know? I mean wholeheartedly. And I mean, in a way, I mean again, we were talking about the constraints that legislators face. You know, ultimately, you know, they face theme constraint in some ways, they create themselves, and this is, you know, coming from the top down. But it’s also coming again through the range of sorts of you know, either I would say in frequent communications from top, you know, sort of especially Republican elected leaders, but also you. In some cases, you know direct contradiction of good public health advice. I mean, I think the thing that you’re kind of pointing out in terms of the folks of the hearings, it’s interesting is you know, I mean one, you know, the focus on sort of on therapeutics and the other costs of co vid not related to covert related deaths. But again, other sorts of bad, you know, medical outcomes, Citrus. It certainly you know, a reasonable thing to explore, But it’s all meant. I mean, I feel is, though, given what we’ve seen thus far, what we’ve seen the data, it’s really all intended in some ways to downplay the seriousness of the pandemic relative to the cost of fighting, which is kind of where we are at this point. I mean, I think you know, the discussion thus far has really been about how we can weather this storm to the point at which everybody gets vaccine, which basically means, you know, his grimace. We expect the winter to be, you know, expected to be grimmer still, because there’s no expectation that people should take well. I know there’s a lot of expectation people should take personal responsibility. There’s no enforcement mechanism behind it. Right? So the question becomes, you know, why is that the case? You know, ultimately, it’s just that the, you know, sort of denial of Cove. It is really concentrated. I mean, just to put it, just to put it bluntly. So just to throw some numbers up here real quick, so I mean, basically overall. In our October 2020 University of Texas Texas Tribune poll, about 47% of registered voters identified as Republicans 27% of Texas say that they’re living normally right now during the virus coming and going as usual. That’s regardless of any sort of restrictions or directives. Otherwise, 73% of these groups of three out of every four of these Texans are Republicans and 80% of those Republicans White Republicans because most Republicans were white. So we’re talking about the racial disparities in co vid. You know, one of the other things sort of, You know, I mean devious, and a lot of this is, you know, the Republican Party in Texas is a majority white party. It’s about 74% of Republicans that identify as white, as opposed to 55% of Democrats who identify as nonwhite. So when you’re talking about Republican attitudes, or you’re talking mostly about the attitudes of white Republican voters in Texas, so you know what are some other examples of this? You know, 74% of registered voters say they’re avoiding other people as much as possible, right? Well, who isn’t? 6% of Democrats say they’re not avoiding people. 23% of independents say they’re not voting people. 27% of non white Republicans say that they’re not voting people. 42% of white female Republicans and 56% of white male Republicans say that they’re not avoiding people. So about half. So we talk about this. We’re not talking about everybody who’s skeptical, the virus or everybody who’s behaving. You know, let’s say cheating the rules. We’re really talking about a concentrated set of people, and, you know, I mean, it kind of really multiplies the dangers of either the silence on the one hand by elected officials or I would say, even worse. You know, the downplaying of the seriousness of the pandemic. On the other hand, right? Yeah, I know. I think that’s right. I mean, and, you know, we have a block post about this. We put up on our website yesterday that people confined in our in the block section at Texas politics that you Texas study to you. You know, I think it’s hard not to look at this and conclude that encouraging a kind of minimization of this that leads to, you know, basically behaviors you say that is a threat to public health, that the responsibility for addressing that, given all the dynamics. And you’re right that we were just talking about with, you know, partisanship and the interpretation of public information, you know, in in the context of elections, it operates here, too. And that means that partisan leaders have to talk to their partisans because because they’re the only people that they’re really gonna look. I mean, you know, look, there’s the normal dynamics that we know about the people really listen to, you know, family and peers. But given the sorting of, you know, that we know has gone on, the dynamic is still at work There. You have to be able to you have to send consistent messages to your partisans to deflect some of this behavior and we were just not. Now, look, you know, a Senate committee hearing is not a huge public forum. I was surprised, you know, there was very little news coverage, frankly, of that hearing yesterday, which I thought was was very odd. And if you’re a journalist and you’re happening to hear this and you wrote about it, you know, power to you and send me this story, uh, just tweeted back or something. But, you know, nonetheless, you know, this is a leading indicator of what we’re going to see in this session. It’s a leading indicator of how you know relatively well placed senators and just, you know, not to put too, you know, dull a point on it. I mean, you know, Senator Cole course and senator Perry, our allies with lieutenant governor, and they are not doing anything in this hearing. I don’t think that lieutenant Governor would not approve of and and that is an automatic kind of dynamic that goes with those political relationships, you know, And at one of the low points to my mind of the hearing, you know, in a discussion of mental health, Senator Perry, you know, in a comment masquerading frankly is a question expressed discontent, how they’re just how there was just not enough attention to positive news about the pandemic and that the, you know, this kind of positive news would help mental health. Well, you know, the problem with that is that there’s not really any positive news right now and that if you’re presenting positive news in the context of a significant group of people that are not taking it seriously to begin with, it’s not the time for absent happy talk to make people feel a little better. And I should say, the mental health professional he was talking to responded with. I thought in a very in a way that was not combative but was very effective and saying that, you know, basically courage comes from facing hard things. You know, it’s not courageous if you know you’re not facing something that’s difficult or hard, and I think we have to give people the chance to face things and be courageous in the face of that, in their ways that we can do that paraphrase. Yeah, so it’s an absence of courage, saying it was a very funny interesting. It was a very interesting response, you know, just just to follow up. I mean, and I think this is really important. You know, there’s been so much focus in the last week and a half, you know, on on Austin Mayor Steve Adler here in Texas and the fact that he encouraged people basically to stay at home while he himself was at a family sort of wedding party in Mexico that he had flown to on a private jet. Not that’s not bad enough. Not a good look, right? Definitely not what you should be doing. But But the point that we’re trying to Well, yeah. But you have to tell the whole story if we’re going to really talk about how bone to be fair, to be fair, on a bipartisan basis, Not only did he go to Mexico on a private jet with a bunch of people, he then recorded a message urging people to not get together for the holidays that he recorded well in Mexico. No, I mean, I imagine him. We have to be fair here, getting a text on his phone, washing the sand off his feet, going into the hotel room, you know, telling his kids. Hey, give me a minute. I got to do something and we should And we should say, in all fairness, I mean, I think this morning or late yesterday, you know, the mayor released a pretty mean he kind of had to, but released a big male culpas saying, Look, I thought you down. I’ll have to re earn your trust, etcetera. But, you know, well, number one I mean, we should number one way. Shouldn’t just say that that’s, you know, BS because ultimately a lot of people aren’t doing that. So the fact of acknowledged fault, we should we should applaud, but that the bigger picture here is is that you know what Democrats are already following these things guidelines. All the public data we have indicates that, you know, by and large, significantly higher shares of Democrats are doing what they can. And now the significant higher shares of Independence are doing what they can to prevent the spread of the virus. Ultimately awesome. You know, Austin, Texas, is Democratic Mayor Steve Adler. Having a screw up is not going to change the behavior of democratic voters and honestly, good behavior by Steve Heather is not going to change the behavior of Republican voters. And that’s why it sort of besides the point. I mean, you know, we want to wrap up soon, but I do want to get to kind of the central nub of this. Really? This is the burr under my saddle. I think for weeks now, which is this I think I’m going thio. It’s this idea of Koven fatigue. This thing you’re hearing about how Look ultimately co fatigue. Sure, it’s a real enough thing. We’re all sick of being at home. We’re all sick of, you know, the things we can’t do. And the things we’ve missed out on in this last year, that is, you know, undoubtedly all probably done something that we thought. Well, that was probably a risk. Uh, should have taken. Yeah, almost certainly. But the thing about this sort of like prevalence of this idea Covad fatigue is that you know, it za couple problems with it. Number one. You know what? I always think about these kind of things in the sense of Yeah, well, does this really describe people? Is this true? Because a lot of times you hear these broad, you know, statements about? Well, you know, people have covert fatigue, so they don’t want more restrictions. They won’t listen to them. And it’s like, Who are you talking about? I think the data we just went through kind of makes a clear point here. You’re not talking about everybody, and I mean, I know we work in a higher ed institution, so I shouldn’t say this, but I feel like, you know, this was the same conversation that was going on with the discussion about reopening universities, right? I mean, you’re saying, Oh, we have to reopen the universities. We have to reopen universities. Well, look, you know you’re talking about, you know, in the U. S. Right now, about 30% of the population has a college degree. I’m sure there are a lot of other tangential benefits. The community is two economies to individuals that are related to opening colleges, universities. But ultimately that was a large discussion talking about a minority of people in a distinct age group in elite population. Within that age group, it’s the same thing here. We’re not talking about everybody. The data tell us we’re talking about a concentrated sense of Republicans in particular white Republicans and even more particular white male Republicans who are not getting a consistent message from people that they would listen to telling them that maybe they should cool it. Maybe they shouldn’t have that tailgate. And the thing is, is that this idea of fatigue? What the problem is that becomes justification for other people, I mean, is, you know, I did a lot of work in, you know, academic honesty, work At some 20.1 of the biggest predictors of whether people cheat on tests is thinking that other people are cheating. So when the news media reports that covert fatigue is this prevalent thing that’s affecting everybody, if you’re sitting there, it’s sort of tell it’s a signal to you. Well, maybe maybe I maybe I can do something. I mean, if everybody else is doing stuff, maybe I conducive to. Or maybe these rules aren’t really that important. If I’m predisposed to believe the rules aren’t important because I’ve been told they’re not, I’d be cold. And I’ve been told that the disease is overblown. Well, that even more so likely that I should go and do this stuff. And so the idea that you know, again, a small share concentrate share of the population that has been mis informed about the virus is then you know, their behaviors were then being post hoc, justified by media and others is just a natural feature of the experience we’re all going through is just not true. And I think one of the you know, the after effects of that poor conceptualization and, you know, basically just it’s just conceptually flawed and empirically flawed. To think about what’s going on and to think about the behavior in response to the pandemic is that when you don’t address that directly, it metastasizes. And so, in the absence of actually specifying the problem and addressing it directly, it’s grown well. And you know what? Let’s wrap it back up. This is a perfect place to probably finish right, and then you get to situation like where you are with voter fraud writ large people’s perception of it, right, we can have a huge election. We can have the Republican attorney general tell us there’s no significant voter fraud. We can have Republican appointed election security officials telling us this is the safest election in history. We could have state legislatures certified Republican state legislatures certifying the election results. We could have recounts that don’t find changes in the votes. And yet we can still be sitting here with multiple, you know, prominent elected officials saying that the fraud was rampant. We have multiple bills filed in the Texas Legislature to make it harder to vote next time we have the attorney general, Texas, trying to invalidate the election results in other states. And you imagine, if California New York tried to invalidate Texas’s election results. I don’t want to imagine how many heads would be exploding. And it doesn’t matter that there’s no evidence, because ultimately what we see now is that it’s metastasized to the point where you’ve got 80 plus percent of Republican voters who believe that this fraud is a feature of the system. And if you’re elected official, you know, again, I said, I’m almost, you know, if you don’t have a part of it, I almost feel bad for you. Now you’re bound by this, and that’s what the problem is that you know, in the case of Cove, it it just means more death. It’s more strain on the health care system and it’s not really I mean, you know, e democracy is E. I think that the voting analogy is a good attitudinal one, but I think the one that we should, But the thing that you kind of get out there that we have to emphasize is that the key difference is that these misplaced attitudes air making the problem worse in terms of fueling, making voting harder. That za passive negative outcome, right, right. In the case of the of the pandemic, because of the nature of epidemics and and the way that the virus spreads, the longer you avoid recognizing this or if you fail to avoid this, it’s costs are measured in sickness, death, economic hardship in a way that makes it extremely frustrating to have people ignoring the available data. In my view, it’s another podcast that ends on a happy note. Whilst I’d rather be fatigued, the dead. Yeah, well, yeah, I think that’s what people are saying. The problem is, since per saying that fatigue leads to death. Thanks for listening. Thanks to Josh for being here, thanks to our crew in the College of Liberal Arts Liberal Arts development studio, have a good week. We’ll be back next week for one more podcasts before the break. Take care and be well, second Reading Podcast is a production of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin