Tim Ryan got 9/11 wrong. He’s gotten his response right.
On the first night of the Democratic Party’s presidential primary debates, Tim Ryan was asked about foreign policy, and in the course of answering the question and responding to Tulsi Gabbard’s criticism of his answer, he screwed up, asserting that “when we weren’t in there, they (the Taliban) started flying planes into our buildings”:
It was not a good look for him, and neither was the statement he put out after the debate (minus the ending attack on Tulsi):
The statement is pretty silly, and consequently, it got ratioed:
And then, after retweeting something on the matter from a BuzzFeed reporter, Team Ryan moved on to talking chiefly about economics and childhood trauma, with the latter a concern given school shootings. Here’s video about the latter subject:
Tim is exactly right, and he’s right for several reasons.
- Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is a thing.
The distinction between the Taliban and al-Qaeda likely isn’t as important to most voters — or even most people — as jobs and the economy are. This triangle helps explain why:
Behold Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. It explains practically everything in life, including why you’ll work yourself to the bone for a demeaning jackass (food is more important than feelings). So while something like the difference between the Taliban and al-Qaeda is probably no more essential than anything else on the level of safety — if it’s even that important — jobs provide for basic physiological needs. Put more simply, people care more about the food on their table than they care about even a horrendous factual error.
2) Historically, voters care about the economy.
Presidential exit polling backs up economic concerns as a driving force. Here’s a chart of the economy as a concern between 2016 and 1992:
Over and over, voters care about jobs and the economy. And when they do — when it is “the economy, stupid” — Democrats win. The low mark there, 20 percent in 2004, is the only year in which the Republican presidential nominee won the popular vote. That isn’t an argument for abolishing the Electoral College, just a basic look at what motivates people to vote for Democrats.
Tim Ryan would have been dead meat had he confused the Taliban and al-Qaeda in 2004, when voters cared more about the war than they did about economics. But when one in two voters cares most about jobs, it’s easy to read the electorate and see that an economics pure play is the way to go. And Maslow just reinforces that message.
3) Manufacturing areas are hurting, and if Hillary Clinton had won them, she’d be president.
Florida, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin. Seven swing states, and Hillary lost them all. That hadn’t happened since 1984, when Walter Mondale got demolished.
Hillary’s support of NAFTA is part of why she lost, but NAFTA isn’t the only thing that’s happened to manufacturing since 1990. Whatever the cause of all those lost jobs in the industrial sector, they’re gone, and the jobs to be had now often don’t pay as well — and that’s if they’re being done by humans at all. But as much as automation has changed things, jobs are growing in the renewable energy industry.
There’s also a tie-in here with children’s welfare in terms of job and home instability:
“The U.S. stands out among industrialized nations, [social welfare professor Mark] Kaplan said. Gun homicides in the U.S. are 25 times higher than the average of other high-income countries. Factors such as poverty and inequality are contributing factors, he said.
‘You all hear about poverty, but inequality is another measure of economic well-being. And there is a strong correlation between homicide per million and income inequality,’ said Kaplan, pointing out that countries that are most equal have the lowest rates of gun-related homicides.
…
Citing recent scholarship published by the Brookings Institution, he said that people who witness gun violence are also at increased risk for a variety mental health issues that can manifest as post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, poor academic performance, substance abuse, risky sexual behavior, delinquency and violent behavior — a ‘constellation of interconnected pathologies.’”
So income inequality results in gun violence, and gun violence results in poor mental health.
Sounds like a reason to focus on jobs, gun violence and mental health.
4) No other presidential candidate is talking about gun violence and feelings.
Tim’s other big focus is on children’s emotional well-being, and that’s smart. Practically nobody is making gun violence — or, bluntly, caring about children’s emotional well-being — a big campaign issue. Ask Bernie about it and he’ll be back to talking about the billionaire class and a living wage within 50 words. He’s not wrong — economic concerns fuel violence — but gun violence matters to people as its own discrete issue. My daughter came home from school one day and played Active Shooter Drill with one of my other kids. I was … other than thrilled that at five years old, she was being taught what to do if someone turns her school into an argument against the Second Amendment.
But gun violence is a problem, and the data are heartbreaking:
That figure — 2,401 since 2012 — is higher than the Department of Defense’s count for American military casualties in Afghanistan since 2001 (2,287, or 2,216+71).
So if you care chiefly about school shootings — and this is me not telling you to focus elsewhere, since the hallmark of any democratic society is each person’s freedom of thought — then backing Tim Ryan is an easy call. (And again, the polling doesn’t matter right now, so please inform anyone who tells you to back a winning horse that no horse’s poll numbers will matter until next year.)
5) The NRA situation is … complicated in Tim’s favor.
Another key part of Tim Ryan’s focus on children’s mental health is that unlike any effort to close the gun show loophole or (as Eric Swalwell has proposed) do a mandatory assault weapon buyback, proposing that we literally “think of the children” isn’t the stuff of NRA fundraising dreams. Tim is talking about ways to keep kids from feeling like they need to use a gun to solve their problems, etc. And while the NRA could target orange sales if it wanted to, things haven’t been great for that organization lately. Consequently, it may be saving its resources for either more urgent or more winnable fights. So if we assume that providing care-based resources for children (with the goal of reducing gun violence) is doable locally without the threat of an NRA lawsuit, those local areas can test various plans and help inform a bigger strategy in relative safety.
Put it all together and you have a winning play. It’s too early to tell if it’ll be enough to put Tim Ryan in the White House — his polling numbers are irrelevant, but only one man has vaulted from the House directly to the White House, and that happened more than one hundred and thirty years ago. But it’s a solid plan.