“I think Democrats are ignoring this problem, are hoping that it will go away. And it’s not going to go away.” That was CNN anchor Don Lemon, speaking to colleague Chris Cuomo on Tuesday night, on the Republican National Convention, five days after the Democrats had adjourned their convention sine die (as they used to say) during which they ignored “this problem” for four straight nights.
What was “this problem?” “Guess what, the rioting has to stop,” Lemon went on. “Chris, as you and I know, it’s showing up in the polls, it’s showing up in focus groups. It’s the only thing right now that’s sticking.”
“Sticking” in this context means hurting the Democratic ticket. Last week, when it evidently didn’t show up at the polls and in focus groups, Lemon was not giving similar advice to the party he obviously favors.
But he might have done so if he had listened to a shrewd Democratic political consultant — and if that consultant had not been “canceled” for giving similar advice three months ago.
The consultant in question is 28-year-old David Shor. On May 28, three days after the death of George Floyd, he made an interesting point in a tweet: “Post-MLK-assasination race riots reduced Democratic vote share in surrounding counties by 2%, which was enough to tip the 1968 election to Nixon. Non-violent protests *increase* Dem vote, mainly by encouraging warm elite discourse and media coverage.” In the tweet, he cited Princeton political scientist Omar Wasow’s 53-page paper entitled “Agenda Seeding: How 1960s Black Protests Moved Elites, Public Opinion and Voting.” By the way, if it matters, Wasow is of African descent and co-founder of the social networking website BlackPlanet, which was sold in 2008 for $38 million. The paper, perhaps revised in the editing process, appeared in the American Political Science Review.
Shor’s purpose was obvious, to advise his fellow Democrats to make sure that peaceful protests remained peaceful and to distance themselves from violent rioting. I don’t know him, but having read some of his writings and his responses in a long interview, I think he’s obviously a very smart guy, well versed in recent political science literature but also gifted with a keen sense of the American electorate: the sort of young person any political consulting firm would want to hire. And he was giving Democrats some pretty good advice, delivered 11 weeks before Lemon’s similar advice Tuesday night.
And it wasn’t ignored. Instead, it was attacked. The two most popular Twitter responses to his tweet were “white dems to black people in 2020: ‘could you die more quietly? We have an election to win,’” and “So we’re really concern trolling for the purposes of increasing democratic turnout. Tell you what, go to Minneapolis and fill the protestors in about your findings. Be sure to video it for our viewing pleasure.” He was repeatedly called a “racist” and told that he had no moral standing to lecture blacks on their behavior.
Shor was fired within days, according to New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait, by his Democratic firm, Civis Analytics, a firm backed by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt that was paid $176,000 in 2019 by the Biden campaign. He refused to speak publicly about this, suggesting that he obtained a severance package coupled with a nondisclosure agreement, presumably in return for agreeing not to sue.
Chait blames Shor’s firing on “the spread of distinct, illiberal norms throughout some progressive institutions over the last half-dozen years.” Or, as Robby Soave wrote June 12 in Reason, “Anyone who still doubts that woke progressives can pose a material threat to the pursuit of truth should consider the case of David Shor.” They can also pose a material threat to the electoral prospects of the Democratic Party.
That’s quickly becoming conventional wisdom now, as evidenced by Lemon’s blurted out comments Aug. 25. Or by the Aug. 26 story in the New York Times on how voters in riot-torn Kenosha, Wisconsin, are turning against Democrats. Or by Gallup poll findings reported on Aug. 26 showing that 77% of Americans believe that nonviolent protests can help improve the situation of black Americans, even more than the 66% who agreed in 1988. But only 12% believed that violent protests could help, and 77% believed they hurt efforts to improve blacks’ situation.
I’d be curious to know David Shor’s reaction to these developments. But he’s been canceled and apparently silenced by a nondisclosure agreement with Civis Analytics, and reportedly prohibited by hiring agreement to say who his new employer is lest that firm get canceled in turn.
Some communists who dissented from the party line used to be called “prematurely anti-fascist.” David Shor was, apparently, prematurely anti-riot. And prematurely right.
