Measuring a rheotorical charge

Kind of a one-sided article redeemed only by the fact that it is making an empirical point. From Are Senate Democrats in the Grip of TDS? by Thomas Jipping.

Have you heard of Trump Derangement Syndrome, popularly known as TDS? Wikipedia defines it as an irrational response to President Trump’s statements or actions “with little regard to Trump’s actual position or action taken.” Senate Democrats’ opposition to Trump’s judicial nominees suggests that TDS might not only be real but also contagious.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., joined the Judiciary Committee in 1979 and chaired the panel for 10 years. He speaks often on the Senate floor about the confirmation process and has offered specific standards for measuring how well it works. On March 6, 2012, for example, then-Chairman Leahy described “the long tradition of deference on District Court nominees to the home-state senators.” A week later, he emphasized that nominees to the court “have always been considered with deference to the home-state senators.”

Since 1917, home-state senators have indeed played an important role in the process of appointing U.S. District Court judges. That role, and the tradition Leahy described, explain why only 4 percent of nominees confirmed to the court between 1917 and 2016 received even a single negative Senate vote.

In fact there is a good deal of talk about Trump Derangement Syndrome and I see the condition manifested with some frequency. Friends who have been lifelong devotees of policy position X who are suddenly -X because Trump is supporting it. It is a real phenomenon and of course an effective rhetorical device, but I have not seen any effort to establish dimensions or efforts to quantify it.

This is what Jipping does, albeit crudely and on a singular measure.

Then Donald Trump was elected president, and TDS symptoms began to appear. In just two years, his 53 District Court appointees received four times as many negative confirmation votes as the 2,459 nominees confirmed in the previous century combined. Take a moment and read that last sentence again.

What happened to deference to home-state senators? What happened to the long tradition that Leahy described?

Perhaps, you might say, that’s the wrong comparison. Okay, let’s look only at the first two years of newly elected presidents. Trump’s 53 District Court appointees received 64 percent more negative confirmation votes than those appointed during the first two years of all newly elected presidents combined. That’s not newly elected presidents in the last century, but newly elected presidents in American history.

In July 2012, when Barack Obama was president, left-wing groups such as the Alliance for Justice declared a “vacancy crisis in the federal courts.” Today, with vacancies 80 percent higher, those groups are actually urging even stronger opposition to Trump’s nominees.

Very interesting. Not hugely significant but it is an intriguing canary in the coal mine with regards to the depth and breadth of TDS.