{"id":46539,"date":"2020-04-22T10:32:33","date_gmt":"2020-04-22T14:32:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/?p=42525"},"modified":"2021-02-03T16:09:21","modified_gmt":"2021-02-03T21:09:21","slug":"menchick-in-nyt-on-trumps-re-election-strategy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/pardeeschool\/2020\/04\/22\/menchick-in-nyt-on-trumps-re-election-strategy\/","title":{"rendered":"Menchik’s Twitter Thread in NYT Op-Ed on 2020 U.S. Elections"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Jeremy Menchik,<\/a>\u00a0Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Fredrick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University,\u00a0<\/span>was recently quoted in an op-ed in the\u00a0New York Times\u00a0<\/em><\/a>on U.S President Trump’s hope for a 2016 repeat in the upcoming 2020 elections. The Opinion piece<\/a> by Thomas Edsall and published on\u00a0April 22, 2020, used a tweet thread by Menchik as a key argument of the piece.<\/span><\/p>\n

From the text of the article,\u00a0entitled “Trump Reaches Back Into His Old Bag of Populist Tricks<\/a>“:<\/p>\n

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Jeremy Menchik<\/a>\u00a0argues in\u00a0<\/span>a lengthy Twitter thread<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>that “these protests have something for everyone: small-business, concerns for the working class, anti-elitism for resentful rural whites, fetishism of guns for NRA, dislike of government for traditional conservatives. It\u2019s a crosscutting issue even amid a pandemic.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Menchik makes the point that anti-quarantine protests “will distract the electorate. If the election is a fight between Trump vs governors who refuse to open their economies, Trump doesn\u2019t have to defend his record on Covid-19. He\u2019s an advocate for liberty!”<\/p>\n

… Crucially, Menchik argues, “continued protests will help Trump rebuild his coalition of 2016. Scholars of digital social movements emphasize a logic of connective action not collective action; where personalized content sharing across media networks enables coalition building.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

You can read the full op-ed here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Menchik’s Twitter thread<\/a> of what social science research tells us about how continued protests could impact the 2020 U.S. Presidential elections can be read here<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s tempting to dismiss the protesters in MI, VA, TX, CA, and MN as irrelevant wakadoddles. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s a mistake. <\/p>\n

Social science research suggests continued protests could effect the 2020 US presidential election in at least 6 ways. <\/p>\n

A thread\/<\/p>\n

— Jeremy Menchik (@jeremymenchik) April 20, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n