Some Gratitude

To start off, I am grateful that our family has been able to stick together.   No one in the immediate family is estranged.  Our sister's successful gall bladder operation this week, our children have been able to find work that suits them, our niece continues to build her sustainable fashion design work, even our cousin who's been forced abroad because her husband is wanted for questioning will probably be able to return with a new government and Department of Justice (bad as that will be in general).  I'm particularly grateful that our son returned safely from his overseas military deployment. That's about as much as I will ever say about those closest to me in this blog. 

Saturday I finally got over my mood and need for intensive "self-care" after the election debacle.  I woke up that day to find that my blessed Cincinnati Reds made a good trade:  acquiring a promising young starting pitcher (Brady Singer)--one can never have enough starting pitching--trading a good infielder, Jonathan India, who didn't have a position in the coming season and wanted out.  I think the Reds are ready to compete in 2025.  Next, that morning I watched an interview on MLB-TV between Greg Amsinger (encyclopedic memory of baseball, on demand) and Johnny Bench, the greatest catcher of all-time (core Red in the heroes' Pantheon), who rarely does that kind of thing.  Chelsea defeated Leicester, a signal result for the Blues' new coach, Enzo Maresca, who led Leicester to qualify for promotion to the Premier League last year.    

Currently visiting Newport, Rhode Island for the first time.  It's offseason here, a little cold and windy, but still has a lot of charm, as do the folks who live here.  The International Tennis Hall of Fame is a beauty (though the museum there is closed for renovation).  I'd suggest visiting here in April; still offseason prices but should be nice. 

I am grateful for my town, Taos, which maintains its defiant independence (better than 3-1 for Harris--a quick search indicates it has the second-best margin of any rural county in the lower 48); it should be one of the last places to feel the pain of the new hateful regime coming in.  At the same time, though, I am grateful that my wife and I have the liberty and the means to look abroad for some respite from the political circus.  2024 has shown us that our Constitution can't protect us, that the rule of law has been overrruled, so our freedoms depend on the people, and they aren't so dependable, electorally.   We plan to spend a lot of time away, at least for the next two years until Trump Clown Car 2.0 crashes to earth.  The best thing that can happen to Earth. 

We are past the precipice, pushed out the window, but as they say while falling, "So far, no problem!"

 

Have a good Thanksgiving!

Two Somewhat Weird Ideas about the 2024 Election

 I have heard much talk about this Trump-X voter, X being a Democrat, and how that seems strange.  I agree, though that there are some such people, I don't doubt.  But here are two hypotheses about them: 

1) There are quite a few (a million or so?) who just left the President line blank!  I've not heard anyone say this.  It is not logical to conclude that the difference in the partisan margin of two races is made up entirely of people dividing up their vote by party, but it could simply be the effect of voters not selecting in every race.  

There should be data to confirm or refute this hypothesis, but I haven't seen it.  It's the sum of the difference, precinct by precinct, of the total number of valid votes submitted and the sum of all entries on the President line (including all party lines, but also all write-ins).  

On the one hand, I could see voters who are dissatisfied with all their listed choices voting for no one.  On the other, if it were a desire to have divided or limited government, as I have often heard suggested,  a voter's choice would have made more sense the other way:  a Republican Congress to control a Democratic President.

The bottom line is that there is a gap of several million votes for Biden-Harris that did not accrue to Harris-Walz.  They did not (all) go to Trump-Vance, and the 3rd-party vote appears quite similar to that of 2020.  The gap does not appear to be in the number of voters, either.  Maybe they didn't stay home, after all. Understanding where those blank-liners are, and what their particular concerns are, would seem to be extremely valuable--perhaps they are persuadable.

  (I have to think a bit more about the fact that turnout was higher in the swing states, and how that affects this hypothesis, though surely it shows that swing voters were responding to the constant stimuli, It goes back to the difference between the national vote and that of the individual swing states.)

2) Those Trump-X voters may have been in large part those upredictable RFKJr fans. Who can know what they are, collectively, thinking or doing beyond that weird predilection?  Democrats looking for someone to demonize could do worse than targeting the Kennedy pariah:  apart from getting zero Democratic Senator votes, there is plenty of oppo to feed Republican Senators about his abortion and climate change views.  It's one time when it makes sense, even if the substitute would only be worse (having made the current DH-elect person angry),  Behavior like his should be punished.   You know, "it's going to hurt me more than it will you,"  the old lie.

Social Media OK?

We have just moved to open up a bit to other channels: 

Bluesky:

j1stoner.bsky.social

 and Substack chat

 https://open.substack.com/pub/stonerj/p/join-my-new-subscriber-chat?r=33u6d&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=tr

Yes, I am a "slow adopter".   You never saw me referencing X, or Twitter, or Facebook, as far as I can remember.  They don't matter in The Bigger Picture, which will be the next post.

My Nation, Alas!

The very worst thing about this, Americans of all kinds, we let Trump win! I hate when we can't stop assholes from profiting by their bad behavior. 

 The Betrayal of Hope -   This was supposed to be the Beginning of the End of Trumpism.  It still is, in a way, but the end is not as I visualized, the public's awakening to the corruption at the heart of it and their rejection of him.  I would say this is the end of the Obama-Biden-Harris Era, which overlaps with the newly-recognized Era of Dickhead.  Republican obstructionism throughout limited the gains a true Democratic majority coalition could get for the American people and for the future of humanity.  That coalition is breaking down now.

The next couple of years will see how much of those limited improvements will be wiped out by the return of the monstrous extremists to full Federal power. Then, after that, the inevitable Republican-driven economic collapse (I see it as renewed inflation combined with job scarcity driven by export dropoffs). The nation will then (2026?  more likely 2028) be ripe for the Great Restoration, and Trump's own rapid fade from center-stage as among the lamest of ducks. 

My speculative theory was that Putin and Trump, in their numerous private, unrecorded calls, made a high-stakes wager:  the proposition was that Trump could basically campaign with nothing but tariffs, xenophobia, and invective, and win the election.  If he wins, the two of them split up the resulting future grift in some specified way (Putin gets X% of the future Trump Moscow?); if he'd lost Putin gives him a safe exile spot (Baku).  Putin wins, either way, as confidence in American democratic elections will be undermined.  So, congratulations to them on their winning bet.

Justice Unserved - To put it in baseball terms, our systems for Presidential accountability batted one-for-six, .167, against Trump. 

 The first impeachment was, in effect, a "waste pitch", it never had a chance, Democrats were just showing they were willing to impeach.  (We have since seen that the House can, in effect, impeach a ham sandwich, as the Republican House just did with HHS Secretary Mayorkas.) . The second impeachment, though, was the real chance to kill off the threat of Trump, and most Republican Senators failed to show, many of them with miserable excuses.  Foul ball. Any claims of acquittal on that one ring hollow, though technically correct. McConnell said it should be left to the prosecutors.  So they did.  (The part about Trump's being out of office for the Senate trial portion was completely bogus, and recognized as such.)

We got a second strike with the NY state trial and conviction, though it did not produce an out.  Two good things about that one:  1) As it is in NY state, which is unlikely to have a Republican governor willing to eliminate the conviction anytime soon, history will record the felony (sentenced to probation, never completed).  Historians do notice things like that.  2)  It will record his legal indiscretion as tax fraud. It is entirely appropriate that he, personally, be convicted of fraud (not just his charities, or his organization, or his luckless subservient victims).  It is certainly one prominent aspect of his criminal persona, fraud. 

The big one, though, was his contempt for the constitution and for the rule of law overriding his power. The overt evidence of it was the indictment for the same incitement to insurrection (Jan. 6) that the second impeachment's Senate punted (to mix sports metaphors), though there was a lot of evidence of covert acts for the same purpose uncovered through investigations.  Not all of it could be used, ruled the Trumpist Supreme Court, in effect, but some of it could be.  There was a real chance for a conviction, if it were to happen. 

Now, it won't.  I'd still like to see Jack Smith, who has a very smart legal mind, come up with a way that his case be frozen in ice for four years, to be defrosted later.  To put it somewhere Trump can't have it dismissed without recourse, and without the statute of limitations expiring.  If that were so, and Trump alive, he'd still be guilty, the public would undoubtedly hate him and all his former allies would already have deserted him.  The record should show, regardless of whether he serves a day in prison, that he did indeed conspire to obstruct a Federal proceeding and defraud the American public. 

As for the other two cases, they won't come to trial, either, now, if they ever would have without the election result.  Trump will get a very stern letter about his abuse of documents, and the Georgia case against him will go into a file cabinet while the rest of the case may eventually go on without him.

We Become the World's Untreated Sewer Hole - I put my thoughts about the pollution the US will be spewing upon the rest of the world above the domestic effects of this electoral result. Culturally, there will be the usual dreck we export, though some of it has lost its bite.  Technology-wise, we will see whether there will seen to be risk trusting American devices.  Trash-wise, we will go from being the "world's garbage dump" to a serious brain-drain, and I doubt anyone will take our barges of unrecycled recyclables. 

In the midst of reduced exports (and a stubbornly resistant negative trade balance, which will irk Trump incessantly), our tariffs will give Trump a chance to play wheeler-dealer with other countries, and you know what kind of edge he will seek.  One he can capitalize upon. 

This will apply in particular to his management of oil exports and the associated grift.  We will do our best in the next four years to contribute to climate warming, while sponsoring nothing new domestically to reduce our footprint upon the air, the land, and the waters. 

We Need Resistance at the State Level - By which, I mean also at the local level.  We can expect nothing new that is not negative from the Federal government over the coming years.  If we are resolute, we can minimize the impact in the places we live of the Trump Administration.  The first two years will be critical:  Trump will have one shot to get fulfillment of promises about deportations, Justice department purges, oil leases, and tax code revisions going.  He will get appropriations for some of it, right away in a budget reconciliation bill, which just needs a bare Senate majority.   He will seek a change in the healthcare regime to replace the ACA; if he has the votes to repeal it, he likely will not have the support for something to replace it. 

The damage from some of these policies can be reduced by attentive local resistance.  Deportees can be protected in some cases; oil drills and pipelines can be tied up by protests and legal challenges. In particular, states may be able to make provisions to reduce the harm coming to our healthcare.  There are Democratic governors with strong political positions (e.g. Newsom, Pritzker, Moore) who can demonstrate that kind of positive leadership  and thereby raise their own prospects for what will be a wide-open 2028 contest.

Democracy, Liberty, and Freedom: I Need a Break from This

I am highly skeptical of our claims to have democratic elections because of all the distortions in our system (Electoral college, gerrymandering, voter suppression efforts, the unrepresentative Senate).  This one seems to have given a clear majority to Trump (final popular vote will be about 50-48, a 3-point shift to him and the same away from Biden to Harris, on similar total vote), and that's what really bothers me.  This is what our voters freely chose; my conclusion is that we do have a democracy but we have a failing polity.  The cost of our elections has gone way up, and the quality of the result way down.   The level of civic education is shockingly low. I'm not going to explain this opinion about what to me is evident; I was witness to this campaign, and I know what I feel when I wake up in the morning:  It is a lot like how I felt waking up during the pandemic; it's very discouraging.

When it comes to liberty, we should expect that Trump would increase it; he is more a libertarian than he is a conservative.  His objective is reducing the degree to which Federal laws, organizations, and individuals touch upon us.  His actions are almost anarchic, reducing the scope and effectiveness of them, except for those tools of government he can use and abuse. The judgment is pending whether he will crack down on things like homelessness, cannabis legalization, same-sex marriage, and reproductive rights, or leave those things to the mixed state and local jurisdictions. This is a key aspect as to whether his administration will be tolerable for the average citizen. 

"Freedom" was one of the keywords of the Harris campaign, recently rejected.  She was using it largely to speak to reproductive rights for women, but there are other aspects of freedom to which we must look. (of course, she lost, and the fate of that freedom is very unclear) I am thinking of the basic ones of where one will live, work, how they will raise children, and enter into social engagements.  We will deny foreigners the freedom to be in our land, and we may well find that penalties will fall on companies and people who dare to leave. 

As for  me, though, I am looking to escape his maladministration and suppression of my liberties.  Appeals to "patriotism" in the fight against Trump are leaving me unmoved; I am more interested in how the rest of the world deals with Trump than I am with our domestic struggles.  I recognize that Trump's malign impact will be felt worldwide; I am not going to be a cheerleader for the USA in these days. 

Predictions

My own predictions for this election were bad, but no worse than most others'. Essentially, I had the scenario wrong:  after Harris came on, I concluded we were probably back to the "Status Quo" scenario of a deadlock, but we were actually still in the "Biden weakened" one (change the name in the subject).  Harris was fatally limited by the Biden administration's weak incumbency.  Harris was further handicapped by misogyny, racism and status anxiety, faults very evident in American society. I will add a dark implication that Hispanics don't seem all that willing to back a black woman.

 I had the ranking of the swing states somewhat right (except for Arizona), but I based them on an estimate of the national vote which was wrong by 3% in each direction.  As I suggested, a three-point drop for either candidate would be catastrophic, and it was electorally disastrous.  

My stake in PredictIt, which had survived the 2016 loss and many other twists and turns, went almost entirely down the drain this time.  The election prediction markets are not very predictive, but they react very quickly.  In the past, I could hedge those kinds of Democratic losses with other markets where I offset the losses confidently.  This year, there were very few markets--PredictIt seems to be on its last legs, with Kalshi now the governmentally-approved site  (I passed on Kalshi when it requested I enlist with a payment service called Plaid which promised to sell my data) , so I risked all of it.  The only money I will have there coming out of this election will be on the win by Ruben Gallego in Arizona and, most likely, some marginal payoff if Biden does not resign his job before Jan. 20 (something I just heard Jamal Simmons suggest). 

My predictions for the Trump Administration:  the tax cuts will happen, through the budget reconciliation process, and that will also fund the increase in ICE and other HHS organizations for the deportations, which will increase but not to the extent Trump pretended in his campaigns.  The logistics are too difficult to deport tens of millions, not to speak of the bad public relations involved.  There will be a harsh immigration bill passed, and there will be a long debate about an abortion bill, which will not pass.  The economy will look great for a year or two and then crash.  Democrats will win what is possible in 2026's midterm elections and will be ready to take on the post-Trump Republicans in 2028. 

The biggest uncertainty about Trump's coming administration is whether he will find the need to declare a national emergency to get his more extreme policies implemented.  He did that for the Muslim ban and to steal appropriations to build some of his wall during his first term.  This time, the circumstances are more favorable for his ability to do his dirty work, so maybe declaring an emergency which would put all our safety at risk will not be necessary.

Flounder, you can't spend your whole life worrying about your mistakes! You f***ed up. You trusted us! Hey, make the best of it! Maybe we can help. -- Animal House

Follow-Up

Did I mention that Japan's Liberal Democratic Party, 65-4 in years in control of the Diet and government, lost its snap election?   That was an oversight on my part; the LDP most likely will do the Italian thing and find another party willing to go with them, the classic trap. But still, one more piece of evidence of this unstable moment. 

 I'm not going to retract any of my picks in the previous post, but I probably should explain my unorthodox pick of Harris-Walz winning Arizona, which has fairly consistently polled in Trump's favor (though by very little).  You know the theory about the "shy Trump voter" who polls always miss?  I'm not questioning its existence, but I don't see it applying in the case of Arizona:  from what I've seen, Arizona Republicans are the opposite of shy.  Instead, I would suggest the existence, and the miss in the polls of the "shy Latina voter".   Think of it this way, and praise our culture for the (still) secret ballot:  How about the Latina who answers the phone, but doesn't want to do the survey, and clearly her husband is just in the next room?*

As additional evidence, look at the trend on "delta" to national popular Presidential vote:  How did the pollsters miss this?  I rest my case. 

About Pennsylvania, though, I have to admit that the data says "tie", just as the polls do, and PA will likely be determinative.  Harris-Walz can't win without PA (or a combo of other non-Wall states), and Trump, the same, really (though his campaign is trying as a last-ditch effort to make Michigan viable as an alternative).  I'm going beyond the data to give a small edge on the tangible/intangibles, as I suggested. Wisconsin/Michigan: I'm staying optimistic about both.  Loss of either would portend disaster for Harris-Walz, as much as would Trump-Vance losing...

North Carolina/Georgia: I am usually disappointed in NC at the end (Obama in '08 the single exception in the other direction).  Like I know that a very good Democratic candidate in Texas (read:  Colin Allred) gets just about 48%, if they run a very good campaign.  Yes, Democrats will win the Governor race there, by a lot, and thus probably control the legislature despite extreme gerrymandering.  As for Georgia, besides Harris needing a massive turnout, she needed the severe Republican political malpractice that benefitted Biden, Ossoff, and Warnock in their races before. The state Republicans worked together this time and Trump didn't do enough specifically in GA to screw it up.  At least that's how I see it. 

Finally, Nevada. Jon Ralston got over his freak-out over the Republican-trending early vote there and reversed the sense of his guidance at the last moment, now predicting a "very, very close" victory for Harris.  I stand by my unique Toss-up call for that one.   It's like picking a draw in a league soccer match, which is a thing. 

 As for the World Series, the less follow-up, the better.  All the drama was in the first game, really, which was one for the ages.   I guess the last game--which I missed--was at least exciting. Instead of "follow-up", when it comes to postseason baseball, with so many 100-mph hurlers, it's about the change-up.  Or Blake Treinen's curve ball.   The question is whether this throwback matchup is the first of many, or the first of a more-normal kind of interval, a decade or two?  The likely departure of Juan Soto suggests there may not be a rematch next year, which I'm sure Yankee fans would be seeking for their buck.  It reminds me of Brooklyn Dodgers fans in the Fifties, so they say.  

Wait 'til next year!  And if Trump wins, we won't need any more years, it'll be like that forever. 

But Change.  When you have weak incumbency, something you could argue exists for both White House tickets, you get this.  

*Moral of the story:  Not all white men are the same, behaviorally.  I know some people of color might reply that when it comes down to certain situations, they are, and they might be right.  Anyway, in Arizona they are proud of their rightness and will not shy away from saying so.  More like the effect if you canvassed whites in Wyoming, or Alabama.  

Instead, the additional hidden turnout in Harris' direction might be from Native Americans  (especially those on the reservations); though they are several percent of the state's population, who overcome obstacles and vote, they probably never get polled.