Part of the ossification of thought about electoral politics comes down to treating the electorate as a fixed group, with each sub-group within it being fixed and equal in size. It's taking for granted who is going to show up and in what numbers, and working only to appeal to the largest share of this group or that group.
So we hear naysayers warn about how, for each blue-collar voter that Trump brings in, he'll alienate two upper-middle class suburban conservadads. That's fine -- the population of blue-collar people is yuge, while country club types are small. If, in order to win half of the entire working class population, he alienates all of the country clubbers, he sweeps the election (perhaps one-quarter of blue-collars would vote Democrat, and the other quarter would stay home).
Trump's "game-changer" has been to turn out a larger share of the population, rather than tweak how well he does with various demographics groups in an electorate that remains the same as before.
We can therefore also ignore innumerate posts like this one from NPR that purports to show why Trump's blue-collar white appeal cannot win elections in 2016, the way it did in 1980. After all, the fraction of the electorate that is white and not college-educated was way down in 2012 compared to 1980.
What didn't occur to this lib-arts major is that the white working class is shrinking within the electorate not for reasons of changing demography. Yes, whites are not as large of a share of the population as they were back in 1980 -- but newsflash: their ethnic replacements do not vote, certainly not at the levels that whites do. Being replaced in the population does not translate automatically into being replaced within the pool of voters.
What actually happened was lower and lower turnout of the white working class over the past several decades. They were between 65-70% likely to go out and vote during the elections of 1972, '76, and '80, but that likelihood has been falling since then, bottoming out around 50% during the 21st century.*
To fix this problem, Trump does not need to take that 50% turnout as a given, and then try to grab larger shares of some other demo (Aztecs, queers, or whoever). He simply has to get the white working class to feel like there's a reason to get out and vote. With dramatically higher turnout of a large group, he doesn't need to obsess over every other little micro-group.
He has been setting records for turnout so far, and Super Tuesday looks to continue that pattern. There will be record turnout in the fall, much of it owing to far higher numbers of white working-class people feeling like they finally have someone who represents their interests (Dems being anti-white, old-guard Republicans being anti-working-class).
This means that Hillary's only possible winning strategy is to suppress white working-class people from voting. They're simply going to be such a tidal wave, and even worse, concentrated in blue states that will turn red (Rust Belt, New England, Mid-Atlantic).
She and Rubio are floating concepts about how Trump isn't truly a friend of the working man, but nobody is buying it. You don't spend tens of millions of your own money in order to regularly stump for a 35% tariff on off-shored manufacturing, if you're aren't truly committed to doing it. Blue-collar folks recognize that he means what he says about bringing good jobs back here through re-negotiating trade treaties, tariffs, etc.
Their only other attacks are weak identity politics stuff (racist, sexist, bla bla bla), which is going nowhere now that the culture war is over.
In short, Trump's victory is all but certain for the nomination and the general, owing to an unstoppable wave of blue-collar whites coming out of the woodwork after having been neglected, abandoned, and disdained for so long now.
* Data from the General Social Survey. White males aged 30-59 with 0-12 years of education.
March 1, 2016
February 28, 2016
Bernie cannibalizing campaign with identity politics instead of class (Good news for Trump turning blue states red)
I thought Bernie had a halfway decent shot at a majority of the pledged delegates, but after seeing how he ran things leading up to South Carolina, he looks to be finished. His forte has always been matters of economics -- class system, trade, inequality, debt, Wall Street, etc. -- and government -- campaign finance, corruption, revolving doors, etc. He represents the left's version of breaking away from identity politics and the culture war, to return to economic and political matters per se.
Hillary is continuing the culture war loud and clear, which mostly means race and ethnicity. (Women do not form a voting bloc, so only throwaway references are made to feminist topics. Homos are even smaller in number, and she isn't making a big stink out of sodomy.)
In the mostly-white early states, these two approaches to left-wing politics were not in conflict -- there were no minorities to pander to, so Bernie did OK and then won. Even in Nevada, with its larger share of minorities (Aztecs), Bernie did respectably. He was still focusing mostly on class issues.
However, once the huge voting bloc of blacks started approaching in South Carolina, he faced a crucial decision -- to continue emphasizing class, albeit by tailoring it to black economic concerns, or to put class on the back burner and take up identity politics. He either didn't want to appear racist, or got deluded into thinking he could compete in the culture war, or just plain choked. All of a sudden, he started talking about police brutality, institutional racism, driving while black, the prison-industrial complex, bla bla bla. And he lost SC big-league.
He allowed Hillary to dictate which arena the battle would be fought in, and he got slaughtered where he has no comparative advantage.
He might not have won SC if he had stuck to class issues, but he would've done better than a 50-point blowout. Not only would it have shown independence to his supporters and to the Democratic Establishment by hammering economics over and over, it would have forced a major choice among the black voters -- can we really afford the luxury of jerking off to the culture war anymore?
Sheeeit nigga, ain't nobody got time fo' identity politics -- I got biiillzzz 2 pay.
Unfortunately he seems to be writing off the black-heavy states going forward, rather than put that choice to them and bring over as many as possible. He's retreating into his comfort zone of economic-oriented whites in more progressive-friendly states.
Contrast this with Trump trying to win over every major group, including the Republicans' form of identity politics -- evangelical Christians. Trump's campaign has little to say to religious matters, or social and cultural issues generally. But by urging them to vote for the best President who can fix our mess of a country, rather than imagining the election giving us a Pastor in Chief who resonates the most powerfully with evangelical values, he's managed to win them over -- at least, back East of the Mississippi, where identity politics is weaker and folks are more open to class politics.
Bernie's doom will ultimately play to Trump's advantage, since the legions of Sanders supporters will most definitely not be turning out for Hillary in November. If she'd only won by a small amount, OK, maybe they suck it up and vote for whoever won fairly. But from what I've read from them, the Sanders supporters feel like she and her voters are robbing them blind. After getting so demoralized and disgusted, they won't vote for her in the general -- they'll either write in for Bernie, vote third-party, switch to Trump, or most likely not vote at all.
That will be even more true if Bernie ends up getting close to Hillary in the pledged delegate count, but gets swamped by her superdelegate spoilers -- a 15-point ace in the hole. Best case scenario for the Trump movement is Bernie wins 45% of all delegates (pledged), Hillary gets 40% of all delegates (pledged), but then adds her 15% of all delegates (super), and robs Bernie 55 to 45.
With a far smaller turnout of Democrats in the fall, Trump will have an even easier time of winning. More importantly, these demoralized Sanders supporters will be concentrated in the blue states that Trump is trying to switch to red -- New England and the Midwest. And in those regions, there won't be a huge pool of blacks to make up for the disgusted whites staying home. If there's record low turnout of Dems in South Carolina, that does nothing for Trump, since it will go Republican no matter what. But with record low turnout of Dems in, say, Wisconsin and Michigan, Trump is poised to turn them red (in addition to his courting their vote directly through class politics).
You can pursue identity politics, or you can pursue issues of economics and government. Not both. Sanders started out on the right foot, but through some form of personal weakness, surrendered his economic-oriented campaign and is trying to be everything to every Dem. Trump has steered clear of wading into the culture war, and he has already pulled away from the rest of the old-guard pack on the Republican side. In a time of realignment, you have to keep your eye on the ball.
Hillary is continuing the culture war loud and clear, which mostly means race and ethnicity. (Women do not form a voting bloc, so only throwaway references are made to feminist topics. Homos are even smaller in number, and she isn't making a big stink out of sodomy.)
In the mostly-white early states, these two approaches to left-wing politics were not in conflict -- there were no minorities to pander to, so Bernie did OK and then won. Even in Nevada, with its larger share of minorities (Aztecs), Bernie did respectably. He was still focusing mostly on class issues.
However, once the huge voting bloc of blacks started approaching in South Carolina, he faced a crucial decision -- to continue emphasizing class, albeit by tailoring it to black economic concerns, or to put class on the back burner and take up identity politics. He either didn't want to appear racist, or got deluded into thinking he could compete in the culture war, or just plain choked. All of a sudden, he started talking about police brutality, institutional racism, driving while black, the prison-industrial complex, bla bla bla. And he lost SC big-league.
He allowed Hillary to dictate which arena the battle would be fought in, and he got slaughtered where he has no comparative advantage.
He might not have won SC if he had stuck to class issues, but he would've done better than a 50-point blowout. Not only would it have shown independence to his supporters and to the Democratic Establishment by hammering economics over and over, it would have forced a major choice among the black voters -- can we really afford the luxury of jerking off to the culture war anymore?
Sheeeit nigga, ain't nobody got time fo' identity politics -- I got biiillzzz 2 pay.
Unfortunately he seems to be writing off the black-heavy states going forward, rather than put that choice to them and bring over as many as possible. He's retreating into his comfort zone of economic-oriented whites in more progressive-friendly states.
Contrast this with Trump trying to win over every major group, including the Republicans' form of identity politics -- evangelical Christians. Trump's campaign has little to say to religious matters, or social and cultural issues generally. But by urging them to vote for the best President who can fix our mess of a country, rather than imagining the election giving us a Pastor in Chief who resonates the most powerfully with evangelical values, he's managed to win them over -- at least, back East of the Mississippi, where identity politics is weaker and folks are more open to class politics.
Bernie's doom will ultimately play to Trump's advantage, since the legions of Sanders supporters will most definitely not be turning out for Hillary in November. If she'd only won by a small amount, OK, maybe they suck it up and vote for whoever won fairly. But from what I've read from them, the Sanders supporters feel like she and her voters are robbing them blind. After getting so demoralized and disgusted, they won't vote for her in the general -- they'll either write in for Bernie, vote third-party, switch to Trump, or most likely not vote at all.
That will be even more true if Bernie ends up getting close to Hillary in the pledged delegate count, but gets swamped by her superdelegate spoilers -- a 15-point ace in the hole. Best case scenario for the Trump movement is Bernie wins 45% of all delegates (pledged), Hillary gets 40% of all delegates (pledged), but then adds her 15% of all delegates (super), and robs Bernie 55 to 45.
With a far smaller turnout of Democrats in the fall, Trump will have an even easier time of winning. More importantly, these demoralized Sanders supporters will be concentrated in the blue states that Trump is trying to switch to red -- New England and the Midwest. And in those regions, there won't be a huge pool of blacks to make up for the disgusted whites staying home. If there's record low turnout of Dems in South Carolina, that does nothing for Trump, since it will go Republican no matter what. But with record low turnout of Dems in, say, Wisconsin and Michigan, Trump is poised to turn them red (in addition to his courting their vote directly through class politics).
You can pursue identity politics, or you can pursue issues of economics and government. Not both. Sanders started out on the right foot, but through some form of personal weakness, surrendered his economic-oriented campaign and is trying to be everything to every Dem. Trump has steered clear of wading into the culture war, and he has already pulled away from the rest of the old-guard pack on the Republican side. In a time of realignment, you have to keep your eye on the ball.
February 27, 2016
GOP Establishment pondering an independent run for one of their own, too dumb to see it would guarantee Trump victory
In further examples of how ass-backwards the Establishment is thinking and acting in our climate of realignment, this post at Politico says that members of the donor class have started to research the feasibility of running a candidate not named Trump on a third-party ticket, in the increasingly likely case where Trump gets the GOP nomination.
Forget the details of their plan. Just step back and ask: where would this cuckservative candidate pick up any of the popular vote at all? In heavily red states, where the most hardcore Old Guard Republicans can be found in any decent numbers per capita. Mostly the Plains and the South, and if the primaries so far are any guide, more so in the Plains (Iowa going for Cruz) than in the South (South Carolina going for Trump).
And therein lies the irony -- even if the third-party Establishment candidate siphoned off a non-trivial amount of would-be Republican voters, there is so much slack left in these deeply red states that Trump's chunk of the electorate would still clear 50% and give him all the electoral votes, while the cuck would get 0.
There's no way the cuck could convert any of the state's Democratic voters either -- he would be the very definition of outdated Republican baggage.
Let's just play with a few numbers to see how futile their efforts would be. Most would-be Republican voters are going to vote Trump if he's the nominee. I'd be surprised if even 10% of the state's Republican voters were so bitter and puritanical that they'd vote for a sure loser just to spite Trump for his "hostile takeover," i.e. democratization, of their precious party, in the hopes of sinking Trump for this cycle and starting the war all over again for the GOP nomination in 2020.
We'll just go with the percent of the state that voted for Romney in 2012, and carve away 10% of it for these hardcore cuck voters, leaving 90% of those who voted Romney. (This is an underestimate, since Trump will be getting a good level of defection from the Democrats.) Where would "90% of Romney's vote" still put Trump over 50%? Where Romney's share of the vote was at least 55-56%. This includes:
Utah
Wyoming
Idaho
Montana
Nebraska
Oklahoma
Kansas
North Dakota
South Dakota
Texas
Arkansas
West Virginia
Alabama
Kentucky
Tennessee
Louisiana
Mississippi
This is the Mountains, the Plains, and the inland part of the South. It does not include the red states or the neither-red-nor-blue states in the Midwest and along the Atlantic coast.
But that works out perfectly for Trump. In the states where the cuck constituency is most likely to be found, their defection would not rob Trump of the electoral votes. And where a defection from Trump of 10% would endanger him, the cuck voters are far less numerous and wouldn't even come close to 10% of Republicans (Rust Belt, southern Atlantic).
Moreover, Trump could use the presence of a third-party made up of bitter old-guard Republicans to even further enhance his appeal to independents and Democrats in blue states, in order to turn them red for Trump. It would even more vividly distinguish him from the cuckservative losers who the Dem voters associate with the GOP.
The fact that the elites can't even tell that the barrel of this third-party gun is bent right back toward their own faces, is further encouragement that they are so out-of-touch with the changing new world that they are going to be trivial to knock over.
It's no different from what we saw in Bloomberg's potential third-party run. He, too, is too dumb-from-insulation to realize that his best chance would be in a world where Clinton and Bush/Rubio were the nominees, revealing popular demand for Establishment candidates. Instead, the clueless rat thinks his best chances are if Sanders and Trump are the nominees, where he would hope to corner the market on Establishment voters -- despite their near invisible numbers in a population that chose Sanders and Trump.
Insulation must be the most intelligence-corroding force in the universe. Good news for the Trump movement.
Forget the details of their plan. Just step back and ask: where would this cuckservative candidate pick up any of the popular vote at all? In heavily red states, where the most hardcore Old Guard Republicans can be found in any decent numbers per capita. Mostly the Plains and the South, and if the primaries so far are any guide, more so in the Plains (Iowa going for Cruz) than in the South (South Carolina going for Trump).
And therein lies the irony -- even if the third-party Establishment candidate siphoned off a non-trivial amount of would-be Republican voters, there is so much slack left in these deeply red states that Trump's chunk of the electorate would still clear 50% and give him all the electoral votes, while the cuck would get 0.
There's no way the cuck could convert any of the state's Democratic voters either -- he would be the very definition of outdated Republican baggage.
Let's just play with a few numbers to see how futile their efforts would be. Most would-be Republican voters are going to vote Trump if he's the nominee. I'd be surprised if even 10% of the state's Republican voters were so bitter and puritanical that they'd vote for a sure loser just to spite Trump for his "hostile takeover," i.e. democratization, of their precious party, in the hopes of sinking Trump for this cycle and starting the war all over again for the GOP nomination in 2020.
We'll just go with the percent of the state that voted for Romney in 2012, and carve away 10% of it for these hardcore cuck voters, leaving 90% of those who voted Romney. (This is an underestimate, since Trump will be getting a good level of defection from the Democrats.) Where would "90% of Romney's vote" still put Trump over 50%? Where Romney's share of the vote was at least 55-56%. This includes:
Utah
Wyoming
Idaho
Montana
Nebraska
Oklahoma
Kansas
North Dakota
South Dakota
Texas
Arkansas
West Virginia
Alabama
Kentucky
Tennessee
Louisiana
Mississippi
This is the Mountains, the Plains, and the inland part of the South. It does not include the red states or the neither-red-nor-blue states in the Midwest and along the Atlantic coast.
But that works out perfectly for Trump. In the states where the cuck constituency is most likely to be found, their defection would not rob Trump of the electoral votes. And where a defection from Trump of 10% would endanger him, the cuck voters are far less numerous and wouldn't even come close to 10% of Republicans (Rust Belt, southern Atlantic).
Moreover, Trump could use the presence of a third-party made up of bitter old-guard Republicans to even further enhance his appeal to independents and Democrats in blue states, in order to turn them red for Trump. It would even more vividly distinguish him from the cuckservative losers who the Dem voters associate with the GOP.
Folks, I understand -- you don't want to be saddled with the baggage of the old Republican Party. If our movement hadn't taken it over, honestly, I'd call it 'The Failing Party of the Bushies' -- no, think about it. But look who you're talking to now -- I'm the guy who eviscerated the Bush dynasty in front of a debate hall packed with Establishment hacks and donors on national TV, and still won the popular vote in that state. Along with 100% of the delegates that really matter, but these are minor details.
With Trump, folks, you aren't gonna have to worry anymore about maybe possibly choosing to vote Republican. I know, before you guys in the blue states, you would've been embarrassed, but all that... garbage... that you're reacting to has been flushed right out of the Party, and they're now running their own pathetic third-party ticket. I call it 'The Circling the Drain Ticket" -- no, it's true! It's true!
The last thing this country needs is another Clinton, or another Bushy. Those people are not going to lead you into the Promised Land, that I can tell you. Stand with Trump, and together we will make America great again!
The fact that the elites can't even tell that the barrel of this third-party gun is bent right back toward their own faces, is further encouragement that they are so out-of-touch with the changing new world that they are going to be trivial to knock over.
It's no different from what we saw in Bloomberg's potential third-party run. He, too, is too dumb-from-insulation to realize that his best chance would be in a world where Clinton and Bush/Rubio were the nominees, revealing popular demand for Establishment candidates. Instead, the clueless rat thinks his best chances are if Sanders and Trump are the nominees, where he would hope to corner the market on Establishment voters -- despite their near invisible numbers in a population that chose Sanders and Trump.
Insulation must be the most intelligence-corroding force in the universe. Good news for the Trump movement.
February 26, 2016
Cargo cult conservatism in the age of realignment: Why a more intense level of attacks-as-usual will continue to have no effect
This summary is not available. Please
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February 25, 2016
Huge non-citizen populations give states unfair boost in Congress and Electoral College
In the roughly 10 years that I've been reading about immigration issues, I don't recall hearing about this one. If it has been covered before, it has not been hammered enough to be one of the facts that everyone knows.
Each state sends two Senators to the upper house of Congress. The number that it sends to the lower House of Representatives is proportional to its population -- we've all heard that before.
But what we didn't realize was that all residents count toward this population measure -- including illegal immigrants, foreigners legally here on student visas, and any other group of non-citizens, none of whom can vote for the Representatives or for President. It's simply how many people wake up and go to sleep in that state, regardless of their citizenship status.
The Census' website has a FAQ that admits this openly, and even has a separate question just about illegal aliens, saying that they do indeed count toward the population estimate that determines how many Representatives that state will send to Congress.
It gets worse: the number of Electoral College votes that a state gets is equal to the number of Congressmen they have. Each state gets 2 for their Senators; the variable number of Representatives is what makes one state's vote for President weigh more or less heavily in the final count.
Thus, states that have large non-citizen populations wield a disproportionate influence in the House of Representatives, and in the Presidential election. And because the number of Representatives is fixed (at 435), when a foreigner-heavy state gains more influence, it must take influence away from other states that are light on foreigners.
It gets even worse: this creates a positive feedback loop, whereby a state brings in hordes of non-citizens, which gives them more Representatives in Congress and greater power over choosing the President. They wield this greater influence over government to change the laws and their enforcement so that more and more foreigners flood into that state. Which boosts their population further, which gives them more influence, which they use to bring in more foreigners, etc etc etc. Pretty soon California and Texas control the entire country.
Here is a map of Congressional districts by degree of non-citizen presence (red means foreigner-heavy):
The entire West, beginning with Texas, has been stealing influence from the citizen-heavy areas back East, with the exception of the highly urbanized Atlantic coastline. Appalachia and small-town New England have taken the biggest clobbering; the Midwest and non-urban South have been pretty well robbed also. If you've been wondering why these places seem less and less influential in national politics, that's why.
It's not just that California has a large population -- between 10-15% of it is non-citizens. They wield 55 votes in the Electoral College now (far more than any other state), and that should be closer to 45 -- still reflecting the large population of actual citizens there, but discounting the hordes of cheap foreign labor they've brought in, along with massive numbers of foreign students at their many colleges, the legal H1-B visa workers taking white-collar jobs from Americans in Silicon Valley, and so on and so forth.
The WP article that the map comes from discusses an open Supreme Court case (Evenwel v. Abbott) about how the Congressional district lines ought to be drawn -- to include a similar number of people in each district, should they count all residents, only citizens, etc.?
They are not challenging the larger point, though, that huge numbers of non-citizens give the state an unfair number of Representatives and Electoral College votes. According to the 14th Amendment, population is reckoned only by the number of "persons" -- not "citizens". In its original context of the mid-19th Century, there were no hordes of foreign non-citizens. There were the white citizens and the citizens who were newly freed slaves.
Fast-forward to now, where several Sun Belt states have over 10% of their population as non-citizens, and it's a whole 'nother ball game. We need a Constitutional Amendment to make Congressional apportionment (and therefore Electoral College votes) a function only of the citizen population.
Otherwise we're back to the Three-Fifths Compromise that was repealed by the 14th Amendment. During the nation's founding, the Southern plantation owners didn't want their slaves to be able to vote or enjoy other benefits of citizenship, but then that would shrink their state's influence in Congress and in voting for the President, since so much of their population was slaves. So a deal was worked out where the slaves would not be citizens, but they would count toward the population used for Congressional apportionment, at three-fifths of their actual number.
That gave the Southern states undue federal-level influence, especially over matters related to slavery. It was win-win for them -- non-citizen labor, but greater control over the federal government. Eventually that tension led to the Civil War, and in the aftermath the Three-Fifths Compromise was replaced by the 14th Amendment, where every person counted toward the total population, but where they were now citizens allowed to vote.
Today, the immigrant-heavy areas are like the old slave plantations -- the local elites enjoy cheap labor from foreigners who cannot vote and are not citizens, yet these laborers beef up the population totals and allow the local elites more national power. It's even worse than the slavery system, since the slaves were only counted at three-fifths their number -- today the non-citizens count at 100% of their numbers.
The other logically consistent but socially suicidal solution would be to give amnesty to the non-citizens. Then their numbers would legitimately count toward how much influence their state gets at the national level.
We keep seeing attempts to push through an amnesty, always led by the immigrant-heavy states. I'm starting to think that they don't actually care if it goes through or not, though. Remember, the elites in a foreigner-heavy state are like the slave-owners of the old South -- they get all that extra influence in government, without having to treat the foreigners as citizens.
In particular, that means that the politicians won't have to learn how to appeal to a new constituency of amnestied immigrants. Maybe they could do it, or maybe they couldn't, and would be replaced by more immigrant-savvy or ethnically-connected rival politicians. Who knows how the newly enfranchised immigrants would vote on all manner of things, potentially re-shaping the political landscape and making it a nightmare for the established elites to find their way through.
It's better for the politicians and their elite constituents if the political ecosystem stays predictable and "more of the same". They can keep their jobs and won't have to learn new tricks. But by boosting the overall population (through more and more non-citizens), the national policies they pursue will have an even greater weight behind them.
Importing hordes of foreigners is a force-multiplier at the national political level that does not entail any extra political costs at the district or state level.
Therefore, I don't think the goal of the immigrant-importing politicians, and the elites they represent, is to "replace the American electorate" with foreigners, who will be more favorable at the voting booth to the immigrant-friendly politicians. I've heard that a lot, and it makes some sense, but only if the immigrants get amnesty and then turn out to vote for those who gave them amnesty.
And yet the amnesty hasn't gotten through over all these years (not since 1986), and these politicians surely know that the Mexicans and other groups do not bother voting even when they are citizens. Politicians stand to gain almost nothing at the voting booth from illegals by giving them amnesty.
Rather, the goal of the elites and their political representatives is simply to keep to politics as usual, only with a great big force-multiplier behind it. Increase total population while not drawing qualitatively new groups into the electorate. Then you won't have to worry about how millions of Mexicans, with Mexican sensibilities, may vote down a California law protecting the environment.
This would seem to explain why there's a constant back-and-forth over amnesty, with no victory for the immigrant-heavy states. They must have an understanding on all sides that the amnesty battle is purely symbolic, empty, and ritualistic. They'll fight over it, stalemate, and each side goes home declaring victory. The anti-amnesty side gets to gloat over preserving the rule of law to their constituents, while the pro-amnesty side gets to gloat over their force-multiplier remaining intact without the system being disrupted by masses of new citizens from a different background coming into the electorate.
Long story short, we need to deport the illegals, anchor babies, and their extended families that were brought in under false pretenses (uniting with a "citizen," i.e. the anchor baby). Build the wall, enforce the border. That would solve most of the problem right there -- then the immigrant-heavy states would lose huge numbers of their total population, and would lose many of their Representatives and Electoral College votes, while the citizen-heavy states would gain them back.
But that's not a permanent solution. We don't want to be in a situation 100 years from now, when the pro-immigrant side has gained the upper hand again, and there are 15% of Californians who are non-citizens, with the Sun Belt wielding disproportionate influence all over again. We need a simple Constitutional Amendment that says Congressional apportionment is to be based on the number of citizens, not just persons or residents.
Only then can we have an American government for the Americans.
Each state sends two Senators to the upper house of Congress. The number that it sends to the lower House of Representatives is proportional to its population -- we've all heard that before.
But what we didn't realize was that all residents count toward this population measure -- including illegal immigrants, foreigners legally here on student visas, and any other group of non-citizens, none of whom can vote for the Representatives or for President. It's simply how many people wake up and go to sleep in that state, regardless of their citizenship status.
The Census' website has a FAQ that admits this openly, and even has a separate question just about illegal aliens, saying that they do indeed count toward the population estimate that determines how many Representatives that state will send to Congress.
It gets worse: the number of Electoral College votes that a state gets is equal to the number of Congressmen they have. Each state gets 2 for their Senators; the variable number of Representatives is what makes one state's vote for President weigh more or less heavily in the final count.
Thus, states that have large non-citizen populations wield a disproportionate influence in the House of Representatives, and in the Presidential election. And because the number of Representatives is fixed (at 435), when a foreigner-heavy state gains more influence, it must take influence away from other states that are light on foreigners.
It gets even worse: this creates a positive feedback loop, whereby a state brings in hordes of non-citizens, which gives them more Representatives in Congress and greater power over choosing the President. They wield this greater influence over government to change the laws and their enforcement so that more and more foreigners flood into that state. Which boosts their population further, which gives them more influence, which they use to bring in more foreigners, etc etc etc. Pretty soon California and Texas control the entire country.
Here is a map of Congressional districts by degree of non-citizen presence (red means foreigner-heavy):
The entire West, beginning with Texas, has been stealing influence from the citizen-heavy areas back East, with the exception of the highly urbanized Atlantic coastline. Appalachia and small-town New England have taken the biggest clobbering; the Midwest and non-urban South have been pretty well robbed also. If you've been wondering why these places seem less and less influential in national politics, that's why.
It's not just that California has a large population -- between 10-15% of it is non-citizens. They wield 55 votes in the Electoral College now (far more than any other state), and that should be closer to 45 -- still reflecting the large population of actual citizens there, but discounting the hordes of cheap foreign labor they've brought in, along with massive numbers of foreign students at their many colleges, the legal H1-B visa workers taking white-collar jobs from Americans in Silicon Valley, and so on and so forth.
The WP article that the map comes from discusses an open Supreme Court case (Evenwel v. Abbott) about how the Congressional district lines ought to be drawn -- to include a similar number of people in each district, should they count all residents, only citizens, etc.?
They are not challenging the larger point, though, that huge numbers of non-citizens give the state an unfair number of Representatives and Electoral College votes. According to the 14th Amendment, population is reckoned only by the number of "persons" -- not "citizens". In its original context of the mid-19th Century, there were no hordes of foreign non-citizens. There were the white citizens and the citizens who were newly freed slaves.
Fast-forward to now, where several Sun Belt states have over 10% of their population as non-citizens, and it's a whole 'nother ball game. We need a Constitutional Amendment to make Congressional apportionment (and therefore Electoral College votes) a function only of the citizen population.
Otherwise we're back to the Three-Fifths Compromise that was repealed by the 14th Amendment. During the nation's founding, the Southern plantation owners didn't want their slaves to be able to vote or enjoy other benefits of citizenship, but then that would shrink their state's influence in Congress and in voting for the President, since so much of their population was slaves. So a deal was worked out where the slaves would not be citizens, but they would count toward the population used for Congressional apportionment, at three-fifths of their actual number.
That gave the Southern states undue federal-level influence, especially over matters related to slavery. It was win-win for them -- non-citizen labor, but greater control over the federal government. Eventually that tension led to the Civil War, and in the aftermath the Three-Fifths Compromise was replaced by the 14th Amendment, where every person counted toward the total population, but where they were now citizens allowed to vote.
Today, the immigrant-heavy areas are like the old slave plantations -- the local elites enjoy cheap labor from foreigners who cannot vote and are not citizens, yet these laborers beef up the population totals and allow the local elites more national power. It's even worse than the slavery system, since the slaves were only counted at three-fifths their number -- today the non-citizens count at 100% of their numbers.
The other logically consistent but socially suicidal solution would be to give amnesty to the non-citizens. Then their numbers would legitimately count toward how much influence their state gets at the national level.
We keep seeing attempts to push through an amnesty, always led by the immigrant-heavy states. I'm starting to think that they don't actually care if it goes through or not, though. Remember, the elites in a foreigner-heavy state are like the slave-owners of the old South -- they get all that extra influence in government, without having to treat the foreigners as citizens.
In particular, that means that the politicians won't have to learn how to appeal to a new constituency of amnestied immigrants. Maybe they could do it, or maybe they couldn't, and would be replaced by more immigrant-savvy or ethnically-connected rival politicians. Who knows how the newly enfranchised immigrants would vote on all manner of things, potentially re-shaping the political landscape and making it a nightmare for the established elites to find their way through.
It's better for the politicians and their elite constituents if the political ecosystem stays predictable and "more of the same". They can keep their jobs and won't have to learn new tricks. But by boosting the overall population (through more and more non-citizens), the national policies they pursue will have an even greater weight behind them.
Importing hordes of foreigners is a force-multiplier at the national political level that does not entail any extra political costs at the district or state level.
Therefore, I don't think the goal of the immigrant-importing politicians, and the elites they represent, is to "replace the American electorate" with foreigners, who will be more favorable at the voting booth to the immigrant-friendly politicians. I've heard that a lot, and it makes some sense, but only if the immigrants get amnesty and then turn out to vote for those who gave them amnesty.
And yet the amnesty hasn't gotten through over all these years (not since 1986), and these politicians surely know that the Mexicans and other groups do not bother voting even when they are citizens. Politicians stand to gain almost nothing at the voting booth from illegals by giving them amnesty.
Rather, the goal of the elites and their political representatives is simply to keep to politics as usual, only with a great big force-multiplier behind it. Increase total population while not drawing qualitatively new groups into the electorate. Then you won't have to worry about how millions of Mexicans, with Mexican sensibilities, may vote down a California law protecting the environment.
This would seem to explain why there's a constant back-and-forth over amnesty, with no victory for the immigrant-heavy states. They must have an understanding on all sides that the amnesty battle is purely symbolic, empty, and ritualistic. They'll fight over it, stalemate, and each side goes home declaring victory. The anti-amnesty side gets to gloat over preserving the rule of law to their constituents, while the pro-amnesty side gets to gloat over their force-multiplier remaining intact without the system being disrupted by masses of new citizens from a different background coming into the electorate.
Long story short, we need to deport the illegals, anchor babies, and their extended families that were brought in under false pretenses (uniting with a "citizen," i.e. the anchor baby). Build the wall, enforce the border. That would solve most of the problem right there -- then the immigrant-heavy states would lose huge numbers of their total population, and would lose many of their Representatives and Electoral College votes, while the citizen-heavy states would gain them back.
But that's not a permanent solution. We don't want to be in a situation 100 years from now, when the pro-immigrant side has gained the upper hand again, and there are 15% of Californians who are non-citizens, with the Sun Belt wielding disproportionate influence all over again. We need a simple Constitutional Amendment that says Congressional apportionment is to be based on the number of citizens, not just persons or residents.
Only then can we have an American government for the Americans.
February 24, 2016
Talking heads still largely clueless about Trump phenomenon (better that they can't figure us out)
Watching CNN's coverage of Trump's sweeping victory in Nevada, I was amazed that most of the talking heads are still going on about his personality, his branding of himself, his appeal to anger, etc., and no awareness of the actual positions he represents. Indeed, whenever the matter does come up, they all flippantly say that he has no real policies, no specifics, other than building the wall.
It's not because they lack the intelligence to see the patterns (populism and nationalism vs. elitism and globalism), nor are they cynically trying to portray his campaign as a great big clown show anymore. The talking heads on CNN are generally more open-minded and curious about what's going on and what makes people tick, and aren't the dour snarky ideologues that you see on Fox News or MSNBC. They really want to understand, but they're like a colorblind person squinting and tilting their head at a Fauvist painting, and wondering what it is that draws so many spectators to it.
The basic points of populism and nationalism are simply so far outside of anything they've ever been exposed to in their lives, whether personal or professional, that there's nothing there for them to see in Trump's campaign. It's not that they've had experience with it, and reject it -- they have only ever experienced the elite-centered and globalist-centered set of beliefs, discussions, and policies. It's an entire range of wavelengths of light that they've never been exposed to, and remain colorblind to.
Not to be too hard on the talking heads, the entire Establishment group of politicians, donors, voters, and onlookers cannot see what's going on because they've been insulated from populism and nationalism throughout their personal and professional lives.
This bodes well for the general election, obviously, since Hillary couldn't be more immersed in elitism and globalism. But beyond that, it's encouraging that the entrenched incumbents in the economy and the government will not be able to do anything about the Trump phenomenon because they can't even understand it at the simplest level. Trump is like the Predator stalking his victims while cloaked from their vision.
Re-shaping the society back to a healthy state will take a long time, but each necessary action will not be a bitter war of attrition. It's going to be like shooting fish in a barrel.
It's not because they lack the intelligence to see the patterns (populism and nationalism vs. elitism and globalism), nor are they cynically trying to portray his campaign as a great big clown show anymore. The talking heads on CNN are generally more open-minded and curious about what's going on and what makes people tick, and aren't the dour snarky ideologues that you see on Fox News or MSNBC. They really want to understand, but they're like a colorblind person squinting and tilting their head at a Fauvist painting, and wondering what it is that draws so many spectators to it.
The basic points of populism and nationalism are simply so far outside of anything they've ever been exposed to in their lives, whether personal or professional, that there's nothing there for them to see in Trump's campaign. It's not that they've had experience with it, and reject it -- they have only ever experienced the elite-centered and globalist-centered set of beliefs, discussions, and policies. It's an entire range of wavelengths of light that they've never been exposed to, and remain colorblind to.
Not to be too hard on the talking heads, the entire Establishment group of politicians, donors, voters, and onlookers cannot see what's going on because they've been insulated from populism and nationalism throughout their personal and professional lives.
This bodes well for the general election, obviously, since Hillary couldn't be more immersed in elitism and globalism. But beyond that, it's encouraging that the entrenched incumbents in the economy and the government will not be able to do anything about the Trump phenomenon because they can't even understand it at the simplest level. Trump is like the Predator stalking his victims while cloaked from their vision.
Re-shaping the society back to a healthy state will take a long time, but each necessary action will not be a bitter war of attrition. It's going to be like shooting fish in a barrel.
February 23, 2016
When manufacturing returns, consumer prices may not rise; rather, stockholders may see lower profits
We've never off-shored entire fundamental sectors of our economy before, nor have we taken them back. So we have no history to consult when we try to figure out what might happen once the Trump administration begins to bring manufacturing back to the United States.
Certainly the company's labor costs will be higher -- cutting costs on labor was the main reason they sent the jobs overseas in the first place. Why pay an American who expects $20 an hour, when a Mexican or a Chinese will do it for $5?
But if a company tries to pass that higher labor cost onto the consumer in the form of higher prices, they risk pricing themselves out of the market. After all, there will be other companies in that sector who will raise their prices by a smaller amount in order to grab the customers. This competition creates a race to the bottom, where they won't end up passing on much of the higher labor costs at all.
If they want any business whatsoever, they're just going to have to get by on smaller profit margins than they had been enjoying during the era of off-shoring.
This assumes there's a healthy level of competition, but for most of the stuff we're talking about -- clothing, tools, appliances, electronics, furniture, etc. -- there are already numerous companies competing against each other.
We can dismiss any hysteria about the profit margins already being so razor-thin -- that's more for retailers, not the producers themselves. We know that the smaller profit margins are sustainable because that's how the economy worked for decades and decades before the stock market boom that only began in the 1980s. Labor costs were high because companies paid good wages, yet profits were not very high as seen in the low level of stock market value. It must have been that prices to consumers were not outta-whack with what we see today.
It's striking to look through old ads and adjust prices for inflation -- cars, scissors, power drills, all kinds of stuff doesn't seem to have been much more expensive back when it was made in America, and when labor costs were therefore higher than today's junk made with cheap Chinese sweatshop labor. (This is not even counting how much greater the quality was when it was made in the first world.)
All sorts of other things have gotten much more expensive than even the overall rate of inflation, like housing, health care, education, and more recently energy and food. These are subject to bubbles of one sort or another, unlike garden-variety consumer products like silverware, screwdrivers, and sweaters.
Most of the scaremongering about higher prices if we return manufacturing to America seems to come from those with a lot of stock market wealth that could evaporate if higher labor costs, combined with a competitive mature industry, means that profits will start to tank for shareholders. That's all for the good: they only got all that wealth since the '80s because off-shoring jobs allowed shareholder value to soar. They got rich from dismantling our economy, so they can lose their ill-gotten wealth in order to restore our economy.
Restoring a healthy economy will lower the top, which has been shooting off into outer space over the past 30 to 40 years, and will raise the bottom, who have been scraping by on stagnant or declining real incomes.
This form of narrowing inequality does not involve taxing the rich and handing out goodies to the poor. It simply removes the ability of elites to leverage a decision about off-shoring into massive wealth to stockholders, which also has the effect of providing good-paying jobs to the bottom layers of the pyramid. This way does not stoke class war in the way that Robin Hood policies would -- some degree of those might be fine, too, but only after making these structural changes that are not an overt form of class war.
An entirely similar line of argument shows the effect of deporting the illegals in the American labor market, and even curtailing the ranks of legal immigrants in our workforce. Whether the foreigner who steals the American's job lives in his homeland (off-shoring) or has been brought here (scabs) makes no difference.
Getting rid of illegals will increase the labor costs to the companies who must now employ Americans, but in any competitive industry these will not be able to be passed on very much to the consumer as higher prices. Rather, the company will simply make less in profits and their stock won't be worth as much.
Very well -- most of us don't own that much wealth in stock, and if you do treat the stock market as a great big casino, you have to accept the possibility of getting burned big-time. You should have invested your money in a more responsible way than in the disgraceful dismantling of your own country's economy. It's far beyond time for the 1980s stock market bubble to burst for good.
Certainly the company's labor costs will be higher -- cutting costs on labor was the main reason they sent the jobs overseas in the first place. Why pay an American who expects $20 an hour, when a Mexican or a Chinese will do it for $5?
But if a company tries to pass that higher labor cost onto the consumer in the form of higher prices, they risk pricing themselves out of the market. After all, there will be other companies in that sector who will raise their prices by a smaller amount in order to grab the customers. This competition creates a race to the bottom, where they won't end up passing on much of the higher labor costs at all.
If they want any business whatsoever, they're just going to have to get by on smaller profit margins than they had been enjoying during the era of off-shoring.
This assumes there's a healthy level of competition, but for most of the stuff we're talking about -- clothing, tools, appliances, electronics, furniture, etc. -- there are already numerous companies competing against each other.
We can dismiss any hysteria about the profit margins already being so razor-thin -- that's more for retailers, not the producers themselves. We know that the smaller profit margins are sustainable because that's how the economy worked for decades and decades before the stock market boom that only began in the 1980s. Labor costs were high because companies paid good wages, yet profits were not very high as seen in the low level of stock market value. It must have been that prices to consumers were not outta-whack with what we see today.
It's striking to look through old ads and adjust prices for inflation -- cars, scissors, power drills, all kinds of stuff doesn't seem to have been much more expensive back when it was made in America, and when labor costs were therefore higher than today's junk made with cheap Chinese sweatshop labor. (This is not even counting how much greater the quality was when it was made in the first world.)
All sorts of other things have gotten much more expensive than even the overall rate of inflation, like housing, health care, education, and more recently energy and food. These are subject to bubbles of one sort or another, unlike garden-variety consumer products like silverware, screwdrivers, and sweaters.
Most of the scaremongering about higher prices if we return manufacturing to America seems to come from those with a lot of stock market wealth that could evaporate if higher labor costs, combined with a competitive mature industry, means that profits will start to tank for shareholders. That's all for the good: they only got all that wealth since the '80s because off-shoring jobs allowed shareholder value to soar. They got rich from dismantling our economy, so they can lose their ill-gotten wealth in order to restore our economy.
Restoring a healthy economy will lower the top, which has been shooting off into outer space over the past 30 to 40 years, and will raise the bottom, who have been scraping by on stagnant or declining real incomes.
This form of narrowing inequality does not involve taxing the rich and handing out goodies to the poor. It simply removes the ability of elites to leverage a decision about off-shoring into massive wealth to stockholders, which also has the effect of providing good-paying jobs to the bottom layers of the pyramid. This way does not stoke class war in the way that Robin Hood policies would -- some degree of those might be fine, too, but only after making these structural changes that are not an overt form of class war.
An entirely similar line of argument shows the effect of deporting the illegals in the American labor market, and even curtailing the ranks of legal immigrants in our workforce. Whether the foreigner who steals the American's job lives in his homeland (off-shoring) or has been brought here (scabs) makes no difference.
Getting rid of illegals will increase the labor costs to the companies who must now employ Americans, but in any competitive industry these will not be able to be passed on very much to the consumer as higher prices. Rather, the company will simply make less in profits and their stock won't be worth as much.
Very well -- most of us don't own that much wealth in stock, and if you do treat the stock market as a great big casino, you have to accept the possibility of getting burned big-time. You should have invested your money in a more responsible way than in the disgraceful dismantling of your own country's economy. It's far beyond time for the 1980s stock market bubble to burst for good.
February 22, 2016
News for Cruz: Culture war doesn't play back East, even with evangelicals
One of the most refreshing outcomes of the South Carolina exit polls was that Trump won handily over Cruz with evangelicals, reversing his loss among that group to Cruz in Iowa (really the only group there that he didn't win with).
A hilariously poorly researched article at -- where else? -- National Review attributes Trump's success with Southern evangelicals to their lower rates of church attendance, while Cruz does better with the supposedly more frequent attenders in the Plains states.
One problem: the Bible Belt is in the Southeast, not the Plains. The blog poster (a Millennial) only alludes to "data compiled by the Association of Religious Data Archives" to support his claim that the Bible Belt is in the Plains, and that "When it comes to church participation, many parts of the South fare no better than liberal enclaves in in the Northeast".
Data from the General Social Survey show what everyone already knows, that the Southeast is the Bible Belt, and the Plains less so.* Even casual browsing of the Wikipedia entry on religion in America provides not only a map but also a table of values showing that the Southeast is indeed the Bible Belt, with the Plains states coming in a distinct second place. Here's the map of attendance:
Here is a map of "adherents," meaning those who are simply affiliated with a church, regardless of how frequently they attend services:
Now it is the Plains states that are in the lead -- but not for attendance. In the Religious Congregations & Membership Study, "adherents" include children, and fertility rates are higher in the Plains states, so it's possible that their higher level of "adherents" is simply due to larger family sizes there compared to the crowded Southeast.
The bogus narrative about Trump only winning among fair-weather evangelicals was meant by the lazy NR blog poster to suggest that Trump's religious supporters, like Trump himself, are weak Christians at best. They may identify with a church, but do not attend often.
No shock that NR is dead wrong yet again about Trump's supporters. You don't find more frequent church-attenders than in the Southeast. If anything, it's the evangelicals in the Plains who are more into Christianity theoretically than in the butts-in-pews manner -- part of the general airy-fairy mentality out west of the Mississippi River.
The thumping that Trump gave Cruz in a state seemingly tailored to his evangelical appeal reveals a divide within evangelicals that we see within the general population, religious or not. Folks back East are more pragmatic, emphasize common sense (along with religion, in the South), feel more secure in their environments, and generally have their social and emotional needs met. Southerners are famously cheerful.
This makes them less susceptible to the razzle-dazzle charms and incantations of a snake oil salesman from out West, where folks are more idealistic, prize the counter-intuitive over common sense, feel insecure in their environments, where they're prepping for the apocalypse, and are more loners and paranoids who are socially and emotionally starved (and not stereotyped as always full of good cheer). That group is ripe for being spellbound by a cult guru like Cruz.
For evangelicals back East, church life is part of overall social life. They don't try to make such a big show about it any more than they do about their family lives, however intensely they may be involved in both. Because they see their family and community lives enduring healthily into the future, they see their church life doing so as well. It's not very apocalyptic, where the ways of the world are on the verge of being turned upside-down.
Evangelicals out West, on the other hand, could not act more holier-than-thou, self-righteous, and vainglorious. It's not so much a part of their social lives (which are not as rich as they are in the Deep South), as it is part of their personal or household-level preparation for the apocalypse. The federal gubmint is out to get you, Satan or the Anti-Christ is out to get you, somebody or other is just around the corner, ready to unleash all Hell upon Earth. Time to prepare for basic survival and the final moral judgment, lest you perish in the imminent chaos.
This also relates to the difference between status contests based on career striving vs. lifestyle striving, where folks out West make a bigger contest out of their lifestyles, while those back East focus more on their careers. Going to church, and carrying out various other religious practices, falls under lifestyle. And just as athletic people in the Southeast don't preen about some overly complicated fitness routine, the evangelicals are less likely than they are out West to treat religion as a battleground for one-upping their rivals in the status contest.
Cruz and his cult are in for a rude awakening when they cross the Mississippi, if they think their apocalyptic freak-out happenings are going to play with the local audiences, just because the preacher has a slight drawl. Texas is not part of the South, any more than Minnesota is part of the Northeast. Southerners are too polite and hospitable to break the Texans' hearts directly, but they're not going to extend their sympathy when it comes to the voting booth, where they're sending the Cruz cult a loud and clear signal to don't let the door hitcha where the good Lord splitcha.
* The GSS uses Census regions, where "South Atlantic" includes Maryland down through Florida, so to estimate Georgia and South Carolina we simply bump the numbers up a bit since Maryland and Florida are less frequent attenders. And "East South Central" is Deep South already -- Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi. The Plains states fall under West North Central and West South Central.
A hilariously poorly researched article at -- where else? -- National Review attributes Trump's success with Southern evangelicals to their lower rates of church attendance, while Cruz does better with the supposedly more frequent attenders in the Plains states.
One problem: the Bible Belt is in the Southeast, not the Plains. The blog poster (a Millennial) only alludes to "data compiled by the Association of Religious Data Archives" to support his claim that the Bible Belt is in the Plains, and that "When it comes to church participation, many parts of the South fare no better than liberal enclaves in in the Northeast".
Data from the General Social Survey show what everyone already knows, that the Southeast is the Bible Belt, and the Plains less so.* Even casual browsing of the Wikipedia entry on religion in America provides not only a map but also a table of values showing that the Southeast is indeed the Bible Belt, with the Plains states coming in a distinct second place. Here's the map of attendance:
Here is a map of "adherents," meaning those who are simply affiliated with a church, regardless of how frequently they attend services:
Now it is the Plains states that are in the lead -- but not for attendance. In the Religious Congregations & Membership Study, "adherents" include children, and fertility rates are higher in the Plains states, so it's possible that their higher level of "adherents" is simply due to larger family sizes there compared to the crowded Southeast.
The bogus narrative about Trump only winning among fair-weather evangelicals was meant by the lazy NR blog poster to suggest that Trump's religious supporters, like Trump himself, are weak Christians at best. They may identify with a church, but do not attend often.
No shock that NR is dead wrong yet again about Trump's supporters. You don't find more frequent church-attenders than in the Southeast. If anything, it's the evangelicals in the Plains who are more into Christianity theoretically than in the butts-in-pews manner -- part of the general airy-fairy mentality out west of the Mississippi River.
The thumping that Trump gave Cruz in a state seemingly tailored to his evangelical appeal reveals a divide within evangelicals that we see within the general population, religious or not. Folks back East are more pragmatic, emphasize common sense (along with religion, in the South), feel more secure in their environments, and generally have their social and emotional needs met. Southerners are famously cheerful.
This makes them less susceptible to the razzle-dazzle charms and incantations of a snake oil salesman from out West, where folks are more idealistic, prize the counter-intuitive over common sense, feel insecure in their environments, where they're prepping for the apocalypse, and are more loners and paranoids who are socially and emotionally starved (and not stereotyped as always full of good cheer). That group is ripe for being spellbound by a cult guru like Cruz.
For evangelicals back East, church life is part of overall social life. They don't try to make such a big show about it any more than they do about their family lives, however intensely they may be involved in both. Because they see their family and community lives enduring healthily into the future, they see their church life doing so as well. It's not very apocalyptic, where the ways of the world are on the verge of being turned upside-down.
Evangelicals out West, on the other hand, could not act more holier-than-thou, self-righteous, and vainglorious. It's not so much a part of their social lives (which are not as rich as they are in the Deep South), as it is part of their personal or household-level preparation for the apocalypse. The federal gubmint is out to get you, Satan or the Anti-Christ is out to get you, somebody or other is just around the corner, ready to unleash all Hell upon Earth. Time to prepare for basic survival and the final moral judgment, lest you perish in the imminent chaos.
This also relates to the difference between status contests based on career striving vs. lifestyle striving, where folks out West make a bigger contest out of their lifestyles, while those back East focus more on their careers. Going to church, and carrying out various other religious practices, falls under lifestyle. And just as athletic people in the Southeast don't preen about some overly complicated fitness routine, the evangelicals are less likely than they are out West to treat religion as a battleground for one-upping their rivals in the status contest.
Cruz and his cult are in for a rude awakening when they cross the Mississippi, if they think their apocalyptic freak-out happenings are going to play with the local audiences, just because the preacher has a slight drawl. Texas is not part of the South, any more than Minnesota is part of the Northeast. Southerners are too polite and hospitable to break the Texans' hearts directly, but they're not going to extend their sympathy when it comes to the voting booth, where they're sending the Cruz cult a loud and clear signal to don't let the door hitcha where the good Lord splitcha.
* The GSS uses Census regions, where "South Atlantic" includes Maryland down through Florida, so to estimate Georgia and South Carolina we simply bump the numbers up a bit since Maryland and Florida are less frequent attenders. And "East South Central" is Deep South already -- Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi. The Plains states fall under West North Central and West South Central.
Bush / Kasich / Carson supporters may just stay home rather than vote Cruz or Rubio, which helps Trump
Now that Jeb is out of the race, people are talking about where his support goes. He had 8% in South Carolina -- perhaps that could be added to the Establishment favorite Rubio, and suddenly he's at 30% and within striking distance of Trump. Ditto for Kasich's support when he drops out. Carson's support would more likely go to Cruz.
Trump has already said that some of that support will go to himself. It's not as though the supporters of non-Trump candidates are so overwhelmingly anti-Trump that they won't vote for him, even when he's so clearly the front-runner in the polls, popular vote, and most importantly the delegate count. There will be an "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" bloc that will boost his numbers, too, not just those of his rivals.
But what if a good chunk of them don't even bother voting, with the departure of their favorite candidate, and even entire class of candidates -- the Nice Guys (TM)?
Think of what a hardened fringe group they are -- to be holding out for Jeb this late in his abysmal campaign. They are not merely Establishment voters, they are so deluded that they thought Jeb of all people was their one true prayer for victory. Anyone more pragmatic, who might have been juggling Jeb around back in July, should have already moved on to Rubio.
Let's consider their choices.
They won't go for Kasich or Carson since these are niche candidates, and the former Jeb supporters already tried a niche candidate that didn't work. If they choose anyone at all to support now, it'll be one of the main three. (And even if they did go for another niche candidate, that simply delays the inevitable for when the last niche nice guy drops out.)
They could try Rubio, but if they were delusional for Jeb, they probably can't get past Rubio's lack of experience, lack of pedigree, lack of avuncular personality, etc. Plus Rubio stabbed his former mentor in the back, and that mentor was their favorite pick. They might not be able to forgive.
They would probably not go for Cruz -- he's part of the Establishment, but from the evangelical wing rather than the financial elite wing. Like Rubio, he has little experience, doesn't come from a proven dynasty, and has a creepy personality, all of which matter to Jeb supporters. He's too slimy for all but the most hardcore apocalyptic / evangelical voters.
And they could go Trump, if only to support the winner.
None of these three seem awfully likely, so perhaps these hardcore Jeb supporters will simply not show up to the polls this year. They prize candidates who have lots of political experience, some level of accomplishments to point to, probably with executive experience, politically connected, not a creepy weirdo personality, niceness and decorum matters more than substance, and so on. They might just write off the 2016 GOP race, as it exists now, as a clown-filled circus with no more appealing choices left.
More or less the same conclusion can be reached for the former hardcore Kasich supporters. And similarly for the hardcore Carson supporters, with Cruz being the only hopeful recipient. However, just like with Jeb supporters having trouble forgiving Rubio for stabbing Jeb in the back, hardcore Carson folks might have trouble forgiving Cruz for lying about Carson getting out of Iowa and stealing a good number of his votes.
So maybe a good amount of these supporters will simply not vote at all. Remember, they're not just "the kind of people that Jeb / Kasich / Carson appeals to," but those who were so devoted to their niche candidate that they stuck it out far beyond any realistic chance they had. These supporters all wanted a niceness candidate, and they're left with the tough-toned Trump, the weasel Cruz, and the slippery foam party backstabber Rubio. "It's become too much of an impolite circus, I won't be dragged down into the mud, so I'll just sit it out this time."
If these former supporters of niche candidates decide not to vote, it benefits Trump in two ways.
First, if Jeb / Kasich / Carson supporters don't join some other candidate's supporters, then the numerator for each remaining candidate stays the same. Nobody gains, nobody loses. Trump benefits by the others not gaining new supporters (numerator).
Second, if Jeb / Kasich / Carson supporters are no longer included in the total count of all voters, they shrink the denominator, which is now made up only of Trump / Cruz / Rubio supporters. When the denominator gets smaller, the fraction gets larger. Trump's share of actual voters (not hypothetical voters) rises a little bit. So does the share for Cruz and Rubio, but not by the same degree because Trump has the largest numerator.
A simple numerical example:
Say there are only 10 supporters in a state, and that they could vote for Trump, Cruz, Rubio, Kasich, Carson, and Jeb. And suppose their support was similar to the polling and early primaries -- 3 for Trump, 2 each for Cruz and Rubio, and 1 each for Kasich, Carson, and Jeb.
Suppose that the niche supporters are so demoralized and disgusted by the remaining viable candidates that they simply don't bother voting.
Then that leaves 3 for Trump, and 2 each for Cruz and Rubio. Same numerators as before. But now there are only 7 voters in total, not 10. Smaller denominator.
With all six candidates to choose from, Trump's popular vote would've been 30%, 20% for Cruz and Rubio, and 10% for the three niche candidates.
With the niche candidates dropping out, and their supporters leaving in disgust along with them, Trump's popular vote share is now 43% (3/7), with 29% (2/7) each for Cruz and Rubio. All of the major candidates increased their popular vote share, but Trump gained 13 points while the other two only gained 9 points. Before, Trump enjoyed a 10-point lead over the other two, while he now enjoys a 14-point lead. Finally, Trump is now much closer to the majority threshold of 50%.
There are two ways in which Trump could come closer to getting a majority of the popular vote -- by converting more of the former niche supporters than Cruz or Rubio could convert, or if they simply dropped out of the electorate.
If you know anyone who's supporting one of the niche candidates, do your best to resonate with their hopelessness of the clown show that the primary race has become, and ask rhetorically is it even worth voting in the primary with only these three weirdos left to choose from? Maybe just sit it out until next time, or the general.
Getting them to sit it out will be much, much easier than trying to convert them to Trump of all candidates. Remember, these are the hardcore "niceness" voters. And it has the same effect -- boosting Trump's share of the actual voters.
It will be hard to evaluate how likely the niche voters are to stay in the electorate, and if so, who they're switching to. But I suspect a decent amount will be so demoralized by the prospect of choosing a tough guy, a weasel, or a backstabbing robot, that they may just sit out the primary this time around and hope for better choices next time. That only helps Trump climb his way toward 50% in the popular vote, which is crucial for the many proportional states where 50% wins all the delegates.
Usually it's the Trump supporters who would be sitting out the primary and the general, which boosted the numbers for the Establishment candidates. Now that we're coming out of the woodwork, it may be having the same effect on the Establishment supporters, sending them to sulk on the sidelines. They deserve it for all the decades they've crowded out a majority-friendly candidate and electorate, and moved farther and farther toward extreme niche positions -- whether on the country club yuppie side or the doomsday cult side.
Trump has already said that some of that support will go to himself. It's not as though the supporters of non-Trump candidates are so overwhelmingly anti-Trump that they won't vote for him, even when he's so clearly the front-runner in the polls, popular vote, and most importantly the delegate count. There will be an "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" bloc that will boost his numbers, too, not just those of his rivals.
But what if a good chunk of them don't even bother voting, with the departure of their favorite candidate, and even entire class of candidates -- the Nice Guys (TM)?
Think of what a hardened fringe group they are -- to be holding out for Jeb this late in his abysmal campaign. They are not merely Establishment voters, they are so deluded that they thought Jeb of all people was their one true prayer for victory. Anyone more pragmatic, who might have been juggling Jeb around back in July, should have already moved on to Rubio.
Let's consider their choices.
They won't go for Kasich or Carson since these are niche candidates, and the former Jeb supporters already tried a niche candidate that didn't work. If they choose anyone at all to support now, it'll be one of the main three. (And even if they did go for another niche candidate, that simply delays the inevitable for when the last niche nice guy drops out.)
They could try Rubio, but if they were delusional for Jeb, they probably can't get past Rubio's lack of experience, lack of pedigree, lack of avuncular personality, etc. Plus Rubio stabbed his former mentor in the back, and that mentor was their favorite pick. They might not be able to forgive.
They would probably not go for Cruz -- he's part of the Establishment, but from the evangelical wing rather than the financial elite wing. Like Rubio, he has little experience, doesn't come from a proven dynasty, and has a creepy personality, all of which matter to Jeb supporters. He's too slimy for all but the most hardcore apocalyptic / evangelical voters.
And they could go Trump, if only to support the winner.
None of these three seem awfully likely, so perhaps these hardcore Jeb supporters will simply not show up to the polls this year. They prize candidates who have lots of political experience, some level of accomplishments to point to, probably with executive experience, politically connected, not a creepy weirdo personality, niceness and decorum matters more than substance, and so on. They might just write off the 2016 GOP race, as it exists now, as a clown-filled circus with no more appealing choices left.
More or less the same conclusion can be reached for the former hardcore Kasich supporters. And similarly for the hardcore Carson supporters, with Cruz being the only hopeful recipient. However, just like with Jeb supporters having trouble forgiving Rubio for stabbing Jeb in the back, hardcore Carson folks might have trouble forgiving Cruz for lying about Carson getting out of Iowa and stealing a good number of his votes.
So maybe a good amount of these supporters will simply not vote at all. Remember, they're not just "the kind of people that Jeb / Kasich / Carson appeals to," but those who were so devoted to their niche candidate that they stuck it out far beyond any realistic chance they had. These supporters all wanted a niceness candidate, and they're left with the tough-toned Trump, the weasel Cruz, and the slippery foam party backstabber Rubio. "It's become too much of an impolite circus, I won't be dragged down into the mud, so I'll just sit it out this time."
If these former supporters of niche candidates decide not to vote, it benefits Trump in two ways.
First, if Jeb / Kasich / Carson supporters don't join some other candidate's supporters, then the numerator for each remaining candidate stays the same. Nobody gains, nobody loses. Trump benefits by the others not gaining new supporters (numerator).
Second, if Jeb / Kasich / Carson supporters are no longer included in the total count of all voters, they shrink the denominator, which is now made up only of Trump / Cruz / Rubio supporters. When the denominator gets smaller, the fraction gets larger. Trump's share of actual voters (not hypothetical voters) rises a little bit. So does the share for Cruz and Rubio, but not by the same degree because Trump has the largest numerator.
A simple numerical example:
Say there are only 10 supporters in a state, and that they could vote for Trump, Cruz, Rubio, Kasich, Carson, and Jeb. And suppose their support was similar to the polling and early primaries -- 3 for Trump, 2 each for Cruz and Rubio, and 1 each for Kasich, Carson, and Jeb.
Suppose that the niche supporters are so demoralized and disgusted by the remaining viable candidates that they simply don't bother voting.
Then that leaves 3 for Trump, and 2 each for Cruz and Rubio. Same numerators as before. But now there are only 7 voters in total, not 10. Smaller denominator.
With all six candidates to choose from, Trump's popular vote would've been 30%, 20% for Cruz and Rubio, and 10% for the three niche candidates.
With the niche candidates dropping out, and their supporters leaving in disgust along with them, Trump's popular vote share is now 43% (3/7), with 29% (2/7) each for Cruz and Rubio. All of the major candidates increased their popular vote share, but Trump gained 13 points while the other two only gained 9 points. Before, Trump enjoyed a 10-point lead over the other two, while he now enjoys a 14-point lead. Finally, Trump is now much closer to the majority threshold of 50%.
There are two ways in which Trump could come closer to getting a majority of the popular vote -- by converting more of the former niche supporters than Cruz or Rubio could convert, or if they simply dropped out of the electorate.
If you know anyone who's supporting one of the niche candidates, do your best to resonate with their hopelessness of the clown show that the primary race has become, and ask rhetorically is it even worth voting in the primary with only these three weirdos left to choose from? Maybe just sit it out until next time, or the general.
Getting them to sit it out will be much, much easier than trying to convert them to Trump of all candidates. Remember, these are the hardcore "niceness" voters. And it has the same effect -- boosting Trump's share of the actual voters.
It will be hard to evaluate how likely the niche voters are to stay in the electorate, and if so, who they're switching to. But I suspect a decent amount will be so demoralized by the prospect of choosing a tough guy, a weasel, or a backstabbing robot, that they may just sit out the primary this time around and hope for better choices next time. That only helps Trump climb his way toward 50% in the popular vote, which is crucial for the many proportional states where 50% wins all the delegates.
Usually it's the Trump supporters who would be sitting out the primary and the general, which boosted the numbers for the Establishment candidates. Now that we're coming out of the woodwork, it may be having the same effect on the Establishment supporters, sending them to sulk on the sidelines. They deserve it for all the decades they've crowded out a majority-friendly candidate and electorate, and moved farther and farther toward extreme niche positions -- whether on the country club yuppie side or the doomsday cult side.
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