TheRickyVaughn
October 12, 2016
October 11, 2016
Obama speechwriter: Bernie's class focus is racist and sexist (Wikileaks)
An earlier post looked at why populism triumphed in the Republican rather than the Democrat primary. In either party, the class orientation had to overcome its party's version of identity politics. That is mostly based on race and ethnicity in the Democrats, and Evangelical Christianity in the Republicans. Race is inherited, while religion is not, making race a stickier aspect of identity to get away from.
This email from the latest Wikileaks series on John Podesta includes a ranting memo by Obama's speechwriter Jon Favreau (Feb. 2016), in which he whines about Bernie's focus on class taking away from the identity politics that has been the Democrats' go-to red meat for at least a generation:
He doesn't really mean the "male" part -- it's just a standard cop-out buzzword that wasn't satisfied to just pile onto whites, why not add men too? Women are just as held down as men are by Wall Street dominating the economy, sending jobs overseas to boost corporate profits, and so on.
What he really means is class vs. race and ethnicity. Working-class people vote similarly, blacks vote similarly. But women do not vote similarly.
Here we see the "basket of deplorables" argument -- a patronizing view of people whose jobs have been sent overseas, and are duped into supporting someone like Trump. Also the dismissive tone toward class politics -- folks in the Rust Belt aren't living paycheck to paycheck, with no good jobs in sight. They're just economically anxious, another bullshit PC euphemism.
Who's blaming blacks, gays, and women for the de-industrialization of our economy and economic inequality? This is just kneejerk "intersectionality," where all identity politics topics are related to each other. In reality, Trump and Bernie only point to immigrants as a source of "economic anxiety" for Americans -- greater supply of labor, lower price of labor, lower wages and incomes.
Favreau is being a typical hysterical homosexual.
Still, that response does have an effect -- to make any discussion of class taboo because you won't only be seen as being skeptical of immigration, but of every kind of diversity -- racial, gender, sexuality, religious, whatever. Populism is racist, sexist, homophobic, etc.
And they're not so wrong, since you are trying to turn the focus away from identity politics and toward class. You aren't anti-black or anti-woman -- you simply don't think national policy has to worry about how racial minorities feel about their identity, or whether men make cat-calls to women wearing revealing clothing. What will the president possibly do to affect those matters? Nothing, but he will affect how much power Wall Street has, whether manufacturing industries stay here or go abroad, and so on.
Favreau says the Democrats have to sideline class matters because Trump has made race, ethnicity, gender, etc., so central -- and yet he's only talked about immigration, not how blacks are ruining society, how women belong in the kitchen, how gays should not allowed to be married, or whatever else. That would be someone more in the mold of Ted Cruz, culture warrior. But again, to the identity-obsessed, anything that is class-oriented must therefore be rabidly against all identity groups.
Too bad he read the mood wrong, which is about populism and the related topic of immigration, rather than about identity politics, only taking the pro-white pro-man pro-hetero side. By misreading the mood, he misreads the roots of Trump's popularity, and misreads how to counteract it -- with a populist of their own, not the most corrupt elitist Establishmentarian they could have possibly run.
His is not an uncommon mistake, and is the reason why the Trump movement has so effortlessly bulldozed through the Establishment of one party and soon the other, the media, and the donor class.
Pay better attention for next time, or you're done for good.
This email from the latest Wikileaks series on John Podesta includes a ranting memo by Obama's speechwriter Jon Favreau (Feb. 2016), in which he whines about Bernie's focus on class taking away from the identity politics that has been the Democrats' go-to red meat for at least a generation:
Far more effective has been what [Hillary has] been doing recently - saying that Bernie is a single issue voter and that there are a lot more issues at stake than Wall Street. This idea that class is the only divide and economic issues are all that matter is a very white male centric view of the world (a Bernie Bro view, if you will).
He doesn't really mean the "male" part -- it's just a standard cop-out buzzword that wasn't satisfied to just pile onto whites, why not add men too? Women are just as held down as men are by Wall Street dominating the economy, sending jobs overseas to boost corporate profits, and so on.
What he really means is class vs. race and ethnicity. Working-class people vote similarly, blacks vote similarly. But women do not vote similarly.
It also reminds me of the hilarious joke that Brian Buetler keeps making every time some asshole says something horribly racist about Obama or sexist about Hillary or prejudice about immigrants and Muslims - oh, let's not blame them, they're just economically anxious.
Here we see the "basket of deplorables" argument -- a patronizing view of people whose jobs have been sent overseas, and are duped into supporting someone like Trump. Also the dismissive tone toward class politics -- folks in the Rust Belt aren't living paycheck to paycheck, with no good jobs in sight. They're just economically anxious, another bullshit PC euphemism.
People are of course economically anxious, and Bernie is tapping into that very well. But that's only half the equation. They're also being told to blame other groups for all their problems - blacks, gays, immigrants, Muslims, women, political correctness, etc. Fighting that intolerance and divisiveness is just as important as fighting inequality - arguably more so in this election because Trump has made it the defining issue.
Who's blaming blacks, gays, and women for the de-industrialization of our economy and economic inequality? This is just kneejerk "intersectionality," where all identity politics topics are related to each other. In reality, Trump and Bernie only point to immigrants as a source of "economic anxiety" for Americans -- greater supply of labor, lower price of labor, lower wages and incomes.
Favreau is being a typical hysterical homosexual.
Still, that response does have an effect -- to make any discussion of class taboo because you won't only be seen as being skeptical of immigration, but of every kind of diversity -- racial, gender, sexuality, religious, whatever. Populism is racist, sexist, homophobic, etc.
And they're not so wrong, since you are trying to turn the focus away from identity politics and toward class. You aren't anti-black or anti-woman -- you simply don't think national policy has to worry about how racial minorities feel about their identity, or whether men make cat-calls to women wearing revealing clothing. What will the president possibly do to affect those matters? Nothing, but he will affect how much power Wall Street has, whether manufacturing industries stay here or go abroad, and so on.
Favreau says the Democrats have to sideline class matters because Trump has made race, ethnicity, gender, etc., so central -- and yet he's only talked about immigration, not how blacks are ruining society, how women belong in the kitchen, how gays should not allowed to be married, or whatever else. That would be someone more in the mold of Ted Cruz, culture warrior. But again, to the identity-obsessed, anything that is class-oriented must therefore be rabidly against all identity groups.
Too bad he read the mood wrong, which is about populism and the related topic of immigration, rather than about identity politics, only taking the pro-white pro-man pro-hetero side. By misreading the mood, he misreads the roots of Trump's popularity, and misreads how to counteract it -- with a populist of their own, not the most corrupt elitist Establishmentarian they could have possibly run.
His is not an uncommon mistake, and is the reason why the Trump movement has so effortlessly bulldozed through the Establishment of one party and soon the other, the media, and the donor class.
Pay better attention for next time, or you're done for good.
Categories:
Dudes and dudettes,
Economics,
Gays,
Human Biodiversity,
Politics,
Psychology,
Religion
October 9, 2016
Trumpenprole army anthem: "Balls To the Wall"
After such a bald-faced coup attempt by the GOP elite, it's time for the Trumpenprole army to get pumped up for a rebellion against the ringleaders of this prison of a political party.
Take no more beatings.
Break your chains.
Shiv the jailhouse guards.
Hang the warden from a lamppost, light the body on fire.
We the party now, BITCH.
* * * * *
Too many slaves in this world
Die by torture and pain
Too many people do not see
They're killing themselves, going insane
Too many people do not know
Bondage is over the human race
They believe slaves always lose
And this fear keeps them down
Watch the damned (God bless ya)
They're gonna break their chains (Hey)
No, you can't stop them (God bless ya)
They're coming to get you
And then you'll get your
Balls to the wall, man
Balls to the wall
You'll get your balls to the wall, man
Balls to the wall, balls to the wall
You may screw their brains
You may sacrifice them, too
You may mortify their flesh
You may rape them all
One day the tortured stand up
And revolt against the evil
They make you drink your blood
And tear yourself to pieces
You better watch the damned (God bless ya)
They're gonna break their chains (Hey)
No, you can't stop them (God bless ya)
They're coming to get you
And then you'll get your
Balls to the wall, man
Balls to the wall
You'll get your balls to the wall, man
Balls to the wall, balls to the wall
Come on man, let's stand up all over the world
Let's plug a bomb in everyone's arse
If they don't keep us alive, we're gonna fight for the right
Build a wall with the bodies of the dead, and you're saved
Make the world scared, come on, show me the sign of victory
Sign of victory, sign of victory
You better watch the damned (God bless ya)
They're gonna break their chains (Hey)
No, you can't stop them (God bless ya)
They're coming to get you
And then you'll get your
Balls to the wall, man
Balls to the wall
Take no more beatings.
Break your chains.
Shiv the jailhouse guards.
Hang the warden from a lamppost, light the body on fire.
We the party now, BITCH.
* * * * *
Too many slaves in this world
Die by torture and pain
Too many people do not see
They're killing themselves, going insane
Too many people do not know
Bondage is over the human race
They believe slaves always lose
And this fear keeps them down
Watch the damned (God bless ya)
They're gonna break their chains (Hey)
No, you can't stop them (God bless ya)
They're coming to get you
And then you'll get your
Balls to the wall, man
Balls to the wall
You'll get your balls to the wall, man
Balls to the wall, balls to the wall
You may screw their brains
You may sacrifice them, too
You may mortify their flesh
You may rape them all
One day the tortured stand up
And revolt against the evil
They make you drink your blood
And tear yourself to pieces
You better watch the damned (God bless ya)
They're gonna break their chains (Hey)
No, you can't stop them (God bless ya)
They're coming to get you
And then you'll get your
Balls to the wall, man
Balls to the wall
You'll get your balls to the wall, man
Balls to the wall, balls to the wall
Come on man, let's stand up all over the world
Let's plug a bomb in everyone's arse
If they don't keep us alive, we're gonna fight for the right
Build a wall with the bodies of the dead, and you're saved
Make the world scared, come on, show me the sign of victory
Sign of victory, sign of victory
You better watch the damned (God bless ya)
They're gonna break their chains (Hey)
No, you can't stop them (God bless ya)
They're coming to get you
And then you'll get your
Balls to the wall, man
Balls to the wall
Voters care about the past four years, not the past four days
The point of an earlier post about historical models has not gotten through, judging from how concerned people are about the latest campaign brou-ha-ha, worrying about the debates, and so on.
Whether the incumbent party will maintain control of the White House can be predicted months, sometimes years, in advance. Helmut Norpoth and Allan Lichtman, whose models were discussed, have been doing that for several decades, and their models work retrospectively over the past 100 years (Norpoth) to 150 years (Lichtman).
The verdict is in: the incumbent party will lose control, meaning Trump is going to win.
Now, these models do not forecast what the important topics will be during election season, nor which positions on those topics will be the most popular. They do not predict the Electoral College vote (other than to say that whoever wins the popular vote almost always wins the EC), nor do they predict which states will side with which party. They do not give any hint of what the zeitgeist will be like, according to contemporary observers or future historians. They don't even necessarily know who the candidates will be. They simply measure signs of stability vs. disruption.
The kinds of things that these models look at are macro-level conditions that apply over the past four to eight years. For example, there's first-term incumbent advantage -- but an incumbent penalty if the party is going for three or more in a row. Was there discontent with the incumbent Presidential party during the previous mid-term Congressional elections? Which party had the more evenly contested primary battle (weak candidate), and which one had the more lop-sided battle (strong candidate)? Are people happy with the direction the economy has been heading over the past four years? This may differ depending on which section of society is responding. Do people feel more protected or less protected from foreign threats? And so on and so forth.
These thoughts and feelings have been brewing throughout the past four years, largely unconsciously. By the time the election season kicks into high gear, it is too late to alter a person's gut-level intuition about whether they're going to vote for the same party or changing the guard.
This is why campaigns largely do not matter, at least once the primaries are over. People's minds are mostly made up before the general election season has even begun. They will only respond to the output of campaign season -- from the candidates themselves, from the media, from social buzz -- by accepting something if it is concordant with their already formed decision, or rejecting it if it is discordant.
Someone who already felt content with continuing the status quo will seize on Trump's latest problematic words about women from 20 years ago, and dismiss the latest in a long line of leaks proving how corrupt Crooked Hillary has been for her entire career. Someone who already felt fed up with the status quo will seize on the video of Hillary collapsing and being dragged lifelessly into the car, while they will dismiss leaked audio showing Trump to be a skirt-chaser in the past.
These are ad-hoc rationalizations of long-formed gut-level intuitions. Arguing over them will not alter the outcome of the election. People might as well just shut up and wait until Election Day to do what they were already planning to do -- but with the team-vs.-team spectacle that politics has become, voters cannot help themselves. The media cater to this demand for fighting it out over every micro-event in the campaigns.
Trump was onto this in the primaries when he said he could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and still win. He was right because Republican primary voters were fed up with the status quo of the party, for a very long time in fact, and Trump was the only unorthodox and disruptive candidate. Voters who wanted change had only one choice. Of course, you have to be in a league of your own in the way that voters desire -- otherwise you're out immediately like Jim Webb during the Democrat primary.
Please, keep this in mind as we run the gauntlet of the final month of election season. Don't obsess over every nano-fart in the news cycle. And do not spazz out about WHAT TRUMP MUST DO to win. People are going into the voting booth thinking of the past four years, not the past four days.
Whether the incumbent party will maintain control of the White House can be predicted months, sometimes years, in advance. Helmut Norpoth and Allan Lichtman, whose models were discussed, have been doing that for several decades, and their models work retrospectively over the past 100 years (Norpoth) to 150 years (Lichtman).
The verdict is in: the incumbent party will lose control, meaning Trump is going to win.
Now, these models do not forecast what the important topics will be during election season, nor which positions on those topics will be the most popular. They do not predict the Electoral College vote (other than to say that whoever wins the popular vote almost always wins the EC), nor do they predict which states will side with which party. They do not give any hint of what the zeitgeist will be like, according to contemporary observers or future historians. They don't even necessarily know who the candidates will be. They simply measure signs of stability vs. disruption.
The kinds of things that these models look at are macro-level conditions that apply over the past four to eight years. For example, there's first-term incumbent advantage -- but an incumbent penalty if the party is going for three or more in a row. Was there discontent with the incumbent Presidential party during the previous mid-term Congressional elections? Which party had the more evenly contested primary battle (weak candidate), and which one had the more lop-sided battle (strong candidate)? Are people happy with the direction the economy has been heading over the past four years? This may differ depending on which section of society is responding. Do people feel more protected or less protected from foreign threats? And so on and so forth.
These thoughts and feelings have been brewing throughout the past four years, largely unconsciously. By the time the election season kicks into high gear, it is too late to alter a person's gut-level intuition about whether they're going to vote for the same party or changing the guard.
This is why campaigns largely do not matter, at least once the primaries are over. People's minds are mostly made up before the general election season has even begun. They will only respond to the output of campaign season -- from the candidates themselves, from the media, from social buzz -- by accepting something if it is concordant with their already formed decision, or rejecting it if it is discordant.
Someone who already felt content with continuing the status quo will seize on Trump's latest problematic words about women from 20 years ago, and dismiss the latest in a long line of leaks proving how corrupt Crooked Hillary has been for her entire career. Someone who already felt fed up with the status quo will seize on the video of Hillary collapsing and being dragged lifelessly into the car, while they will dismiss leaked audio showing Trump to be a skirt-chaser in the past.
These are ad-hoc rationalizations of long-formed gut-level intuitions. Arguing over them will not alter the outcome of the election. People might as well just shut up and wait until Election Day to do what they were already planning to do -- but with the team-vs.-team spectacle that politics has become, voters cannot help themselves. The media cater to this demand for fighting it out over every micro-event in the campaigns.
Trump was onto this in the primaries when he said he could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and still win. He was right because Republican primary voters were fed up with the status quo of the party, for a very long time in fact, and Trump was the only unorthodox and disruptive candidate. Voters who wanted change had only one choice. Of course, you have to be in a league of your own in the way that voters desire -- otherwise you're out immediately like Jim Webb during the Democrat primary.
Please, keep this in mind as we run the gauntlet of the final month of election season. Don't obsess over every nano-fart in the news cycle. And do not spazz out about WHAT TRUMP MUST DO to win. People are going into the voting booth thinking of the past four years, not the past four days.
Categories:
Economics,
Media,
Politics,
Psychology
October 8, 2016
Moralizing decorum fetishists: Democrats pursue descent into irrelevancy
Admittedly the inversion of which party belongs to the holier-than-thou elites has come abruptly, but you'd think that with the billions of dollars that the Clinton campaign is spending on expert analysis, they'd be better at reading the direction of the country. Then again, maybe it's their sclerotic bureaucracy that keeps them from adapting in real time.
Whatever the reason, they have convinced themselves that "going nuclear" means bringing up past instances of Trump engaging in guy talk about women. And not in a neutral tone of "the evidence speaks for itself," but the most fiery finger-wagging moralizing that we've seen this side of "Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics".
So Trump issues a brief video apologizing for guy talk, then pivoting to attacking Bill's record of sexual assaults and Hillary's intimidation of the victims afterward, to keep them from ruining their ambitions. BFD.
Hillary surely remembers sitting on the couch with Bill for an hour-long interview about his 12 year-long affair with Gennifer Flowers. That was 60 Minutes, right after the Super Bowl. Far more flagrant of an offense, far more groveling of an apology, and far more intense of a spotlight on them before the entire nation.
And yet Bill went on to win the nomination and then the election. In the voting booth, nobody cared about his problematic past with women -- and they didn't even know about his many sexual assaults either.
Beyond not caring, a large share of voters had become downright disgusted by the hypocritical grandstanding about family values from the Religious Right, after so many televangelist scandals (affairs, prostitutes, etc.).
Now the shoe is on the other foot. Everyone except for Millennials knows about Bill's womanizing past, and Hillary's role in at least enabling him. Soon they will learn about his assaults and her intimidation of the victims. Even without knowing about the really gruesome stuff, though, middle America instinctively distrusts the grandstanding about the proper treatment of women, when it's coming from the Clintons.
Can you imagine if in 1992, the lead prosecutor of Bill's character flaws had been Jimmy "I have sinned" Swaggart? Talk about tone-deaf and clueless.
And they're sick of being lectured about women's issues and family values, when the economy continues to provide lower-paying jobs with less security, and when we're wide open to all sorts of foreign threats that the elites tell us not to worry our little heads about.
A generation later, it's still the economy, stupid. It's not that voters liked Slick Willy for having had affairs -- they were rejecting the incumbent party that had degraded into an out-of-touch elitist group that was more worried over decorum than the American people's fundamental well-being. And it's not that most voters like Teflon Don for having joked around about skirt-chasing. They're sick of the incumbent party being more concerned with how we act in our private lives than with protecting us and providing for us.
The difference this time is that the President-to-be is not a phony politician just trying to get elected in order to enrich themselves, while doing nothing to help the voters who got him there. Trump is rich enough already, not a career politician, and has been sticking his neck out for the major causes like being against NAFTA for decades. Real change is coming this time, and people know it -- making them even less likely to give a shit about what he said about chasing tail in the past.
If the Clinton campaign has proven to be this clueless and hell-bent on driving over the cliff, what does that portend about the future of the party? The Bernie fans are planning on an immediate overhauling in their direction, and away from the colossal failure of the Clintons. But I wouldn't bet on that.
Look at how long it took the Republican party to re-orient after becoming less and less electable from 1992 onward. The re-alignment process seems to be subject to hysteresis.
What we're looking at is a near-term rise of the Republicans in their Progressive Era re-incarnation, replacing the corrupt urban immigrant party that the Democrats were around that time (Tammany Hall). After the Democrats carry out their own purge toward populism over the upcoming decades, it will be their day in the sun, a la the New Deal that followed after the Progressive Era.
Whatever the reason, they have convinced themselves that "going nuclear" means bringing up past instances of Trump engaging in guy talk about women. And not in a neutral tone of "the evidence speaks for itself," but the most fiery finger-wagging moralizing that we've seen this side of "Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics".
So Trump issues a brief video apologizing for guy talk, then pivoting to attacking Bill's record of sexual assaults and Hillary's intimidation of the victims afterward, to keep them from ruining their ambitions. BFD.
Hillary surely remembers sitting on the couch with Bill for an hour-long interview about his 12 year-long affair with Gennifer Flowers. That was 60 Minutes, right after the Super Bowl. Far more flagrant of an offense, far more groveling of an apology, and far more intense of a spotlight on them before the entire nation.
And yet Bill went on to win the nomination and then the election. In the voting booth, nobody cared about his problematic past with women -- and they didn't even know about his many sexual assaults either.
Beyond not caring, a large share of voters had become downright disgusted by the hypocritical grandstanding about family values from the Religious Right, after so many televangelist scandals (affairs, prostitutes, etc.).
Now the shoe is on the other foot. Everyone except for Millennials knows about Bill's womanizing past, and Hillary's role in at least enabling him. Soon they will learn about his assaults and her intimidation of the victims. Even without knowing about the really gruesome stuff, though, middle America instinctively distrusts the grandstanding about the proper treatment of women, when it's coming from the Clintons.
Can you imagine if in 1992, the lead prosecutor of Bill's character flaws had been Jimmy "I have sinned" Swaggart? Talk about tone-deaf and clueless.
And they're sick of being lectured about women's issues and family values, when the economy continues to provide lower-paying jobs with less security, and when we're wide open to all sorts of foreign threats that the elites tell us not to worry our little heads about.
A generation later, it's still the economy, stupid. It's not that voters liked Slick Willy for having had affairs -- they were rejecting the incumbent party that had degraded into an out-of-touch elitist group that was more worried over decorum than the American people's fundamental well-being. And it's not that most voters like Teflon Don for having joked around about skirt-chasing. They're sick of the incumbent party being more concerned with how we act in our private lives than with protecting us and providing for us.
The difference this time is that the President-to-be is not a phony politician just trying to get elected in order to enrich themselves, while doing nothing to help the voters who got him there. Trump is rich enough already, not a career politician, and has been sticking his neck out for the major causes like being against NAFTA for decades. Real change is coming this time, and people know it -- making them even less likely to give a shit about what he said about chasing tail in the past.
If the Clinton campaign has proven to be this clueless and hell-bent on driving over the cliff, what does that portend about the future of the party? The Bernie fans are planning on an immediate overhauling in their direction, and away from the colossal failure of the Clintons. But I wouldn't bet on that.
Look at how long it took the Republican party to re-orient after becoming less and less electable from 1992 onward. The re-alignment process seems to be subject to hysteresis.
What we're looking at is a near-term rise of the Republicans in their Progressive Era re-incarnation, replacing the corrupt urban immigrant party that the Democrats were around that time (Tammany Hall). After the Democrats carry out their own purge toward populism over the upcoming decades, it will be their day in the sun, a la the New Deal that followed after the Progressive Era.
Categories:
Dudes and dudettes,
Economics,
Media,
Morality,
Politics,
Psychology,
Religion
October 7, 2016
Why didn't Gore contest 2000 election? Shenanigans of their own?
The 2000 election took place well into the polarized partisan era, so why was there so little of a struggle between the two parties when the outcome was still up in the air after the vote was in?
The incumbent party was the apparent loser, so they should have wielded incumbent advantage in one way or another to squash the challenger party. Its candidate was the next-in-line ally of one of the most ruthless political clans in recent history (the challenger was from the other), so they should have had the killer instinct.
The incumbent party won the popular vote, had rising momentum going from its first to its second term, suggesting a win for the attempt at a third term. And the Electoral College race was about as close as you could get, all hinging on merely hundreds of votes in a very populous state -- which by the most extensive method of recounting, would have swung the state and the entire election to the incumbent party.
Instead, Al Gore declined to contest to the death the shutting down of the recount in Florida, surrendering the White House to the Republicans and the Bush clan in particular once again. Why risk another long string of Republican victories?
Remember that Clinton's terms only looked like an interregnum at best back then -- aside from the deeply unpopular Jimmy Carter, who got dethroned after a single term, and damn near got primaried out of his re-election campaign by Ted Kennedy, it was Republicans from Nixon in '68 through Bush in '88. In the documentary about the Clinton '92 campaign, The War Room, there's a scene where James Carville is trying to fire up the team before the New Hampshire primary, warning them that if they let this go, a Democrat will never win the White House again. After so many McGoverns, Carters, Mondales, and Dukakises, that's how bleak their party's prospects looked.
After only clawing back the presidency for two measly terms, why would the Democrats just hand it over to the Republicans for at least four and perhaps eight more years?
What people have remembered about the recount is that "if everything had been fair," Gore would have won Florida and the election.
Certainly he would have won Florida -- but who says the election? That's assuming that halting the Florida recount was the only event of unfairness that won a state for the wrong party.
Perhaps there were the usual shenanigans by the Democrat urban machines, or rigging the voting machines themselves, or electronically altering the data, or whatever else. If the Democrats pushed hard for fair process in Florida, they would open themselves up to counter-pushes against their own unfair practices in other states.
They would not have wanted to risk airing so much dirty laundry, delegitimizing not just the electoral process (which they don't care about), but more importantly their brand as a party. This could have kept them from pursuing the crusade to "make everything fair" even if they still would have won the election. It would have been almost impossible to govern with so much anti-democratic trickery on both sides being aired in public.
And it's also possible that they would have still lost, even after winning Florida. There were four states that the Democrats won by under 1 point, whose EC votes added up to 30 -- more than enough to outweigh the 25 votes of Florida. These were New Mexico, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Oregon. The margin in numbers of votes was 300-some in New Mexico, and between 4000 to 7000 in the other three -- not impossible for an urban machine to come up with by unsupervised tampering, dead people voting, voters from outside the state, etc. In fact, New Mexico could be left out, and the other three would still make up 25 votes to perfectly replace Florida.
Two of those states were in fact won by Bush in the very next election, New Mexico and Iowa. So who's to say he didn't get robbed in '00?
I'm not saying there was such a degree of fraud in those four states (or other blue states). I'm saying that Gore and the Democrat leadership probably didn't know for sure either. The party elites don't know how the lowly precinct officials conducted themselves in Albuquerque, Milwaukee, Portland, and Davenport. That's all they needed -- a great big deal of uncertainty that would at the least expose all sorts of election fraud by their party, and at most rob them of these states, nullifying the gain of Florida in their supposed pursuit of total fairness.
It's hard to think of a convincing explanation, given what we know about how ruthless and heatedly partisan the top Democrats were, and how little of a fight it would supposedly have taken to win the election -- just recount votes in Florida! The most plausible conclusion is that they would have been found to have committed even more severe crimes of the same kind that they were accusing their enemies of.
The incumbent party was the apparent loser, so they should have wielded incumbent advantage in one way or another to squash the challenger party. Its candidate was the next-in-line ally of one of the most ruthless political clans in recent history (the challenger was from the other), so they should have had the killer instinct.
The incumbent party won the popular vote, had rising momentum going from its first to its second term, suggesting a win for the attempt at a third term. And the Electoral College race was about as close as you could get, all hinging on merely hundreds of votes in a very populous state -- which by the most extensive method of recounting, would have swung the state and the entire election to the incumbent party.
Instead, Al Gore declined to contest to the death the shutting down of the recount in Florida, surrendering the White House to the Republicans and the Bush clan in particular once again. Why risk another long string of Republican victories?
Remember that Clinton's terms only looked like an interregnum at best back then -- aside from the deeply unpopular Jimmy Carter, who got dethroned after a single term, and damn near got primaried out of his re-election campaign by Ted Kennedy, it was Republicans from Nixon in '68 through Bush in '88. In the documentary about the Clinton '92 campaign, The War Room, there's a scene where James Carville is trying to fire up the team before the New Hampshire primary, warning them that if they let this go, a Democrat will never win the White House again. After so many McGoverns, Carters, Mondales, and Dukakises, that's how bleak their party's prospects looked.
After only clawing back the presidency for two measly terms, why would the Democrats just hand it over to the Republicans for at least four and perhaps eight more years?
What people have remembered about the recount is that "if everything had been fair," Gore would have won Florida and the election.
Certainly he would have won Florida -- but who says the election? That's assuming that halting the Florida recount was the only event of unfairness that won a state for the wrong party.
Perhaps there were the usual shenanigans by the Democrat urban machines, or rigging the voting machines themselves, or electronically altering the data, or whatever else. If the Democrats pushed hard for fair process in Florida, they would open themselves up to counter-pushes against their own unfair practices in other states.
They would not have wanted to risk airing so much dirty laundry, delegitimizing not just the electoral process (which they don't care about), but more importantly their brand as a party. This could have kept them from pursuing the crusade to "make everything fair" even if they still would have won the election. It would have been almost impossible to govern with so much anti-democratic trickery on both sides being aired in public.
And it's also possible that they would have still lost, even after winning Florida. There were four states that the Democrats won by under 1 point, whose EC votes added up to 30 -- more than enough to outweigh the 25 votes of Florida. These were New Mexico, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Oregon. The margin in numbers of votes was 300-some in New Mexico, and between 4000 to 7000 in the other three -- not impossible for an urban machine to come up with by unsupervised tampering, dead people voting, voters from outside the state, etc. In fact, New Mexico could be left out, and the other three would still make up 25 votes to perfectly replace Florida.
Two of those states were in fact won by Bush in the very next election, New Mexico and Iowa. So who's to say he didn't get robbed in '00?
I'm not saying there was such a degree of fraud in those four states (or other blue states). I'm saying that Gore and the Democrat leadership probably didn't know for sure either. The party elites don't know how the lowly precinct officials conducted themselves in Albuquerque, Milwaukee, Portland, and Davenport. That's all they needed -- a great big deal of uncertainty that would at the least expose all sorts of election fraud by their party, and at most rob them of these states, nullifying the gain of Florida in their supposed pursuit of total fairness.
It's hard to think of a convincing explanation, given what we know about how ruthless and heatedly partisan the top Democrats were, and how little of a fight it would supposedly have taken to win the election -- just recount votes in Florida! The most plausible conclusion is that they would have been found to have committed even more severe crimes of the same kind that they were accusing their enemies of.
October 6, 2016
Trump improving among non-"married with children" group, vs. old Republicans
One major aspect of the Trump re-alignment that has not gotten any coverage is how the Republican vs. Democrat candidates are appealing to people of different marital status, presence of children, and so on.
Usually the Republican runs on an explicitly natalist platform, whereas Trump has sidelined the issue of abortion, doesn't talk about family values, and doesn't specifically target people who are married with children. Now it is the Democrat who is appealing to suburban parents about how problematic the other candidate's tone and words would be if they came into contact with their innocent children's ears, and what kind of role model the other candidate would set for their little dears while growing up.
Trump is focusing on making life better for all Americans, not just those who score highest on the Ned Flanders index of household type, and he's focusing mainly on class and economic issues. Hillary ought to ask her husband who wins when one candidate is speaking plainly to the plight of working class whites, while the other is a hoity-toity tone-monitor lecturing the rest of us about family values. See here for an earlier discussion.
I compared the support for Trump across various marital and household types, using the Reuters tracking poll for September 2016 and Romney's performance as recorded in the General Social Survey (a national probability sample, and the gold standard for social science research). I restricted respondents to those aged 30-49, to control for whether or not they're likely to be married, have kids at home, etc. I also added 5 points to the Reuters numbers, since they deliberately altered their methodology to penalize him by that much.
He's under-performing Romney among the married-with-children ideal by 15-20 points, but doing much better in the other types (single and never married, divorced, cohabiting, married without children, etc.), by around 5-10 points. This helps Trump because most of the 30-49 age group of voters in 2012 were not married-with-children (only 25-30%). The net effect in this age group is to add about 3 points above Romney. If he can convince the married-with-children types that fixing our broken country is more important than what words their kids hear on the internet, he could improve by 10 points above Romney in this age group.
Reuters doesn't allow us to know the ages of the children at home, but I suspect Trump is out-performing Romney among parents with babies (under 6), since that's the one married-with-children demographic that Democrats tend to win. They emphasize childcare when the kids need it most, and now Trump has stolen their thunder on that topic with his plan to make early childcare more affordable. His sub-Romney support is likely among parents of preteens and teenagers.
Trump's improvement among cohabiting boyfriend-girlfriend households, the divorced, and so on, is not due to these households spurning the ideal of nuclear household living -- as though they simply had fewer burdens and responsibilities, and wanted bigger tax cuts to pursue their materialist hedonistic lifestyles. That would be the yuppies, who are still largely Democrats.
Rather, the non-Flanders people are turning to Trump because they do want to settle down, get married, have children, raise a family, visit the neighborhood children's lemonade stands, host their kids' friends for birthday parties, and the like. But given the downward class mobility that has plagued more and more young people as good-paying jobs have been off-shored or undercut by immigrants working here, and relentless mergers and acquisitions have concentrated the good jobs into fewer households, it's become harder and harder to begin the process of family formation.
Over 10 years ago, Steve Sailer wrote about affordable family formation being the key to the GOP's future, since Republicans did better with voters who were married, had more kids, and lived in areas with cheaper housing (such as in wide-open areas that are easier to develop than land lying next to a major body of water). His policy implications, however, were restricted to lowering costs rather than also raising incomes, and focused only on immigration and deregulation of building (fewer immigrants, less demand for housing, cheaper rents and mortgages).
The main driver of stagnating and falling real incomes over the past 40 years has not been immigration, which has made the trend even worse, but the disappearance of high-paying jobs. That is due to both the off-shoring of jobs (especially manufacturing, which paid many times the minimum wage), and the consolidation of good jobs via the trend toward monopolization in the era of deregulation mania.
However, using trade agreements and tariffs to bring those good jobs back here would hurt corporate profits (the very reason they were off-shored in the first place). So would breaking up big industries and blocking most mergers and acquisitions. Here we see the trade-off between favoring business interests and affordable family formation -- beyond the wage-lowering effect of businesses bringing in cheap unskilled labor. Even if we kicked all the immigrants out and shut the door, we would still have to take on the Chamber of Commerce in order for more citizens to realize the American dream in their family lives.
Under the Reagan-era coalition of the GOP, business interests were inviolable, and an elitist agenda was pursued. Downward mobility meant you were a sucker who should just go vote for the welfare-dispensing Democrats. With the populist re-alignment of the Trump movement, business interests will become subordinated to the well-being of all citizens. Now it is coherent and popular to discuss both the cost-lowering solution of immigration restriction, as well as the income-raising solution of a more protectionist trade policy and trust-busting attitude.
The natural "golden age" to look back toward for affordable family formation is the Baby Boom of the early post-WWII period. There was minimal immigration, but more importantly there was soaring prosperity (falling inequality) due to protectionist trade policy, a distrust of monopoly, and collective bargaining by labor unions. Tightly regulated banking was not very profitable, while most recent high school graduates could earn enough at a manufacturing plant to get married, buy a house, and start having children.
Only by proposing a fundamental re-structuring of the economy -- re-industrialization -- has Trump been able to succeed where the old Republican party had so pitifully failed in promoting affordable family formation.
Bernie Sanders was on the right track, too, and also galvanized the downwardly mobile and stagnant "young" people ("when you're over 70, under 40 will seem young"). However, he didn't focus quite enough on re-industrialization, almost writing it off as fantasy to return to the good ol' 1950s and '60s.
He focused on maintaining or extending the knowledge economy, just making it cost less to get a degree. But what are they supposed to do with that degree? Not everybody is going to become a professor, lawyer, or doctor. Raise the minimum wage for overly educated service workers? Fewer would be hired. Better to have higher-paying jobs being produced because the work is valuable to the company owners and the end consumers -- assembling a truck, not assembling a taco.
As Trump's plan of re-industrialization and trust-busting bears fruit, I think more and more of the Sanders supporters will come around to the new Republican party.
Usually the Republican runs on an explicitly natalist platform, whereas Trump has sidelined the issue of abortion, doesn't talk about family values, and doesn't specifically target people who are married with children. Now it is the Democrat who is appealing to suburban parents about how problematic the other candidate's tone and words would be if they came into contact with their innocent children's ears, and what kind of role model the other candidate would set for their little dears while growing up.
Trump is focusing on making life better for all Americans, not just those who score highest on the Ned Flanders index of household type, and he's focusing mainly on class and economic issues. Hillary ought to ask her husband who wins when one candidate is speaking plainly to the plight of working class whites, while the other is a hoity-toity tone-monitor lecturing the rest of us about family values. See here for an earlier discussion.
I compared the support for Trump across various marital and household types, using the Reuters tracking poll for September 2016 and Romney's performance as recorded in the General Social Survey (a national probability sample, and the gold standard for social science research). I restricted respondents to those aged 30-49, to control for whether or not they're likely to be married, have kids at home, etc. I also added 5 points to the Reuters numbers, since they deliberately altered their methodology to penalize him by that much.
He's under-performing Romney among the married-with-children ideal by 15-20 points, but doing much better in the other types (single and never married, divorced, cohabiting, married without children, etc.), by around 5-10 points. This helps Trump because most of the 30-49 age group of voters in 2012 were not married-with-children (only 25-30%). The net effect in this age group is to add about 3 points above Romney. If he can convince the married-with-children types that fixing our broken country is more important than what words their kids hear on the internet, he could improve by 10 points above Romney in this age group.
Reuters doesn't allow us to know the ages of the children at home, but I suspect Trump is out-performing Romney among parents with babies (under 6), since that's the one married-with-children demographic that Democrats tend to win. They emphasize childcare when the kids need it most, and now Trump has stolen their thunder on that topic with his plan to make early childcare more affordable. His sub-Romney support is likely among parents of preteens and teenagers.
Trump's improvement among cohabiting boyfriend-girlfriend households, the divorced, and so on, is not due to these households spurning the ideal of nuclear household living -- as though they simply had fewer burdens and responsibilities, and wanted bigger tax cuts to pursue their materialist hedonistic lifestyles. That would be the yuppies, who are still largely Democrats.
Rather, the non-Flanders people are turning to Trump because they do want to settle down, get married, have children, raise a family, visit the neighborhood children's lemonade stands, host their kids' friends for birthday parties, and the like. But given the downward class mobility that has plagued more and more young people as good-paying jobs have been off-shored or undercut by immigrants working here, and relentless mergers and acquisitions have concentrated the good jobs into fewer households, it's become harder and harder to begin the process of family formation.
Over 10 years ago, Steve Sailer wrote about affordable family formation being the key to the GOP's future, since Republicans did better with voters who were married, had more kids, and lived in areas with cheaper housing (such as in wide-open areas that are easier to develop than land lying next to a major body of water). His policy implications, however, were restricted to lowering costs rather than also raising incomes, and focused only on immigration and deregulation of building (fewer immigrants, less demand for housing, cheaper rents and mortgages).
The main driver of stagnating and falling real incomes over the past 40 years has not been immigration, which has made the trend even worse, but the disappearance of high-paying jobs. That is due to both the off-shoring of jobs (especially manufacturing, which paid many times the minimum wage), and the consolidation of good jobs via the trend toward monopolization in the era of deregulation mania.
However, using trade agreements and tariffs to bring those good jobs back here would hurt corporate profits (the very reason they were off-shored in the first place). So would breaking up big industries and blocking most mergers and acquisitions. Here we see the trade-off between favoring business interests and affordable family formation -- beyond the wage-lowering effect of businesses bringing in cheap unskilled labor. Even if we kicked all the immigrants out and shut the door, we would still have to take on the Chamber of Commerce in order for more citizens to realize the American dream in their family lives.
Under the Reagan-era coalition of the GOP, business interests were inviolable, and an elitist agenda was pursued. Downward mobility meant you were a sucker who should just go vote for the welfare-dispensing Democrats. With the populist re-alignment of the Trump movement, business interests will become subordinated to the well-being of all citizens. Now it is coherent and popular to discuss both the cost-lowering solution of immigration restriction, as well as the income-raising solution of a more protectionist trade policy and trust-busting attitude.
The natural "golden age" to look back toward for affordable family formation is the Baby Boom of the early post-WWII period. There was minimal immigration, but more importantly there was soaring prosperity (falling inequality) due to protectionist trade policy, a distrust of monopoly, and collective bargaining by labor unions. Tightly regulated banking was not very profitable, while most recent high school graduates could earn enough at a manufacturing plant to get married, buy a house, and start having children.
Only by proposing a fundamental re-structuring of the economy -- re-industrialization -- has Trump been able to succeed where the old Republican party had so pitifully failed in promoting affordable family formation.
Bernie Sanders was on the right track, too, and also galvanized the downwardly mobile and stagnant "young" people ("when you're over 70, under 40 will seem young"). However, he didn't focus quite enough on re-industrialization, almost writing it off as fantasy to return to the good ol' 1950s and '60s.
He focused on maintaining or extending the knowledge economy, just making it cost less to get a degree. But what are they supposed to do with that degree? Not everybody is going to become a professor, lawyer, or doctor. Raise the minimum wage for overly educated service workers? Fewer would be hired. Better to have higher-paying jobs being produced because the work is valuable to the company owners and the end consumers -- assembling a truck, not assembling a taco.
As Trump's plan of re-industrialization and trust-busting bears fruit, I think more and more of the Sanders supporters will come around to the new Republican party.
October 5, 2016
No signs of third-party cuck victory in Mountain states
An earlier post looked into the nature of the American two-party system, where each party is really a coalition of various groups that would form their own separate parties in Europe. Here, we form the coalition before the election rather than after. That seems to make actually governing proceed more swiftly here once the election is done, although it does make for more grand-scale politics leading up to the election, since each party is a great big coalition rather than a smaller party fending for itself.
But that doesn't mean the coalition holds together forever. When there is enough friction, one member group may break off into a protest party of its own:
That's an important point because third parties do not split off from a party that is already the opposition -- only from the incumbent party. Being taken for granted, abused, etc., stings more when you're part of the incumbent party because you aren't enjoying the fruits of victory like the other member groups are.
Once the Trump movement takes office, there could come a time after four or eight years when some of the older and now lesser elements of the coalition will feel slighted, taken for granted, and so on. We need to do our best to keep every group happy so that nobody pulls out -- at least, to the extent that they would jeopardize victory. If only one small state pulled out, and we would otherwise win by a large margin, we'd still win, just by a slightly smaller margin.
But if it's part of a broader discontent, then the coalition could be in serious trouble. For example, the Deep South punishing the Democrats in 1968 for cutting against white Southerners' interests by going whole-hog on the Civil Rights movement.
For the Trump movement, the weakest members are the apocalyptic Judaizers in the Plains and Mountain states, particularly the Mormons. So let's take a look at Utah and see if there are any signs already visible of a splinter movement there.
Right now, Trump is comfortably ahead of not only the Democrat but also the various third-party candidates, of which there are many. That is their main problem -- they are voting against Trump out of a sense of being holier-than-thou, but in what way are they holier-than-thou? There could be any number of traits that they draw that contrast on.
According to polls by PPP, Salt Lake Tribune, and Dan Jones & Assoc., Trump's support is in the high 30s, and Clinton's in the mid 20s. Normally the Republican would go on to win the state with well over 60% of the vote, but Trump is NOT A TRUE CONSERVATIVE.
And yet there is no single candidate who is running away with the 30 points left between Trump and the typical conservative Republican. Libertarian Gary Johnson is polling at 13%, while movement conservative Mormon McCuckin is polling at 10%, and Darrell Castle is at 2% (Constitution Party -- paleocon, theocratic). That still leaves about 10% who are undecided, too.
This is a microcosm of the primaries, where the non-Trump voters were too concerned with tailoring their non-Trump vote to their personal tastes, yielding over a dozen challengers to cater to as many different ideological and personality niches. If they wanted to break away, they had to overlook their personal differences and unite behind just one non-Trump candidate.
At least for now, then, Utah and the region is safe. But it's still something to keep an eye on, and to head off by giving them something in the new Republican Party -- like promising conservative Supreme Court Justices. They may want a more theocratic President, though, not just conservative influence in the courts. They may want weekly performances by a cosplay conservative President (a la Glenn Beck in his cargo cult Oval Office), rather than specific policy changes.
In the event that they did vote for a single third party in the future, that would only remove 13 EC votes. If the re-alignment made Michigan a permanent member of the coalition, that would offset the loss in the Mountain states by 3 votes. To clear 270, we'd need other members in the Great Lakes, Mid-Atlantic, or New England. It wouldn't be the end of the world. See this earlier post on trading the Mormons for Michigan.
The only big loss that would be hard to make up for if they voted third-party is Texas, but they seem to be a lot less likely to splinter. They seem to want to punish Lyin' Ted rather than encourage him as in Utah. Trump is polling about 5 points higher in Texas than in Utah, and the main enemy is Democrats rather than a motley crew of cuck candidates. After deporting the illegals and anchor babies and their extended families, that ought to pad our margin better still.
It is exciting to be bringing in all sorts of new voters, demographic groups, states, and even regions into the Republican Party -- at least for Presidential races. But we need to be mindful of not letting the older groups feel marginalized, lest they abandon ship. And even if that proves inevitable, we need to be doubly aware of it and begin making up for it elsewhere.
But that doesn't mean the coalition holds together forever. When there is enough friction, one member group may break off into a protest party of its own:
Third parties do occasionally achieve national success, but they are short-lived reactions by defectors from one of the two parties, intended to punish the other members of the coalition who have betrayed the defecting group. They realize they will not win the general election as a break-off faction of one of the two parties -- the point is to punish past wrongdoing within the party, and serve as a credible threat against any future betrayal within the party.
Importantly, they are swift responses against the incumbent party -- not delayed grudges.
That's an important point because third parties do not split off from a party that is already the opposition -- only from the incumbent party. Being taken for granted, abused, etc., stings more when you're part of the incumbent party because you aren't enjoying the fruits of victory like the other member groups are.
Once the Trump movement takes office, there could come a time after four or eight years when some of the older and now lesser elements of the coalition will feel slighted, taken for granted, and so on. We need to do our best to keep every group happy so that nobody pulls out -- at least, to the extent that they would jeopardize victory. If only one small state pulled out, and we would otherwise win by a large margin, we'd still win, just by a slightly smaller margin.
But if it's part of a broader discontent, then the coalition could be in serious trouble. For example, the Deep South punishing the Democrats in 1968 for cutting against white Southerners' interests by going whole-hog on the Civil Rights movement.
For the Trump movement, the weakest members are the apocalyptic Judaizers in the Plains and Mountain states, particularly the Mormons. So let's take a look at Utah and see if there are any signs already visible of a splinter movement there.
Right now, Trump is comfortably ahead of not only the Democrat but also the various third-party candidates, of which there are many. That is their main problem -- they are voting against Trump out of a sense of being holier-than-thou, but in what way are they holier-than-thou? There could be any number of traits that they draw that contrast on.
According to polls by PPP, Salt Lake Tribune, and Dan Jones & Assoc., Trump's support is in the high 30s, and Clinton's in the mid 20s. Normally the Republican would go on to win the state with well over 60% of the vote, but Trump is NOT A TRUE CONSERVATIVE.
And yet there is no single candidate who is running away with the 30 points left between Trump and the typical conservative Republican. Libertarian Gary Johnson is polling at 13%, while movement conservative Mormon McCuckin is polling at 10%, and Darrell Castle is at 2% (Constitution Party -- paleocon, theocratic). That still leaves about 10% who are undecided, too.
This is a microcosm of the primaries, where the non-Trump voters were too concerned with tailoring their non-Trump vote to their personal tastes, yielding over a dozen challengers to cater to as many different ideological and personality niches. If they wanted to break away, they had to overlook their personal differences and unite behind just one non-Trump candidate.
At least for now, then, Utah and the region is safe. But it's still something to keep an eye on, and to head off by giving them something in the new Republican Party -- like promising conservative Supreme Court Justices. They may want a more theocratic President, though, not just conservative influence in the courts. They may want weekly performances by a cosplay conservative President (a la Glenn Beck in his cargo cult Oval Office), rather than specific policy changes.
In the event that they did vote for a single third party in the future, that would only remove 13 EC votes. If the re-alignment made Michigan a permanent member of the coalition, that would offset the loss in the Mountain states by 3 votes. To clear 270, we'd need other members in the Great Lakes, Mid-Atlantic, or New England. It wouldn't be the end of the world. See this earlier post on trading the Mormons for Michigan.
The only big loss that would be hard to make up for if they voted third-party is Texas, but they seem to be a lot less likely to splinter. They seem to want to punish Lyin' Ted rather than encourage him as in Utah. Trump is polling about 5 points higher in Texas than in Utah, and the main enemy is Democrats rather than a motley crew of cuck candidates. After deporting the illegals and anchor babies and their extended families, that ought to pad our margin better still.
It is exciting to be bringing in all sorts of new voters, demographic groups, states, and even regions into the Republican Party -- at least for Presidential races. But we need to be mindful of not letting the older groups feel marginalized, lest they abandon ship. And even if that proves inevitable, we need to be doubly aware of it and begin making up for it elsewhere.
Categories:
Geography,
Morality,
Politics,
Psychology,
Religion
October 3, 2016
Poll shifts after "events" are illusory
After last week's debate that the media and the elites declared a resounding victory for Clinton, several bogus polls were released purporting to show a little bump for her. How can we tell about specific polls being bogus, and what larger lessons can be drawn from polling after supposedly big "events" like a debate, gaffe, leaked documents, etc.?
PPP put out a poll where 2% said they were voting for Evan McMullin, the fake "true conservative" candidate whose campaign exists only so that the failed cuckservative consultants who were supporting Rubio etc. can still rake in some donor money this season, and delay having to get real jobs for another six months. This nobody polls below 1% -- which is what PPP says is Jill Stein's support level, when in reality it is more like 2-3%.
In other words, it over-sampled cuckservative Republicans to cut down Trump's numbers, and under-sampled progressive Democrats to boost Clinton's numbers.
Fox News put out a poll where only 18% are Independents, and the wording did not group Democrat with "Democrat leaning Indies" and Republican with "Republican leaning Indies," which is the only way to get that low a share of Independents. Since Trump wins Indies in every poll, this one under-sampled a key support group of his.
Reuters did a little better, as they should given their superior track record from the 2012 general election. Their daily poll shows Trump improving after the debate, not a bump for Hillary like the other two. After the debate, Clinton leads by 3-4 points (4-way vs. heads-up), about what the Fox and PPP polls showed.
However, Reuters surgically altered their methodology in the middle of the election season in order to move soft Trump supporters from "Trump" into one of the other / neither / unsure categories. The result was an overnight 6-point boost for Hillary. Using their original methodology (which is what their high track record from 2012 is based on), they show Trump up by 2-3 points.
That estimate is closer to what the USC poll has said for the post-debate period, which is 4-5 points for Trump. The Reuters and USC polls are also similar in their directions after the debate -- Trump doing better, although that improvement had already been under way for several days, and was therefore not a response to the debate. That is, the debate appears not to have mattered, judging from USC and Reuters.
To make sense of this, consider a recent journal article by Gelman et al (2016), "The Mythical Swing Voter" (found among Ricky Vaughn's tweets).
They look back at the 2012 election, when Romney had a good first debate, and the polls afterward suggested a 10-point movement in his favor. But who participates in the samples before and after the debate are not the same people -- maybe that 10-point swing was real, but maybe it was just a more pro-Romney crowd that participated in the sample after their team smashed the other team in a public spectacle.
Using a panel of the same individuals over time, the researchers were able to see how likely someone was to change after the debate. There was in fact a movement in Romney's direction after winning the first debate, but it was only 2-3 points instead of 10, after correcting for demographic and partisanship differences in the before and after samples.
Most people had the same preference the whole time, with only 3% changing their minds, indicating low volatility. The major difference in the before and after polls was who chose to participate -- those who did after the debate were more likely to be Romney supporters than those who participated before the debate. Perhaps it's the same effect as when fans of the losing sports team suffer a drop in testosterone and enthusiasm generally, while the fans of the winning team are turbo-charged.
So, when pollsters contact different groups of people with each poll they release, they cannot be sure that they have a representative sample each time. Maybe after some event that demoralizes the fans of one candidate, they are less likely to respond to the pollster, maybe telling them to call back when they're in a better mood -- while the fans of the other candidate are now energized at their enemy's misfortune, and are only too eager to participate in a poll and let their support for the winner of the event be known far and wide. They are probably getting a kick just from imagining the other sides' long faces when they read the poll results in a few days.
Gelman et al discuss this in the context of party affiliation, but it's broader than that. It's not only that after an event that damages the Democrat, the polls will under-sample Democrats because they're demoralized. They will under-sample anyone who was for the Democrat -- including partisan Democrats (the bulk of support), but also cross-over voters who are normally Republican, and Independents who are inclined toward the Democrat.
Differential willingness to participate also screws up our ability to generalize about Democrats, Republicans, and Independents, from such a sample, as though we were talking about the same populations every time a poll comes out.
The Democrats who do participate after their team suffers a loss are probably not the most rabid and loyal fans, who are more sensitive to public losses and more likely to be sulking. The Democrat participants are therefore less likely to qualify as "likely voters", and are less in favor of the Democrat candidate, compared to the rabid fans who are sitting things out until some good news comes along to cheer them up and make them feel like participating in the polls again. And the Republicans will not include the cross-over voters, making them even more against the Democrat candidate than is true. And the Independents will also be those more inclined toward the Republican.
The only way to keep track of these things is to track the same individuals over time in a panel. That's what the RAND poll did in 2012, and it out-performed just about all others, particularly when it suggested only a minor slump for Obama after he bombed the first debate, while the others suggested that Romney was not only doing better than before but now ahead of Obama.
The USC poll is the RAND poll under new branding, and that's why it's worth giving greater weight to than the other ones, which are going to be affected by swings in willingness to participate among Trump supporters vs. Clinton supporters. In fact, given how roller coaster-y the emotions have been this season, the non-panel polls will probably do worse than in 2012.
In particular, I've noticed PPP and Quinnipiac, which were among the best last time, have slipped a tier down in their accuracy. For example, Quinnipiac's heads-up poll from 9/8 to 9/13 had Clinton up 5, while USC had Trump up half a point over that period. Before that, PPP's heads-up poll from 8/26 to 8/28 had Clinton up 5, while USC had her up only half a point.
In general, it seems like the non-panel polls are biased against Trump, as their deviation from the more accurate panel polls is always in the pro-Clinton direction, never a more pro-Trump result than USC. Some of that is certainly due to the anti-Trump agenda of the pollsters and their corporate sponsors, which is far fiercer than whatever anti-Romney bias there was last time. Now it's the people and Trump vs. all arms of the Establishment.
But it could also be due to a stronger unwillingness among Trump voters to participate in the non-panel polls this time, compared to Romney voters last time. That's not necessarily because Trump voters are a crankier group of people, but they are more subjected to a 24/7 gauntlet of attempted demoralization by the media, compared to what Romney voters had to put up with last time.
That is evidently having an effect on their willingness to share their views with pollsters, who they might feel are about to engage them in another tedious "gotcha!" debate about whatever the Establishment hitjob du jour is. However, the demoralization campaign is clearly not having an impact on their willingness to support Trump in all ways -- to tune into the debates starring him, to follow him on social media, to attend his rallies or watch them from home, to wear Trump gear or put up Trump signs, and ultimately to vote Trump at the polling station -- first in the primaries, and soon in the general.
In the future, I'd like to see heavy restrictions on what kind of stuff goes on during campaign season. We all know how bad it is that unlimited big money gets involved. But the endless roller coaster of events is worse -- none of them end up changing people's minds or affecting the outcome. They're just a bunch of annoying shit that we're forced by the media to pay attention to. And the media make a fortune during election season -- they're the only ones who benefit from all this crap.
Somehow we elected good presidents like FDR and Eisenhower without any of today's non-stop campaigning (for those with the energy to do so), round-the-clock coverage, and roller coaster of attention and emotion.
PPP put out a poll where 2% said they were voting for Evan McMullin, the fake "true conservative" candidate whose campaign exists only so that the failed cuckservative consultants who were supporting Rubio etc. can still rake in some donor money this season, and delay having to get real jobs for another six months. This nobody polls below 1% -- which is what PPP says is Jill Stein's support level, when in reality it is more like 2-3%.
In other words, it over-sampled cuckservative Republicans to cut down Trump's numbers, and under-sampled progressive Democrats to boost Clinton's numbers.
Fox News put out a poll where only 18% are Independents, and the wording did not group Democrat with "Democrat leaning Indies" and Republican with "Republican leaning Indies," which is the only way to get that low a share of Independents. Since Trump wins Indies in every poll, this one under-sampled a key support group of his.
Reuters did a little better, as they should given their superior track record from the 2012 general election. Their daily poll shows Trump improving after the debate, not a bump for Hillary like the other two. After the debate, Clinton leads by 3-4 points (4-way vs. heads-up), about what the Fox and PPP polls showed.
However, Reuters surgically altered their methodology in the middle of the election season in order to move soft Trump supporters from "Trump" into one of the other / neither / unsure categories. The result was an overnight 6-point boost for Hillary. Using their original methodology (which is what their high track record from 2012 is based on), they show Trump up by 2-3 points.
That estimate is closer to what the USC poll has said for the post-debate period, which is 4-5 points for Trump. The Reuters and USC polls are also similar in their directions after the debate -- Trump doing better, although that improvement had already been under way for several days, and was therefore not a response to the debate. That is, the debate appears not to have mattered, judging from USC and Reuters.
To make sense of this, consider a recent journal article by Gelman et al (2016), "The Mythical Swing Voter" (found among Ricky Vaughn's tweets).
They look back at the 2012 election, when Romney had a good first debate, and the polls afterward suggested a 10-point movement in his favor. But who participates in the samples before and after the debate are not the same people -- maybe that 10-point swing was real, but maybe it was just a more pro-Romney crowd that participated in the sample after their team smashed the other team in a public spectacle.
Using a panel of the same individuals over time, the researchers were able to see how likely someone was to change after the debate. There was in fact a movement in Romney's direction after winning the first debate, but it was only 2-3 points instead of 10, after correcting for demographic and partisanship differences in the before and after samples.
Most people had the same preference the whole time, with only 3% changing their minds, indicating low volatility. The major difference in the before and after polls was who chose to participate -- those who did after the debate were more likely to be Romney supporters than those who participated before the debate. Perhaps it's the same effect as when fans of the losing sports team suffer a drop in testosterone and enthusiasm generally, while the fans of the winning team are turbo-charged.
So, when pollsters contact different groups of people with each poll they release, they cannot be sure that they have a representative sample each time. Maybe after some event that demoralizes the fans of one candidate, they are less likely to respond to the pollster, maybe telling them to call back when they're in a better mood -- while the fans of the other candidate are now energized at their enemy's misfortune, and are only too eager to participate in a poll and let their support for the winner of the event be known far and wide. They are probably getting a kick just from imagining the other sides' long faces when they read the poll results in a few days.
Gelman et al discuss this in the context of party affiliation, but it's broader than that. It's not only that after an event that damages the Democrat, the polls will under-sample Democrats because they're demoralized. They will under-sample anyone who was for the Democrat -- including partisan Democrats (the bulk of support), but also cross-over voters who are normally Republican, and Independents who are inclined toward the Democrat.
Differential willingness to participate also screws up our ability to generalize about Democrats, Republicans, and Independents, from such a sample, as though we were talking about the same populations every time a poll comes out.
The Democrats who do participate after their team suffers a loss are probably not the most rabid and loyal fans, who are more sensitive to public losses and more likely to be sulking. The Democrat participants are therefore less likely to qualify as "likely voters", and are less in favor of the Democrat candidate, compared to the rabid fans who are sitting things out until some good news comes along to cheer them up and make them feel like participating in the polls again. And the Republicans will not include the cross-over voters, making them even more against the Democrat candidate than is true. And the Independents will also be those more inclined toward the Republican.
The only way to keep track of these things is to track the same individuals over time in a panel. That's what the RAND poll did in 2012, and it out-performed just about all others, particularly when it suggested only a minor slump for Obama after he bombed the first debate, while the others suggested that Romney was not only doing better than before but now ahead of Obama.
The USC poll is the RAND poll under new branding, and that's why it's worth giving greater weight to than the other ones, which are going to be affected by swings in willingness to participate among Trump supporters vs. Clinton supporters. In fact, given how roller coaster-y the emotions have been this season, the non-panel polls will probably do worse than in 2012.
In particular, I've noticed PPP and Quinnipiac, which were among the best last time, have slipped a tier down in their accuracy. For example, Quinnipiac's heads-up poll from 9/8 to 9/13 had Clinton up 5, while USC had Trump up half a point over that period. Before that, PPP's heads-up poll from 8/26 to 8/28 had Clinton up 5, while USC had her up only half a point.
In general, it seems like the non-panel polls are biased against Trump, as their deviation from the more accurate panel polls is always in the pro-Clinton direction, never a more pro-Trump result than USC. Some of that is certainly due to the anti-Trump agenda of the pollsters and their corporate sponsors, which is far fiercer than whatever anti-Romney bias there was last time. Now it's the people and Trump vs. all arms of the Establishment.
But it could also be due to a stronger unwillingness among Trump voters to participate in the non-panel polls this time, compared to Romney voters last time. That's not necessarily because Trump voters are a crankier group of people, but they are more subjected to a 24/7 gauntlet of attempted demoralization by the media, compared to what Romney voters had to put up with last time.
That is evidently having an effect on their willingness to share their views with pollsters, who they might feel are about to engage them in another tedious "gotcha!" debate about whatever the Establishment hitjob du jour is. However, the demoralization campaign is clearly not having an impact on their willingness to support Trump in all ways -- to tune into the debates starring him, to follow him on social media, to attend his rallies or watch them from home, to wear Trump gear or put up Trump signs, and ultimately to vote Trump at the polling station -- first in the primaries, and soon in the general.
In the future, I'd like to see heavy restrictions on what kind of stuff goes on during campaign season. We all know how bad it is that unlimited big money gets involved. But the endless roller coaster of events is worse -- none of them end up changing people's minds or affecting the outcome. They're just a bunch of annoying shit that we're forced by the media to pay attention to. And the media make a fortune during election season -- they're the only ones who benefit from all this crap.
Somehow we elected good presidents like FDR and Eisenhower without any of today's non-stop campaigning (for those with the energy to do so), round-the-clock coverage, and roller coaster of attention and emotion.
Categories:
Media,
Politics,
Psychology
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