Tag Archives: U.S. politics

July U.S. Election Check-in

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Well, I was all set to tell you that the polls moved decisively toward Biden in June, and that would have been true with just a few days to go. But it seems the debate on June 27 really did cause a sharp swing toward Trump. I don’t like it, but these are the facts of the case. We will see if the effect is persistent or if things slowly revert to trend. Either way, the polls closing in the last few days of June may not fully indicate the state of the damage, so it may get worse before it gets better for Biden, if it does in fact ever get better.

STATE2020 RESULTMost Recent 538 Poll Average (as of 7/1/24)
ArizonaBiden +0.4%Trump +4.8% (June 1: Trump +4.7)
GeorgiaBiden +0.3%Trump +6.3% (June 1: Trump +5.5)
WisconsinBiden +0.6%Trump +0.8% (June 1: Trump +1.4%)
North CarolinaTrump +1.3%Trump +7.3% (June 1: Trump +6.2%)
PennsylvaniaBiden +1.2%Trump +2.0% (June 1: Trump +2.0%)
MichiganBiden +2.8%Trump +1.8% (June 1: Trump +0.6%)
NevadaBiden +2.4%Trump +3.8% (June 1: Trump +5.9%)

In June, 1/7 swing states had large (> 1%) movement toward Biden – Nevada.

In June, 1/7 swing states had small (< 1%) movement toward Biden – Wisconsin.

In June, 1/7 swing states had no change – Pennsylvania.

In June, 2/7 swing states had small (< 1%) movement toward Trump – Arizona, Georgia.

In June, 2/7 swing states had large (> 1%) movement toward Trump – North Carolina and Michigan.

So the trend is all over the place, with big swings toward Trump coming right at the end of the month. Trump obviously has all the swing states at the moment and is headed for an electoral college landslide if current trends hold.

Enough has been written about the debate. I’ll just link to this Politico article that points out that if you were just reading the transcript, a lot of what he said was very reasonable and even astute. That was my impression when listening to the actual debate. But I can’t excuse any politician for failing to be prepared and put on a decent rhetorical performance – that is what they do, and there 10,000 politicians who could have done it better than Biden did on Thursday night. So either he was inexplicably, inexcusably poorly prepared, or he really is faltering physically and mentally, with dire consequences for our nation’s future.

What would a real “conservative” agenda look like?

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I consider myself a “liberal” to the extent that I think we need major expansion of the social safety net to minimize human suffering and support working families in our country. But let’s say I took a purely rational, “conservative” view. What might that entail?

  1. A level playing field. High inheritance taxes followed by redistribution using baby bonds or something similar. A public education system that spends the same amount and provides the same opportunities per student, regardless of location or background of the students. It would entail making it much easier for a second spouse to work or start a business, which would mean guaranteed childcare and health care benefits for all.
  2. A relentless focus on job skills, innovation and productivity growth. This would mean major and equitable investments in education from preschool through college. It would mean big government investments in basic research, not favoring those with military applications. It would also mean subsidies for companies to invest in research and development and skills development for the workforce. It would mean a rational immigration policy focused on letting in those with job skills that add value to our national economy.
  3. A relentless focus on competition. This would mean vigorous anti-trust enforcement and punishment of price fixing attempts.

Summarizing Project 2025

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In fairness, I don’t see much evidence here of the “blueprint for a fascist takeover” narrative some in the left-wing media are pushing. I see misguided yet unimaginitive ideas for a reorganization of the executive branch, which any new CEO of any organization is likely to undertake just to leave his or her (okay, let’s be honest, HIS in this cracker-ass country of ours) mark on the organization. I’ll just summarize my take on this document below.

  1. Double down on the homophobic, Christian Nationalist agenda. This includes immigration controls and attacks on public education. The immigration controls are counter to the big business cheap labor agenda, though, which raises a conundrum.
  2. Shamelessly let the fossil fuel industry lobby write the nation’s laws in its favor, at the expense of our nation’s food security, our coastal population centers, and everyone on Earth.
  3. Shamelessly give the military-industrial complex anything and everything it wants. This crowds out investment in peaceful innovation and technological progress, and greatly increases the risk of nuclear war.
  4. Shamelessly give the financial industry anything and everything it wants. This includes no functioning health care system in our country, and no regulations to prevent a meltdown of the international financial system such as almost happened in 2008. This is very dangerous.
  5. To nominally promote “small government and low taxes”, eliminate or slash the funding of key agencies that underpin our nation’s resilience to the existential threats of our age. This includes FEMA (fires, floods) and the CDC/NIH complex able to respond to pandemics and biowarfare attacks, which are eventually coming.

Project 2025, Part 4

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Tackling the section called “The Economy”.

  • Self-labeled “Conservatives” are not sure if they like free trade or not. Economic and financial conservatives (confusingly known as “neoliberals” in every other country) do. But the xenophobic element does not, so the Republican party is conflicted about this one. This section is “on the one hand… on the other hand…” drivel with no clear policy position.
  • They want to get rid of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, because this agency knows the incontrovertible truth about climate change (which is always in quotes in this document) and this is against the fossil fuel industry agenda.
  • They want to gut the census bureau, because this agency knows the truth that the United States is under minority rule.
  • They want to gut the IRS.
  • They want to gut the Dodd-Frank rule and other regulations passed on the finance industry after they shamelessly almost destroyed the world’s economy in 2008. This is just shameless caving to a powerful industry lobby.
  • There is a faction that wants to eliminate central banking, or try other yahoo proposals like a return to the gold standard. All this was tried in the 19th century and ushered in a century of chaos, culminating in the GREAT DEPRESSION. This is EXTREMELY DANGEROUS. I am unclear, but I don’t think the executive branch can do this all on its own.

June U.S. election check-in

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I’m sticking with 538’s adjusted poll averages here, which consider poll quality and recency.

STATE2020 RESULTMost Recent 538 Poll Average (as of 6/1/24)
ArizonaBiden +0.4%Trump +4.7% (May 2: Trump +3.2)
GeorgiaBiden +0.3%Trump +5.5% (May 2: Trump +5.9)
WisconsinBiden +0.6%Trump +1.4% (May 2: Trump +2.6%)
North CarolinaTrump +1.3%Trump +6.2% (May 2: Trump +6.4%)
PennsylvaniaBiden +1.2%Trump +2.0% (May 2: Trump +1.8%)
MichiganBiden +2.8%Trump +0.6% (May 2: Trump +1.3%)
NevadaBiden +2.4%Trump +5.9% (May 2: Trump +5.1%)

In May, 1/7 swing states had large (> 1%) movement toward Biden – Wisconsin.

In May, 3/7 swing states had small (< 1%) movement toward Biden – Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan.

In May, 2/7 swing states had small (< 1%) movement toward Trump – Pennsylvania, Nevada.

In May, 1/7 swing states had large (> 1%) movement toward Trump – Arizona.

So it’s hard to say things are trending one way or the other over the past month, and the trend needs to be significantly in Biden’s favor for him to have a good shot in November. As it stands now, the electoral college would be 312 Trump to 226 Biden, a major defeat. If Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin were to all break for Biden, it would be Biden 270 to Trump 268.

Project 2025, Part 3

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Continuing to tackle this thing with the section called “the general welfare”. I’m just reading the summary since the thing is so long. Various authors want to:

  • End Medicare and Medicaid. [We are the only developed country without a health care system, and our population is suffering for it. This is a shameless giveaway to the finance/insurance industry.]
  • Gut the National Institutes of Health and the CDC. The section makes wild, conspiracy theory-driven claims that there was no scientific evidence that masks or vaccines helped end the Covid-19 epidemic. [Pardon me, but this is radical, dangerous, ignorant, lying bullshit! This also means our nation will not be prepared to respond and recover from the next pandemic, be it of natural or bioweapon origin. This puts our nation at huge risk and is therefore wildly irresponsible and unpatriotic.]
  • Double down on fossil fuels, end promotion of alternative energy, fuel efficient and electric vehicles. [We are going to lose our food supply and our coastal cities. This is a shameless giveaway to the fossil energy industry, and it is EVIL.]
  • End the Department of Education and let parents decide what their children will believe about the world. This is basically driven by the Christian Nationalist, homophobic agenda, although somewhere in there is a shameless giveaway to the charter school lobby.
  • Regarding the EPA – well, finally, here is a federal agency I actually know something about, having spent decades helping local governments and water utilities comply with its mandates. This section doesn’t say a lot about water, and what it does say is not all that controversial – it even has some love for the state revolving loan funds. Otherwise, this section focuses mostly on rolling back regulation of fossil fuels and vehicle fuel efficiency (which in the EPA context means allowing more air pollution), ignoring greenhouse gases, and otherwise leaving most regulation to the states. They want to slash much of EPA’s research and science agenda, and shift oversight of enforcement actions from lawyers to political appointees. None of this is particularly radical, only “conservative” and would probably take us more or less back to the Bush or Reagan years. Failing to regulate greenhouse gases is a crucial moral and practical unforced error for our country of course, I am just saying it is fully consistent with the shameless giveaway to wealth and power agenda the Republican Party has been pushing for the last 50 years.
  • Basically bring the DOJ and FBI fully under the control of political appointees. Actually, the propaganda narrative is that the Biden administration has done this, while in reality this is a good example of doublespeak where you accuse your opponent of doing exactly the thing that you plan to do, so that any protest sounds like a childish “I know you are but what am I”?

Project 2025

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We’re hearing, at least through media sources one might consider somewhat left-leaning, that “Project 2025” from the Heritage Foundation is an open plan for a fascist takeover of the United States following the example of Mussolini or even Hitler. Both those leaders mobilized street thugs, neutralized the legislative and judicial branches, and co-opted big business almost entirely. They also brought state/provincial and local police forces completely under their central control. Is Trump or any American leader even remotely capable of herding the cats that make up our decentralized, fragmented, and largely dysfunctional government? I’m a little skeptical, so let’s take a look at what’s actually in the document.

Keep in mind, the Republican Party did not even manage to pull together a written party platform in 2020. It was literally the party of no ideas. And that, in fact, does sound like Mussolini, who had no real concrete or coherent policy proposals, and ruled more on charisma, machismo and promises to Make the Roman Empire Great Again. And from what I understand, he was far better at campaigning than actually governing. Hitler, evil as he was, certainly put together a highly functional administrative state at least for a few years. And right off the bat, this document makes a “promise” right in the introduction (pp. 35-36) to decentralize power and dismantle the administrative state.

First of all, the actual document on the website is called “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise” and then further down the page, “Project 2025: Presidential Transition Project”. Each chapter of this thing is written by a different “conservative scholar” covers a different part of the executive branch. So at this point, I have to say it seems totally normal for the leader of the executive branch to have a plan for who he (or she – I’ll just do the pronoun thing once) wants in each box of his org chart and to have some idea of what he would like each person to do once they are there. So I’ve skimmed through this 920 page document very quickly and tried to pull out a few highlights. It’s hard because although the document claims to make concrete policy recommendations, it doesn’t really. It mostly identifies key positions in the executive branch and recommends hiring people to fill them who agree with a very nebulous policy agenda of “protecting Christian families”.

  • It talks a lot about “families”. What it seems to mean by this is married heterosexual Christian couples with children.
  • It talks a lot about Christianity. It talks a lot about school choice. What it seems to mean by this is married heterosexual Christian couples teaching their own children to think like them. It actually states that “schools serve parents” and that parents are their children’s “primary educators”.
  • It talks about protecting Christian American families within our borders against foreigners. This seems to be the primary purpose of the military.
  • It talks about debt. What it seems to mean by this is eliminating most of the social safety net, possibly to lower taxes for Christian families. Of course, this does not apply to the cost of protecting Christian families from foreigners, which is worth any price.
  • But amid all this nebulous rhetoric, there are some concrete policy proposals that are just blatant giveaways to rich and powerful big business interests. A few are below (I can’t figure out how to make a simple indented list in this latest ridiculous version of WordPress.
  • “The President should eliminate the Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Carbon (SCC), which is cochaired by the OSTP, OMB, and CEA, and by executive order should end the use of SCC analysis.” [because why would our children need food, or coastal population centers? This is evil.]
  • Double down on the war on drugs. This does not mean helping addicts, which is a “leftist woke” idea. It means ramping up violence on our streets, at and near our borders. And this should not be managed by people with professional experience, it should be managed by politicians with political aims.
  • Lots of homophobic stuff. I won’t even go into it. When the “next conservative President” is looking for all these political appointees, a great place to start the search will be closets.
  • Merit hiring, merit pay based on performance appraisal results, and the ability to let underperformers go in the civil service bureaucracy. Okay, I could get behind this one in theory as should anyone who has ever been to a post office. But they also want to gut benefits for federal workers, which is not really the right idea. [A good idea would be more along the lines of extending similar benefits to private sector workers. And most of the private sector, save certain corners of the finance industry, would benefit greatly from this. But the finance industry gets what it wants, such as no functional health care system.]
  • They just generally want to gut the bureaucracy and starve the beast, of course. Same old ideas they have always had. They sell them on the idea that the money would be given back to average people, when in reality these ideas are always used to justify subsidies for the already wealthy and powerful at everyone else’s expense.
  • Prepare for “great power competition”, and specifically for a war with China over Taiwan. Then stick a fork in China’s eye. [great way to pare the national debt, right?]
  • Active support by active duty military for border control.
  • NUCLEAR MODERNIZATION AND EXPANSION [because why do our children need to survive to old age at all? This is evil.]
  • Just shovel money at defense contractors without limit, and make producing weapons the focus of the U.S. economy. Funding research and development is okay only when it is about weapons.
  • Double down on recruiting high schoolers into the military. pp. 134-135 – this section is particularly chilling.

I’ll go ahead and post this since I haven’t posted in awhile. Maybe I’ll continue looking at the document in another post.

April 2024

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Most frightening and/or depressing story: Peter Turchin’s description of a “wealth pump” leading to stagnation and political instability seems to fit the United States pretty well at this moment. The IMF shows that global productivity has been slowing since the US-caused financial crisis in 2008. In Turchin’s model, our November election will be a struggle between elites and counter-elites who both represent the wealthy and powerful. That sounds about right, but I still say it is a struggle between competence and incompetence, and competence is a minimum thing we need to survive in a dangerous world. In early April I thought things were trending painfully slowly, but clearly, in Biden’s direction. As I write this in early May I am no longer convinced of that.

Most hopeful story: Some tweaks to U.S. trade policy might be able to significantly ease the “border crisis” and create a broad political coalition of bigots, big business, and people who buy things in stores.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: If the singularity is in fact near, our worries about a productivity slow down are almost over, and our new worries will be about boredom in our new lives of leisure. It doesn’t seem like a good idea to count on this happening in the very near future, and therefore stop trying to solve the problems we have at the moment. This would be one of those “nice to have” problems. If it does in fact materialize, the places to be will be the ones that manage to shut down Peter Turchin’s wealth pump and spread the newfound wealth, rather than the places where a chosen few live god-like existences while leaving the masses in squalor.

Latinos for Trump?

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Alongside the narrative that the Republican Party is a white supremacist party, we hear a narrative that Latino voters are shifting toward Trump. This matters because they make up about 15% of U.S. voters. I’ll share a few thoughts:

  • First, the U.S. Census has revised how it asks people if they identify as Latino over the years, and is considering revising it again. This makes it a little hard to track over time. It occurs to me that it is just a very broad group with some very disparate people, ranging from Puerto Ricans to people with Cuban ancestry to South American ancestry to Spanish ancestry and newly arrived immigrants to families who have been in the U.S. for many generations. So I am just not sure how predictive this category is of how people are going to vote.
  • For people who have immigrated legally and recently, not all are going to be sympathetic to undocumented immigrants. It may seem unfair when you feel you have followed the rules to see that others have not. People also may see newly arrived immigrants as competing for jobs, whether this is really borne out by the facts or not. So Republican anti-immigrant messaging may appeal to some, although the ads we are seeing in Pennsylvania right now are just blatant racist lies, in my opinion.
  • People who view themselves as succeeding through hard work resent any sense that the government is taking their income and redistributing it to people who do not work hard. So the Republicans can trot out their decades-old anti-tax and “welfare queen” messages and they are going to resonate with some people, sometimes.
  • This may be a sensitive topic, but there is some anti-black racism among some Latinos, sometimes, and so even blatantly racist messaging from the Republicans is going to reach some people.
  • For approximately 50 years, the Democrats have made promises to the working class and middle class and failed to deliver them, time and time again. The Republicans don’t offer solutions, but they can just keep pointing out that the Democrats have failed to deliver, and offer us people to blame. This message reaches a lot of people of all races who are hurting in this country.

So those are the problems. Now our politicians can just put on their thinking caps and come up with practical solutions, right?

April election poll check-in, or “it’s just the fading price shocks in gas and groceries, stupid”

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Here’s where we stand as I write this on April 3, 2024. Sure, there are all sorts of reasons the polls might be wrong and it is a long time until election day…but I would rather be ahead in the polls and saying that than behind, wouldn’t you? Or even behind and getting less behind.

STATE2020 RESULTMost Recent Real Clear Politics Poll Average (as of 4/3/24)
ArizonaBiden +0.4%Trump +5.2% (March 1: Trump +5.5)
GeorgiaBiden +0.3%Trump +4.5% (March 1: Trump +6.5)
WisconsinBiden +0.6%Trump +0.6% (March 1: Trump +1.0%)
North CarolinaTrump +1.3%Trump +4.6% (March 1: Trump +5.7%)
PennsylvaniaBiden +1.2%Trump +0.6% (March 1: Biden +0.8%)
MichiganBiden +2.8%Trump +3.4% (March 1: Trump +3.6%)
NevadaBiden +2.4%Trump +3.2% (March 1: Trump +7.7%)

The electoral college vote, as it stands at the moment, would be 312 for Trump to 226 for Biden. (March 1: 293 for Trump to 245 for Biden)

So the verdict is…Biden behind but getting less behind in every swing state (6 out of 7) except Pennsylvania. The Nevada, Georgia, and North Carolina moves are all more than 1% towards Biden. Arizona, Wisconsin, and Michigan are less than 1% towards Biden. The Pennsylvania move is less than 1% towards Trump, but because this flips the state from slight Biden to slight Trump, Trump now leads all swing states and the electoral college looks even worse for Biden than a month ago.

Have we gone from “it’s the economy, stupid” to “it’s the rate of change in the rate of change in the price of groceries, compared to the rate of change of the rate of change in the price of groceries two years ago, stupid”? Maybe it’s that simple. Sure, there is plenty going on in the world in terms of war and peace and the collapsing biosphere that supports all life. But we are Americans, and we don’t base our votes on these things. At least not enough of us, enough of the time to make a difference compared to the damn price of groceries. All things being equal, I would wager on this trend continuing over the next seven months. Of course, all things will probably not be equal – a significant recession that throws a significant number of voters out of work would be the worst possible thing for Biden. Because it doesn’t matter so much how much the damn groceries cost if you have no money at all. On the other hand, most other crises might tend to give Biden a chance to show some leadership, which at least some voters might like. And of course, Biden and/or Trump could drop dead at any time. I am not predicting any of these things, just defining a range of things that could happen.