Tea Leaves and Prognostications

There are..what? Seventeen Republicans contending for the party’s nomination? How does one tell which one –if any– has “legs”?

Predicting political outcomes is perilous. I’ve lived long enough–and seen enough “pundit predictions”–to take all of them with a whole shaker of salt. With the possible exception of Nate Silver, political “analysis” is mostly the analyst’s wishful thinking.

That doesn’t mean they can’t be fun to read. Especially the ones that tell you things you want to believe.

One such “analysis,” I came across was written not long after the 2014 midterms–midterms that Republicans won big– by a GOP columnist for the Houston Chronicle, Chris Ladd. Rather than celebrating those victories, Ladd declared the week of the Midterm Elections “a dark week for Republicans.” 

And why was what looked like a resounding victory “a dark week”?

The Midterms of 2014 demonstrate the continuation of a 20 year old trend. Republicans are disappearing from the competitive landscape at the national level where the population is the largest utilizing a declining electoral base of aging, white, and rural voters. As a result no GOP candidate on the horizon has a chance at the White House in 2016 and the chance of holding the Senate beyond 2016 is vanishingly small.

Ladd identified a “blue wall” on the electoral college map, and noted that in 2014, GOP support had gotten deeper, but no wider.

The Blue Wall is a block of states that no Republican Presidential candidate can realistically hope to win. On Election Day that block added New Hampshire to its number and Virginia is shifting At the outset of any Presidential campaign, a minimally effective Democratic candidate can expect to win 257 electoral votes out of the 270 needed to win. If Virginia joins New Hampshire that number will be 270 out of 270.

To win, a GOP  candidate has to win all nine “tossup” state and one solidly Blue state. Thus, in the next, and into the foreseeable future, Presidential elections will be decided in the Democratic Primary. What are the chances that a Republican candidate capable of appealing to the increasingly right wing GOP will appeal to enough Democrats to win in tossup and Blue states?

Ladd makes a number of other points (my favorite: “Voter suppression is working remarkably well, but that won’t last.” Glad to see someone willing to call it what it is..), and the whole piece is well worth reading, especially if you are a Democrat looking for a feel-good few minutes.

The problem with taking this–or any– analysis at face value is that things change. Predictions are particularly hazardous in state-level races: Favored candidates do stupid things (RFRA, God intended that rape, etc.), or get caught playing footsie in public restrooms. A hurricane keeps voters away from the polls. Even at the national level, parties have been known to nominate people who are simply unelectable– unsalable even to the party base.

National trends can also change. At some point (admittedly, probably not 2016), the GOP is going to realize that a strategy that depends on playing to the anger and fear of old white guys isn’t viable, and the party will revert to its more rational roots.

The only political prediction that is usually true is: the party that gets more voters to the polls, wins.

Comments

Scott Walker Wants to Do for the US What He Did for (to?) Wisconsin

Well well…to the surprise of absolutely no one, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (aka Koch Brothers’ favorite errand boy) has squeezed into the GOP’s presidential campaign clown car.

Walker’s positions were summarized by former Labor Secretary Robert Reich:

1. On immigration, Walker says he’s changed his mind on a path to legal status for undocumented immigrants and no longer supports the idea. He’s expressed skepticism toward legal immigration as well.

2. On gay marriage, Walker is calling for a constitutional amendment allowing states to ban it.

3. On abortion rights, Walker is pushing for a 20-week ban in Wisconsin with no exceptions for rape or incest. (In 2014 he told voters his previous legislation left “the final decision to a woman and her doctor.”)

4. On “gun rights,” Walker is against any attempt to ban assault weapons or limit the ability of anyone to own a gun.

5. On labor unions, he is the GOP’s most virulent anti-labor candidate, having taken on teachers and other public employees and signing a “right-to-work” law. (He says his battles with labor leaders have prepared him to take on the Islamic State.)

6. He favors tax cuts over deficit reduction and public education. His most recent Wisconsin budget cuts taxes, requires steep cuts to education, and deepens the state deficit.

7. He has tried to weaken Wisconsin’s “open records” law by blocking press requests that have yielded some embarrassing finds in the past.

Reich omits Walker’s persistent attacks on higher education– his sneering dismissal of scholarly endeavors and his ongoing effort to make the University of Wisconsin focus upon  job-training to the exclusion of the life of the mind. (He also fails to mention the criminal investigations that have been triggered by charges of serious wrongdoing.)

So how has Wisconsin fared under the administration of this paragon of the far Right?

The Pew Charitable Trust recently reported that Wisconsin has had the largest decline of any state in the percentage of families considered “middle class,” or those earning between 67 and 200 percent of their state’s median income.

In 2000, 54.6 percent of Wisconsin families fell into the middle class category but that has fallen to 48.9 percent in 2013, according to U.S. Census figures compiled by Pew.

All other states showed some decline but none as great as Wisconsin’s 5.7 percent figure.

Wisconsin ranks dead last among the 50 states in terms of a shrinking middle class, with real median household incomes there falling 14.7 percent since 2000.

I assume he’ll run on his record….

Comments

Houston, We Have a Problem…

In my periodic rants about the state of civic knowledge, I’ve frequently cited the results of a test periodically administered by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) as evidence of the American public’s worrisome deficit of civic literacy.

As troubling as that deficit of public knowledge is–as much as it contributes to political polarization and our inability to hold government actors accountable to constitutional standards– another outcome of ISI’s research should really terrify us.

Elected officials’ scores were lower than those of the general public in almost every category.

Of the 2,508 People surveyed, 164 say they have held an elected government office at least once in their life. Their average score on the civic literacy test is 44%, compared to 49% for those who have not held an elected office. Officeholders are less likely than other respondents to correctly answer 29 of the 33 test questions. This table shows the “knowledge gap” for each question: the difference between the percentage of common citizens who answered correctly and the percentage of officeholders who answered correctly.

Think about that for a minute.

Manufacturers don’t hire workers who don’t know how to make the product. Athletes who don’t understand the rules of their sport are soon gone. A lawyer who doesn’t know the rules of procedure and the precedents governing his practice area is likely to get sued for malpractice. Surely we have a right to expect our public officials to have a basic acquaintance with, and understanding of, the Constitution they swear to uphold.

I suppose ISI’s findings shouldn’t come as a shock; those of us who are watching the political spectacle that is the run-up to the 2016 Presidential election have seen plentiful evidence that–even among the people who presume to run for the highest office in the land–a number appear to be woefully ignorant of America’s history, philosophy and constitutional principles.

Perhaps we should test candidates for political office for basic constitutional competence before we allow them to run.

Comments

La La La…I Can’t Hear You!

Remember when you were a kid on the playground having an argument, and felt you were losing? Remember sticking your fingers in your ears and going “la la la” as loudly as you could, in order not to hear what the other kid was saying?

Some of you who are reading this were probably  never that childish, and most of the rest of us have since grown up.

All except Congress.

A congressional ban on gun violence research backed by the National Rifle Association (NRA) has been extended in the aftermath of the Charleston church shooting that left 9 people dead.

As Public Radio International (PRI) reported recently, the House of Representatives Appropriations Committee voted to reject an amendment last month that would have allowed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to study the relationship between gun ownership and gun violence.

The purported reason for the ban is that gun deaths are not “diseases.” Neither are cigarettes, but the CDC researches the health effects of tobacco. Guns certainly affect health; guns kill more Americans under 25 than cars. (More than 25% of teenagers ages 15 and older who die of injuries in the US are killed by gun-related injuries.)

The costs of gun violence are staggering: American taxpayers pay roughly $12.8 million every day to cover the costs of gun-related deaths and injuries. Total social costs have been estimated at 100 billion each year. That, of course, excludes the human losses.

The CDC used to conduct firearms safety research, but in 1996, the gun lobby persuaded Congress to restrict CDC funding of gun research; similar restrictions on other federal agencies followed.

Far from hiding its role, the NRA has publicly taken credit for preventing the research. In 2011, it issued a statement :”These junk science studies and others like them are designed to provide ammunition for the gun control lobby by advancing the false notion that legal gun ownership is a danger to the public health instead of an inalienable right.”

The CDC doesn’t do “junk science,” of course. And denying that guns pose a danger to public health is tantamount to an admission of insanity. But facts and evidence pose a special threat to the NRA extremists who no longer even reflect the position of most NRA members.

They can’t put their fingers in their ears, so–like the bullies on those long-ago playgrounds–they’re trying to deprive advocates of sensible gun control measures of data that they know would strengthen those advocates’ arguments.

It’s their version of “la la la–I can’t hear you.”
Comments

The Bottom Line and the Common Good

I’ve done my share of business-bashing on this blog–pointing out corporate overreach and bad behavior. But as Frank Bruni recently reminded us in a timely and excellent column for the New York Times, there’s a sunny side to greed.

Self-interest has contributed to sanity on a wide number of issues. As Bruni notes,

They’ve been great on the issue of the Confederate flag. Almost immediately after the fatal shooting of nine black churchgoers in Charleston, S.C., several prominent corporate leaders, including the heads of Walmart and Sears, took steps to retire the banner as a public symbol of the South; others made impassioned calls for that.

And when Nikki Haley, the South Carolina governor, said that the Confederate flag at the State House should come down, she did so knowing that Boeing and BMW, two of the state’s major employers, had her back. In fact the state’s chamber of commerce had urged her and other politicians to see the light.

Eli Lilly, American Airlines, Intel and other corporations were crucial to the defeat or amendment of proposed “religious freedom” laws in Indiana, Arkansas and Arizona over the last year and a half. Their leaders weighed in against the measures, which licensed anti-gay discrimination, and put a special kind of pressure on politicians, who had to worry about losing investment and jobs if companies with operations in their states didn’t like what the government was doing.

Bruni quotes a business consultant for the observation that successful businesses must be more responsive to the general public than politicians.

If you’re a politician and all you care about is staying in office, you’re worried about a small group of voters in your district who vote in the primary,” he told me, referring to members of the House of Representatives. “If you’re a corporation, you need to be much more in sync with public opinion, because you’re appealing to people across the spectrum.”

Does this sensitivity to the population outweigh the damage that some corporations do to the environment? Does it make up for others’ exploitation of workers? Of course not, but as Bruni notes, “it does force you to admit that corporations aren’t always the bad guys. Sometimes the bottom line matches the common good.”

And it should force those of us who think and write about such matters to make important distinctions. I get angry when people make sweeping generalizations based on race, religion or sexual orientation, because there is no monolithic group. Every human category includes assholes and saints and everything in-between.

That’s equally true of corporations and business enterprises.

The market provides many incentives for good behavior. As I noted yesterday, many existing public policies reward less salutary behaviors, and those need to change.

Comments