Failure of the Democratic Party

I've read a fair number of articles now about how the Democratic Party has failed with many different theories.  The one I haven't heard much is the failure to focus on local politics.  Personally that's my favorite theory.

Back in the early 2000s there was a quite a bit of writing concerning the Republican Party targeting local politics to build a political power base.  They were going after the state legislatures because in 2010 they wanted to be in charge of the redistricting of legislative districts.  They succeeded.  The Democratic Party did nothing.  As I mentioned there was a fair amount of political writing about this.  There's no way the Democratic Party leadership couldn't not have known it was happening, but they chose not to act at the local level.  The Democratic Party chose to focus on state wide and national politics because that's where the the court appointments were made.  The gave up retail politics in favor of wholesale politics and they are and have been paying the price for that decision.

In the most recent election the Democratic Party was convinced it would win.  Back in August and September Hillary Clinton started reducing resources going to her "firewall states" and started campaigning in traditional Republican states that weren't "swing states" but seemed to be soft based on polling.  I really have no clue what they were hearing at the local level, but I have seen a few articles where local level party volunteers were complaining of a lack of resources and that they weren't hearing from the national campaign or the national party.  I assume they were also not hearing much from their local state parties.  Hillary Clinton went on to lose those traditional Republican states and also to lose her "firewall states."  My supposition is that is she and the Democratic Party at both the state and national levels failed to listen to what the town and county party committees and chairs were hearing in their communities.

A few years ago I was a member of my local town committee in Massachusetts.  I even served for a year as chair of the town committee.  I attended the state convention a few times.  There was very limited coordination from the State Party Committee.  They had their own statistics and their own staff.  We had two elections in that time and very limited interaction with the State Party.  We were very much on our own.  Near as I can tell the State Democratic Party Committee in Massachusetts has no interest in the towns and cities and I haven't noticed if they have any sort of watch for rising local politicians who could be groomed to move forward.  I haven't seen much from them in our local races even for State Representative or State Senate.  I've long since given up on the town committee for many reasons, but chief among them is the lack of interest in the local level.  Maybe cities have a different experience.

I'm one person who was active in the Democratic Party and have since become inactive.  But I've seen enough and read enough that I hold strongly to my belief that the Democratic Party has surrendered local politics and until they refocus they'll continue to wander in the wilderness.

Is the Media Waking to Authoritarianism?

During the campaign Donald Trump often attacked and ridiculed the media.  He would hold rallies and have the media sectioned into pens.  He would hurl insults at them and invite his followers to do so.  The media for some reason decided that this was acceptable and it appears felt that once the election was over that things would change. This week Trump summoned them to meetings.

According to the New York Post the television media were summoned to Trump Tower in New York.
Per an unnamed source who attended the meeting:

“The meeting took place in a big boardroom and there were about 30 or 40 people, including the big news anchors from all the networks,” the other source said. 

“Trump kept saying, ‘We’re in a room of liars, the deceitful, dishonest media who got it all wrong.’ He addressed everyone in the room, calling the media dishonest, deceitful liars. He called out Jeff Zucker by name and said everyone at CNN was a liar, and CNN was [a] network of liars,” the source said. 

“Trump didn’t say [NBC reporter] Katy Tur by name, but talked about an NBC female correspondent who got it wrong, then he referred to a horrible network correspondent who cried when Hillary lost who hosted a debate — which was Martha Raddatz, who was also in the room.” 

The stunned reporters tried to get a word in edgewise to discuss access to a Trump administration.

The New York Post reports "NBC’s Deborah Turness, Lester Holt and Chuck Todd; ABC’s James Goldston, George Stephanopoulos, David Muir and Martha Raddatz; CBS’ Norah O’Donnell, John Dickerson, Charlie Rose, Christopher Isham and King; Fox News’ Bill Shine, Jack Abernethy, Jay Wallace and Suzanne Scott; MSNBC’s Phil Griffin, and CNN’s Jeff Zucker and Erin Burnett."  So that's the list of people who received special attention from Trump.  Anyone reading the article can easily see it for what it is, an attempt to intimidate the media and put them into their place.  The media are self appointed elite and Trumpism has steadily attacked elites, so to expect the media to be treated as something special was a stretch.

Given how they were treated on the campaign trail it isn't surprising to me that Trump would seek to bully them post-election. I'm only partly surprised that the media didn't see this coming because the media has a sense of entitlement calling itself the "Fourth Estate."  That they would be taken in by an authoritarian clown and abused is pretty easy to see.  Anyone should have been able to see it coming.  The media didn't because they are too full of themselves and their own self importance.

Margaret Sullivan writing in The Washington Post comments,

Brandon Friedman, a Virginia-based public relations executive, offered his theory on Twitter: “They walked into an ambush, agreed not to talk about it, then Trump went straight to the Post with his version.” 

Then it was just a hop, skip and jump to a big headline on the Drudge Report, with its huge worldwide traffic: “Trump Slams Media Elite, Face to Face.” As Business Insider politics editor Oliver Darcy aptly put it, that is “how a lot of America will see this.” 

The result for the president-elect: He once again was able to use the media as his favorite foil. Having a whipping boy is more important than ever now that the election is over and there is no Democratic opponent to malign at every turn.

Sort of sums it up there.

Christiane Amanpour of CNN wrote a commentary entitled "Journalism faces an 'existential crisis' in Trump era."  Amanpour writes, "I actually hoped that once President-elect, all that that would change, and I still do. But I was chilled when the first tweet after the election was about 'professional protesters incited by the media.'"  She continues, "As all the international journalists we honor in this room tonight and every year know only too well: First the media is accused of inciting, then sympathizing, then associating -- until they suddenly find themselves accused of being full-fledged terrorists and subversives. Then they end up in handcuffs, in cages, in kangaroo courts, in prison -- and then who knows?" Amanpour gets it.  She really does.  The question is do her bosses at CNN get it?  I doubt it.  CNN was turned over to false equivalence panel shows a long time ago.  They chase ratings.  Same is true of CBS, ABC and NBC.  They are all in business to gain ratings which translate into ad dollars which means profits.  They area all profit centers for their parent corporations.  At the end of the day will any of them listen to Amanpour and pursue truth to power or will they all fall into false equivalene, normalization and access.

I have no faith in the broadcast media.  Access and ratings are all they care about.

But then Trump had a meeting scheduled with The New York Times.

The New York Times meeting went down entirely different.  The Times refused to make the meeting off the record.  They also asked questions and got answers.  They weren't there to have their egos stroked and they weren't there to supplicate before the altar of Trump.  They were there as reporters.  The New York Times Editorial Board wrote a op-ed and they state that his answers were flexible, but lacking any in depth thought which to me would seem to indicate a total lack of conviction.

The New York Times Editorial Board ends with, "Ronald Reagan used to say that in dealing with the Soviet Union, the right approach was to "trust, but verify." For now, that's the right approach to take with Mr. Trump. Except, regrettably, for the trust part."

Support for President Trump

I call upon Democrats and Principled Conservatives to provide Trump with the same level of support and cooperation that Republicans provided to President Obama.

You Can Collaborate or You Can Resist

Masha Gessen writing for The New York Review of Books produces Autocracy: Rules for Survival.  

Rule #1: Believe the autocrat. He means what he says. Whenever you find yourself thinking, or hear others claiming, that he is exaggerating, that is our innate tendency to reach for a rationalization. This will happen often: humans seem to have evolved to practice denial when confronted publicly with the unacceptable. Back in the 1930s, TheNew York Times assured its readers that Hitler’s anti-Semitism was all posture. More recently, the same newspaper made a telling choice between two statements made by Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov following a police crackdown on protesters in Moscow: “The police acted mildly—I would have liked them to act more harshly” rather than those protesters’ “liver should have been spread all over the pavement.” Perhaps the journalists could not believe their ears. But they should—both in the Russian case, and in the American one. For all the admiration Trump has expressed for Putin, the two men are very different; if anything, there is even more reason to listen to everything Trump has said. He has no political establishment into which to fold himself following the campaign, and therefore no reason to shed his campaign rhetoric. On the contrary: it is now the establishment that is rushing to accommodate him—from the president, who met with him at the White House on Thursday, to the leaders of the Republican Party, who are discarding their long-held scruples to embrace his radical positions.
He has received the support he needed to win, and the adulation he craves, precisely because of his outrageous threats. Trump rally crowds have chanted “Lock her up!” They, and he, meant every word. If Trump does not go after Hillary Clinton on his first day in office, if he instead focuses, as his acceptance speech indicated he might, on the unifying project of investing in infrastructure (which, not coincidentally, would provide an instant opportunity to reward his cronies and himself), it will be foolish to breathe a sigh of relief. Trump has made his plans clear, and he has made a compact with his voters to carry them out. These plans include not only dismantling legislation such as Obamacare but also doing away with judicial restraint—and, yes, punishing opponents.
To begin jailing his political opponents, or just one opponent, Trump will begin by trying to capture of the judicial system. Observers and even activists functioning in the normal-election mode are fixated on the Supreme Court as the site of the highest-risk impending Trump appointment. There is little doubt that Trump will appoint someone who will cause the Court to veer to the right; there is also the risk that it might be someone who will wreak havoc with the very culture of the high court. And since Trump plans to use the judicial system to carry out his political vendettas, his pick for attorney general will be no less important. Imagine former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani or New Jersey Governor Chris Christie going after Hillary Clinton on orders from President Trump; quite aside from their approach to issues such as the Geneva Conventions, the use of police powers, criminal justice reforms, and other urgent concerns.
Rule #2: Do not be taken in by small signs of normality. Consider the financial markets this week, which, having tanked overnight, rebounded following the Clinton and Obama speeches. Confronted with political volatility, the markets become suckers for calming rhetoric from authority figures. So do people. Panic can be neutralized by falsely reassuring words about how the world as we know it has not ended. It is a fact that the world did not end on November 8 nor at any previous time in history. Yet history has seen many catastrophes, and most of them unfolded over time. That time included periods of relative calm. One of my favorite thinkers, the Jewish historian Simon Dubnow, breathed a sigh of relief in early October 1939: he had moved from Berlin to Latvia, and he wrote to his friends that he was certain that the tiny country wedged between two tyrannies would retain its sovereignty and Dubnow himself would be safe. Shortly after that, Latvia was occupied by the Soviets, then by the Germans, then by the Soviets again—but by that time Dubnow had been killed. Dubnow was well aware that he was living through a catastrophic period in history—it’s just that he thought he had managed to find a pocket of normality within it.
Rule #3: Institutions will not save you. It took Putin a year to take over the Russian media and four years to dismantle its electoral system; the judiciary collapsed unnoticed. The capture of institutions in Turkey has been carried out even faster, by a man once celebrated as the democrat to lead Turkey into the EU. Poland has in less than a year undone half of a quarter century’s accomplishments in building a constitutional democracy.
Of course, the United States has much stronger institutions than Germany did in the 1930s, or Russia does today. Both Clinton and Obama in their speeches stressed the importance and strength of these institutions. The problem, however, is that many of these institutions are enshrined in political culture rather than in law, and all of them—including the ones enshrined in law—depend on the good faith of all actors to fulfill their purpose and uphold the Constitution.
The national press is likely to be among the first institutional victims of Trumpism. There is no law that requires the presidential administration to hold daily briefings, none that guarantees media access to the White House. Many journalists may soon face a dilemma long familiar to those of us who have worked under autocracies: fall in line or forfeit access. There is no good solution (even if there is a right answer), for journalism is difficult and sometimes impossible without access to information.
The power of the investigative press—whose adherence to fact has already been severely challenged by the conspiracy-minded, lie-spinning Trump campaign—will grow weaker. The world will grow murkier. Even in the unlikely event that some mainstream media outlets decide to declare themselves in opposition to the current government, or even simply to report its abuses and failings, the president will get to frame many issues. Coverage, and thinking, will drift in a Trumpian direction, just as it did during the campaign – when, for example, the candidates argued, in essence, whether Muslim Americans bear collective responsibility for acts of terrorism or can redeem themselves by becoming the “eyes and ears” of law enforcement. Thus was xenophobia further normalized, paving the way for Trump to make good on his promises to track American Muslims and ban Muslims from entering the United States.
Rule #4: Be outraged. If you follow Rule #1 and believe what the autocrat-elect is saying, you will not be surprised. But in the face of the impulse to normalize, it is essential to maintain one’s capacity for shock. This will lead people to call you unreasonable and hysterical, and to accuse you of overreacting. It is no fun to be the only hysterical person in the room. Prepare yourself.
Despite losing the popular vote, Trump has secured as much power as any American leader in recent history. The Republican Party controls both houses of Congress. There is a vacancy on the Supreme Court. The country is at war abroad and has been in a state of mobilization for fifteen years. This means not only that Trump will be able to move fast but also that he will become accustomed to an unusually high level of political support. He will want to maintain and increase it—his ideal is the totalitarian-level popularity numbers of Vladimir Putin—and the way to achieve that is through mobilization. There will be more wars, abroad and at home.
Rule #5: Don’t make compromises. Like Ted Cruz, who made the journey from calling Trump “utterly amoral” and a “pathological liar” to endorsing him in late September to praising his win as an “amazing victory for the American worker,” Republican politicians have fallen into line. Conservative pundits who broke ranks during the campaign will return to the fold. Democrats in Congress will begin to make the case for cooperation, for the sake of getting anything done—or at least, they will say, minimizing the damage. Nongovernmental organizations, many of which are reeling at the moment, faced with a transition period in which there is no opening for their input, will grasp at chances to work with the new administration. This will be fruitless—damage cannot be minimized, much less reversed, when mobilization is the goal—but worse, it will be soul-destroying. In an autocracy, politics as the art of the possible is in fact utterly amoral. Those who argue for cooperation will make the case, much as President Obama did in his speech, that cooperation is essential for the future. They will be willfully ignoring the corrupting touch of autocracy, from which the future must be protected.
Rule #6: Remember the future. Nothing lasts forever. Donald Trump certainly will not, and Trumpism, to the extent that it is centered on Trump’s persona, will not either. Failure to imagine the future may have lost the Democrats this election. They offered no vision of the future to counterbalance Trump’s all-too-familiar white-populist vision of an imaginary past. They had also long ignored the strange and outdated institutions of American democracy that call out for reform—like the electoral college, which has now cost the Democratic Party two elections in which Republicans won with the minority of the popular vote. That should not be normal. But resistance—stubborn, uncompromising, outraged—should be.

The Consequences of President Trump

I do not believe at this time that I can sway minds in this election.  You've made your decision.  You are voting for who you are voting.  Whatever I write here in this space will not change your mind.  If you are voting for Trump, Johnson or Stein then you own the consequences.  This post is about the consequences of those votes because those votes add up to the statement "I'm fine with Donald Trump being President" and if you feel that way, then you own the consequences and I'm going to lay out some of them for you.

Donald Trump is an authoritarian.  I've had arguments with people if he rises to the level of fascism.  He is a fascist.  The oligarchs in America will do quite well with President Trump.  One of the traits of fascism is that the people who support it do well when the government hands out contracts and spending.  And they will do well.  Donald Trump has already called for slashing taxes on the wealthiest Americans and his tax cut plan involves handing 99% of the benefits to the 1% in America.  He is an authoritarian who has said he will sue news sources and he has said he would put Hillary Clinton in jail if he wins.  Think he's bluffing?  When has Donald Trump forgiven a slight?  When has he not sought revenge when it was available.  He may not be a Hitler, but he is certainly a Mussolini or a Franco.

Paul Ryan's budget framework for the Federal Government will pass.  No one thinks the likelihood of the House of Representatives turning Democratic with this election to even be worth mentioning.  It is highly likely that if Donald Trump wins the election that the Republicans will retain a Senate Majority.  That means Paul Ryan can start passing his budget plan and it will be signed into law.  What's in that plan?  Tax cuts for the wealthy and Trump is already on board on that.  Restructure of Medicare devolving authority to the States and pushing the funding to the states in the form or grants.  The other offing for Medicare would be simple privatization at the Federal level.  Either way your parents Medicare is under the axe.  Obamacare would obviously be repealed and no there is no Republican alternative.  Social Security would be back under the threat of privatization.  Trump said he would save it, but didn't say how.  The Republican plan for "saving" Social Security has always been about privatization and it would likely take the form of 401k-type plans funded by payroll deductions in which Wall Street gets to start extracting management fees.  In order to pay for those tax cuts without cutting military spending social programs will have to be cut deep.  Dodd Frank which created a watchdog committee to monitor abuses by financial firms will be repealed.  They will also continue to dismantle regulations on other industries.

Donald Trump has also decided to end Federal support for Global Warming preparation and spending on renewable energy.  The US would pull out of the current global accord on climate change.  The accord likely would collapse.  A few degree world wide warming is going to cause droughts on the land and rising sea levels with coastal areas flooded.  None of that will be immediate, but will take decades.

The Supreme Court has a vacancy.  It will be filled by someone who will support the Republican agenda.  There are at least two more liberally leaning SCOTUS Justices who will retire in the next four to eight years.  The Republican Party and President Trump will hold a majority on the Supreme Court for another twenty years.

We've seen a great deal of work at the state level to suppress the voting blocks that traditionally support Democratic politicians.  That will continue and with the Supreme Court solidly in Republican hands for a generation and the Legislature and Executive branches we will see no attempt at the Federal level to stop these attempts.

These are some of the consequences of allowing Trump to become President.  There is one candidate who is in a position to stop this and she is Hillary Clinton.  None of what I describe above will come to pass while Hillary is President.  So there's your choice and there's your consequences.  Don't say you weren't warned.

Massachusetts Ballot Questions: Question Four

Question Four on the Massachusetts ballot concerns the legalization of marijuana.

I'm voting yes on question four.

I don't smoke marijuana.  I smoked it a couple times between high school and college and that was over twenty years ago.  So I do have some basis of understanding marijuana.  I've also smoked tobacco a few times over the years.  Single cigarettes here and there and the last time I tried one was when it was still legal to smoke in bars in Massachusetts.  My memories of smoking marijuana area about the same as smoking a cigarette.  I got about the same impact from smoking marijuana as I did a cigarette.  If tobacco hadn't of been big business when marijuana was made illegal you can bet tobacco would have gone that path too.  And then there's alcohol.  I don't see much difference between the impacts of alcohol and marijuana either.  The new law would only make marijuana legal for people over twenty-one, just like alcohol and tobacco.  I don't see any big difference between marijuana, tobacco and alcohol.  Alcohol and tobacco are legal.  Marijuana should be too.

I'm also a believer in the legalize it and tax it approach.  Right now we have a pretty big black market for marijuana.  None of that is taxed.  Legalize it and tax it.  Bring in new revenue to the state.

Lastly I'm a fan of personal rights.  Adults over twenty-one are fully capable of making their own decision to smoke marijuana or not.  We can put the same curbs on it as we do alcohol.

Massachusetts Ballot Questions: Question Three

Question Three on the Massachusetts ballot concerns a change to animal husbandry laws in the state. I'm just going to copy and paste a block from the state site: "his proposed law would prohibit any farm owner or operator from knowingly confining any breeding pig, calf raised for veal, or egg-laying hen in a way that prevents the animal from lying down, standing up, fully extending its limbs, or turning around freely. The proposed law would also prohibit any business owner or operator in Massachusetts from selling whole eggs intended for human consumption or any uncooked cut of veal or pork if the business owner or operator knows or should know that the hen, breeding pig, or veal calf that produced these products was confined in a manner prohibited by the proposed law. The proposed law would exempt sales of food products that combine veal or pork with other products, including soups, sandwiches, pizzas, hotdogs, or similar processed or prepared food items."

This is a hard one.  I do feel for the question, but I don't know enough about farming.  I understand the point of trying to get animals a "living" space, but again I don't know what this would mean to farms.  I also don't know how many farms would be impacted by this or what redress those farms would have if they can't comply.  I'm also not a fan of holding retailers for selling animal products if they "should know" that the animals weren't given the space indicated in this law.  I'm also a bit concerned about the cost of food products and how that would impact people living in poverty.

I guess the short of it is that I'm voting no on this one.

Massachusetts Ballot Questions: Question Two

Question Two on the Massachusetts ballot concerns lifting the current limit on the number of charter schools that can be opened in Massachusetts in a given year.  According to the summary the cap would rise to twelve or a maximum of 1% of total student enrollment.  I'm voting no.

I spent four years as a member of the Leicester School Committee.  I have a number of reasons to oppose this question.

First, the current cap allows for the Department of Education to actually take time to review individual applications.  Everyone likes to complain that the government is horrible and can't do anything right, but we're expected to believe that in this case they can effectively review twelve or more applications per year and only approve the qualified ones.  I find that doubtful.  The Department of Education is going to be swarmed with applications and they won't have time to properly review them all and they'll be under political pressure  to approve new schools.  Quality is going to suffer.  Bad charters are going to get approved.  How many years will go by before these bad charters are then identified and closed?  How often are charters in Massachusetts closed?  If it was just a matter of  the fact that it takes time it wouldn't be so bad, but each year is a year of a child's education.  Children don't get those years back.  The current cap allows for the Board of Education to review a small number and approve only the best of those number.  Towns don't open new schools very often, sometimes they replace existing schools, but they don't open truly new schools often and when they do they staff them with teachers and administrators from other schools.  In this case a new charter is truly a new thing in Massachusetts.  We owe it to the kids to make sure each and everyone of those charters is fully vetted and reviewed prior to being approved.  I do not trust the Massachusetts Board of Education to make a truly professional and thorough review when they will be approving so many at one time.  They just can't do it.  Bad schools will get approved and kids will pay the price.

Then there's the funding.  In Massachusetts the state sets a minimum budget number that school districts need to be provided.  The minimum budget is basically broken into two parts. One part is the amount that the local community is expected to raise through local taxes to support the school.  The difference between the local funding requirement and the minimum required budget is given by the state in the form of Chapter 70 funding.  When a charter opens in a district and students from that district enroll the state deducts a portion from that district's Chapter 70 and gives it to the charter.  The state uses an average per student spending number.  The average doesn't differentiate between elementary students and high school students.  The fact is that high school students are more expensive to educate than elementary schools students, so a k-8 charter gets some very impressive funding and the sending district loses more per student than it would take to educate those k-8 students (the way it works is that since high school students are more expensive to educate and k-8 are cheaper it balances out at the district level).  So charters get preferential funding.  There is bridge funding that the state provides for a couple years, but it's less than the amount the district loses and goes away fast.  I've read some disingenuous articles suggesting that local communities could just raise taxes to make up the difference, but that because of Proposition 2 1/2 (the property tax cap law in Massachusetts which limits how much local property tax can increase in a given year without an override vote by the community) it is nearly impossible to get such an increase in local taxes.  The fact is that most district schools are dependent on Chapter 70 funding because the towns can't raise taxes and when they lose the Chapter 70 funding they lose they just can't make it up.

And local schools can't cut costs.  Because of the property tax cap the schools are already running tight budgets.  The towns keep a wary eye on school budgets because the Boards of Selectmen and City Councils have to balance school funding against municipal funding knowing that they have a tax increase limit to work against.  Towns in Massachusetts run tight budgets.  And lets be honest there's only so much overhead that can be cut when a kid leaves a school.  If you have a school with 500 kids and 50 leave you can't close the school.  You can save some money by not needing one or two teachers and then money on supplies.  You still need that building.  You still need maintenance staff.  You still need administrators. You still need heat.  You still need all the other teachers.  You still have 450 kids needing an education.  So thinking you can just cut costs to make up the loss is simple minded.  It's an argument made by someone who hasn't actually thought through what they are saying or who has thought it through and decided to lie about it.

Which brings me to the advertisements by the "yes crowd."  I've seen a lot of these and oh my word are they full of lies.  I won't even go into them.  Basically my previous two paragraphs rebut most of the points that I hear in the ads.  Look at the funding behind those ads and you'll find that most of it is coming from out of state sources.  The people backing this don't even live in this state.  Outsiders want to change education in a state in which their kids will never have to live.  I have an issue with that.

You'll notice I haven't mentioned in this my personal view on charters.  I won't.  Charters are part of Massachusetts life.  The question is currently should we lift the cap on the number.  I think the current cap and the current process works for Massachusetts.  Massachusetts has the best schools in the country and if Massachusetts were it's own nation it would rank high on the list of best countries.  Massachusetts has technology companies specifically opening in the state because we produce well educated kids.  I don't see threatening that because a group of people who don't live here want to see their agenda advanced.  What I want is to see that kids in Massachusetts receive a quality education.  Public schools in Massachusetts have been under pressure to improve test scores and graduation rates since the 1990s and have achieved remarkable success as evidenced by the number of technology companies filling the office buildings in the Eastern part of the state.  The charters that have been opened have gone through a rigorous process of review and only a few can open per year which means that only best make it through.  I consider this law a danger to what's already been accomplished and what has been shown to work and I can not in good conscience support a law that I consider reckless.

I'm voting no on question two and I would suggest that you vote no too.

Massachusetts Ballot Questions: Question One

In past blogs I've typically written about how I'm planning to vote on the upcoming ballot questions.  I'll post each individually.

Question One on the Massachusetts ballot is about expanded slot machine gaming.  I'm voting no on this one.  

When the last gambling question came up I was in favor of it.  I have no particular issue with gambling.  I personally don't engage in it.  I've been to a casino a couple of times and don't find it of any particular interest.  My reason for voting in favor of gambling then was that people were leaving the state to engage in gambling in Connecticut and I didn't see why Massachusetts should forgo that tax revenue.  Yes, some people may engage in self destructive behavior with gambling, but I'm not a fan of telling adults what they can and can not do.  I'm very much in favor of personal liberty and letting people do what they want so long as they don't cause harm to others and if they do cause harm to others we have plenty of laws to deal with that.  

Why am I not voting in favor this time?  I have a problem with this particular referendum.  This was ywritten in such a way that only one location could possible be suitable for the new slot parlor.  I'm just not a fan of this type of targeted agenda in the referendum process.  It won't hurt me or pretty much anyone that I can think of it passes, but this type of referendum just doesn't fit what I consider to be a good purpose of the process.  It sets a standard that anyone with a personal agenda can push to get a law passed that fits their desires.  I just don't agree with that approach.  

Background Reading

I haven't posted in a while, but I don't think between March and now there was much need for another round of analysis.  I'm not certain that there's a need now.

Here's some background reading.

George Lakoff on "Understanding Trump".  George Lakoff is a linguist who works from a neurological perspective.  His works focus on how language impacts the brain and how the brain impacts language.  He focuses on how the framing of a narrative or comment impacts how people react to it.  I would also suggest reading his book "The Political Mind."  I think most journalists do a horrible job of framing and political journalists are the worst.

"The Authoritarians" by Bob Altemeyer.  The title explains it all and I've posted this link previously.

2nd Amendment Rights and the Republican National Convention

Word is that the Republican Party doesn't want firearms at the Republican National Convention. There's a movement afoot in conservative circles to petition for the Republican Party to allow them. The Republican Party states openly that teachers should be allowed to carry firearms at schools. Republicans argue and push for open carry laws across the country at the state level.  Republicans argue for stand your ground laws.  The Republican Party claims to support the 2nd Amendment rights of the populace and publicly calls for laws just about everywhere except where actual officials of the Republican Party will be present.  I do hope the Republican National Committee stands by it's open statements in support of the 2nd Amendment and support the rights of Republican delegates to the Convention to carry their firearms.  I would like to know where the NRA is in supporting the fundamental rights of the Republican delegates.  This seems like just another case where the Republican establishment is spinning a story for the Republican base and they don't actually give a damn what the base supports.  Just like everything else they've ever told the base.

Protesting Donald Trump

Activists in Chicago protested a Donald Trump rally and shut it down. I don't entirely understand the point. Yes, you can rally and shut down a Trump event.  But what's the end game?

Donald Trump is running as an authoritarian leader over a group that is afraid of change and also feels that it's been attacked by outsiders.  So protesters are now showing up and providing the evidence that Trump's followers are indeed under attack.  The protesters have shut down what he had to say and to his followers that just proves that his enemies don't want his voice heard.  Trump is under attack in reality the way his followers have always known they are under attack. They aren't allowed to say the things that they believe and now the same people who silence them are trying to silence Trump.

So what' the point of protesting Trump and shutting down his rally? Is it to make a point that his politics are toxic? Because we know that.  Those of us who aren't voting for him know this already. Is it peal off his support?  The support that feels under attack and now has proof that their leader is under attack?

I get that protesting is a form of First Amendment action. I just don't understand the goal in this one. This sort of protest against Donald Trump is just the wrong strategy. You want to stop Trump?  Vote for someone who isn't Donald Trump. My preference is that you vote for a Democrat.  You think Trump is bad?  Trump is vocal.  Cruz scares the piss out of me.  Voting is the strategy to trip Trump. Confrontation isn't the approach that will work.  Trump and his supporters want confrontation and it only serves to firm up their beliefs and support.  Responding to anger with anger is not a solution. You respond to anger with reason.

Rubio We Hardly Knew Ye

Marco Rubio is not doing well.  Just for the record I had figured that Rubio would end up the nominee.  My thinking was that Jeb! Bush was weak from the get go and that the establishment and elites in the Republican Party would flood Rubio's way and with their money and connections he would get bullied into the nomination, but that hasn't happened.  Trump and Cruz have really over achieved in this campaign cycle.

Rubio has just never taken off as a candidate.  Nate Silver over at fivethirtyeight.com posits that Rubio never had a base to build off.  That could certainly be true.  He could be a boutique candidate.  On March 8th Hawaii, Idaho, Michigan, and Mississippi had primaries and that's a pretty diverse group of states.  Rubio didn't land a single delegate out of the four.  Since the start of the primaries we've had caucuses or primaries in twenty-four states and territories.  These states swing from liberal leaning northern states to ultra-conservative southern states and Rubio has only won Minnesota and Puerto Rico.

Nate Silver feels that Rubio's core supporters are educated conservatives and to be honest that is more or less the definition of the Republican establishment.  Educated conservatives, politicians and political operatives are basically the establishment group.  The elites are really the billionaire class funding it all.  But what it looks to me is that Rubio has the establishment vote and only the establishment vote and that should scare the hell out of the Republican establishment.  The Republican establishment doesn't even have the sway in their own party to drive their chosen candidate to the nomination.

Rubio's strategy seems to be to hold out to the convention and then try to be the consensus candidate.  He may also be hoping that as more liberal states have their primaries that he seems to do better with those states, but he is running as a conservative so he's not going to pick up many moderate voters except as a protest against Cruz and Trump.  Right now Rubio is trailing Trump in Florida polls by double digits and Rubio is from Florida.  The one thing that he does offer is a block on Cruz and Trump in gaining the necessary delegates to go into the convention as the outright winner.  But if he's hoping to get to the convention and win the nomination win a brokered fashion there's the phantom of the backlash that will occur if Trump goes into the convention with the lead and loses the nomination.

#NeverTrump

Last week the Republican Establishment went full bore into it's anti-Trump attacks.  They rolled out Mitt Romney in an anti-Trump speech on March 3rd.  The New York Times published the text of the speech and you can read it yourself. Mitt Romney as you remember was the Republican Nominee in 2012 who lost the election to President Barack Obama. After Romney's loss one of the critiques was that he was insufficiently conservative. So who does the establishment roll out, but Mr Establishment himself who was dismissed by many conservatives for failing to be sufficiently orthodox. There was also some discussion and I don't know how serious it was of drafting Mitt for a dark horse run as a last ditch attempt to counter Trump. Somewhere over the last week the hashtag #NeverTrump was spun up on the web.

I don't know who started #NeverTrump, but I really have no clue what that means. A few strategies to get there have been floated.  The one that is currently underway has been to support a candidate and try to get voters to support that person.  As mentioned previously the establishment backed Marco Rubio once Jeb! Bush dropped out. Since then we've had two batches of primaries with Rubio doing poorly in both.  He finished second or third on Super Tuesday and then on Semi-Super Saturday he finished third across the board. Rubio made a big splash in Florida when he ran for Senate and he was a Tea Party darling in those days. Ted Cruz did really well on Semi-Super Saturday coming in first in two caucuses and second in two others. So I'm wondering how much the establishment label is hurting Rubio, but if you were holding out for Rubio to be the #NeverTrump solution you probably need to look elsewhere.

There's Ted Cruz as the #NeverTrump candidate and based on Semi-Super Saturday it may be that some people are voting for him, but the establishment and elites in the Republican Party hate Cruz with a passion. They view him as an opportunist who will do anything to get to advance his career. So from an establishment point of view Cruz like going from the fire into the frying pan; you won't get burned, but you are still cooked. Cruz is however a palatable alternative for authoritarian evangelicals with an anti-establishment bent. The two states Cruz won are Kansas and Maine and I'm not going to put much weight on either of those states with states with much higher populations that do actual primary elections and not caucuses coming up.

Another option for the #NeverTrump faction is the concept of the contested election.  In this strategy you don't have to win the nomination in the primaries, but you just have to make sure that Trump doesn't.  When you get to the convention you won't have a clear winner and then the wheeling and dealing can begin and the establishment can engineer someone else to be the nominee.  There's a huge danger here. Imagine what Trump's followers are going to think. They are angry because they feel that they've been screwed by just about everyone and they are incredibly anti-establishment.  They are going to view this as the establishment stealing the election and invalidating them and their votes. And then who gets the nomination?  The establishment doesn't like Trump, but it also doesn't like Cruz.  If Cruz has the second highest number of delegates what happens?  The establishment is pretty much screwed here.  They could get #NeverTrump, but end up with Cruz or an emasculated Rubio or Kasich and an open civil war in the party.

The last option I can see is that Trump wins and the establishment runs a third party option in the general election. I don't see this happening, but it is an option. This is where Mitt Romney might come back into the picture or maybe Michael Bloomberg.  There's really only a couple people who could fill the role, but basically it's splitting the Republican vote.

My opinion is that the people who say #NeverTrump are either not thinking things to the end of simply throwing a tantrum. #NeverTrump means finding another candidate to beat Trump out right in the primary or splitting the Republican vote in the general election.  If you split the Republican vote in the general election you are giving the election to the Democratic Party.  So win the primary outright or throw the election to Hillary Clinton.  That's really what #NeverTrump means and I bet most people are either not thinking it out or are simply locking onto a catch phrase and lying to themselves.

Republican Authoritarianism

In my last post I wrote a bit about the authoritarian support of Donald Trump in the Republican Primary.  Interestingly Vox had an article on March 1st "The Rise of American Authoritarianism." The Vox article is pretty long, but very well worth reading in it's entirety.  I'm not going to add any additional commentary.  I think the Vox article says a lot on its own.

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"The Rise of American Authoritarianism" : http://www.vox.com/2016/3/1/11127424/trump-authoritarianism

The Republican Primary

To do a write up of the Republican Primary justice I think you need to spend more time writing up your analysis than I, someone doing it for free in my spare time, can provide time to do. But here I am trying.

Right now the Republican Primary consists of Trump, Rubio, Cruz, Kasich and Carson.  Carson and Cruz seem to be trying to split the religious conservative vote.  Trump has the non-religious, anti-establishment, and conservative vote. Rubio and Kasich are vying for the establishment conservative vote.  You'll notice a theme there.  Conservative.  There are no moderates in this race.  Anyone calling Kasich a moderate conservative or a moderate Republican is an idiot and only trying to put him on a right axis line graph with no left.  They really are all bunched up on the extreme right end of the scale. So level of conservatism isn't a huge factor here.

The other thing happening in the Republican Party is the full scale adoption of authoritarianism.  (Yes, you can be anti-establishment and authoritarian.) Politico has an article by Matthew MacWilliams about a poll conducted testing authoritarian belief in Republican primary voters.  MacWilliams writes, "49 percent of likely Republican primary voters I surveyed score in the top quarter of the authoritarian scale." The study finds that Trump has locked up about half the authoritarian votes in the primary.  He doesn't write about where the remainder of the Republican authoritarians are leaning, but I'm willing to bet that a number are locked into Cruz and Carson.  Cruz and Carson are vying for the evangelical vote and evangelicals generally score high on authoritarian scales. Authoritarians believe generally in strong father figures that must be obeyed and quite frankly the evangelical view of God is the ultimate father figure that must be obeyed.

The question in my mind is what happens when Cruz and Carson drop? Where do their supporters break?  Do they go establishment or do they go authoritarian?  I think that's what will define the end of the primary. Mind you that Trump is in the driver's seat in this campaign.  Rubio has proven that by adopting the campaign tactic of making personal attacks against Trump.  I have no clue what Rubio is trying to do.  Attacking Trump personally just solidifies him with his base.  It isn't going to peel off Trump voters. Trump's appeal isn't his crassness.  His supporters enjoy it because they find it refreshing and it's something they fantasize about being able to do.  Trump is a billionaire which means he has freedom  to do whatever he wants.  Trump doesn't need money and he doesn't need a job.  If his followers spoke the way he does they would get fired.  Fear of being jobless and moneyless is a key factor in curbing certain speech.  Maybe Rubio thinks it makes him look like Trump, but at the end of the day you can have the Real Trump or you can have the cheap knock off version.  Rubio is the cheap knock off version.

The authoritarian bent isn't the only factor in the nomination for the Republicans, but it is a big one.  And I do think it's going to be a large driver to who wins.  Another factor comes down to the establishment versus the anti-establishment.  The Tea Party is extremely anti-establishment. They have tried to oust the establishment in Congress and have had considerable success in doing so. Trump is the ultimate anti-establishment candidate in the Republican Party right now.  Upon a time Rubio was a Tea Party darling and represented the anti-establishment, but at this point he is the establishment's best hope of beating Trump.  So the next question is if the Carson and Cruz voters are interested in going establishment or anti-establishment and I think there's a strong case that Cruz's supporters are anti-establishment, but Cruz also has a large evangelical following and I'm not sure which factor is going to drive them.

Obviously I've spent a lot of time thinking about the Republican Primary and I just don't know how this ends.  Lindsey Graham this week referred to his party as being batshit crazy. Senator Graham is solidly conservative and also very much an establishment guy.  His summation of the Republican Party is pretty much right on and that's what makes it so hard to predict which way this is going to go.  The Republicans are driving off road and while that makes it an intriguing puzzle for someone like myself who enjoys the analysis it also makes it scary as all Hell. This is a party that has gone insane. I know a lot of people sit back and think that is a good thing since "there's no way they can win the White House," but that's a lazy analysis.  Let me close by adding that the MacWilliams poll indicated that in regards to the authoritarian angle 39% of independents and 17% of Democrats have authoritarian leanings.  Let that sink in for a bit.


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Links:

Matthew MacWilliams, The One Weird Trait That Predicts Whether You’re a Trump Supporter: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/01/donald-trump-2016-authoritarian-213533.

Bob Altemeyer of the University of Manitoba has done considerable analysis on authoritarianism and I advise reading his book: http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/.

South Carolina Democratic Primary

Hillary Clinton handily won the South Carolina Democratic Primary.  That was pretty much a given.  It's the edge of the South and Bernie Sanders is going to have a hard slog through the South.  I'm personally of a mind that Hillary will win the Democratic nomination.  There certainly is a path to victory for Bernie and he is going to have his share of victories going forward.  I just don't think the probabilities are on his side.  His path is an unlikely one.  Bernie is going to serve to push Hillary toward the left through the primary, but she's not going to go too far.

South Carolina Republican Primary

Trump's path to the Republican nomination got a lot clearer yesterday.  The Republican Primary in South Carolina was held on February 20th (the Democratic Primary is next weekend).  Trump came in first with 32.5% of the vote, Rubio came in second with 22.5%, Cruz came in third with 22.3%, and Bush, Kasich and Carson finished with under 8% each.

Kasich and Carson are finished.  I expect Kasich's support to flow to Rubio and Carson's to Trump. Bush will hold on until Super Tuesday.  The elite and establishment will consolidate now around Rubio and the money will flow his way.  We've seen the start of Cruz attacking Rubio as a creature of the establishment and I would expect that to increase at this point.  He's going to get hammered on that point and will become radioactive with the base which is distinctly anti-establishment and anti-elite.

Cruz is going to hang on for a while, but he'll be toast before long.  He uses a lot of dirty tricks and he's doesn't come across as particularly moral.  He's a career opportunist and this is his high water mark.  I'm not entirely sure where Cruz's support goes when he drops out.  I think a best guess would be a split between Trump and Rubio, but I'm not sold on that.  Trump has suprised me in that he has a fair number of Evangelical Christians voting for him.  It's possible that they rally to Trump's banner.

Of course I'm in pundit mode and even though I've been mostly correct so far (you'll have to take my word for it since I was still on blogger hiatus as of last week), I'm painfully aware of how hard it's been to make predictions about this race.  Six months ago I wouldn't have guessed Trump vs Rubio for the nomination.  I would have guess Bush with Trump playing the spoiler.  This race is a dream come true for people who enjoy political analysis.

UPDATE: Well, one of the problems with not following the news closely is that Bush dropped out already.  So I'm off on the timing on that one.  I really thought he was going to wait for Super Tuesday.

SCOTUS Justice Scalia's Former Seat

With the death of Supreme Court Justice Scalia his former seat on the Court is now vacant.  Even though Justice Scalia died on Saturday by Saturday evening the Republican politicians had already stated that President Obama should be blocked from filling the vacancy.

Most of the Republican presidential candidates came out with some sort of weird new tradition that the President hasn't made a nomination to the Court in his last year in office in eighty years.  That is demonstrably false.  (It's a lie.) Scotusblog was good enough to compile a list of election year SCOTUS nominations made by presidents during election years over the last 100 years.  The list includes five cases between 1912 and 1987 where the nominee was confirmed by the Senate and then another two cases one in 1956 where President Eisenhower made a recess appointment that was confirmed by the Senate the following year and another in 1968 when President Johnson attempted to fill a vacancy, but it was blocked by the Senate.  The most recent case was in 1987 when President Reagan nominated Anthony Kennedy to the Court and the Senate confirmed him in 1988.  The New York Times has also published a graph showing all the Supreme Court nominations going back to President Washington which shows when in a term the nomination was made.  

Senator Mitch McConnell has commented that the American people should have a voice in the nomination via the Presidential election campaign currently underway.  As shown in the previous paragraph this would be an unusual situation.  Also let me remind you that the American people have had a say in this nomination since in 2008 there was a Presidential election in which Barack Obama was elected president and then another in 2012 where he was re-elected to the same office.  

Article II, Section 2, of the US Constitution spells out the ability of the President to make nominations to the Supreme Court:

He shall have power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, judges of the Supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States, whose appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by law: but the Congress may by law vest the appointment of such inferior officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the courts of law, or in the heads of departments.

"He shall have power" not should, but shall.  That means he does.   It also states "with the advice and consent of the Senate."  So there you have it.  President Obama was elected twice to the office.  He can exercise the powers provided by the US Constitution.  He has the power to nominate justices with the advice and consent of the Senate.  There is no tradition of Presidents not nominating someone to fill the vacancy during an election year and anyone who says otherwise is simply playing games.

I'm going to lay it out there blankly.  Anyone who claims to support the Constitution and who then tries to say that the President shouldn't or can't nominate someone to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court doesn't actually support the Constitution.  The Constitution is pretty clear on the power of the President to nominate.  It doesn't have a secret clause that says "except in an election year or the last year in office."  It's pretty simple.  Either you believe in the Constitution or you don't.  If you say you don't, but then in practice you say it shouldn't apply to a case, then you are a hypocrite or a panderer and in either case you've disqualified yourself to the Office of the President of the United States of America.  

Been a While

It's been almost four years since I last wrote a blog.  I've had two others.  "Notes to Leicester" which I started around 2007 and folded it sometime around 2011.  "Notes to Leicester" was focused on town politics back when I was very much into local politics and had a school committee seat in my home town.  I followed that with "Heart of an Iconoclast" and then folded that shortly after the 2012 election.  "Heart of an Iconoclast" was focused on state and national politics, economics and a bit of town politics when the mood struck me.  When I folded that I focused on Twitter.  Learning how to communicate in 140 characters was refreshing, but since the 2016 election season has unfolded I've been thinking I need more characters with which to elaborate my thoughts, so here it is "Whiskey, Coffee and Politics."

I happen to be a fan of whiskey, coffee and politics.  Also whiskey and coffee tend to be flowing when conversations of politics are occurring.  So if you've come looking for discussion of whiskey and coffee you might get disappointed.  If you've come for discussion of politics you may still be disappointed.  I'm a rationalist.  I'm not someone who is going to sit and write emotionally charged commentary.  I'm going to write commentary that has been considered and hopefully logically rational.  You'll also be treated to the occasional discussion of economics.  Actually more than just the occasional discussion of economics, because I'm of the mind that politics and economics are intertwined and one leads to the other.  

I'll just present an up front warning.  I don't watch or listen to broadcast news or talk radio.  If you get your news from those sources, then I'll have very little for you here.  I do gather written news from multiple sources and will often respond to what I've read.  I'll also have commentary based on things important enough to have floated through my general air of indifference.  I do glance at the headlines and I'll read an article that I think may be of interest.  I don't read Drudge, Breitbart or Red State and you can extrapolate from there where this is all going.