Remember the Edmund Fitzgerald

Sometimes singing about a thing makes it famous. Gordon Lightfoot sang the doleful ballad that begins:

The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they call Gitche Gumee
The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead
When the skies of November turn gloomy.

People are still interested in the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald, see this article from USA Today website, written by a reporter for the Detroit Free Press. Lyrics are from this site about the event.

The article reports the activities of a retired policeman who spent much of his savings renting a two-man sub to dive on the wreck. It includes a picture of the ship's name, still visible on the hull at a depth of 530 feet.

On a stormy November night, we remember that Lightfoot concluded:

The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they call Gitche Gumee
Superior, they say, never gives up her dead
When the gales of November come early.

Argentina Revisited

Mary Anastasia O'Grady writes about Latin America for The Wall Street Journal. This week she is looking at the future of Argentina after the death of strong-man ex president Nestor Kirchner.

O'Grady is not among those who were optimistic upon his death, hoping for a return to rule of law. She says the country is being run by union bosses, who are the power behind the Peronist party. I particularly like her closing thought:

The only thing up in the air is who can maneuver most effectively within a country ruled by the ideology of 1930s economic nationalism. It's like a battle of mafia dons. The rest of the Argentine nation remains a spectator.

Identity Group Voting

If an identifiable group of voters always votes for one party, that party takes them for granted while the other party ignores their interests as irrelevant. If, on the other hand, an identifiable group of voters sometimes votes for one party, sometimes for the other, then both parties pay attention to their interests.

In the last 50 years roughly 90% of African American voters have voted for Democrats. As noted above, Democrats have largely taken their votes for granted and ignored their interests. Mostly Republicans have ignored them as unreachable.

On the other hand, in the election just concluded, Hispanics voted for both parties. A Washington Examiner article has the data:

At 34 percent, Republicans turned in one of their better recent performances with Hispanic voters. If all margins hold as currently reported, Republicans will represent eight of the 30 most heavily Hispanic congressional districts in America. Three of those are South Florida districts with significant Cuban populations.

Cuban Americans are known to favor Republicans; it is interesting that 5 Hispanic congressional districts not dominated by Cuban immigrants appear to have elected Republicans. If over time Hispanics continue to vote for either party, both parties will attend to their interests.

Advanced Gerrymandering 1A

Gerrymandering, and the advantages it gives the party controlling the process, are some of the most arcane aspects of political inside baseball. If you are enough of a politics wonk to want some gerrymandering details, here is an article by Mark Greenbaum from Salon about the current state of play.

The author concludes that our friends across the aisle could be in semi-deep doodoo for the next decade. The reasoning is that in 2010 the Dems lost a number of seats they shouldn't be holding, legacy seats held by blue dog Dems in districts that lean right.

Most of the rest were seats in somewhat conservative districts that were gained during the recent Dem wave elections. Greenbaum believes that the upcoming round of census data-driven redistricting/gerrymandering in state houses controlled by the GOP will tend to strengthen Republican control for the next decade.

Given Salon's lean to the left, you know this notion gives them heartburn. We rarely get the opportunity to say to them, "Gosh, I hope they are correct."

Yesterday's Faces

Teams with losing records fire their coaches, seek new leadership. See what liberal Albert Hunt writes for The New York Times about the continuation in office of the former congressional Democratic leaders:

In U.S. elections where voters expressed disapproval with Washington, the decision of the House speaker to remain as the Democratic leader of the minority, following the re-election in Nevada of the Senate majority leader, Mr. Reid, means that the face of the congressional party will continue to be yesterday. (snip) Republicans were jubilant. Leading Democratic strategists were despondent.

Older = Wiser

I've been wondering for whom older citizens voted in the midterm elections. Here is an article from Politico which answers that question.

Author Byron Tau pulls together results from a variety of sources to conclude that seniors were large contributors to the anti-Democrat wave. Here is the money quote:

The shift in older voters was the most dramatic swing of any age group, George Mason political scientist Michael McDonald said, and it gave the GOP the “magnitude” of its victory.

Tau also indicates that seniors were a larger proportion of total voters in 2010 than in earlier elections. It has always been difficult to motivate young folks to make the effort to vote, more so in midterm elections, and even more so this year.

Adams on Management

Scott Adams, author of the "Dilbert" cartoon series lampooning organizational life, has an excellent article for The Wall Street Journal. His basic thesis is that the prevalence of managers who are "hamster-brained sociopaths" is a real stimulus for our economy. They motivate subordinates to go to work for themselves.

Adams also applies his concept to countries:

The United States is a nation founded by people who couldn't stand the leaders of their old homelands. I'm no geneticist, but I suspect that the "screw it, I'm out of here" attitude can get passed on. We're probably the most disgruntled, self-loathing, hard-to-satisfy people on Earth. It's no wonder our GDP is awesome.

BTW, I spent a career educating managers, some of whom undoubtedly are seen by their subordinates as hamster-brained sociopaths, or worse. Maybe this outcome isn't so bad after all.

Scott Adams is a humorist but I wonder if, like Ann Coulter, he hasn't stumbled across truth in the pursuit of laughs. Along the way Adams takes a couple of hard jabs at affirmative action, jabs only a humorist can get away with.

New Britain-France Defense Treaty

I've been shaking my head at the news that the British have signed a 50 year defense pact with the French. Can you believe the people who fought the Battle of Britain and withstood the London Blitz have made common cause with cheese-eating surrender monkeys?

Talk about the halt leading the blind, my guess is that the pact will be fortunate to last 5 years, let alone 50. Go see this article by a British author in The Wall Street Journal. He is correct; the pact should have been with the United States, or perhaps with the U.S. and Australia.

2012 Begins

The midterm election happened November 2; the presidential derby for 2012 began November 3, if not earlier. One thing about modern politics, the game never stops.

At this point there are two interesting sets of questions to be answered. Set one: will President Obama face a primary challenge and who will be in the running to be the Republican nominee? Set two: who will be the nominees of the two major parties?

In my lifetime, a number of sitting presidents have been denied a second term. Lyndon Johnson, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush come to mind. What do they have in common? In every case they had done things that really ticked off the electorate: unpopular war, Nixon pardon, Iran embassy hostages, breaking a no new tax promise, respectively.

Two years from now, will Barack Obama be seen to have ticked off the electorate? Will his phrase be "screwed up health insurance?" Will it, like Herbert Hoover's, be "ignored the bad economy?" Or will he be reelected? These are questions we will be exploring over the next two years.

Let the seminar begin!

California, New York Politically Similar

Fred Siegel writes a very interesting article for City Journal. He finds New York and California politically similar in a variety of ways, and observes that they differ from the rest of the country. I particularly appreciated this description:

New York and California lead the country in middle-class—often white—outmigration. That has produced a vicious circle in which the very wealthy, the urban poor, and the public-sector unions who define the Democratic coalition create a high-taxing, heavily regulated polity that drives business and the upwardly mobile to the exits.

As you see, Siegel agrees with my "banana republic" analogy of two days ago. He concludes that NY and CA will demand the solvent red states bail them out of impending bankruptcy, leading to an epic battle Siegel describes as follows:

The upshot would likely be a high-stakes conflict about free trade, globalization, social class, race, illegal immigration, and public-sector unionism.

I can hardly wait.

McConnell Gets Tough

Presumptive new Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told the brutal truth about what is required to accomplish the Republican agenda. Speaking to The Heritage Foundation, as reported by Howard Kurtz in The Daily Beast, McConnell said:

If our primary legislative goals are to repeal and replace the health spending bill; to end the bailouts; cut spending; and shrink the size and scope of government, the only way to do all these things is to put someone in the White House who won't veto any of these things.

Talk about flinging down the gauntlet. I doubt that sentiment will make cooperation with the White House any easier.

Punditry

Pundits throw ideas at the wall. Some ideas stick there and are admired as art, or something very like art. Others fall to the floor and are treated like the animal waste they resemble.

A columnist who is highly variable in this way is The Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan. A former presidential speech writer, attractive TV talking head, and longtime observer of the nation's politics, Noonan has plenty of both hits and misses.

Her latest column has great examples of each. In the hits category, we have observations like the following:

>The implicit message of two generations of negative ads: Vote conservative, limit the reach of the thieves.
>On Wednesday, President Obama gave a news conference to share his thoughts. Viewers would have found it disappointing if there had been any viewers. The president (was) speaking, in effect, to an empty room.
>In the future the tea party is going to have to ask itself: Is this candidate electable? Will he pass muster with those who may not themselves be deeply political but who hold certain expectations as to the dignity and stature required of those who hold office.

In the misses category, Noonan finishes with this loser:

>Americans don't want, as their representatives, people who seem empty or crazy. They'll vote no on that. It's not just the message, it's the messenger.

That line should read "They should, and often do, vote no on that." Barack Obama was an empty candidate with a feel-good message.

Quote of the Day

David Paul Kuhn, chief political correspondent for RealClearPolitics, writes about the recent election in Yahoo News:

This election was not a vote for Republicans anymore than 2006 was a vote for Democrats. We just witnessed an historic no confidence vote.

"An historic no confidence vote" is exactly what I would call it.

California's Woes

On Tuesday a Republican wave swept the nation, a wave that didn't reach California. We wrote about this yesterday. Explaining this refusal by Californians to face reality is hard to do.

The Investor's Business Daily has an editorial that summarizes just how screwed up things in the Golden State have become. They do an entire column on the indications of CA's disaster, let me give you three samples:

• With just 12% of the U.S. population, California has almost a third of the nation's welfare recipients.
• The state's sales tax is the nation's highest, and its income tax the third-highest, the BusinessInsider.com Web site recently noted.
• California is home to 25% of America's 12 million to 20 million illegal immigrants.

One eighth of the U.S. population supports one third of those on welfare and copes with one quarter of the illegals. Poor California has more than its share of trouble; and Californians just voted to make it worse. Merde alors.

This Los Angeles Times article explains from whence the votes for CA Democrats are thought to have come. The author gives most of the credit to Hispanics.

CA as Banana Republic

Democrats swept all of the top jobs in California...every one...without exception. And yet, about 40% of Californians voted for the GOP. Imagine being one of those 40%, as I once was.

Imagine seeing that your state, a place of which you are fond, of which you are possibly a native, is going irretrievably into the toilet. What happens, what do you do? My nephew is in this fix now and he asked me where could he move? My answer was: Texas or Oklahoma.

As a native Californian my nephew won't like many aspects of those states, but he will find the politics congenial. He will find housing inexpensive, taxes relatively low, and the climate not too different if he can tolerate the tornadoes and the humidity.

Will he move? Probably not until retirement. Many who aren't tied down by secure employment will go sooner. Others will get opportunities to move with their employers that are leaving the state.

Over time, this migration will hollow out California's middle class, leaving the state with many poor, and a few wealthy. Does that sound like the classic description of a third world country, resembling many nations in Latin America or Asia? It does.

Postmortem

It was a good night for those of us on the right. A good night, perhaps even a very good night, but not a spectacular night. We don't know how close we came in the Senate; as I write this a couple of seats remain to be called. What we do know is that we didn't quite get a majority.

Seemingly using tactics learned from Mayor Daley's father, a vastly unpopular Harry Reid managed to squeak a narrow win over an inferior opponent in recession-ridden Nevada. That is sad, I really didn't want to hear about him over the next two years. I cheer myself up by remembering that I will no longer be looking at Speaker Pelosi's Botox work.

Not capturing the Senate may turn out to be a blessing in disguise, at least some of the pundit class think this could be true. It makes it harder for the electorate to blame the GOP for the inevitable failures of the Congress. Our candidates in 2012 can still run against the Democrat establishment comprised of Obama and Reid. As this election demonstrates, there are distinct advantages to being on the outside looking in.

One nice thing the Republican "wave" brought was some wins in New England, an area that has appeared lost to the GOP over the last decade or two. We also elected some minority GOP candidates: blacks, Hispanics and another East Indian. That makes ragging on us as racists more difficult.

I look forward to seeing a summary of the election results. Perhaps there is more reason for happiness than I am experiencing now. I think Majority Leader-in-waiting Boehner had it right, it is time to roll up our sleeves and get to work.

An Unhappy Democrat

In years past, Georgie Ann Geyer has had decent insights on foreign affairs, her specialty. She now writes for U express, after a long career with Universal Press Syndicate, and her column is here on the Yahoo News site. Tonight she gives us a bewildered Democrat's look at the situation on this unhappy (for her) election day.

Ms. Geyer is genuinely confused and, unusually for a career pundit, she admits it. I expect her "we did everything right and got blamed for everything wrong" meme will be on many Democratic lips in the next few weeks.

We Screwed Up

Bret Stephens, of The Wall Street Journal, has an interesting column in which he says we - the electorate - are responsible for Obama. We knew he had no experience, a truly bizarre background, repellent associates, an inflated opinion of himself, and we hired him anyway.

When Stephens says we are to blame for Obama, I have to say I think he's right, if by "we" he means the American people. Actually most readers of COTTonLINE didn't vote for Obama, but a distressing majority of our fellow citizens did.

Now, if the pollsters haven't totally missed the mark, those same voters are going to register a "we don't love you any more" vote. Go figure....

NOvember Is Here

We learn midterm election results tomorrow. Those of us who proudly wear the label "conservative" are likely to be happy with the outcomes. Those who equally proudly, I suspect, wear the label "liberal" won't.

I hope you have a good evening tomorrow. Grinning is permitted; however skipping and giggling in this context are considered unseemly.

Quote of the Day

Hugh Hewett, writing for the Washington Examiner, about the implications of Tuesday's election:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and President Obama have accomplished an extraordinary thing. Tomorrow they will enter the history books as the most spectacularly failed partnership in modern American political history.