Pithy Wisdom

William Voegeli. plugging his new book Pity Party: A Mean-Spirited Diatribe Against Liberal Compassion, on the Power Line website.

Being simultaneously compassionate and nonjudgmental - caring about how people are but not about what they do - disregards the many important ways that what they do determines how they are.

By contrast, conservatives believe much of what is wrong with how people are is the result of the poor choices they make on a regular basis. Everyone who has experienced a hangover understands how this works.

Scandinavian Political Traditions, Indians Too

John Hinderaker of Power Line blog takes note of the National Journal map of red and blue House districts we wrote about yesterday. He wonders what is wrong with his home state of Minnesota.

MN has some of the few rural areas represented by Democrats. To his credit he mentions Scandinavian political traditions which lean left.

The other large non-urban area represented on the map is the northern parts of Arizona and New Mexico plus southern AZ. For those who don't know, much of this is part of the enormous Navaho, White Mountain, Papago and Moqui reservations which blanket large stretches the northeastern, eastern and southern reaches of AZ and the northwestern reaches of NM.

Fun factoid: The Navaho Nation is so out of step with the rest of the state that it observes daylight savings time while the rest of AZ does not, stubbornly sticking to Mountain Standard Time year round.

Higher Ed, Higher Pay

Some have suggested a college degree is worth less than previously. Perhaps, but recent research shows those with degrees aren't often at the bottom of the barrel.

The Pew Research organization reports very few individuals with a baccalaureate degree or higher make a near-minimum wage of $10.10 per hour or less. Only 7.2% of those at these wage levels have a college degree. On the other hand, some 37% of those earning this wage have some college, but stopped short of a degree.

Election Demographics

Joel Kotkin has a relatively fine-grained analysis of the demographic aspects of the Republican midterm victory, written for Forbes and reprinted in New Geography. Not filled with surprises but good stuff nevertheless.

For example, Kotkin reports Greg Abbott won 44% of the Hispanic vote in TX against Democrat Wendy Davis. This suggests some things about a potential Hillary Clinton candidacy. It may be that Hispanics are somewhat reluctant to vote for women, culturally that might compute.

Quote of the Day

Heather Wilhelm, writing for RealClearPolitics about feminism's foibles and Hillary Clinton:

Hillary Rodham Clinton, an individual who is, when we’re being honest, not very competent, kind of a snooze, and not at all “likeable enough”—and yet who is now, rather amazingly, the leading 2016 Democratic presidential candidate solely because she does not have man-type junk in her trunk.

That characterization is funny, but a tad harsh. Democrats want to believe she can rekindle the Clinton era good economic times. That's highly unlikely as Bill was more lucky than skillful. However, many will drink the Kool-Aid.

A Fun Factoid

The Fox News cable news channel won the ratings war on election night, according to The Los Angeles Times. See what they write:

According to Nielsen Media Research, Fox News Channel beat CNN, MSNBC, CBS, NBC and ABC's coverage in both total viewers and in the 25-to-54-year-old demographic.

Co-anchored by Bret Baier and Megyn Kelly, the channel's election coverage averaged 6.3 million viewers during prime time.

I think it amazing Fox beat the big broadcast nets. Do you suppose it had something to do with Fox's conservative viewers being happy with the outcome while liberal viewers were bummed and tuned out?

Could It Be the Bradley Effect?

Apropos of my last post about polling problems, I just had a strange thought. Is it possible the systematic pro-Democrat bias in 2014 polling was a vestigial remnant of the Bradley effect?

A quick reminder, the Bradley effect refers to California voters telling pollsters they'd vote for L.A. mayor Tom Bradley - an African-American - for governor when they knew they would vote for George Deukmejian instead. Bradley led in the polls but lost.

It is possible some few individuals intended to vote Republican as a way of expressing disapproval of our African-American president, but didn't want to admit it as they feared it made them appear vaguely racist. It wouldn't take more than a few percent to throw off the polls.

If that were the case, there may have been nothing wrong with the pollsters' models, referenced below. I wonder if any pollsters build a Bradley effect fudge factor into their models?

Just sayin' ....

Poll Problems

USA Today's Jim Norman asks why the polls all predicted the Democrats would do better than they eventually did. I believe he unwittingly answered his own question.

As he notes, in 2012 the polls systematically overestimated the Republican turnout. In 2014 they overestimated the Democratic turnout. I'd guess the answer is buried in that pair of facts.

Following their miss in 2012 pollsters rechecked their assumptions about turnout and adjusted their modeling of the electorate to reduce pro-GOP bias. I'd guess they adjusted it too much, believing that the Democrats vaunted "ground game" would succeed in getting the young and minorities to the polls in a midterm election. That belief proved to be false.

At a minimum a pollster needs separate models for presidential elections and midterm elections. Needed are models that reflect the older, whiter, more conservative midterm electorate and the younger, more diverse, more liberal presidential electorate.

A Liberal's Two Conclusions

Writing for New York Magazine, Jonathan Chait reaches two conclusions you may find interesting, coming from a liberal pundit:

The first is that Democrats stand almost no visible prospect of attaining a government majority. (snip) As long as Democrats hold the White House, Republican control of Congress is probably safe — at least for several election cycles to come.

The second conclusion is simpler, and more bracing: Hillary Clinton is the only thing standing between a Republican Party even more radical than George W. Bush’s version and unfettered control of American government.

Both parties are more radical than they were formerly. It is the result of Americans sorting themselves into two ideologically cohesive parties. Few conservative Democrats or liberal Republicans remain. This perforce reduces the ideological "bandwidth" of each party's "big tent."

Chait's second conclusion is spooky - Hillary reminds me of Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cukoo's Nest. Who else do they have? A coach would say the Dems' bench isn't strong, many of their "hot prospects" just lost an election.

Some Don't Bother, Some Choose Not To Vote

The New York Times' Nate Cohn writes that many Democrats are blaming their poor performance on Tuesday on low turnout, even though their party invested millions in targeting young and minority voters who often don't vote in midterm elections. He points to a race where that was a factor - Virginia - and one where it was not - Colorado.

COTTonLINE believes a person not voting can arise from more than one mindset. To be sure, it often arises from a lack of interest in the down-ballot races featured in midterms. However, it can also arise from anger at the party for which one normally votes plus an unwillingness to vote for the other major party, long viewed as "the enemy."

Not voting can be an affirmative choice. A voter says: "I don't approve of either major party, each for different reasons, and can't be bothered casting a throwaway protest vote for a minor party."

Possible affirmative non-voters: a black evangelical who is pro-life, a young Jew angry at his party calling Netanyahu "chickenshit," a union member who opposes amnesty for illegals, a Hispanic activist who believes promised amnesty to be postponed or forgotten, an unemployed Millennial college grad who lives with parents. You can imagine others.

I'm not unhappy when people choose not to vote. If only a quarter of those eligible cast a ballot, then my vote speaks for four people, myself and three who didn't vote, bless 'em.

Political Humor Alert

The following is the dialog from a political cartoon by Glenn McCoy at today's Lucianne.com site:

Reporter: Why are you planning to grant amnesty to millions of illegals?
Obama: Because they will do the jobs Americans don't want to do.

Reporter: Like what?
Obama: Voting Democrat.

That was the case on Tuesday, two years from now - who knows?

Two Sets of Takeaways

What are the odds that two pundits who write for different outlets will use essentially identical titles for their election analytics? There is some overlap in their pearls of wisdom.

"9 takeaways from the 2014 election"
by Ezra Klein, for Vox

"9 Key Takeaways From Last Night's GOP Triumph"
by Mark Hemingway for The Weekly Standard

Klein mines the following gems from the election returns:

1. The Democrats lost.
2. The night had few bright spots for Democrats.
3. Democrats told themselves the wrong stories about this election.
4. The Republican Senate wins were largely expected.
5. Hillary Clinton is arguably also a winner here.
6. Republicans just got a big general boost for 2016.
7. Don't expect much on immigration.
8. The Senate is about to get a lot more polarized.
9. There are a few policies that might be easier to pass after the election.

Hemingway draws the following conclusions, some in agreement, some in opposition:

1. The "War on Women" is now a loser.
2. From minority party to party of minorities.
3. Chris Christie and Scott Walker are winners.
4. The Clintons are losers.
5. Obamacare is a loser.
6. Global warming is a loser.
7. Obama's winning coalition is not a winning Democratic coalition.
8. The GOP needs to learn to tell blue from purple.
9. The polls were, in fact, skewed.

They draw opposite conclusions about the election's implications for Hillary C. Both articles are definitely worth your time.

A Sea of Red

Next Tuesday, November 11, we celebrate Veterans' Day. So do the Brits, for the same reason - the Great War, aka World War I ended with an armistice on November 11, 1918.

In honor of that war, which began just 100 years ago in July of 1914, the Brits have done something strange and wonderful, and terrifying too. For each British and Commonwealth soldier who died in that war, they have "planted" a ceramic red poppy in the moat of the Tower of London, a total of 888,246 poppies.

The blood red flowers fill the huge moat, and it is a stunning, terrible sight. CBS News has video of the scene. Britain lost a generation of young men in the brutal trench warfare in France, on the hills of Gallipoli, and at sea against the U-boats.

Without Stopping

The Washington Post's Dana Milbank, commenting on today's Obama presser:

“I hear you,” President Obama said to the voters who gave Democrats an electoral drubbing in Tuesday’s midterm elections.

But their message went in one presidential ear and out the other.

Don't Hold Your Breath

President Obama, sometime earlier in the year speaking with Democrat Senators up for reelection, according to a Politico article:

I don’t really care to be president without the Senate.

The Democratic Senate will be gone in January. Question: Will he resign? Answer: No, he was blowing smoke up their backsides ... again.

A Crimson Tide

National Journal has a map of the U.S. with each House district colored red or blue according to whether it will be represented in the next Congress by a Republican or a Democrat. You really owe it to yourself to go look at it.

What will amaze you is the overwhelming percentage of our landmass represented by House Republicans. It eyeballs at maybe 75-80%. The map is a practical tool for conservatives to find philosophically congenial places to live, particularly in retirement.

Then stop to consider that if Alaska was drawn to scale (it isn't) the map would be much redder. AK is 2.5 times the size of number two Texas but the map shows it to be smaller.

Trende: What It All Means

RealClearPolitics' senior elections analyst Sean Trende weighs in on the election:

I think we have the answer to the question of “What did the election mean?” The answer: The president received a vote of no confidence.  It was amplified in Senate races because of the playing field, but the overall House vote and the performance of Democratic senators in purple states is consistent with this approach.

COTTonLINE agrees.

Cut My Budget, Suffer the Consequences

Perhaps you remember that I wrote about bureaucrats punishing the public whenever their budgets are cut, or desired increases not approved? Today's news brings a prime example.

Forbes Magazine has a report of a speech by the head of the Internal Revenue Service, John Koskinen, who makes it explicit.

Phone service could plummet to 53%. All we can do is try to maximize our services as well as we can; as well as we can is still going to be miserable. You really do get what you pay for. 

Forbes explains that would be down from 72% during the 2014 filing season. The average hold time is projected to be 34 minutes.

I'd have hoped some reporter would ask Koskinen how the IRS is tightening its own belt, how its people will suffer from the cuts. Apparently, those present were too smart to believe this could ever happen.

Election Reflections

As the day wears on, I expect to have a variety of reflections and insights about yesterday's election - what influenced the outcome and what it all means, if anything. I plan to add them to this post as they occur to me.

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A number of indicators suggest yesterday's election results are less an endorsement of the GOP than a repudiation of Obama's Democrats; a vote of "no confidence" in Harry Reid, and what one pundit termed "Typhoid Barry."

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The "performance appraisal" I wrote of early Tuesday morning happened as predicted. If anything, the pollsters overestimated the effectiveness of the Democrat turn-out machine.

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A smart thing was said by a TV pundit last night. A major reason Obama won reelection in 2012 was the Dems made sure key provisions of their big legislative achievements - Obamacare and Dodd-Frank - didn't take effect until after the election. The atmospherics of both laws were much better than their reality.

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A major factor in the Republican sweep yesterday was a greatly improved panel of candidates. Unlike the last couple of cycles, the GOP put forward no inept Tea Party candidates afflicted with foot-in-mouth disease. Sounding stupid tended to be a Democrat problem in 2014.

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The GOP got off the social issues bandwagon in 2014 and was rewarded for doing so. For better or worse, public opinion has "moved on" and the courts have recognized this.

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Whoever came up with the idea of having GOP candidates endorse over-the-counter birth control should get a gold star. It turned out the "war on women" meme didn't sell in 2014.

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It was predicted that President Obama would not take responsibility for his party's dismal midterm election showing, and once more the prediction has come true. See a CNBC story in which POTUS comments on the last two years of his presidency. He pointedly says nothing about the election debacle being his fault. Denial is not just a river in Egypt.

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Statistician Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight blog notes the polls were biased against Republicans this year, as they also were in 1994 and 2002. The same polls were biased against Democrats in 1998, 2006, and 2012. He writes:

The average Senate poll conducted in the final three weeks of this year’s campaign overestimated the Democrat’s performance by 4 percentage points. The average gubernatorial poll was nearly as bad, overestimating the Democrat’s performance by 3.4 points.

Two Great Images

The following are self-explanatory images apropos of yesterday's election returns.

and 

My source for these is a Yahoo News article.