Good News ... Maybe

Various news sources are reporting an announcement by Pfizer that their Covid-19 vaccine is 90% effective in preventing the corona virus infection. This is excellent news, and in record time, too. 

Much of the credit for the speed with which it was developed must go to President Trump. The credit for its efficacy goes to the scientists and technologists who developed it.

I anticipate the first recipients should be health professionals - doctors, RNs, hospital orderlies, EMTs, etc. The second should be the at-risk residents and staff of long-term care facilities. The third, probably after the first of the year, should be the non-institutionalized elderly. 

However, one of Biden’s health advisers has written that keeping the Covid vaccine for Americans before others get it is basically unfair and wrong. It would serve us right if Biden decides his adviser is correct and ships our vaccine to third world sh*tholes before Mr. and Mrs. America get theirs. It would be an appropriate way for Biden to ‘thank’ his supporters.

Further Musings

George W. Bush was my President but I certainly was unenthused about his RINO ways. Barack Obama was the President but he wasn't "my President." Donald Trump was both the President and "my President." Joe Biden, presuming he is in fact the winner will once again be the President but not "my President." 

Life is like that, you win some and lose some. Somehow I take the winning for granted, and feel the losing more keenly. Perhaps that's Murphy's Law at work, and that Murphy puts in long hours on the job. 

It looks like COTTonLINE will spend the next four years chronicling the Biden missteps and malapropisms. That is, we will if they don't ease him out of office using the 25th Amendment. Damn, I really don't want to listen to Kamala's inane laugh from the Oval Office.

Comes the Bolo 3.0

Much of my misspent youth was devoted to reading science fiction novels and short stories. When I donated my library to the special collection at East New Mexico State University it comprised 800+ volumes. Favorites of mine were Keith Laumer’s stories about self-aware robot tanks called Bolos. 

Technology is beginning to catch up with sci fi, see Kyle Mizokami’s piece for Popular Mechanics about the successor to the M1 Abrams tank. According to him, a crew will be optional for the new design.

So ... how close are we to artificial intelligence (AI) with self-awareness? Ask your search engine as I just did and get pages of hits. How long till they are combined - the robot tank and self-awareness? Ask DARPA, but don’t expect an answer.

No Coattails

While we examine the implications of this election, it is worthwhile noting that the Biden-Harris ticket had, as they say, no coattails. It appears they have won, or maybe stolen, the presidential election while adding only one to their representation in the Senate and losing 10 or more seats in the House of Representatives. 

In an era of little ticket-splitting this is highly unusual. I’m certain some will interpret it as a targeted repudiation of Trump rather than a rejection of Republicans. There is no question Trump is a highly polarizing figure.

As we noted some weeks ago, it’s likely some voters were tired of Trump’s histrionics, his tendency to make every story about himself. Am I the only one to notice he shares this trait with Barack Obama? 

For the Politics-Obsessed

An outcome of this election, which a few of the more insightful observers have noted, happened at the state government level. Democrats managed to flip exactly zero state legislatures into their control, in fact they lost control of two to the GOP. 

Why is this important? Because as a result of the 2020 census, seats in the House of Representatives will be reapportioned to the states based on new population figures. There will be winner states that have gained population and loser states that have lost people. Republican FL and TX are big winners.

More states have Republican legislatures than have Democrat-controlled ones. In most cases the House districts are carved up by the legislatures in ways that are advantageous to the dominant party. 

This normally means designing as many districts as possible with modest dominant party majorities, and stuffing supermajorities of not-dominant party voters into a few districts designed to be sacrificed to the opponents. This is a process called, for obscure historical reasons, the “gerrymander.” The goal is to maximize opportunities to elect House members from the dominant party.

The CA House district in which I worked is one of those sacrificial districts. It normally sends a Republican to Congress, while most of CA’s Representatives are Democrats.

The Democrats’ inability to extend their control down-ballot means more states will be reapportioned in ways that disadvantage Democrats, and reward Republicans. This is part of the ‘inside baseball’ of politics in our great land. If you’ve been wondering about the angst among House Democrats, this explains a part of it. 

Everybody Loses

Project Syndicate runs an election retrospective that does a decent job of summing up where it appears this particular election leaves our nation. I won’t try to summarize it beyond quoting their conclusion.

Democrats were hoping for a stinging repudiation of Trump and everything he embodies. They didn’t get it. Republicans sought an election that validated Trump. That, too, didn’t happen. Instead, what the election revealed is one country and two nations. They will have to coexist; whether they can work together remains to be seen.

If you were a betting person, you’d answer the final question “can they work together” with one word: “Minimally.” 

Movin’ On

On several occasions we’ve linked to Instapundit Glenn Reynolds’ weekly opinion columns for USA Today. That relationship has ended, he has shifted his weekly column to the New York Post. 

Why? USAT refused to run his pre-election column on Biden family corruption. John Hinderaker at Power Line has the details of the move. 

Reflections

In a 50-50 nation it was likely that whichever side lost would claim voter fraud, and whichever side claimed it was likely to be correct. Vote counting is done by local authorities and some of our most obvious crooks are at the local level. 

So be it, it’s the way we roll. It’s likely our only national elections which truly reflect voter preferences are those where the margin of victory is clear-cut and too strong to be overcome by local vote fiddling.

It appears each party will win some and lose some in 2020. Attempts in CA to use the ballot to push the left’s agenda supporting racial preferences and banning gig work both went down to defeat. 

This as Joe Biden won the CA vote handily. CA is big on mixed messages - Gov. Newsom wants to ban cars, of which nearly every Californian owns two or more.

Nancy Pelosi lost a substantial chunk of her majority in the House, I’m reading somewhere in the 10-13 seat range. It seems likely Mitch McConnell will retain his majority, slightly weakened, in the Senate. Both of these are pluses for the GOP.

We don’t have final numbers but it appears one way or another Biden will end up at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, by the skinniest of margins, and that thin margin possibly fraudulent. If things settle out as noted above, he’ll be a lame duck on Inauguration Day. 

Ex-president Trump, if that’s the way it turns out, will likely become the successor to Rush Limbaugh who sadly seems to be losing a battle with cancer. Trump hasn’t been a conventional president and I’m betting he won’t be a conventional ex-president. 

My mild optimism vis-a-vis the presidential election outcome proved unwarranted, indicating all those hopeful indicators were as wrong as were the polls showing a Biden sweep. It happens ... too often.

As I never tire of observing, we are cursed to live in interesting times.

Dog Whistle Called

A very pleasant bit of snark (scroll down) from the Washington Free Beacon, reflecting Trump's better showing with minorities than any Republican in the last 50 years.

Trump's growing support among minority voters ought to raise serious questions about whether the Democratic Party's race-obsessed "woke" rhetoric is little more than a masturbatory dog whistle for educated white liberals.

They do love to wallow in guilt about their racist feelings. Hat tip to Power Line for the link.

Exit Poll Insights

The Washington Examiner's Byron York looks at exit poll data which gives us some idea what was on in-person voters' minds when they voted for president and who voted for whom.

Trump, for example, won narrowly, 50 percent to 48 percent, among Americans who work full-time for pay, according to exit polls. But that group was just 59 percent of the electorate. Among the Americans who do not work full-time for pay -- retired, unemployed, underemployed, disabled, etc. -- Biden won big, 58 to 41. Trump also won, 52 to 45, among Americans who have served or are serving in the U.S. military. But that was just 15 percent of all voters. Among the other 85 percent, Biden won, 52 to 46.

The economy was the most important concern for the greatest number of voters; 35 percent said it mattered most in their decision on which candidate support. Among them, Trump won an overwhelming victory, 82 to 17. The top concern of the next-largest group of voters, 20 percent, was racial inequality. Among them, Biden won big, 91 to 8. The third-biggest concern was the coronavirus pandemic, cited by 17 percent of voters. Among them, Biden won big again, 82 to 14. Then came the issue of crime and safety, cited by 11 percent of voters. Trump won big, 71 to 28.

Do with those data points what you will. There is more at York's column.

The AZ Call

It is important to remember that when this or that news source “calls” a particular state for one candidate, that prediction has no legal weight and is merely a prediction in advance of final data. Newsweek quotes numbers guy Nate Silver as saying the Arizona call for Biden was premature. Many have held this view as there are still large numbers of votes yet to count.

"I don't know, I guess I'd say that Biden will win Arizona if you forced me to pick, but I sure as heck don't think the state should have been called by anyone, and I think the calls that were previously made should be retracted now," Silver wrote in his website's blog.

Like most prognosticators, Silver hasn’t covered himself with glory in 2020 but he’s still one of the better numbers people on the national scene. It appears Fox News got out ahead of itself on the AZ call, RealClearPolitics hasn’t yet called the state.

I’d like to believe Trump still has a chance, but candidly it doesn’t look highly positive. Whoever wins the presidency will govern a very divided nation, and I’d rather that individual was Trump. That said, I’ll keep my powder dry and await developments. I hope we have a better idea of the final outcome by the weekend.

Class Conflict

The election just held, with oddly mixed results still pending, has led me to ponder a shortcoming of our national political structure compared to, say, that of the British. There, as is typical in parliamentary systems, the head of state (think “figurehead”) and actual executive leader of government are two different people. In our system the elected President fulfills both roles.

The U.K.’s Queen symbolizes in her person and behavior, the Brits’ idealized vision of their nation. This frees up the leader of the parliamentary majority, currently Boris Johnson, to wheel and deal and be a bit of a buffoon at times without besmirching the nation’s self-image, which the monarch embodies. 

Our President is both our national icon and the executive head of government at the same time. Heading into the election Donald Trump had done a good job of being national executive. At least one view of the outcome is that, for many people, he did not embody their view of who we should aspire to be. He didn’t fulfill the figurehead role for those hung up on social class markers of ‘breeding’ and ‘superiority.’

For maybe half the nation, he either was “their kind of guy” or they didn’t care about appearances, about his show-off, boasting nature. For some serious fraction of the other half, the Karens and their beta males, these were issues, insurmountable ones it appears. 

Class issues have been a problem for populists in our nation before, Andrew Jackson stirred them too. Social class is the seriously divisive issue which Americans falsely claim doesn’t exist, while Brits obsess over it. For some portion of us, a flamboyant egotist who chases women and brags about his wealth just “isn’t our sort.” JFK did the same self-indulgent rich boy things, albeit quietly, and was loved.

The mantra we heard so often the last two years, till we were sick of it, was Trump’s appeal to those who had not finished college. If you don’t recognize this as the American way of describing a major marker of social class, without ever using the “C” word, you haven’t been paying attention.

Afterthoughts

The polls closed roughly 24 hours ago, and counting still continues. The year 2020 has been nasty for most of its length, the corona virus has made our election a bigger mess than usual. Hanging chads are remembered as positively quaint by comparison.

RealClear Politics is now claiming the Democrats will have lost a net of 10 House seats to the GOP. Pelosi and Co. really screwed the pooch; they predicted big wins, not the embarrassing losses that occurred.

It continues to appear the Senate will remain in Republican hands. If Machiavellian Mitch is on his game, the Dems may learn just how unfun a "resistance" can be - agencies with 'acting' heads, programmatic gridlock, and unfilled judge and ambassador positions. It would clearly be karmic justice to give the Ds a healthy dose of their own mischief.

We don't yet know how the presidency will turn out. Biden is ahead in terms of electors but lawsuits are being bruited and allegations of large-scale intentional cheating in Wisconsin are already on the wires. It may be decided in the courts.

I remember when our elections were staid affairs where the losers took it stoically like gentlemen, and the winners were at least superficially magnanimous. Will we ever see that degree of civility again? Probably not in what's left of my lifetime.

The Morning After

We have preliminary election results and an outcome literally nobody predicted appears likely. Barring successful challenges in the courts and odd distributions of votes not yet counted, the President doesn’t have a clear path to reelection. 

As I write this, and subject to change, the final outcome in the Electoral College could be Biden 270, Trump 268. It couldn’t get closer than that without being a tie. 

On the other hand, it seems likely Republicans will retain control of the Senate. And something nobody predicted, the GOP so far has gained 3 seats in the House of Representatives. 

In a long life I’ve experienced my share of political disappointments, this looks like another in that column of downers. If all we’ve got to look forward to for the next two years is a deadlocked Congress and a largely impotent president, I’ll take it and be glad it wasn’t worse. 

If Senate control remains with Mitch McConnell’s Republicans, there will be no Supreme Court packing or statehood for Puerto Rico and DC. You take your good news where you find it. 

The likely bad news is bad enough, open borders and open prison gates are no picnic. To the extent to which executive orders can accomplish it, expect the return of the worst of Obama-ism, perhaps minus Barry’s odd S&M affair with Iran. You remember, they chanted "Death to America,"  he was orgasmic, and sent them plane-loads of cash as a reward.

One of our favorite columnists, David P. Goldman aka “Spengler,” writes about what a wag once called “the upside of the downside.” There are worse things than a weak Biden presidency, although in the long-run weak presidencies aren’t great for the nation. Nevertheless they can be survived in the short-to-medium run, and “survive” is what I propose to attempt, maybe even “thrive.”

Weird Pharmacological Science

CBS Baltimore reports the results of a U. of Maryland med school study which found the following.

COVID-19 patients taking a daily, low-dose aspirin to protect against cardiovascular disease significantly lowered the risk of death and complications from COVID-19.

The study found that COVID-19 patients taking aspirin were nearly 50% less likely to die in the hospital and much less likely to be admitted to the ICU and put on a ventilator.

Doctors said because the virus increases the risk of blood clots, it makes sense that aspirin would help infected patients.

Vitamin D and baby aspirin - talk about cheap, over-the-counter preventive therapy, this costs pennies a day. Hat tip to Instapundit for the link.

Election Day

The day we’ve been waiting for has arrived. If you haven’t voted by mail or early in person, do so today. If you are a regular COTTonLINE reader, you do care about politics and therefore you must choose and vote.

In our de facto binary system, your choice is - depending on your view of the candidates - either the best of two or the least bad of two. When incumbents are running for reelection it is also a referendum on their performance for four years. The comparison becomes four more years of what we’ve just experienced or four years of this other person at whose performance we have to guess.

I have voted for Trump. My comparison of his substantial accomplishments since early 2017 compared with Biden’s meager accomplishments in over 40 years in national politics made the choice clear. If I sometimes have had stylistic differences with Trump, as who has not, his track record of promises kept and judges appointed cannot be ignored or belittled. And I have more than a few “stylistic differences” with the sad shell of a man into which Joe Biden has deteriorated. 

I am reminded of a quote often mis-attributed without citation to George Orwell, “People sleep peacefully in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf." The other DrC says of Trump, “He’s a bully, but he’s my bully.” I agree, he is the “rough man” who stands ready to do (cultural and political) violence on our behalf.

Political Musings

I find myself harking back to something my dear mother - a lifelong FDR Democrat - told me when as a young man I asked her why she wasn't active in local Democratic politics. She replied she had met the women who were active in the local Democrat organization and they weren't people she liked. To which she added in a bemused, plaintive tone, "All my friends are Republicans." 

Not looking for an argument, I let the subject drop. Ironically, I spent my career in academia where most of my colleagues were Democrats. She was proved right, many of them were people I didn't much like. 

Although the roles were reversed, like her I shut up about my politics and tried to ignore theirs. Life is a minefield studded with such odd coincidences.

----------

A fellow doctoral student who went into industry for a couple of decades, later in life interviewed for B-school jobs, listing me as a reference. Following one campus visit he asked me, "How do you put up with these weirdos? They wouldn't last a week in industry." I responded that you did a lot of ignoring and even more avoiding, which the non-collaborative nature of the faculty job permits. 

Faculty teamwork is unusual and mostly unnecessary. Nearly everyone hates the faculty and committee meetings. Out of a B-school faculty of 60+ I was fortunate to find two simpatico guys with whom to collaborate on research and publication. 

Forty-Eight Hours and Counting

Forty-eight hours from now we should have an inkling of how the presidential election will turn out. As I noted yesterday, the trends or tea leaves look positive for a Trump win. 

Everything looks positive except the opinion polls which ask "for which candidate will you cast your ballot." Those still predict a Biden win, albeit by a less robust margin.

So once again it is the old story, "Who are you gonna believe, the polls or your lying eyes?" I remain mildly optimistic about a Trump win, so I go with "eyes."

There is even some evidence that the GOP could hold onto their control of the Senate. I don’t want to oversell this trend, but it now looks like Ernst will win in IA and a Trump win might pull a few more across the finish line.

Public enthusiasm is almost entirely on Trump's side. Even Trump haters cannot muster much excitement for Biden/Harris. I wonder if later in the week we'll be writing that, faced with two unpalatable choices, a fair few chose to skip voting this time?

Happy Halloween

Wishing all you spooks and goblins out there a Happy Halloween. I fear the holiday is somewhat constrained by the corona virus. 

We were out briefly and saw someone wearing an all-encompassing black and white bovine costume. It was the very picture of an anthropomorphized Holstein, assuming such could walk on its two hind legs.

Now that November has shown up, we may begin getting some actual autumn here in northern CA. The leaves need to turn and fall, they haven't yet really begun that process.

Trends Positive for a Trump Win

Last minute trends are looking positive for a Trump win. Are they real enough, big enough and soon enough to do the job? We'll know sometime next week, or maybe later. It is fingers-crossed time.