Wave, Shmave

Wave? What wave? Where? I don’t see no stinkin’ red wave. It appears the pollsters decided they’d been undercounting Republicans so they overcompensated this time and overcounted us. 

We Republicans had the midterm advantage, a opposition party president with crapola approval ratings, a miserable economy. We were even talking about the issues voters said they cared about, when the opposition wasn’t, even that seemed not to matter. 

We spent tens of millions, they spent tens of millions, and all we got was this miserable draw. It is entirely possible we won’t know for sure until Georgia holds a runoff election next month, because it appears neither Warnock nor Walker broke 50%.

At 11 p.m local time Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy predicted the GOP will eke out a bare majority in the House. I guess he experiences that as a victory, if so it is a very mild, muted one. 

If McCarthy can hold his gang together they will be able to stymie Biden’s agenda. That truly is worth doing, but as ‘meals’ go, it is pretty thin gruel, a very watery soup. I’ll have further reaction after I’ve had a chance to sleep on it.

Guam Has Politics?

You are going to see stories like this and this reporting that Guam has elected its first Republican non-voting representative to Congress since 1993. Journalists desperate for something to write about while we await returns have landed on this factoid.

The DrsC spent a year as visiting faculty at the University of Guam in the mid-1980s. While that hardly qualifies us as experts, we at least called Guam home for a year.

At that time, Guam had Republicans and Democrats but the so-called "parties" had little to do with the groups with those names in the States. Basically, they were coalitions of ruling families in opposition to each other who contested for control of the island's government structure and handed out patronage when successful.

Guam natives, who call themselves the Chamorros, tended to be allied with one coalition or the other, most often by either blood or marriage. Guam politics are dynastic, "Republican" James Moylan just defeated "Democrat" Judith Won Pat who has the same family name as Guam's first representative in DC had several decades ago. 

"Liberal" and "conservative" tend not to mean much on an island whose economy is largely dependent on the U.S. military which maintains large bases there. The other main source of revenue is tourists from Japan who treat Guam as a cheaper-to-reach sub-tropical substitute for Hawaii. 

Bottom line: That Guam elected a "Republican" may not mean what us mainlanders would tend to conclude.

Waiting ....

In about an hour, the polls will begin to close on the East Coast. TV's talking heads will engage in palaver, filling time until meaningful results begin to trickle in, which will take another couple of hours. 

This is when residing in the Pacific time zone is an advantage. It is like having a time machine and being able to look three hours into the future. The local polls probably won't close for another 4-5 hours. 

The DrsC long since voted by mail. It is what Wyoming snowbirds normally do in the November general election. We voted in person in the August primary, it now seems long ago. 

Election Day

Today is Election Day across our great land. It is the day when our elected officials get their performance appraisals. 

If you've not already done so, please go vote. it is your opportunity to either give the incumbents another term, or to throw the rascals out.

Even if the people you vote for don't win, voting is still important. Those who make party policy look at vote totals as a reflection of the directions to take in the next election. 

Our ancestors fought and died to earn us the right to elect our government. Honor their memory by exercising that right.

The Forgotten

If journalism has produced an authentic American voice in the last decade, it is Salena Zito who writes for the Washington Examiner. She wanders the two lane highways and small towns, mostly in the Rust Belt, listens to the people others don’t notice, and tells their stories.

On this Election Day she writes an elegy for the Democratic Party, which for decades represented the people about whom she writes. She identifies four milestones in that party’s decline. 

Zito begins with the cancellation of the Keystone pipeline, which hurt so many working people directly and indirectly. Her second is the godawful mess that leaving Afghanistan became. 

The third was Biden’s Leni Riefenstahl speech in Philly where he said half the country were racist extremists, echoing Hillary’s “deplorables.” And the fourth was a photo of a soot-covered coal miner watching a basketball game with his spotless young son, an image that captures for Zito the America that bicoastals have no concept of, one that works hard and enjoys small pleasures. See her conclusion.

The Democratic Party and the cultural curators in this country that run our institutions, academia, national media, corporations, Hollywood , and our sports entities have forgotten that these people vote — no matter how much pressure you place on them, no matter how much you look down on them or call them names or believe you know better than them or think they should just deal with high prices or accept dangerous crime in their communities.

The Democrats need a much better message to appeal to voters the next time a big election is held — one that is aspirational, nondivisive, and truly inclusive.

That wasn't their message this year.

’Nuff said. 

Henry Olsen Predicts

The Washington Post's Henry Olsen is known for his election predictions. While his WaPo column is behind a paywall, his basic conclusion has been reprinted at the Ethics & Public Policy Center's website and I cite it here for your information.

Inflation, crime, progressive attempts at overreach and a general sense that President Biden is not up to the job will likely deliver a surprisingly large victory to Republicans. I predict the GOP will win the national popular vote by about 5.5 points, likely gaining between 31 and 40 House seats in the process. I also expect it will retake control of the Senate, gaining two to four seats.

That outcome, if accurate, will certainly find me smiling. Olsen doesn't talk about governors, but CNN misleadingly reports a majority of Americans will have a Democratic governor. It is likely this is true since CA alone has 1/8 of the U.S. population. When the votes are counted however, expect a majority of states to have Republican governors.

Now we wait....

More from Teixeira

Some years ago political scientist Ruy Teixeira predicted a demographic surge for Democrats which did not materialize. I respect the fact he admitted he was wrong and has moved on. We don't often agree about policy choices but I find much of his analysis first rate. 

A Teixeira article in The Atlantic reprinted by msn.com documents the steps by which the Democrats ceded their long-time position as defender of the working class to Republicans. It's a story semi-familiar to those of us who follow politics, but Teixeira lays it out succinctly.

In a de facto two party political system, assembling a potentially majority coalition is the only meaningful goal. Teixeira doesn't make his own views explicit but I infer he believes ceding the working class vote to the GOP was a Dem mistake, perhaps a grievous one. 

Saturday Snark

And I love it.

All images courtesy of Power Line's The Week in Pictures, or its comments section.

Unhappy Women

The 2022 American Family Survey found interesting differences in happiness and mental comfort levels for liberals and conservatives, and these differences were particularly acute for women.

Only 15% of liberal women in the age group surveyed said they were “completely satisfied” with their lives, compared to 31% of conservative women.

In the same vein, only 15% of liberal women reported being “completely satisfied” with their mental health, compared to 36% of conservative women.

Commenting on these findings, sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox is quoted as having made the following observations.

Two family factors have a lot to do with this ideological gap: marital status and family satisfaction. Given that conservatives aged 18-55 are about 20 percentage points more likely to be married, as well as 18 percentage points more likely to be satisfied with their families, the lesson here is obvious. Marriage and family are strongly linked to happiness and to personal mental health in particular.

While I doubt many readers of this site find the above either surprising or strange, it is always good to have confirmation of what was already believed to be true.

Whither Democrats?

Writing for Politico, David Freedlander looks at the schism within the Democratic Party. He describes the ideological purists versus the practical realists by putting names on leading people in each group. 

Freedlander does a reasonable job of being fair to both sides, it seems to me as an outsider. I’m not certain the partisans would agree. We have the same sort of division among Republicans, except our old-style “purists” are very much on the defensive and in the minority these days, thanks to Trump and populism.

I don’t expect regular COTTonLINE readers to particularly empathize with either Democratic faction. However, their intra-party conflict will be a part of the national political dialog going forward. If we care about politics writ large, we need to know what the “other side” wrestles with when we’re not in the room. Check out this bit:

The Democratic Party started to go awry during the Obama years. His was a style and a rhetoric that let all Americans see themselves in the story he would tell about the country.

All of which left room open for someone who could put together a coherent story for people looking for someone to explain why, if all that inspiring stuff was true, everything seemed to be falling apart in the country.

Inconveniently for every Democrat in America right now, the person who did figure it out wasn’t a populist like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. It was Donald Trump.

Good luck, guys … you’ll need it. The faculty lounge bushwhah you’re peddling isn’t finding many heartland buyers.

We Are Rudderless

David Strom writes at the Hot Air site about the current political milieu and, stated baldly, this is quite an indictment. Hat tip to Instapundit for the link.

We are at a moment in time rarely seen in politics, where the President of the United States can give a Prime Time address claiming that the very future of the Republic is at risk and the reaction is a complete shrug. Nobody cares. Nobody is listening. Biden owns the “bully pulpit,” but it is made of balsa wood and was nailed together by a 3 year old with a Playskool hammer.

Thank heavens the ship of state plows ahead on momentum and inertia, because there is no discernible presence at the helm.

The Hollywood Dilemma

I write “Hollywood” as a shorthand way to indicate the entertainment industry wherever it’s located. In the wake of the generally bad year they’ve had contrasted with the big success of the film Top Gun Maverick, a dilemma is becoming clear for the industry.

Television viewing and movie theater receipts are both down. Woke doesn’t sell, not-woke does sell. Things that don’t sell don’t make money, things that sell make money. The entertainment industry writ large likes woke, but also likes money. 

For years they made money on the “big” films and made cheap little “art films” that lost money to scratch their ideological itch. More recently, their ideology has gotten in the way of money-making. But their preferred Malibu-Beverly Hills-St. Tropez lifestyle demands plenty of money.

The entertainment industry is discovering they aren’t very successful in selling us their ideology. Attempts to force feed us their woke obsessions aren’t working. The moguls who survive will be those who understand the imperatives of the marketplace.

A personal note: My parents lived in Hollywood between the World Wars and my dad had some interaction with movie colony folk. His view of them, seen up close, was that way too many film folk were what we’d today call Harvey Weinsteins, though he was probably thinking of Fatty Arbuckle & Co. He said their politics were Marxist and their morals were debauched. 

He was correct then and I’ve seen little to indicate positive change. In a rare moment of self-awareness, Cher’s lyric describes her industry colleagues as, “Gypsies, tramps, and thieves.”

Marking Time

Between now and Tuesday night those of us who follow politics are likely to be marking time, or maybe killing time. It is unlikely that anything critical to the outcome will happen between now and then. So we wait. What does happen tomorrow night is the switch back to standard time, aka the "fall back."

The omens are looking good for Republicans, most prognosticators call GOP control of the House a given. Some are still fence-sitting about the Senate, although the braver souls will allow it's likely the GOP will prevail there too.

Assuming Joe Biden will wield his veto pen with considerable abandon, the Congress will tend to put emphasis on those things which do not require presidential approval. These mostly involve oversight or investigations into executive branch malfeasance, but also include confirming presidential appointments to certain offices. 

Without a majority in both houses of Congress, it is likely the President will emphasize foreign policy, which our system makes mostly a presidential function. Expect the Vice Presidency to go back to being a sinecure, assuming we will no longer have a 50-50 Senate whose ties the VP breaks.

A Shadow President?

Glenn Reynolds writes a column for the New York Post, as well as his posts at Instapundit. Today Reynolds writes that Gov. Ron DeSantis is sorta-kinda filling the role of "shadow president." 

If that title doesn't make sense to you, it's because it comes from British politics where the opposition party forms a "shadow cabinet." Its members are MPs who understudy and criticize the actual cabinet ministers from the party in power. Cabinet ministers being the equivalent of our cabinet secretaries.

Being governor of Florida isn’t the same as being president of the United States. But DeSantis has been able to show the spirit, and sometimes the substance, of actions that a Republican president might take.

In his role as governor, DeSantis has been making a lot of good choices, demonstrating the executive skills which a president needs. It's likely I will vote for whoever the GOP nominates in 2024, but if I had my druthers, the candidate would be DeSantis. Reynolds implies DeSantis would be his choice too.

Only Capital D Democracy Is Endangered

When Joe Biden and his allies talk about a Republican wave in the election next week being a threat to democracy, it is important to understand what they do and do not mean. In their minds “democracy” is simply a synonym for Democratic Party rule, full stop. 

If the polls are to be believed, it appears that Democratic Party rule is endangered. In two short years the Democrats have damaged a healthy economy, a functioning criminal justice and immigration system, and a substantial international position, we hope not irreparably.

Be clear, small d democracy is in no particular danger. Next Tuesday the electorate will do what electorates are supposed to do, which is punish political actors who turn in lousy performances. That is small d democracy in action. 

You screw up, you lose your mandate, and retire to the opposition. Like a losing sports team, political losers go through a “rebuilding” process aimed at winning at some point in the future, perhaps aided by the incumbents screwing up their mandate.

Expect the Democrats, in spite of their protestations to the contrary, to behave a month from now exactly as though small d democracy is alive and well. They will strive to make it work for them, "next time."

----------

Sir Winston Churchill in 1947, "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government, except all the others that have been tried."

The Last Minute Polls

The Ace of Spades blog writes something interesting about last minute polling which is showing Republicans "suddenly" ahead. I'd guess he is correct in his suspicions.

There is a very strong suspicion among poll analysts and critics. 

They talk about major pollsters deliberately publishing polls they know for a fact oversample Democrats and are therefore just wrong, in order to please their clients.

But then, right before the election, in the last poll before voting starts, they suddenly publish a poll showing the GOP in a much better position.

Suddenly, the Democrat oversampling they've been doing for months just poof! vanishes.

And why do they do this? Because, when people rank pollster's accuracy, they usually only look at the last poll conducted before the election.

Ace goes on to cite several examples of this, if you're interested. Another explanation is that late in the game many pollsters switch from polling "registered voters" to polling "likely voters." Pay more attention to polls which only survey "likely" voters.

All things being equal, Republicans are more likely than Democrats to vote. A fact about which my father - a lifelong Southern Democrat who died before they all became Republicans - never tired of complaining. 

A Malign Collaboration

Wisdom occurs in odd places. The particular example I bring to your attention comes from the website FDD (Foundation for the Defense of Democracies). Hat tip to Power Line for the link.

The article in question deals with the letter of opposition to continued funding of the Ukraine war and a demand for negotiations with Russia to end that conflict. The letter, signed by 30 progressive Congressfolk, was almost immediately withdrawn.

I call your attention to the following concerning who was pushing the views espoused by the letter. FDD writes: 

The Quincy Institute is funded both by George Soros, a well-known leftist billionaire and Charles Koch, a prominent billionaire on the right.

What they appear to have in common is isolationism. It’s likely they come to that standpoint for different reasons. Simply put: Left isolationists see America as unworthy to be a world leader. Right isolationists see the world as unworthy of American leadership.

COTTonLINE cautions that collaborations like this one between left and right have, in the past, had ugly long-term consequences. 

A DeSantis Ad

If you don't live in the state of Florida, and most COTTonLINE readers don't, you won't have seen this TV ad for FL Gov. Ron DeSantis. It is amazingly powerful and not even a little bit negative, you'll enjoy it. 

DeSantis is running for reelection and, not incidentally, for the presidential nomination in 2024. He keeps doing the smart thing, and those who follow politics are noticing. 

There's more than a little libertarianism in his policies. His slogan for Florida is particularly good: "Keeping the Free State of Florida Free."

Supreme Snark

In arguments before the Supreme Court, in the case brought by Asian students who believe they were unlawfully discriminated against in university admissions, the following interaction happened between lawyer for Harvard Seth Waxman and Chief Justice John Roberts.

MR. WAXMAN: Race in some – for some highly qualified applicants can be the determinative factor, just as being the – you know, an oboe player in a year in which the Harvard-Radcliffe orchestra needs an oboe player will be the tip.

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Yeah. We did not fight a Civil War about oboe players.

That riposte calls for a rimshot, Mr. Drummer Man. Steven Hayward at Power Line has the quote.

Thinking About Plastics

It is widely reported that recycling of plastics isn’t working. The creation of new plastic from petroleum is much cheaper and more sanitary than sorting, breaking down and reusing old plastics. 

The logical response is to replace plastic in single-use-followed-by-disposal settings with other products which are more biodegradable. At least at present those replacements are substantially less satisfactory than plastic.

Glass was once how beverages - beer and soft drinks - were packaged. Bottles were used, emptied, returned, sanitized, and refilled. But glass is heavy and fragile, and the replacement aluminum cans actually do get recycled. Unlike plastic, aluminum is cheaper to recycle than to produce new from ore.

The solution to the plastics problem is more technology, not less. Chemists need to develop satisfactory plant-based replacements for plastic which are stable in the medium run, but biodegradable in the long run.