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.

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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.

Regular Time Resumes

Don't forget to set your clocks back one hour tonight before bed, or tomorrow a.m. upon awakening. We will get back the hour we 'lost' in March. 

Don't whine about the slightly changed schedule. Anyone who's done any serious travel has dealt with much worse time changes, and survived just fine.

I remember a trans-Pacific cruise on which it seemed every other day was only 23 hours long, that got a little strange. With time always available ashore on the cell phone, the only time I wear a watch is on shipboard and I was forever resetting it to match ship time.

About Polling and Campaigning

We've written about the problems political opinion polling has demonstrated in recent elections, most pointedly in 2016 when most polls predicted a Clinton win that never materialized. For another look at polling's problems and approaches to circumvent them, check out this article at American Greatness.

Asking variously who your social circle will vote for, or alternatively your neighbors, is one approach to getting beyond the social desirability bias issue. Another with less track record is asking which major party will carry your state. That wording puts even more distance between respondent and the expressed opinion.

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Let me note that polls which report percentages of Americans favoring each candidate are effectively useless. It is entirely possible to win the popular vote and lose the election, Clinton did so in 2016. The U.S. is a republic, not a plebiscite democracy. 

Whether a candidate wins a state by one vote or a landslide makes no difference, the number of electors voting for him or her is the same. If most of a candidate's voters live in a few states where they run up huge super-majorities, he or she is at a disadvantage. This fact is normally a disadvantage for Democrats as their voters are more concentrated.

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Also, if you live in CA, NY, MA, AL, WY or UT, the campaigns mostly ignore your state. Everybody believes they know a priori who will win those states. Dems will win the first three, Republicans will win the second three. 

It is the states where both sides have a decent shot at winning where the campaigns spend their time and money. These are usually labeled "battleground states" and if you live in one of them you'll be hectored by both sides till you are sick of it.

Questions

My data-crunching research days are long behind me. That said, I pose a hypothesis a younger somebody ought to test after the election data has all been tabulated and the elected sworn in. 

Some data-driven scholar should compare the votes for each of the two major parties in 2016 and 2018 with those of 2020 for the regions where, in the intervening interval, major Antifa and BLM violence, looting, and destruction occurred. My hypothesis, the "troubles" have influenced a significant number of former D voters to vote R in 2020. Comparison groups would be cities with no significant rioting, of which there must be at least a few.

To the extent precinct level data is available, I would anticipate this trend particularly in largely white precincts. You might (or might not) see the opposite effect in minority precincts.

I would also expect the degree of shift to be proportional to the length and intensity of street violence. Portland would likely anchor the high end of that scale. 

Another factor to dump into the regression equation is the elapsed weeks between the end of the violence and Election Day. Philadelphia's violence now ongoing should have more impact than, for instance, that of Minneapolis which appears to have ended a month or two ago. Recency is an issue.

Further Evidence ....

The polling firm YouGov asked Americans their opinion of various countries. Power Line has some of the results of comparing the views of Democrats and Republicans.

Two very interesting findings pop out. First Democrats have a higher opinion of communist Cuba than they have of Israel (39% vs 36%). Second, Democrats have a higher opinion of France than they have of the United States (71% vs 68%).

With the usual caveats about problems with polling I suggest: As a group, Democrats are neither smart or patriotic. Likely not great neighbors, either.

Competing Civil Religions

A good article at the Law & Liberty website treats the progressive-conservative debate on-going in our nation as a competition between two "civil religions." It is an interesting and relatively balanced treatment of our two antagonistic belief structures. 

I won't try to summarize it for you, it is worth reading. Hat tip to RealClearPolicy for the link.

Problems with Opinion Polling

I've been reading a variety of articles discussing the possible existence this election season of "shy" Trump voters, which there is reason to believe exist as they did four years ago. Supposedly they don't want to tell a stranger on the phone that they'll vote for Trump.

This caused me to think of another factor biasing telephone polling. Do you get a lot of "junk" or "spam" calls? I certainly do. 

Do you answer calls whose calling number your phone does not 'recognize,' who aren't in your address book? If the caller's name is shown and it is someone with whom I'd like to speak, I do. 

Otherwise, if no name is shown or it's someone I don't know, I just let it ring. Therefore I will not be a respondent to a telephone poll as I'll never take their call. I figure there are millions like me, what do you think?

Maybe it is time to begin ignoring opinion polling as we've known it. I believe a huge chunk of the populace is unlikely to ever be included in their samples, rendering the polls invalid. This was true in 2016, let's see what happens in 2020.

I guess it could be possible to somehow determine how the "don't answer" bias is distributed in the populace and weight the sample accordingly. I'm certain those who've made a career out of polling will try to rescue the art form, I wish them luck.

Maybe the turnout at rallies is the best measure of voter enthusiasm and motivation, we should know in a week or so.

Very Good News Indeed

UPI, aka United Press International, carries a report of research on the effect of getting flu vaccinations upon subsequent cases of Covid-19.

People who received the flu vaccine in the year before testing positive for COVID-19 are nearly 2 1/2 times less likely to be hospitalized with a severe form of the disease than those who were not vaccinated, an analysis published Wednesday by the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine found.

In addition, those vaccinated against the flu within a year of being diagnosed with COVID-19 were more than three times less likely to be admitted to an intensive care unit because of the new coronavirus, according to researchers at the University of Florida.

Let's be clear. The influenza vaccine does not stop you developing Covid-19. It does appear to cause the corona virus to make you less sick. And it reduces likelihood of getting the flu, too, making it a win-win proposition. 

The DrsC got their flu shots over a month ago, a yearly ritual in our household. It is a good habit to develop. Hat tip to Instapundit for the link.

Social Media Bias on Display

The Federalist reports Twitter suspended the account of the chief of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commission. That gentleman, Mark Morgan, had sent the following message:

To which The Federalist adds:

“You may not promote violence against, threaten, or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease,” Twitter wrote in an email explaining the suspension. As is clear from the banned post’s text, the commissioner did not threaten anyone based on race, national origin, or anything else.

What Morgan wrote is not the functional equivalent of shouting "FIRE" in a crowded theater. If he was harassing anyone, it was criminals and drug smugglers - not exactly protected classes.

Assuming Republicans ever get control of Congress again, there is a serious need to rein in social media political bias. These dudes are out of control, declare them public utilities and regulate them. 

The electric company doesn't get to turn off your power because they don't like your politics. Twitter and Facebook shouldn't be able to cut you off for that reason either. The First Amendment's protection of free speech is relatively absolute.

A Political Dilemma

British politics are intermittently interesting. Today comes a story from Axios about the Labour Party suspending former leader Jeremy Corbyn for tolerating anti-Semitism during his leadership of the party.

The U.K.'s Equality and Human Rights Commission found that Labour was "responsible for unlawful acts of harassment and discrimination" linked to anti-Semitism, per the BBC.

• Its report found "a culture within the party which, at best, did not do enough to prevent anti-Semitism and, at worst, could be seen to accept it." 
• It also found that Corbyn's office had "politically interfered" on 23 separate occasions regarding the anti-Semitism complaints.

One supposes Corbyn did what he did to appeal to the U.K’s Islamic voters, mostly immigrants from former colonies India and Pakistan. Which raises the question of where those voters will find a home if the Labour Party rejects their reflexive Jew-hatred and the foreign policy positions associated therewith? 

Partisan Humor

John Hinderaker, first among equals at Power Line, posts a video in which a pretty lady named Allie Stuckey claims to be a spokesperson for the Democratic Party. Topic by topic she systematically eviscerates them. 

It is well-done parody, scarily on the nose, and she does it with a straight face. Enjoy the show.

Explaining Softballs

A couple of days ago I wrote about the seeming death of journalism. Today comes a more elegant treatment of the same subject by Prof. Charles Lipson, who writes this of journalism for Spectator, USA.

Reporters aren’t demanding answers or making the candidates pay a price for the silent treatment. The reason is painfully obvious. It’s not just that most reporters and media operations consider the Democrats ‘our ticket’. That’s been true for decades. What’s different now is that they consider this particular Republican a danger to the Republic.

Protecting the country from another four years of Trump in the White House is a more important, more patriotic duty for journalists than their normal job of asking hard questions, demanding evidence and investigating big stories. That’s why, when reporters do get a rare opportunity to ask Joe Biden a question, they toss him softballs.

Journalists believe the half of the country that doesn't agree with them will forgive and forget when Trump is history? Improbable, to say the least. 

The Internet has made journalism non-essential where it was once essential. Journalism is a legacy technology that will wither as those accustomed to routinely consuming its product die off. I wonder what Gen Z will use to wrap fish and line birdcages?

A Survivor

Sarah Hoyt blogs at Instapundit. She links to the two installments (first, second) of a charming very short biography of a Romanov princess, with the descriptive title of “The Princess Who Went Her Own Way.”

While it is totally out of character for COTTonLINE, I found I enjoyed it, I hope you do too. 

It’s a Minefield

Instapundit posts a Tweet by Andy McCarthy that is masterful irony, here it is:

That right there is some serious snark. 

A Thought Experiment

Try a thought experiment. Imagine you are Joe Biden and you are running for president. You go out to do campaign appearances and a handful of people show up. Meanwhile you've seen the President's rallies on TV and you know he draws thousands, often turn-away crowds.

I know your handlers say to criticize the Prez for allowing a large group to come together, but meanwhile how do you feel about your popularity versus the Presidents' evident popularity? The polls say you are the choice of a majority of voters, so why don't they show up for you, cheer for you, do boat parades for you?

I have to think at some level this demonstrated disparity in popularity has to be galling. He has to be telling himself that come Election Day he'll be vindicated and the Orange Man will be shamed. What does he tell himself if that proves not to be the case? 

What if the crowd sizes are an accurate indicator of popularity? Pollsters who measure voter enthusiasm suggest they are just that. The polls blew it four years ago, who's to say they haven't done it again? I think if I were Joe Biden about now I'd be scared silly. 

Inferential Findings

Breitbart, which favors Trump, reports the results of a poll that tried to get beyond the "shy voter" problem. USC Dornlife asked people who their friends and neighbors would vote for. In contrast to their "who will you vote for" results which favored Biden, asked about their associates' votes they answered Trump.

Using this same method today, USC says “it’s looking like an Electoral College loss for Biden” — with Trump only down by four or five points nationally.

Finally, there is one pollster taking a similar approach to the USC Dornlife “social desirability” question, and that’s Trafalgar, who made some tough calls in 2016 and got a lot right. Trafalgar currently has Trump up by just under a point in Pennsylvania, up by three in North Carolina, up two in Michigan, down by only a point in Wisconsin, up two in Florida, and up four in Arizona. If Trump wins those states, he wins re-election.

So ... there is reason to hope, if not for wild optimism, and to vote to reelect.

Election in One Week

Everyone has been talking and writing about the 2020 election for over 2 years. Now it is one short week away and a whole lot of folks, including the DrsC, have already voted. 

We voted absentee as we're currently snowbirds and can't make it to the polling place a few miles up the road from our WY place. We were concerned about the mail thing until I realized that WY was going to vote for Trump even if we didn't bother or our votes didn't arrive. 

We did, however, bother and I presume they have already arrived. Now we await results.