Sauce for Goose, Gander

Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed a special prosecutor to investigate Donald Trump for possible crimes in connection (a) with Jan. 6, and (b) with regard to documents retained and taken to Mar-A-Lago. His stated rationale is that Trump’s announcement of a run for the presidency in 2024 and Biden’s stated intentions to run again mean the DOJ - which reports to Biden - has a conflict of interest in prosecuting the former president in the normal, in-house way.

If he is correct, then how is it that the DOJ doesn’t have a conflict of interest in deciding in-house not to prosecute Hunter Biden, and by implication Joe Biden, for the Biden family influence peddling schemes and scams? Isn’t a special prosecutor equally justified by conflict of interest in the Biden family corruption matter? 

This looks like Merrick Garland getting even with Trump and McConnell for not being confirmed as a Supreme Court justice in the last days of the Obama administration. It isn’t a good look, either.  Some of the above reflects comments made by law prof Jonathan Turley yesterday on Bret Baier’s Special Report for Fox News.

There Will Be Math

In the recent election, results were not what had been anticipated, based on prior midterm elections. Writing for City Journal, Jeffrey H. Anderson does a deep dive into the numbers to understand why the odd outcome happened. The whole column is interesting but I particularly enjoyed this bit.

The more years voters spent in school, the more apt they were to vote Democratic; the more money they made, the more apt they were to vote Republican. Thus, for Republicans, the sweet spot would seem to be the relatively affluent tradesman who didn’t go to college (a plumber, for example); and for Democrats, the grossly underpaid adjunct professor whose degrees fill up most of the wall space in the tiny apartment he can barely afford.

Anderson's two archetypical voters occupy different life spaces, that is certain ... both physically and ideologically. As a retired professor, I side with the plumber, who is actually a contributing member of society. 

I also like this data point which I’ve not seen reported elsewhere:

A pair of numbers leaps out of the exit polling: 32 percent of voters said that they cast their House vote to “oppose” President Joe Biden, while 28 percent said they cast their House vote to “oppose” former President Donald Trump. In other words, for every eight votes cast against Biden, all but one was negated by a vote cast against Trump. This is surely unprecedented in a midterm election.

In other words, if Trump hadn’t been making noises about another try for a second term, the red wave of Biden revulsion would have rolled. Maybe so, or it could be Democrats putting an anti-Trump spin on votes they’d have cast anyway.

Friday Snark

Images courtesy of Politico's Cartoonists' Week in Politics.

Intentional Gruesomeness

If you spend a fair amount of time online, as I do, looking at various websites which report news and opinion, you also see a ton of ads. If you're like me, mostly you don't pay much attention to the ads.

The people who make the ads know we are ignoring them and have traditionally used photos of nice looking women to get our attention. I don't expect that to stop anytime soon. I also don't find that offensive.

A phenomenon I've noticed in the last year or two is the use of gruesome photos, photos that appear to be some sort of ugly sore, wound or infestation. These are used as ways to break through our indifference and get us wondering what is that ugly thing? What does it have to do with whatever the ad is selling?

In a couple of cases I've clicked through to see if the photo had any relevance to what they were selling. It didn't. 

The ads doing this take advantage of our "can't look away from something gruesome" instinct. I do hate it when people use our relatively few vestigial instincts against us, especially when my reaction is one of revulsion. 

I can't imagine it will convince many people to buy whatever produce or service is advertised. The gruesome probably does drive "clicks" which is what the agency gets paid for in the weird world of online advertising.

Afterthought: I wouldn't want products or services I was offering associated in potential customers' minds with gruesome images, would you?

Pelosi Passes the Mantle

Nancy Pelosi has announced that she will not be in the running for Minority Leader when the next Congress convenes in January. She will, however, keep her seat in the House and continue to represent her ultraliberal San Francisco district. 

Minority Leader isn't as much fun as Speaker, so let someone else have a shot.

Weird Oncological Science

Researchers at Johns Hopkins have discovered a highly targeted anti-cancer drug, of a type they call a "prodrug." The obvious need for such therapies is clear.

The technology takes clever advantage of known properties of cancerous versus noncancerous cells to deliver meds to tumor cells while avoiding healthy cells which would otherwise be harmed. 

Medicalxpress.com has the report. Hat tip to Instapundit for the link.

Trump Announces Run 3.0

Former President Donald Trump last night announced that he is running for president a third time in the 2024 election. Only a few hours have elapsed but the hosannas of praise you might expect to follow such an announcement seem somewhat slow in coming.

We have plenty of time for these encomiums to emerge, and they may well appear in the next few days. Let's keep track to see if Trump still has the magic, shall we? 

I heard Mike Pence make a thinly veiled presidential pitch in an interview with Bret Baier this evening, while plugging his new book. Obviously, Pence has to explain why he supported Trump in 2016 but no longer does so. 

He has worked out an explanation which he rattles off in glib fashion; it is well rehearsed but ultimately not convincing. While Pence would probably be an adequate president, I don't think he has the charisma to get elected. He is sort of the anti-Trump.

Shedding Baggage

The other DrC has long thought of Donald Trump as “my bully.” If I understand her, she means something like “Yes, he’s a bully but he’s hassling my enemies, people who richly deserve punishing so he’s okay.” And I’ve largely agreed with her.

He was even okay when he was picking on RINOs like Jeb Bush, and Jeb’s brother George. During the 2016 primary it became clear he was an equal-opportunity bully, Republicans were great targets too. But then he won the nomination and turned his invective on Democrats, who were the enemy, and that was him just doing the job we picked him for, him being our attack dog.

Now he’s turning his ire on Republicans who, unlike himself, have had recent electoral success. That is not okay. 

Here we come to a parting of the ways. What is important to us isn’t what is important to him. We want the populist/nationalist program to move forward, he wants Donald Trump to move forward. 

What Trump wants isn’t automatically the key to what we want, although in 2016 it was. We have goals, he has ambitions. He expects our loyalty is to him, when our loyalty is to the goals which he once espoused but which now some other champion may be able to actualize better, with less baggage.

Update

If the best Republicans can hope for out of the 2022 midterm election is congressional gridlock, it does look tonight like we may salvage at least that. See what Politico, which leans left but tries for a modicum of accuracy reports.

Democrats’ slim hopes to retain the House majority were just about extinguished Monday, with five races called for Republicans on Monday night.

As of late Monday evening, just 14 House seats remain uncalled, with 217 seats projected for Republicans and 204 for Democrats so far. Democrats would have to capture all of them to retain the chamber — a near-impossible task.

On the other hand, Kari Lake lost her bid for the governorship in AZ, which is too bad as her skills in tying the press in knots were unmatched. Tomorrow's news should bring word of House seat number 218 falling into GOP hands. 

It's fingers crossed time, folks. I am not going to miss Nancy P. showing up on the nightly news multiple times a week, that's for sure.

The Trump Problem

Kurt Schlichter obviously enjoys writing scathingly nasty things about Democrats, because he has talent in that direction. And I enjoy reading him, though I don't often quote him. I figure you know he's there and you read him if he floats your boat.

Today he writes seriously about the "Trump Problem" our GOP faces, and about why we have to get serious about dealing with it sooner rather than later. This isn't' his usual line of creatively nasty invective, rather he is serious because the problem is serious.

Trump presents problems and we need to face them. Before we go further, we need to be clear because some folks are a bit sensitive when the subject of the ex-president comes up. Get over it. He works for us. We owe Trump nothing. He’s a politician. He owes us. I don’t care if he resents his unfair 2020 defeat any more than I care when a teenager whines that something is unfair. Life is unfair.

The only question that matters to us conservatives is whether we are better off with Donald Trump as a candidate or whether we are not.(snip) We need to decide whether we think the people threatening to take their ball and go home outnumber the people who might be gettable by a different Republican nominee.

I agree.

VDH: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Historian Victor Davis Hanson writes at American Greatness a balanced summary of the Trump phenomenon. He notes the undoubted political accomplishments, the enemies vanquished, and the feeling now that Trump has somewhat overstayed his welcome. 

See the VDH conclusion which lets you know where he believes it all comes out.

So, will Trump rest on his considerable laurels and ride out gracefully to Mar-a-Lago? And there, as a kingmaker/elder statesman, will he work to institutionalize his MAGA agendas while raising money for any presidential candidate who embraces it?

Or will a subdued candidate Trump now pivot, grow quieter, and let the people vote in the primaries to decide whether they want him anymore—and whether Ron DeSantis sinks as a 2016 Scott Walker on the national stage (a similarly talented and successful governor), or assumes the mythical status of Ronald Reagan?

Or will an unapologetic Trump instead now escalate his slurs, bray at the moon, play out his current angry Ajax role to the bitter end, and thus himself end up a tragic hero—appreciated for past service but deemed too toxic for present company?

It is relatively clear most of the party’s bigwigs believe Trump’s demons will demand he go through door number three. Whereas a lot of us GOP sympathizing Trump appreciators hope he can take one of the other two helpful paths.

Saturday Snark

For Lord of the Rings fans.

For Mel Brooks fans.

Images courtesy of Power Line's The Week in Pictures, 

and the comments section.

College Major Matters

CNBC reports the findings of a recent study done by ZipRecruiter which surveyed 1500 job seekers. The study looked at college majors and identified the ten most regretted majors and the ten least regretted majors.

I'm a retired Business School prof so I was interested to see if any of our specialties were included on either list. In the years I taught our majors tended to get jobs without much difficulty, recruiters came to campus looking for Bus. majors.

I expected to find Bus. specialties on the least regretted list, I was surprised to find certain of our specialties on both lists. On the most-regretted list I found "Marketing management + research" listed as one of the ten.

"Business administration + management," "Finance," and "Human resources management" were three of the ten least regretted. The least regretted major was "Computer + information science."

Of graduates who regretted their major, most said that, if they could go back, they would now choose computer science or business administration instead.

The firm's chief economist said the following of current job seekers.

Pay is still most important, but job security is now becoming more important. That happens whenever we have the fear of a recession.

Friday Snark

Both images courtesy of Politico's The Week in Politics, # 8, 9.

Veterans' Day

On this date in 1918, the eleventh day of the eleventh month, an armistice ended the Great War. We now call that war World War One because the next war - World War Two - was even bigger. 

Since then we have celebrated the day as Veterans' Day, when we honor those who served our country in uniform. We owe those men and women more than we know.

I had family in the military. My dad's brother was a West Pointer who retired an Army Colonel. My father enlisted in the field artillery, and mustered out as a First Lieutenant. Two of my mother's brothers served in the Army Air Corps. Her sister was a WAC who married a former sailor after both demobbed. 

As a young person, one of my hobbies was World War Two history. A bookish kid, I read lots of memoirs of the war, written by generals, and war correspondents. 

A blown rotator cuff kept me out of the service. I begrudge our veterans none of the perks we provide them, their service was and is essential and much appreciated.

DeSantis' Rules

Writing at City Journal, recent Florida immigrant Dave Seminara identifies the eight rules Gov. Ron DeSantis appeared to follow to achieve a true "red wave" reelection victory. Here they are in bullet-point format:

• Stay on offense.
• You can create your own majority with the right approach.
• Competence matters.
• You don’t necessarily have to move to the center to win over independents.
• You can redraw the political map without pandering.
• Create a culture where wokeness cannot thrive.
• Deliver a policy-driven approach that works.
• Court the moms.

Allowing for some rhetorical overlap, that isn't a bad agenda albeit one that is easier to appreciate in the abstract than to deliver on the ground while coping with hurricanes.

Drama Queen Don

You may have read somewhere that former President Trump issued an extremely ungracious email basically dumping on Gov. Ron DeSantis. I just read it and the reality is worse than the descriptions, you can read it here.

At the moment, Ron DeSantis is the only clear (no asterisks required) super-winner of the 2022 midterms. How big a winner? See these numbers to understand how much DeSantis kicked butt, his victory is impressive as heck.

So what does an orange guy who couldn’t engineer a similar outcome two years ago do? He rains on DeSantis’ parade, calls him “average.” I call “sour grapes” on Trump.

Damn, don’t I wish the average GOP governor candidate had done as well as DeSantis did? No such luck, in spite of the fact that several did very decent jobs and were clear winners.

In elections, there are always losers as well as winners. Unfortunately, since Trump lost he has been acting like a drama queen on steroids, and it is totally past time he put a cork in it. Histrionics “worked” in the WWE, but doesn’t work in politics.

Trump took the Republican Party in a new direction and we owe him thanks for doing so. Furthermore, it’s not going back and that’s even better. But if Trump can’t get over losing in 2020 he needs to get off the stage and let people who know how the game is won, starting with DeSantis, have the spotlight.

Later ... Now Trump is dissing VA Gov. Youngkin, another winner against the odds. Trump can really show crapola judgment. There's a world of lowlife Democrats out there and he's picking on winning Republicans? 

In the last two years, Trump has "transformed" from a cartoonish "my bully" into a "loose deck gun" who needs to careen over the side and sink from view.

Further Ruminations

Columnist Don Surber writes from the right, and today he writes a rueful political epitaph for Donald Trump. I won’t excerpt it at any length here, you need to go read what he wrote. Here is his conclusion.

Trump failed. He cost America the red tsunami we need to rein in Democrats. Harris Rigby at Not the Bee wrote, "A red wave turned into a purple puddle, thanks to an orange man." 

I really wanted Trump to come back but I just don't see it. He's damaged goods, done in by Barack Obama and the FBI and the Washington media.

To which I’d add two things, first to Trump, with a hat tip to Douglas Adams, so long and thanks for all the judges. Second, to Republicans, be careful what you wish for. The SCOTUS Dobbs decision was a drag on our Nov. 8 outcome.

Afterthoughts: Would Trump run as an independent merely to ensure DeSantis as the GOP nominee would lose? I worry that he might; Trump tends to take perceived rejections personally. 

What a mess if in 2024 the nominees are Biden and Trump. Neither is the actual preference of his party but both could end up getting the nod.

The Continetti Op

The Washington Free Beacon's Matthew Continetti writes the best analysis I've seen so far of how the GOP blew the advantage of a favorable set of circumstances. How they barely managed to eke out a tiny win, if that is what it turns out to be. Some key quotes:

Donald Trump was an unpopular president who polarized the national electorate. Joe Biden is an unpopular president who makes the electorate yawn. Four years ago, the electorate was obsessed with Trump. In 2022 the electorate is thinking about other things.

The Republicans should have done much better on inflation and the economy. They lacked an effective and transparent message on how they planned to fix things.

Since 2016 the GOP has been estranged from the middle of the country. I don’t mean the Midwest—I’m talking about independents, moderates, and suburban voters.

This year, independents went for Democrats narrowly. Moderates broke for Democrats by 15 points. And the suburbs narrowly went for Republicans in the national exit poll, while narrowly going for Democrats in the Fox voter analysis. Our national stalemate continued.

The national GOP needs to recognize Biden’s irrelevance, settle on an economic message and agenda that wins public support, take lessons in how to talk about the right to life, and reconnect with independents, suburban voters, and moderates. Maybe the governor of Florida, who just won reelection by 20 points without Trump’s "help," can teach them how to do it.

You might want to read his whole column - there's no paywall. Hat tip to Dashiell Hammett for my title.

Post-Election Ruminations

In no particular order as they occur to me, my thoughts about the election yesterday.

Gov. Ron DeSantis looks like a winner, and his Florida like a model. The “red wave” began and unfortunately ended in Florida.

What strengthens DeSantis, weakens Donald Trump, while the endorsements of both had very uneven impacts at best. 

Californians who moved to Texas left California politics behind, probably a key motive in their move. TX is, if anything, more “red” than formerly, CA more “blue” and more “screwed.” Ditto those who moved to FL from the Northeast.

I hope we’ve seen the last of Beto O’Rourke, Charlie Crist, and Stacy Abrams, all lost again decisively, and quixotically.

Both parties ran weird candidates in the PA and GA senate races. They were races where you almost wished both parties could lose.

Kari Lake’s supposed ninja-like skills were overrated in AZ, ditto for Tudor Dixon in MI. Drazan in weird OR was always going to be a long shot.

I believe game theory is the best explanation for how evenly balanced the two parties are. More and more energy is put into gaining that 50% + 1 edge, crucial in the zero-sum game that our de facto two party system produces. 

Maybe the most striking thing about the night was how few seats changed parties, most places seem locked in for one party or the other. My mental image is two elk stags with their antlers so tangled that they struggle and die locked together, though I hope that isn’t prophesy.

It appears the best outcome the GOP can hope for is a deadlocked, do-nothing Congress. Compared to the last two years of D domination, it is a real improvement. 

Maybe gridlock was also the best we could hope for while a D sits in the White House? We were never going to have a veto-proof majority in the Senate. 

The polls were no more accurate than formerly, but they were inaccurate in the opposite direction! If this means an overcorrection was in place, fine. If it means something else, we may have to rethink the entire enterprise. 

The pundit class won't like rethinking polling. We've relied on polls to give us an augury of future election results - basically something to write about.

We tend to believe ticket splitting doesn't happen much. This election proved that tendency wrong. We saw significant ticket splitting in PA where the D won the governorship easily and the senate race was very close. 

Something similar happened in reverse in AZ where the governor race is close and the senate race not so much. Conclusion: candidate quality does truly matter after all.

Later ... A gradual consensus seems to be emerging, and it isn't good news for Donald Trump. People voted D when most indicators seemed to suggest they'd vote R; the last time this happened people were bummed about Richard Nixon. 

This time? Maybe it is Trump? We need some precinct-level analysis to suss out the relative impacts of abortion, Trump, and fight-to-the-death party loyalty on the disappointing outcome we got.