Sunday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Sunday, December 13, 2020
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64 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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According to CNN, Bill Barr has dismissed Trump’s Tweets as “the deposed king ranting. Irrelevant to the course of justice and to Trump’s election loss.”
It’s hard to think of a president who’s been the object of so much open contempt on the part of so many of his employees.
@CSK:
Attorney General is not / should not be an employee of the President. He or she represents the legal interest of the US in toto.
The whole DOJ is *supposed* to be non-partisan. Civil servants doing hard work.
Like every other norm, Trump trashed that concept too. Treated them like a bought legal shop on retainer.
Spirit of Justice blindfolded holding a scale. (Ashcroft’s ham-fisted boob covering was really funny.)
Charlie Pride – RIP
@de stijl:
Oh, I know. But Trump has made it clear on several occasions that he believes cabinet secretaries and other office-holders work for him. Remember the constant references to “my generals”? And recall how, at the beginning of his first (and last) term, he walked around the room forcing all the cabinet members to say how grateful they were to be working for him?
The EU’s red lines were clear in 2016
@CSK:
King Cheeto the Last came three centuries too late to his style of pretending to govern.
@Kathy:
Well, as I’ve said before, he ran his “business” as if it were some shabby little tinpot fiefdom, didn’t he?
I’ve been developing an Excel so I could analyze elements of the 2020 election, and I waited till the certifications are complete to discuss it.
Biden’s popular-vote lead is 4.5 points (51.3-46.8). That’s more than a half-point higher than Obama’s 3.9 points (51.1-47.2) in 2012. Yet Trump was a lot closer to winning the EC than Romney. Romney would have needed to flip at least one state that Obama won by over 5 points, as well as two more that Obama won by about 3 points. Trump would only have needed to flip states that Biden won by much narrower margins. Biden’s three narrowest states were GA (0.24), AZ (0.30), and WI (0.63). If Trump had won those alone and the rest of the map had stayed the same, the EC would have been a 269-269 tie, in which case the GOP-controlled House delegations would almost certainly have handed the election to Trump.
Trump’s 2016 victory rested on 77,000 votes in three states. Biden’s rested on fewer than 44,000 in three states. Yet he improved on Trump’s national margin by 6.5 points. That’s a stunning testament to how skewed the EC currently is against the Dems.
Part of the reason may be that Biden overperformed in several non-swing states, and so those extra votes were “wasted” in states that made no difference electorally. He had the best showing for a Dem in WA, CO, and MA since 1964; in VA since 1944; in CA since 1936; and in MD since 1868. He also did unusually well for a Dem in some ruby-red states like UT and AK.
According to the data I collected, he improved on Clinton’s margins by an average of 3.07 points. In only seven states plus DC did Clinton have a slightly better margin. Biden had a higher overall percentage of the vote than Clinton everywhere. Trump scored a higher overall percentage than he did four years ago in 32 states plus DC.
I also looked at the errors in the polls. I used 538’s polling averages, since RCP didn’t conduct averages in every state. Biden’s winning national margin was 4 points smaller than the polling average, a much bigger error than 2016 when it was only 1-2 points off. The average error in the states was 5.15 in Trump’s favor. In the states Trump won, however, the polls underestimated Trump by 7.28 points. In the Biden states it was merely 3.1 points. There were only five states where Biden was underestimated: IL, CO, DC, LA, and MD. The most was MD at 2.0 points. The state where Trump was underestimated the most was ND at 16.05 points.
Fit for a king: true glory of 1,000-year-old cross buried in Scottish field is revealed at last
It’s a beautiful piece of work but this part that made me go, “Huh. Who’da thunk it?”
@OzarkHillbilly:
It’s not even that the EU has done something exceptional. It’s just that the UK has been staggeringly unwilling to engage with reality.
From an economic pespective, the big prize is the EU’s common market. The UK wants a level of access that is not commensurate with the obligations it is willing to take on in exchange for that access.
If the EU gives the UK what it asking for (access wihout obligations), then that will be something that all current member states will want. (After all, who doesn’t want a free lunch?) In which case (since nobody will be fulfilling any obligations any more) there won’t be a common market any longer.
So the UK ask is impossible to meet. Because what it is asking for will inevitably disappear if it gets its way.
It is utterly incomprehensible that successive UK governments didn’t see this – despite being repeatedly warned by their own civil service, I should add.
@Kylopod:
I don’t dispute your figures, they are correct, but the focus on GA and AZ is misplaced. Back in 2016 Clinton lost the EC largely because she lost MI, WI, and PA, which Biden won this time. The latter two, by higher margins than GA, AZ, and WI.
I’d agree the turning point state is WI, which Biden barely won. But AZ and GA are gravy.
As to the polls, I completely agree they were really bad this year. I’m not even looking at polls for the Georgia Senate runoffs. I hear they place both Warnock and Ossof ahead, which probably means they’ll lose in a blowout 🙁
New Yorker: The True Cost of Dollar Stores
@Kathy:
Looking ahead, assuming the remainder of states are not seriously in play, the winner in 2024 will be the candidate who wins any three (or more) of the five: PA, MI, WI, AZ, GA.
@charon:
(That might not be exactly true on today’s map, but AZ and GA should gain congressmen in the 2020 census).
@Kathy:
My focus on GA, AZ, and WI was to illustrate how shaky Biden’s electoral win was compared with his national margin. He won the popular vote by almost 5 points yet his electoral victory rested entirely on states won by less than 1 point.
This is in contrast to Obama in 2012, whose popular-vote lead was slightly smaller than Biden’s, but whose electoral win was much more robust, resting on states he won by 3-5 points.
AZ and GA weren’t just gravy; Trump could have won the election by winning those two states plus WI alone, while still losing MI and PA.
The caveat there is that the polls in GA for the Nov election weren’t so bad. 538 had Biden leading Trump by 1.2 points, while RCP had Trump ahead by 1.0 points. As we know, Biden won by 0.3 points–well within a standard margin of error of either estimate. Similarly, while I wasn’t able to find a polling average for the Senate races in November, the polls I did find showed Ossoff and Perdue neck and neck, which is pretty much what happened (Perdue won a 2-point plurality, pretty much in line with the final poll before Election Day). Of course there are additional polling problems in trying to estimate a runoff happening outside the normal frame of Election Day–there’ll be a big dropoff in turnout for one thing–so I wouldn’t pay attention to the polls in any case.
If you look at the photo of Trump above James Joyner’s latest post, “Republican Recovery,” you’ll note that Trump has the eyes of a feral pig.
@CSK:
A while back I created a side-by-side pic to illustrate this point. Believe it or not, that image on the left is an actual photo of a pig’s eye (though I slightly manipulated the coloring in both images).
@drj:
Magical realism doesn’t exist only in García Márquez novels and the Trump WH.
Good piece by Paul Campos at LGM on the possibility of ratfracking with congressional certification of the EC vote. With a D majority they can’t actually accomplish anything, but it’s another chance to posture for the base and maybe buy some insurance against a primary challenge. And it’s practice for a future R majority House to block the election of a D president.
@Kylopod:
Yes; I believe I recall that. The resemblance is something that’s always struck me about Trump. His anal mouth and quadruple chins are equally disconcerting. Even in his younger days he was an unpleasant-looking man. Yet the Trumpkins purport to find him devastatingly attractive.
Nice COVID map here:
https://twitter.com/prchovanec/status/1337946368111996931
Tweet links to NYT map:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html
It occurred to me yesterday that if the Republicans are going to go anti-democracy and fascist maybe the safest thing to do is to let them secede.
@charon: In the most recent projection I’ve seen, AZ gains a seat, GA stays the same, while WI, MI, and PA all lose one.
Also MN, IL, and OH. Been another bad decade for the Midwest. That trend goes back a long ways, more than 30 years. I assert that the same factors responsible for that are responsible for the steady shift of the Midwest to the Republicans.
@Kylopod: Are you sure you have them labeled correctly? I can’t tell the difference.
Another map:
https://twitter.com/l_e_whyte/status/1337755277727309824
@Michael Cain:
Look at the darkest shaded areas on the COVID maps I just posted.
I do not actually believe this BTW. I think the number of people who have been infected is at least 2, maybe 3 times the confirmed cases, and these are the “low hanging fruit” – the people whose circumstances, occupation or behavior make them the easiest people for the virus to access.
My prediction: New cases start a steady decline from early January onwards, new fatalities start a decline in late January. The virus is already running out of the easiest people for it to infect.
Dang. The Pfizer vaccine now being shipped out of a plant in Kalamazoo, Michigan, is being escorted by US Marshals.
image here
Words to live by:
“We are all equal in the eyes of the stove.” — Jacques Pepin
I have trouble understanding the claims of voting irregularities. Democrats won the popular vote in 2000, 2008, 2012, and 2016. The victory in 2020 is as surprising as an Alabama win on any Saturday afternoon.
The Electoral College system was designed to take the power of the vote from the people. This artifact of the eighteenth century is overdue for rethinking.
Trump keeps saying he won the most votes ever for a sitting president. This statement is accurate, though totally irrelevant. You know one other president who won the most votes for a sitting president up to that point? Herbert Hoover.
@Teve:
The fact that the vaccine-carrying trucks are being protected by marshals isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It will help ensure that the cargo will gets where it’s going as quickly as possible. I live in one of the three places in the U.S. where this is being manufactured. I anticipate that when it’s shipped, similar precautions will be taken here.
@CSK: who said it was a bad thing? I thought it was impressive. They ain’t playing.
@Teve:
Ah, okay. I misunderstood.
And yes–they do mean business.
video of Proud Boys straight assauting people
@Kylopod:
We agree on Wisconsin. When results for it and Michigan showed Biden leading, was when I began to feel hopeful Trump would lose. And I wasn’t ready to call it until PA was decided (and the news networks weren’t, either).
The thing is trump in 2016 took three usually Democratic states by slim margins. This year Biden took two usually republican states by thin margins, but got back WI, MI, and PA. Except PA and MI went for Biden with larger margins,. albeit still small, than they’d gone for Trump.
It was a narrow victory, but not that narrow.
Rod Dreher watched the Jericho March yesterday and is extremely disturbed by the fascism and idolatry he witnessed:
@Kathy:
I was only considering narrowness in relative contrast to the popular vote. If Biden had won the PV by 10 points but his electoral win rested on three states where he’d won by 5 points, that would also suggest the EC was skewed in the GOP’s favor, even though it wouldn’t be a particularly narrow victory in itself. Here, however, Biden won the PV by nearly 5 points yet his EC victory rested on three states he won by less than a point, and he would not have won the EC if those states had gone the other way. Doesn’t that suggest a strong pro-GOP skew in the EC?
@CSK:
Barr obviously wants to be fired. He believes that will restore his honor. In seeking to restore honor, his toady-soul seeks something which is beyond it’s comprehension.
@Teve: Even the most Trumpy county of Washington state had 24.4% Biden voters. King County has 22% Trump voters.
For all the Red State/County vs blue State/County talk, there’s a lot more mixing. I’m not sure how succession would even work. It’s like a chunk of your intestines deciding to go another way — you could live without it, but getting rid of it is going to hurt.
This does not mean I don’t want to cede Eastern Washington to Idaho though — dumping people into a different state is very different than a different country.
@Monala:
Earlier, I saw a link to that, but didn’t follow it because, well it was Dreher, but it does support a thesis that I’ve been spouting that Trump and trumpism is fascist, though his government isn’t, by definition, fascist. We can count ourselves fortunate that Trump is old, in ill health and a moron. Otherwise his government would have been fascist as well and we would have lost our Democracy.
@dazedandconfused:
Barr may also believe that he can make Trump look like a fool (an even bigger one, if that’s possible) by backing Trump into a corner.
Is there anyone who works for Trump who doesn’t know he’s a horse’s ass?
Yesterday I ordered groceries online and went to the store to pick them up. Between waking up rather late, and the time the store takes to put the order together, I wound up getting there by 1 pm. I haven’t been really been out on Saturdays since late March, except between 7 and 8 am.
Well, the store was packed.
Less packed than in a pre-pandemic Saturday at 1 pm, but still a lot of people shopping. They were all wearing masks, some even face shields, and more than a few kept their distance from others. But I was glad to have been in there less than five minutes, and to have worn a KN-95 mask.
Next time, if I can’t place the order for an early pickup on Saturday, I’ll just leave it for Sunday.
Anyone been following the results from the old-man-yells-at-cloud Epstein opinion article in the WSJ telling Dr. Biden to Stop Using Your Title Because It Sounds Silly To Me?
As someone with a doctorate in physics myself, I’m “meh” either way. I just insist that if you’re going to use a non-medical doctorate title for people like “Dr. Kissinger” and “Dr. Gorka” then you bloody well better use one for Dr. Biden as well.
@grumpy realist: The best takedown I saw of that article is this one.
Here’s part of it:
@grumpy realist: I have several scientist friends who are women, so my Facebook feed is almost nothing but that Joseph Epstein article. The WSJ opinion editor who green-lit that column should be fired, but the WSJ opinion page is often reprehensible. Lotta global warming denial, for instance. Fun Fact: Epstein called Obama an “affirmative action President” and said he wasn’t qualified like his 43 predecessors were.
@Kylopod:
First, thanks for sharing some of your analysis.
Second, your finding of just how narrow the gap really was is very troubling. And we know that the EC is here to stay for the forseeable future. Republicans are benefitting so greatly that there is zero chance it can be abolished. The best we probably can hope for is elimination of the possibility that rogue electors vote counter to the popular vote winner in their state.
@Teve: Considering that the individual is in his 80s I’m chalking it up to an acute case of “back when I was young….” nostalgia and total cluelessness about the experience women with higher degrees have in getting their credentials to be taken seriously. (And not just women. There was an article written by a black American who noted that in academic gatherings he would be addressed by his first name (and no “Dr.”) while the more pale-skinned individuals around him were addressed using “Dr.”)
There’s also what used to be the standard, which was women would use their titles in professional arenas and then default back to being the “Missus” when at social gatherings with their husbands. As time has passed, more and more women use their titles all the time, especially when necessary to hit clueless jerks over the head who are trying to patronise them.
As someone with multiple higher degrees myself, my experience has been that the benefit of the higher accreditation is not so much the title as the self-confidence it gives you to bite the heads off of idiots.
Having made fun of SpaceX’s successful crash recently, I’ll note that today they launched a Falcon 9 successfully.
I bring this up because it’s not news worthy. It’s almost routine. That said, it was the 25th launch in the year. That’s close to an average of one launch every 2 weeks, which was the intended launch frequency of the space Shuttle.
Now, granted Falcon 9 is a simpler system, and that SpaceX has more than 4 orbit-capable vehicles available to choose from, let’s not lose sight that the 1st stage booster is reusbale, and many have been reused, some several times. Reusability was another feature of the Shuttle program. To its credit, the orbiter and boosters were reused, but at high monetary cost.
Now to make fun of Blue origin: Musk had an orbit capable rocket, Falcon 1, when he sued NASA for access to bid on launch contracts.
On a completely unrelated subject, I’m reading “Spaceman” by Mike Massimino, former NASA astronaut (you may recall him from The Big Bang Theory, where he played himself).
@Mister Bluster: Good story. Thanx.
@grumpy realist: Considering that the individual is a complete and utter misogynist ass, I’m not sure why somebody doesn’t just slap the piss out of the editor who approved it.
John le Carre has died. He was 89.
@drj:
Well, Cameron realised it; that’s why he buggered off as soon as the results came in.
And May realised it after a while; after the 2017 election failure I suspect, when she finally ejected her old Home Office advisers and started listening to the Treasury (and going around Johnson to get Foreign Office advice).
I suspect that, in his more sensible moments, Johnson realises it now.
It’s just that he prefers to live in the comfortable coloured candyfloss world inside his head, where something will turn up to spare him the pain of actually making a choice, beyond grasping for the pleasures of the moment.
Besides which, he has promised the moon on a silver platter to the ERG and the party base.
Confronting that collection of chancers, liars, fools and “enthusiasts” would take stone hard will.
And Johnson hates having to fight for the success that he feels is his by right of being Johnson.
Johnson likes to think of himself as being in the image of Churchill.
What a joke.
@Kathy: The launch/mission I’m going to be watching closely is the Starliner uncrewed flight at the end of March (assuming no more delays). If the software’s performance isn’t flawless, Boeing has a problem on a put-the-company-out-of-business scale.
I have an acquaintance who did real-time flight software at Boeing years back. He says that he started looking for a position at another company when some very senior executive said, at a company function, “Boeing is not, and never will be, a software company.”
Just over 40 years ago I was the poor systems engineering schmuck responsible for doing presentations for project managers all over Bell Labs (yes, of song and legend) telling them that in the future their projects were much more likely to fail because of software than hardware. I struggle to believe that there are companies that still haven’t learned that lesson.
German humour:
@Teve: Not too many years back in my state, the county recorder in one of the few large-population counties that still voted Republican was running for the Republican AG nomination. He was campaigning on how the state’s vote by mail system was riddled with fraud. The other county recorders, very heavily Republican, took out a full page ad in the paper-of-record for the state, that basically said, “You’re lying. There’s no wide-spread fraud, we know what we’re doing. Shut the f*ck up.”
Meet the Night Witches, the Daring Female Pilots Who Bombed Nazis By Night
@OzarkHillbilly
glad U liked it
(Teve goes to Twitter)
“Why are women complaining about right-wingers and something to do with Sasha Obama?”
(Teve browses Trending posts for 5 minutes)
“Oh. Sasha wore a sexy tankini-based costume with some fabric tied around her waist but you can see her bellybutton so the righties are calling her a whore and a prostitute. That’s just great.”
@Monala: I’ve commented at TAC a couple times, and I really wanted to comment on that article. There were already 600 comments, so what’s the point. But I also couldn’t figure out a constructive way to get Dreher or his audience to consider the possibility that the way those religious loons looked like to him is kind of how he looks to a lot of us.