On the occasion of the commencement of the 2016 World Series

The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it's a part of our past, Ray. It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again. Oh... people will come Ray. People will most definitely come.

Field of Dreams.

The perfect storm

This hasn't been a good year for me.

In April, my mother died.  I wrote about it earlier, but it's had a bigger impact on me that I would have anticipated. That may seem a strange thing to say, but she was in her 90s, and death is clearly around the corner at that age, which isn't to say, quite frankly, that death isn't lurking around quite a bit earlier than that.  Indeed, it's always there in the background somewhere.  But I haven't adjusted really well to it, for some reason.

 

Added to that, I have a family member that's been ill, and that's created some huge stresses, but I'll omit the personal details of those, even though its on my mind all the time, and it impacts me in ways that are extremely stress laden.

And, added to that, my son graduated from high school this past spring, which is a joyful event of course,  but which dredges up all the angst associated with the passage from youth to young adult, and all the recollections of your own time at that age, which at least in my case tends to remind me of the numerous errors committed by me then and later, and how I often knew that they were mistakes but wondered (not charged) into them anyhow. It also emphasizes, I think, just how poor of father I have been in comparison to my own father, to whom I compare very poorly in ever sense.  Hindsight, as they say, is 20/20.

When I was small.

I didn't take any time off, I couldn't afford to, when my mother died, and it's been catching up with me a bit.  Indeed, I didn't take time to trail cattle this year, again, which is not a good thing.  Added to that, I have to deal with her estate, which isn't a huge problem, but it does mean that we (my wife and I) now own the house that was hers.  For some reason, this is proving to be a bigger chore than I thought it would be, but I'll omit those details.

I don't intend to sell the house as I figure that it can be retirement income for my wife and me, and unlike a lot of lawyers I hear say "I intend to keep working" (there are many that don't say that), I don't intend to be practicing law in my 70s, assuming I'm still living at that age, which is very far from a safe assumption.  Indeed, I question the motivation of those who do that really, or rather I question the wisdom of it.  They say it keeps the mind sharp, but do we so become our jobs that that's all  we can think to do?  I hope not.

Anyhow, as was the plan before my mother died, somewhat, my son has moved into her old house as its located just a block from the college and is an ideal location for college students.  A high school friend is sharing the tenancy of the house with him.  So far so good, it would seem.

Well, it was pointed out to me that a house built in the 1950s will lack three prong plugs, so after a two day ordeal with the whole topic, I learned about gfci outlets and how they worked, and installed a set.  I don't like doing electrical work at all, and I didn't want to spend a lot of money at the house, but I did it as it seemed wise or necessary. So far so good, I thought. All upgrades finished.

 The GFCI outlet.  Any electrician could do this in seconds, but for me, not so much.

Well, then there was a plumbing incident, followed by a second one.

The second one came last Thursday, and resulted in an after hours plumbing call.  Okay, that'll happen. Well, the diagnosis was not anticipated.  The sewer line is wrecked and has to come out.

Great.

Well, not only does it have to come out, at about the time my mother started to fall ill some concrete men who were working next door convinced her that they should poor a new pad of cement.  And, boy, did they.  I stopped the project before it ended up covering the entire basement, but the long and the short of  it was that they really went to town and poured a pad a freakin' two feet thick. Two feet.

Indeed, that may have been the source of the sewer line failure, or may not be.  The house always had problems with tree roots and a neighbors line failed the year before last.

I got this news late at night, the day before I was to run up to Cody for a hearing.  It's a 210 mile drive.  I tossed and turned all night long, and then the next day got up, got dressed, and headed out.  I got up really early, I was up anyhow.

I'd agreed to take my son as he had the day off and it'd make for a nice trip. We determined, and in fact did, stop by the museum in Cody.  But he's one of those people who simply cannot wake up.  That's the opposite of me, and in fact it drives me crazy as I really hate waking people up. Waking people up is one of my least favorite things on earth to do.  It's awful.

Well, all the lights in the house were dark, and I thought, we'll, I'll drive on.  Particularly after I called him twice with no answer. But, I thought, we'll, I'll knock on the door.

By this time, I had my truck turned off.

Now, I've been driving a stick shift vehicle since I was about 10 years old, and I've never, ever, left one in neutral so that it would roll off. And I instinctively set the parking brake.

But I failed to do both of those things.  And while I was at the door ringing the doorbell, the truck started to roll off.

I'm amazed that I made that failure. Fatigue?  I hope so.

I tried and did catch it, but I couldn't stop it, and it rolled away from me down the street, right towards a house.  I was sure it was going to go into the house.  But, in the intersection, the unmanned truck made a backwards right turn.

Modern trucks, mind you, don't make turns by themselves.

Well, this one did.

So, it didn't hit the house, Thank God. And I mean that in the literal sense.  But it did hit the Subaru Forester those folks had parked in front of their house.  And it destroyed it.

It didn't do my own truck any favors, and it'll go into the body shop as a result, but it's still drive-able.  Indeed, I did drive it to Cody as planned.

 As an experiment in mass, it proves to be true that the heavier object is the one that is less likely to be badly damaged.

Well of course the police came, as they should and must for such an event.  And of course, it was a policeman we'd had experience with.

When my son was first in high school, he accidentally backed into a vehicle at the high school.  It was not a bad collision, but we told him to call the police, as everyone is instructed to do.  The policeman was a jerk to him, and way overcharged him in the bond schedule which we ended up having to take care of in court.

Well, we got that policeman.

And he was, once again, a total jerk.  A second policeman came as well and was very nice, but the first was quite a jerk and indeed did some things I think are inappropriate.  I'm thinking of filing a complaint regarding him with the department.  I took full responsibility for the accident and didn't deserve the treatment received.  Nor did my son deserve to be awakened by the officer who refused to provide substantive details.  Nor did the basement dwelling fellow renting the basement who wasn't given any reason for why a policeman "wanted to talk to him."

Jerk.

Now, there may or may not be an added element to this, albeit one that we have nothing to do with.  A couple of years ago, a cousin of mine who was employed in law enforcement got in trouble with the law himself.  I have had no professional or personal involvement in the situation at all, but I will be frank that based upon my outside observation, there was a "not passing the smell test" element to it.  That is, what I think the real story is, is one of a moral failing, but not an actual violation of the law.  I may, of course, be all wet, but the degree to which his former employer turned on him was impressive and I think made defending himself pretty difficult.

As noted, that has nothing to do with me, but my last name is distinct here and every single one of us who carriers it is usually related (there are occasional exceptions).  As it was big news at the time, I sort of wonder, but have no real reason to believe, that this sort of marks us all in the eyes of some.  At least I wonder.  And when the jerk cop went up to the house and got my son up, he asked "Is there a X here?"  Now, that may be the only way to ask it, but it does come across like being asked if a member of some other species lived there, of which I'm part.

Indeed, as a total aside, I'm one of those folks, I'll quite admit, who sympathize pretty heavily with blacks when they claim they live in fear of the police.  I don't live in fear of the police, and I'm friends with some members of the law enforcement community, but I get it.  If I were black and undergoing this experience I'd frankly be afraid of the police at this point.  I'm mad enough about it that I'm extremely tempted to go to the department and ask what's up with this guy.

Well, anyhow, I've had just about enough of 2016.

But it's probably just me.  Death, stress, illness, not being able to get out and take time off.  It's been a bit much.

It's particularly odd for me, in a retrospective context,  as I'm just not that ambitious of guy.  Indeed, some years ago I found a letter or maybe a diary entry of my mother's written when I was a little boy, wondering what would become of me as an adult, as I just flat out lacked the driving ambition that so characterized her family growing up.  She was concerned.  People who know me professionally regard me as a workaholic, but I sure don't see things that way myself.  Maybe it's the case that people who live that way are consumed less by ambition than they are by an overdeveloped sense of duty.  Who knows.  Anyhow, thinking back on it, I think was really tired the other day and I wasn't really in the best state of mine to end up driving 400 miles in a day, by the time the day was over.  But I couldn't do anything about it.

Well, it's been a rotten year so far.

Then the LORD answered Job out of the storm and said:

2Who is this who darkens counsel

with words of ignorance?

3Gird up your loins now, like a man;

I will question you, and you tell me the answers!

4Where were you when I founded the earth?

Tell me, if you have understanding.

5Who determined its size? Surely you know?

Who stretched out the measuring line for it?

6Into what were its pedestals sunk,

and who laid its cornerstone,

7While the morning stars sang together

and all the sons of God  shouted for joy?

8Who shut within doors the sea,

when it burst forth from the womb,

9When I made the clouds its garment

and thick darkness its swaddling bands?

10When I set limits for it

and fastened the bar of its door,

11And said: Thus far shall you come but no farther,

and here shall your proud waves stop?

12Have you ever in your lifetime commanded the morning

and shown the dawn its place

13For taking hold of the ends of the earth,

till the wicked are shaken from it?

14The earth is changed as clay by the seal,

and dyed like a garment;

15But from the wicked their light is withheld,

and the arm of pride is shattered.

16Have you entered into the sources of the sea,

or walked about on the bottom of the deep?

17Have the gates of death been shown to you,

or have you seen the gates of darkness?

18Have you comprehended the breadth of the earth?

Tell me, if you know it all.

19What is the way to the dwelling of light,

and darkness—where is its place?

20That you may take it to its territory

and know the paths to its home?

21You know, because you were born then,

and the number of your days is great!

22Have you entered the storehouses of the snow,

and seen the storehouses of the hail

23Which I have reserved for times of distress,

for a day of war and battle?

24What is the way to the parting of the winds,

where the east wind spreads over the earth?

25Who has laid out a channel for the downpour

and a path for the thunderstorm

26To bring rain to uninhabited land,

the unpeopled wilderness;

27To drench the desolate wasteland

till the desert blooms with verdure?

28Has the rain a father?

Who has begotten the drops of dew?

29Out of whose womb comes the ice,

and who gives the hoarfrost its birth in the skies,

30When the waters lie covered as though with stone

that holds captive the surface of the deep?

31Have you tied cords to the Pleiades,

or loosened the bonds of Orion?

32Can you bring forth the Mazzaroth in their season,

or guide the Bear with her children?

33Do you know the ordinances of the heavens;

can you put into effect their plan on the earth?

34Can you raise your voice to the clouds,

for them to cover you with a deluge of waters?

35Can you send forth the lightnings on their way,

so that they say to you, “Here we are”?

36Who gives wisdom to the ibis,

and gives the rooster understanding?

37Who counts the clouds with wisdom?

Who tilts the water jars of heaven

38So that the dust of earth is fused into a mass

and its clods stick together?

39Do you hunt the prey for the lion

or appease the hunger of young lions,

40While they crouch in their dens,

or lie in ambush in the thicket?

41Who provides nourishment for the raven

when its young cry out to God,

wandering about without food?Do you know when mountain goats are born,

or watch for the birth pangs of deer,

2Number the months that they must fulfill,

or know when they give birth,

3When they crouch down and drop their young,

when they deliver their progeny?

4Their offspring thrive and grow in the open,

they leave and do not return.

5Who has given the wild donkey his freedom,

and who has loosed the wild ass from bonds?

6I have made the wilderness his home

and the salt flats his dwelling.

7He scoffs at the uproar of the city,

hears no shouts of a driver.

8He ranges the mountains for pasture,

and seeks out every patch of green.

9Will the wild ox consent to serve you,

or pass the nights at your manger?

10Will you bind the wild ox with a rope in the furrow,

and will he plow the valleys after you?

11Will you depend on him for his great strength

and leave to him the fruits of your toil?

12Can you rely on him to bring in your grain

and gather in the yield of your threshing floor?

13The wings of the ostrich flap away;

her plumage is lacking in feathers.

14When she abandons her eggs on the ground

and lets them warm in the sand,

15She forgets that a foot may crush them,

that the wild beasts may trample them;

16She cruelly disowns her young

and her labor is useless; she has no fear.

17For God has withheld wisdom from her

and given her no share in understanding.

18Yet when she spreads her wings high,

she laughs at a horse and rider.

19Do you give the horse his strength,

and clothe his neck with a mane?

20Do you make him quiver like a locust,

while his thunderous snorting spreads terror?

21He paws the valley, he rejoices in his strength,

and charges into battle.

22He laughs at fear and cannot be terrified;

he does not retreat from the sword.

23Around him rattles the quiver,

flashes the spear and the javelin.

24Frenzied and trembling he devours the ground;

he does not hold back at the sound of the trumpet;

25at the trumpet’s call he cries, “Aha!”

Even from afar he scents the battle,

the roar of the officers and the shouting.

26Is it by your understanding that the hawk soars,

that he spreads his wings toward the south?

27Does the eagle fly up at your command

to build his nest up high?

28On a cliff he dwells and spends the night,

on the spur of cliff or fortress.

29From there he watches for his food;

his eyes behold it afar off.

30His young ones greedily drink blood;

where the slain are, there is he.

 The LORD then answered Job and said:

2Will one who argues with the Almighty be corrected?

Let him who would instruct God give answer!

3Then Job answered the LORD and said:

4 Look, I am of little account; what can I answer you?

I put my hand over my mouth.

5I have spoken once, I will not reply;

twice, but I will do so no more.

6Then the LORD answered Job out of the storm and said:

7Gird up your loins now, like a man.

I will question you, and you tell me the answers!

8 Would you refuse to acknowledge my right?

Would you condemn me that you may be justified?

9Have you an arm like that of God,

or can you thunder with a voice like his?

10Adorn yourself with grandeur and majesty,

and clothe yourself with glory and splendor.

11Let loose the fury of your wrath;

look at everyone who is proud and bring them down.

12Look at everyone who is proud, and humble them.

Tear down the wicked in their place,

13bury them in the dust together;

in the hidden world imprison them.

14Then will I too praise you,

for your own right hand can save you.

15Look at Behemoth, whom I made along with you,

who feeds on grass like an ox.

16See the strength in his loins,

the power in the sinews of his belly.

17He carries his tail like a cedar;

the sinews of his thighs are like cables.

18His bones are like tubes of bronze;

his limbs are like iron rods.

19He is the first of God’s ways,

only his maker can approach him with a sword.

20For the mountains bring him produce,

and all wild animals make sport there.

21Under lotus trees he lies,

in coverts of the reedy swamp.

22The lotus trees cover him with their shade;

all about him are the poplars in the wadi.

23If the river grows violent, he is not disturbed;

he is tranquil though the Jordan surges about his mouth.

24Who can capture him by his eyes,

or pierce his nose with a trap?

25Can you lead Leviathan about with a hook,

or tie down his tongue with a rope?

26Can you put a ring into his nose,

or pierce through his cheek with a gaff?

27Will he then plead with you, time after time,

or address you with tender words?

28Will he make a covenant with you

that you may have him as a slave forever?

29Can you play with him, as with a bird?

Can you tie him up for your little girls?

30Will the traders bargain for him?

Will the merchants divide him up?

31Can you fill his hide with barbs,

or his head with fish spears?

32Once you but lay a hand upon him,

no need to recall any other conflict!

 Whoever might vainly hope to do so

need only see him to be overthrown.

2No one is fierce enough to arouse him;

who then dares stand before me?

3Whoever has assailed me, I will pay back—

Everything under the heavens is mine.

4I need hardly mention his limbs,

his strength, and the fitness of his equipment.

5Who can strip off his outer garment,

or penetrate his double armor?

6Who can force open the doors of his face,

close to his terrible teeth?

7Rows of scales are on his back,

tightly sealed together;

8They are fitted so close to each other

that no air can come between them;

9So joined to one another

that they hold fast and cannot be parted.

10When he sneezes, light flashes forth;

his eyes are like the eyelids of the dawn.

11Out of his mouth go forth torches;

sparks of fire leap forth.

12From his nostrils comes smoke

as from a seething pot or bowl.

13His breath sets coals afire;

a flame comes from his mouth.

14Strength abides in his neck,

and power leaps before him.

15The folds of his flesh stick together,

it is cast over him and immovable.

16His heart is cast as hard as stone;

cast as the lower millstone.

17When he rises up, the gods are afraid;

when he crashes down, they fall back.

18Should a sword reach him, it will not avail;

nor will spear, dart, or javelin.

19He regards iron as chaff,

and bronze as rotten wood.

20No arrow will put him to flight;

slingstones used against him are but straw.

21Clubs he regards as straw;

he laughs at the crash of the spear.

22Under him are sharp pottery fragments,

spreading a threshing sledge upon the mire.

23He makes the depths boil like a pot;

he makes the sea like a perfume bottle.

24Behind him he leaves a shining path;

you would think the deep had white hair.

25Upon the earth there is none like him,

he was made fearless.

26He looks over all who are haughty,

he is king over all proud beasts.

 Then Job answered the LORD and said:

2I know that you can do all things,

and that no purpose of yours can be hindered.

3“Who is this who obscures counsel with ignorance?”

I have spoken but did not understand;

things too marvelous for me, which I did not know.

4“Listen, and I will speak;

I will question you, and you tell me the answers.”

5By hearsay I had heard of you,

but now my eye has seen you.

6Therefore I disown what I have said,

and repent in dust and ashes.

From the Book of Job.

Where have all the farmers gone?

Recently we posted an item about a conference in Wyoming seeking to address the increasingly high age of farmers and ranchers. Naturally, in this day and age, the conference seems to be focused on technology as the solution.

It isn't.

Land prices are the big problem.  Technology, oddly enough, is also a problem.  But land is the huge one, with prices driven up and up by various conspiring factors in our economy, improvements in transportation, the concentration of wealth, and the enormous increase in population over the decades.  I.e., in 1916 a person still needed a pretty substantial investment to get into agriculture, but it wasn't impossible and you could still homestead.  Now, you might be able to scrape and invest for the tools of the trade, but land is priced so high, there's no earthly way in much of the country you can actually make a living at it, if you have to buy land.  This is certainly the case for ranching anyhow.  You can't buy a ranch, if  you want to be a real rancher, and ever pay the land off or even make a living on it.

That's what agricultural conferences address.

Wringing hands over youth not entering agriculture won't solve any problems at all.  How can they, really?  Unless their family has land, and the family is already dedicated to staying in agriculture or at least not selling the land, their task is daunting and they have to accept never being able to own what they are working.

Not that the golden alternatives are all that great, they're just more obvious. Those "good" "town jobs" that are so often the alternative have plenty of their own problems.  In the ones where you actually own things, there are all sorts of problems associated with them, they're just less obvious and you have to really be a part of them to know what their downsides are.  Your dentist, doctor, lawyer, accountant, or whatever, isn't going to really tell you the bad sides of what  he's doing.  His incentive is completely in the opposite direction.

Not that it has to be this way. This actually can be addressed, we just won't do it.  Land prices for agricultural land could be depressed overnight by restricting the ownership of it to people who make a living from it.  That would change it, as most of your out of state executives that fly in to "their ranch" aren't going to walk out of their offices for ever to take up the life of a real agriculturalist.

The problem with that, however, is that doing this is deeply contrary to the American concept of "I can do anything I want" and "I can own anything I want".  Those values made a lot of sense, quite frankly, in the world of 1916 for the US. They're pretty obviously false in the world of 2016.

Tracking the Presidential Election Part VII

Yes, a new one already.  The last one was rather obviously very long, and the GOP now appears to have a candidate with a sufficient number of delegates so as to be able to take the nomination on the first ballot.

The current results:

Democrats:  Needed to win, 2,383.

Clinton: 2,305 (537 of which are Superdelegates)
Sanders:  1,539 (42 of which are Superdelegates)

Republicans:  Needed to win, 1,237.

Trump:  1,238 (of which 88 are unpledged delegates).  Absent unpledged delegates bolting, Trump is the GOP nominee.
Cruz:  560   Cruz has suspended his campaign. (of which 9 are unpledged delegates)
Rubio:  167.  Rubio has suspended his campaign.
Kasich:  161.  Kasich has suspended his campaign
Carson:  8  Carson has suspended his campaign.
Bush:  4  Carson has suspended his campaign.
Fiorina:  1  Fiorina has dropped out of the race.
Paul:  1  Paul has dropped out of the race.

Commentary 

Washington's May 24 results, Republican only, have pushed Trump barely over the top to the required number, although 88 of his delegates are unpledged and therefore could change.  Nine unpledged delegates that had been pledged for Cruz switched over to Trump recently.  Surprisingly, Kasich picked up one delegate since our last tally while Rubio lost one.

The GOP race is therefore more or less over, although a large amount of dissent remains.  As recently as last weekend one of the conservative pundits was still urging an independent or third party run.

The Democratic race, amazingly, remains in contest.  Clinton is very close at this point, but only due to Superdelegates.  There's every reason to believe that Sanders will continue to contest the election all the way to the convention.  This has to be frustrating to Clinton who now clearly faces Trump in the fall but who cannot ignore Sanders.  At the same time, the email issue has revived.

___________________________________________________________________________________

May 30, 2016 

Presumably reflecting changes in pledged delegates the tallies have changed a little; adding a few delegates for the front runners.


Democrats:  Needed to win, 2,383.

Clinton: 2,309 (540 of which are Superdelegates)
Sanders:  1,539 (42 of which are Superdelegates)

Republicans:  Needed to win, 1,237.

Trump:  1,239 (of which 95 are unpledged delegates).  Absent unpledged delegates bolting, Trump is the GOP nominee.
Cruz:  560   Cruz has suspended his campaign. (of which 9 are unpledged delegates)
Rubio:  167.  Rubio has suspended his campaign.
Kasich:  161.  Kasich has suspended his campaign
Carson:  8  Carson has suspended his campaign.
Bush:  4  Carson has suspended his campaign.
Fiorina:  1  Fiorina has dropped out of the race.
Paul:  1  Paul has dropped out of the race.

Commentary 

The only actual reason I bumped this up today is to note that the Wyoming Democratic Party has indicated its going to protest the DNC's allocation of Wyoming's delegates.  Sanders won the Wyoming primary, but the delegates were equally split between Sanders and Clinton. The Wyoming party feel that rather than a 7/7 split, it should be 8/6.


That would make no difference, unless it really comes down to the last vote, in the Democratic contest, but it does demonstrate why the Sanders campaign has been frustrated.  In spite of winning some late primaries, and picking up delegates as a result, the Democrat's process operates such that Clinton picks up nearly the same number, or in the case of Wyoming, she actually did pick up the same number.

___________________________________________________________________________________

June 6, 2016

 After a couple of weekend Democratic territorial races, the tallies are now as follows:

Democrats:  Needed to win, 2,383.

Clinton: 2,383 (571 of which are Superdelegates)  Absent unpledged delegates bolting, Clinton is the Democratic nominee
Sanders:  1,569 (48 of which are Superdelegates)

Republicans:  Needed to win, 1,237.

Trump:  1,239 (of which 95 are unpledged delegates).  Absent unpledged delegates bolting, Trump is the GOP nominee.
Cruz:  560   Cruz has suspended his campaign. (of which 9 are unpledged delegates)
Rubio:  167.  Rubio has suspended his campaign.
Kasich:  161.  Kasich has suspended his campaign
Carson:  8  Carson has suspended his campaign.
Bush:  4  Carson has suspended his campaign.
Fiorina:  1  Fiorina has dropped out of the race.
Paul:  1  Paul has dropped out of the race.

Commentary

So Clinton is now the unofficial Democratic nominee.  With these results she achieves, but only just achieves, obtaining enough delegates to secure the Democratic nomination, assuming the 571 Superdelegates that are pledged to her remain pledged to her.

Depending upon tomorrow's votes, the question of the loyalty of the Superdelegates may become moot, as over 800 Democratic delegates are to be chosen tomorrow.   The amazing thing, of course, is by this point both parties have chosen very unpopular candidates.  Having said that, the  Democrats chose the highly unpopular candidate they were anticipated to have chosen right from the onset, while the Republicans chose one that they were not anticipated to choose.

__________________________________________________________________________________

June 8, 2016 

The primaries, except for Washington D.C.'s Democratic primary, are now over.  Indeed, while this has been an odd election season to be sure, the election itself is effectively over as well.

The standings.

Democrats:  Needed to win, 2,383.

Clinton: 2,755 (571 of which are Superdelegates)  Absent unpledged delegates bolting, Clinton is the Democratic nominee
Sanders:  1,852 (48 of which are Superdelegates)

Republicans:  Needed to win, 1,237.

Trump:  1,536 (of which 95 are unpledged delegates).  Absent unpledged delegates bolting, Trump is the GOP nominee.
Cruz:  560   Cruz has suspended his campaign. (of which 9 are unpledged delegates)
Rubio:  167.  Rubio has suspended his campaign.
Kasich:  161.  Kasich has suspended his campaign
Carson:  8  Carson has suspended his campaign.
Bush:  4  Carson has suspended his campaign.
Fiorina:  1  Fiorina has dropped out of the race.
Paul:  1  Paul has dropped out of the race.

Commentary

Sanders took North Dakota and Montana, and South Dakota was a tie.  He did not take, however, California which was really his last hope.

Clinton is only the nominee right now, of course, due to the Superdelegates.  But Sanders would need nearly 500 Superdelegates to bolt Clinton and join him in order to reverse these results and that won't be occurring. Trump, for his part, received all the late delegates in spite of his earlier competitors largely remaining on the ballots of those states choosing yesterday.

The candidates now go on to their conventions in late July.  The campaign of the two main candidates against each other, however, started a couple of weeks ago.

There remains some items up in the air, most significantly a lingering threat that the Never Trump wing of the GOP will bolt for a third party candidate or give their support to the Libertarian candidate in protest.  Likewise, there's a small threat that the Green Party will appeal to Sanders supporters, and even the Libertarian Party might a bit.  This might, therefore, turn out to be a surprisingly good year for both those parties, even though neither has any serious chance of winning.  A good showing, however, might propel those parties into serious parties that have to be contended with.

The fact that Trump continues to face internal opposition is, moreover, significant.  The thought was that the Republicans would pull together after Trump secured the necessary number of delegates but that isn't occurring to the extent it was predicted to.  Indeed, the Never Trump movement, even this late, is hinting that it will back an alternative and it clearly would have run one but for the fact that those that it approached declined to run. That fact is hugely significant for the Democrats as its heavily symbolic of this election cycle.  By choosing Trump the Republicans have chosen a candidate that even the massively unpopular Hillary Clinton is likely to easily beat and even a fair number of Republicans can't support.

This thread will continue on, unless it grows to big, until at least the Convention.  Or until something surprising happens and a new one is needed.  In a year of surprised, who knows, that could happen.

Followup

Following Tuesday's primaries, I thought there was a chance that Bernie Sanders might concede.

Nothing doing, apparently.

Indeed, he's taking a lot of heat for it, but he's contesting for the Washington DC primary, the only one left, which occurs next week.

It's a bit difficult to see what Sanders end game is at this point, and there's a lot of speculation about it.  Indeed, Democratic commentators are getting a bit spastic about it, demanding that he concede. Some are speculating that he is now campaigning for concessions from the platform, or to impact the direction that the Democrats are going in.  Maybe. But there's also speculation that he intends to angle for the Superdelegates, perhaps to drop Clinton below the assured number and cause a brokered convention.  That would seem odd, as he wouldn't win that, but who knows.  His campaign has been a difficult one to accurately predict.

In any event, the irony of it is that Sanders is doing what everyone thought the Never Trump Republicans would do, campaign to the bitter end. They basically dropped out, however, before the matter was really decided.  The hard to predict Sanders hasn't.

June 28, 2016

I never did put the final count in here, and I've been well aware of that, but I've figured everyone was so sick of this that they'd want a break.

Anyhow, after the D.C. primary, which went to Clinton, this stand as follows:

The standings.

Democrats:  Needed to win, 2,383.

Clinton: 2,811 (591 of which are Superdelegates) 
Sanders:  1,879 (48 of which are Superdelegates)

Republicans:  Needed to win, 1,237.

Trump:  1,542 (of which 95 are unpledged delegates). 
Cruz:  560   Cruz has suspended his campaign. (of which 9 are unpledged delegates)
Rubio:  167.  Rubio has suspended his campaign.
Kasich:  161.  Kasich has suspended his campaign
Carson:  8  Carson has suspended his campaign.
Bush:  4  Carson has suspended his campaign.
Fiorina:  1  Fiorina has dropped out of the race.
Paul:  1  Paul has dropped out of the race.

Commentary

Not surprisingly, there was a time after everyone had dropped out that Trump's poll standings surged and he appeared to be more likely to win that Clinton, but that only lasted for a week and he's been on the rocks ever since.  Now experienced observers have wondered what he's been doing the past month, and he has been in the news a lot less.  Today finds him, oddly, in Scotland where he commented following the Brexit vote. Things frankly don't look good for him at all, and in a race in which he only has Clinton to take on, he's not taking her on effectively at all.

The conventions, which will cause new entries or at least a new entry in this series, will spike each candidates numbers following the respective conventions, but this now appears to be on a fairly certain trajectory.  The GOP establishment does not appear to be rallying to Trump, which pundits said it would.  The terrorist attack in Florida does not appear to have made him look like a better option, as some predicated a terrorist attack would, and mostly he seems sort of stuck. Clinton, on the other hand, doesn't appear stuck at all, even if she doesn't appear to be popular either.

I wasn't going to update this thread until the conventions, but I've done so now due to all the other political races gong on and it would have accordingly been odd not to.  Internationally we have the Brexit vote, of course, and the following resignation of David Cameron.  Locally we have a U.S. House race heating up in which one campaign manager went so far as to claim he didn't know that one of his opponents "was still running".     And around the state we did have some Democrats that were looking good, but the national party effectively murdered them this week with their childish sit in on the floor of Congress and, moreover, true to form local Democrats, or at least one, couldn't shut up long enough not to suddenly come out looking like a radical proponent of gun control, which ends that campaign even if the candidate doesn't seemingly know that.

Followup

I thought it unlikely that I'd have anything to update in this thread prior to the conventions, at which time I'd start new ones, but a surprising event did occur.

Longtime Republican columnist and intellectual figure George F. Will officially announced that he is leaving the GOP.   This is not minor news.  Will is actively opposed to Trump and Republicans themselves seem to be wavering.  Some dismiss this as the discontent Republican elite simply pouting, but its' more than that.  Trump is not gaining the support that many assumed he would after he became the presumptive nominee, and there is no indication that his support in traditional Republican quarters is going to grow.

At the same time, there's some curious speculation now amongst pundits that Trump may actually quit the race prior to the election.  This has been commented upon in more than one columnist's writings, although the writers may be feeding off of themselves in this speculation.

Recent polls show Trump behind Clinton, which is not surprising, but one now shows him far behind.  His campaign appears to have become somewhat lost and with Republican figures now actively opposed to him the campaign is in serious trouble.

____________________________________________________________________________________

Tracking the Presidential Election, 2016

Tracking the Presidential Election, 2016, Part II

Tracking the Presidential Election, 2016, Part III Sic Transit Gloria Mundi.

Tracking the Presidential Election Part IV

Tracking the Presidential Election Part V

Tracking the Presidential Election Part VI. The wobbly Democratic Party.

Tracking the Presidential Election Part VI. The wobbly Democratic Party.

In part III of this series, I address the sad situation in the Republican party, a scene so bad that some people believe the party is on the verge of death and, in spite of an effort to unify the party behind the "presumptive  nominee", we are actually still seeing an effort to find an acceptable third party candidate by some Republicans who are big names.

First the tell of the tape:

Democrats:  Needed to win, 2,383.

Clinton: 2,293 (525 of which are Superdelegates)
Sanders:  1,533 (40 of which are Superdelegates)

Republicans:  Needed to win, 1,237.

Trump:  1,161 (of which 58 are unpledged delegates).
Cruz:  567   Cruz has suspended his campaign. (of which 18 are unpledged delegates)
Rubio:  168.  Rubio has suspended his campaign.
Kasich:  159.  Kasich has suspended his campaign
Carson:  8  Carson has suspended his campaign.
Bush:  4  Carson has suspended his campaign.
Fiorina:  1  Fiorina has dropped out of the race.
Paul:  1  Paul has dropped out of the race.

Commentary

Well, if the GOP is in ICU, laying right there in the bed next to it is the Democratic Party, something that's become increasingly obvious as the Sanders campaign and its supporters have finally managed to get some press, late in the election, and as they start to become increasingly vocal about their discontent about the coronation of Hillary Clinton as the 2016 Democratic nominee, a move that reflects just how ossified the Democrats are.  Indeed, the insurgent Sanders wing of the party is now actually in full revolt.

A notable feature of this election is that, even though the country has more Democrats than Republicans, the Democrats would have been blown out of the saddle this year but for the fact that the GOP apparent nominee is even more unpopular than Hillary Clinton.  It's an amazing feat that the Republicans have pulled off, managing to find a candidate that actually is throwing voters to a candidate who is really unpopular, maybe.

I say maybe, as its still possible, although extremely unlikely, for Sanders to win. With a campaign that the press has treated as dead right from the onset, he has continued to win state after state and would be within striking distance of Clinton but for the Superdelegates, those delegates that the Democratic establishment have established to prevent the nomination of anyone who isn't solidly Democratic mainstream.  If the Republicans are facing an internal revolt, they at least have a democratic method of letting the steam off and the party adjust.  The Democrats, however, have built in a structural roadblock that's actually designed to prevent that, and for that reason, the fact that the party is nearly as ill as the GOP hasn't been apparent.  But the Democrats are a house of cards, held up right now only by the lack of a strong wind from the Republican Party.

How did the second American political party enter the same state of advance decay that the GOP did, and how can it address it?

Well, its where it is largely for the same reason that the GOP is where it is.

And to do that, we need to take a look at its history, to see how it got to where it is.  More particularly, how did the Democratic Party become a working class liberal party in the 20th Century, only to devolve to an effete, East Coast, upper class white WASP lite party?

As with the GOP, we find that story starting once again with the election of 1912.  It's amazing how pivotal that election really was, and the extent to which its defined the evolution of the parties for over a century.

 More Trump than Clinton, Andrew Jackson was the first Democrat to be elected President.  Even up until fairly recently Jackson was celebrated by Democrats in an annual "Jefferson Jackson Day" in most places, including in Wyoming. Recently, they've started omitting Jackson's name, cognizant that he wasn't exactly a modern liberal.

The Democratic Party is the oldest political party in the world.  It hasn't always been anything like the party it is today, however.  Prior to 1912 it was basically a conservative party with a strong secondary base in ethnic immigrants.  It was steeped in racism (which it didn't overcome in 1912) and it was the party that basically had come down on the wrong side of the Civil War.  Prior to the war the Democrats were strong supporters of Manifest Destiny, while the GOP opposed it, two positions that have oddly sort of lived on in the parties in spite of themselves, as the Democrats have always been more strongly associated with the violent maintenance of American ideals overseas, while the Republicans have not.

That the party survived the Civil War at all is stunning, in that the Democrats opposed the war for the most part and the Democrats had a strong Southern base, which the war did not disrupt.  Following the Civil War it retained its basic conservative base and it remained the party of Southern whites, which meant that after Reconstruction was defeated that it was the party of the South.  Only blacks provided a base for the GOP in the South at the time.  Still the war meant that the Democrats were out of the Oval Office for a 20 year period.

Running up to the 20th Century an aspect of the Democratic Party in the North that was already there became cemented as the Democrats also strongly came to be associated with ethnic minorities, and often Catholic ethnic minorities, such as the Irish.  The machine system in politics was extremely strongly expressed at the time and that strongly favored Democratic recruitment of disfavored minority voters in a region where the Democrats were otherwise not very strong.  With patronage being the basis of the effort, and successfully, in the North the party came in some ways to be partially defined by this, while ironically in the South its membership was much different.

 William Jennings Bryan, populist, and Presidential candidate at age 36.

The evolution of the modern party oddly began with an odd issue, coinage.  The Depression of 1893 threw monetary policy into focus and populist Democrat William Jennings Bryan ran on the platform of free coinage of silver, as ridiculous idea that would in no way have served to end the depression.  This makes Bryan recognizable, in some ways, to our modern era in that he was campaigning on an easy fix to a complicated problem that really had no hope of offering a solution to it.  The party nearly split in half as the conservatives in the North and the South united in a breakaway party, the National Democratic Party, which was started by Grover Cleveland and saw the recruitment of Woodrow Wilson.  Bryan took the nomination, in a manner that's somewhat reminiscent of Donald Trump today, and he saw huge crowed in the rural Midwest and South before he went down in epic defeat in 1896.  The result was a disaster, but it did start to bring into focus a populist movement that was brewing in both parties at the time, much as the same is occurring in both parties now.

What started in 1896 developed in 1912, and the upper class elements that had been the National Democrats united with populists and progressives to basically swipe the progressive movement from the GOP. The GOP was clearly split on progressivism at hte time, and the Democrats had their chance, which they took with Woodrow Wilson.  From that moment on the Democrats have been the liberal, or as it is sometimes said, the progressive, American political party, solidly to the left of the Republicans.

 Woodrow Wilson, of whom we've been seeing a lot here recently.

That 1912 liberal party wasn't what we see today, however, and its not really quite how the Democrats define themselves today. For one thing, Wilson was highly racist, but this didn't really matter to a party that didn't count on black or minority votes anywhere, and which could and did count on Southern whites, who really remained more reflective of the old conservative Democratic Party.  But the roots of the current party were there. They really came forth into bloom into what Democrats imagine themselves to be, however, with the 1932 election.

 Considered by some to be a "traitor to his class", Franklin Roosevelt as President.

In 1932 the Democrats elected the most liberal, by default, President the nation has ever seen, Franklin Roosevelt.  Coming up when he did, he came up in a party that had developed since 1912 in an era of increasing radical politics in the United States. The GOP remained solidly conservative during this time period, and the Democrats solidly liberal, except in the South, but the Socialist Party and even the Communist Party were serious parties from about that point until World War Two.  Angling for the votes of blue collar laborers, the Democrats found themselves contesting with really radical parties which saw some success.  The Great Depression brought that battle into sharp focus and the Democrats, seeking to address he nation's ills, went sharply to the left, basically taking the wind out of the hard left's sails, but also becoming a much more liberal party itself.  This continued to develop throughout the Great Depression and World War Two, during which the Democrats became solidly party nearly defined by support for working class laborers.  It became the part of the "working man".  Consistent with the general policy of progressives, it also became the party that favored expansion and protection of American ideals beyond our shores.

Coming out of World War Two, the Democrats were a solidly working class party that also had a strong base of ethnic Catholics and nearly the entire white Southern population.  It was very pro labor, and by that we mean pro organized labor.  It was in favor of big government and it also was in favor of a very active foreign policy designed to counter threats to American interest and in favor of American values.  Having been in favor of entering World War Two long before the Republicans, who only came to that opinion on December 7, 1941, the party tended to see, and often correctly, analogies with Hitler in Communist movements all over the globe.  The party was also strongly anti-colonial in terms of its foreign policy.  A recognition on its part that its support of the working class everywhere meant that its hostility to blacks in the South started to force the reform of the party on civil rights as well and blacks in the South started to join the party for the first time, following blacks in the North that had started to do so while FDR was President.

Following World War Two that Democratic Party remained the party up until the late 1960s.  It was the party's interventionist foreign policy that undid it.  The Democrats lead the nation into two wars following World War Two, neither of which was wildly popular.  Intervention in the Korean War in 1950 came first, obviously, and had the impact of finally ending GOP isolationism as the majority platform of the GOP.  The election of John F. Kennedy in 1960 saw the party take a "go anywhere" view towards intervention which shortly lead the country into a conflict in Vietnam.  It's interesting to note that during Eisenhower's Republican administration, the first GOP administration in over 20 years, the country eschewed intervention in foreign campaigns, leading in part to the Communist takeover in Cuba, while this changed rapidly with Kennedy coming into office.

 

 U.S. soldier in the Korean War and . . . 

Vietnam.  Two post World War Two wars which started for the US with intervention under Democratic Presidents, and not featuring Declarations of War, and which ended during the administration of Republican Presidents.

Vietnam would turn out to be a hugely unpopular war and that saw its reflection strongly in the Democratic Party. At the same time, the old hard hat blue collar base of the party really began to age out of politics.  Economic changes brought about by World War Two put the sons and daughters of blue collar workers into university where they remained in their parents party but lost their connection to the strong, often ethnic, working class societies their parents had been in.  As this occurred the union between theory (the Democrats had incorporated a lot of hard left economic theorist during the Great Depression) and practicality began to break down in the party.  The Democrats had been, because of their strong blue collar and ethnic base, surprisingly conservative on many domestic issues while practical liberal on economic ones, with the hard hat element of the base tempering strong leftist instincts that were otherwise there.  Staring in the late 1960s, however, with the economy doing well and younger members of the party divorced from industrial labor, while becoming increasingly radicalized in universities, the party began to transform into what it currently is.

The battle lines became sharply drawn in 1968s when Democrats literally fought each other at the Democratic Convention.  Hard Hat Democrats and the police, in a solidly Democratic city, rioted against war protestors, who were also Democrats, assuming that they were not in a party further to the left, over the war. The war, of course, had been brought about and maintained under two Democratic Presidents.  The result was the loss of the 1968 Presidential campaign and enduring memory on the part of the party insiders that its hard left elements had to be controlled or they'd bring the party down.

It didn't happen immediately at first, of course, but the impact was real and last to the current day.  Starting in 1968 the more conservative working class elements of the party became marginalized and began to leave it.  In the north the party increasingly became an upper class liberal party with little connection to working men or even to the ethnicities that had been strongly part of the part, although that process can be dated back to 1960 when John F. Kennedy started that process by suppressing any suggestion that his religious roots, strongly associated with an Irish base in the party in many cities, would not mean much.  The party really remained a separate party in the South, a legacy of the Civil War, but that would soon change too, but not before two Southern Democrats would in fact be elected President.

 Jimmy Carter, sometimes considered the first post Civil War Democrat to be elected to the Presidency since the Civil War, he was actually the second as Woodrow Wilson was as well, although his academic career had placed him in New Jersey at the time he ran for office.  Carter was an unsuccessful President, but reflected the best of the Southern Democrats.

The first of those was Jimmy Carter, a Georgian with strong rural roots, who reflected in many ways the Southern aspect of the party in the best way.  His Presidency failed however and he was replaced by Ronald Reagan, the first Republican President to separate southern Democrats from their party.  In fairness, while that strategy (often denied to exist by Republicans) was effective, the Democrats themselves started it in 1968.  The Southern party was largely conservative and the Northern party was increasingly liberal and highly urban.  By the 1980s the Southern Democrats were dying off, with that base defecting to the GOP in droves.

These factors, however, weakened the Democratic Party and it realized it.  In spite of being a liberal urban party in terms of its "establishment", it realized that the country was not as liberal, nor as urban, as it was, and starting with the election of its last Southern President, Bill Clinton, it worked to appeal to a broader base, hoping to retain Democrats who were not as left wing in the areas that it could.  The strategy has been very effective and the Democrats remain the largest American political party.  They've even gained since 2012 in some demographics, such as Catholics for example, where their social policies had been causing them to loose members.

And then came this election, the 2016 election.

But we need to look first at the election of 2008.

The election of 2008 and the election of 2012, for the Democrats, repeats what the Republicans  experienced, but have forgotten,in 1980 and 1988.  In 1980, the Republicans elected a new type of conservative with Ronald Reagan. In 1988 the old party mainstream seized the Presidency, and the party, back with the election of George Bush I.  The party is paying for hat now.

But that's what the Democrats have sort of experienced as well, and might, or might not, depending upon the rebellion going on in the Democratic Party.

President Barack Obama.  Like him or hate him, he's a point of departure for American politics, but perhaps the Democrats haven't realized that as of yet, a this year's choices show.  The first President to have come into his adult years without the Vietnam War and the 1960s as a point of reference, he's also the first President who is ethnically ambiguous, thereby reflecting the younger base of the party, rather than the older, whiter, and 1960s dominated nature of the party's elite.

Like him or hate him, Barack Obama was a different type of Democrat from those that came up in the party post 1968.  He is a true liberal, but a post 1968 liberal.  Not truly grounded in the hard core upper class effete branch of the Democratic Party, he has been a clever politician, and even if truly liberal on many things, he's held off in many areas and even declared what amounts to a truce in others.  He's been pretty ineffective in many areas, due to a professorial confusion of speech with action, but he's not a 1968 Democrat.  He's the first American President who has no 1960s frame of reference and the first who is really ethnically ambiguous.  He's not a 1960s, member of NOW, ERA, type of Democrat.

Hillary Clinton, however, is.

Clinton has a long history in the Democratic Party and came up in the party very much during its hyper liberal stage.  She represents the Boomer Party, which Obama does not.  If elected, she'll be the triumph of that wing of the party.  While Barack Obama has been regarded as highly liberal, and in his last year of office is indeed proving to be highly liberal and is actually remaking, to the distress of much of the country, the nation in a more liberal mold, perhaps temporarily, there's no doubt that Clinton retains a view of the world that can be found in the annals of the history of 1970s liberals, like most of the leadership of her party's elite, whether they've effected those views or not.

Which is the wing of the past.

And which is why there's a full scale revolt going on in the party.

The old fights that so concern the 1968-1978 liberals are largely ones that are either past concern, or are ones that society actually has caused to highly evolve and which are much different than those in the past.  The 1968 party still believes in "firsts", which the rest of American society put to bed with the election of Barack Obama.  Old causes, such as "women's issues", are largely unrecognizable to younger voters who have moved past those long ago, which explains why younger Democratic women are almost insulted by the suggestion that they are somehow required to vote for Clinton just because they are women.  Democratic base voters, moreover, who saw it as a matter of human justice to struggle for the rights of minorities and women do not necessarily equate those fights with ones that are based on social theory, such as re-identification of a person's gender or attacks on traditional marriage.  People who would have gone to jail to allow a black and white couple to marry are baffled in some instances by the suggestion that allowing people of the same gender to marry is the same fight, or that people are okay not to marry at all and are defined as "partners".  Indeed, to some there seems to be some retreat involved.  Rural voters who stayed in the party since the 1930s for support to rural populations are now baffled by why the Democratic Party seems so eager to disarm them.  Union members are baffled why the Democrats stood by and seemingly did nothing as the rich of both parties exported factories overseas.  To some extent, the natural base of the Democratic party has moved to the center or into lethargy on social issues that the party leadership, now that the gloves are off and they feel that they can surely win in the fall, has gone far to the left on.

The old Hard Hat Democrats in the Midwest and East, where they still exist, have produced a younger generation that is, moreover, nearly completely divorced from the upper class liberal wing of the party.  Their focus is economic, and on social issues they are may be or are far to the right of the leadership of the party.  The party's ethnic base is likely paper thin as those voters who still identify themselves as Democrats due to ethnicity are increasingly forced into a position in which their values are starkly in opposition to those espoused by the party.  A group such as Hispanics, for example, who are constantly presumed to be natural Democrats, are only Democrats on labor  and immigration issues.  On social issues their views are much more closely aligned to the Republicans.  In some areas of the country, such as the Rocky Mountain West, the Democrats became so disaffected with their own party that the majority of them left it and joined the Republicans or became independents, with t his move not being closely analogous to what occurred in the South.

But for the extremely strange GOP fight, caused by its ignoring its base, the Democrats would be dead in the water this year.  The Democrats seem set to chose Clinton against an insurgent Sanders in part because Sanders was ignored by the Press and because Democratic control over the party membership has proven to be more effective, although frankly only barely so, than Republican control over its base.  If Sanders, who has campaigned almost exclusively on populist economics issues, had been receiving the same level of attention that Trump did, he likely would be the front runner in actual "pledged" delegates.  Clinton's large margin is attributable only to the Superdelegates.

All of this reflects a party breakdown and the party is in fact breaking down. Sanders' supporters are now crying "foul" on a lot of the process and Democrats are starting to call for the head of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a spokesmen that only the upper class East Coast Democrats could love.  The Democrats, however, are in danger of massively misinterpreting what is going on at the establishment level, however, as the insurgency is being lead by a candidate that is economically on the extreme left of the party.  They better think twice about what they are seeing.

Looked at carefully, the successful Trump insurrection and the struggling Sanders insurrection share certain common traits, which is not to say that they are identical by any means, and which is not to say that the two personalities are the same.  Rather, what's seems to be motivating core elements on both sides is similar or identical, and that's disaffection with American Corporate Capitalism. Beyond that, the  Trump voters are reacting to forced social change and being repeatedly ignored by their own party.  The Democrats are mostly reacting to the same economic factors the GOP insurgents are, but they are also reacting to the ossified leadership of their party as well, but not really over the same set of issues, if any issue in particular.

At the voting both level both Democratic and Republican insurgents have a significant number of what I've referred to as "Hard Hat" voters.  Voters who live in regions that were once industrially strong but now are shadows of their former selves.  Ironically, when the boomers moved on and left their parents in the rust belt, they left a lot of their fellows there as well. Not everyone went on to university.  The "60s" that formed the backdrop for the boomers controlling the Democratic Party was not one single experience, but several. For many in the rust belt the 1960s saw the last era in which American industry was really strong in the steel, coke and automobile sense.  Those Democrats and their children were left behind and they know it.  Now forced into college academics by the dissolution of t he meaning of university and with no solid place to go, and even facing a  future in which the traditional blue collar escape careers, such as the law, no longer mean anything near what they once did, they feel themselves to be in a box.  Hence the demands for the concern for the working men and for "free" university for their children.  They have to do something, they know, and feel betrayed by a party that claims to have the rights of the working class at heart, but hasn't shown it, because it no longer really does in the same way it once did.  Sanders voters suspect that the Democratic Party is comfortable with the new economy that shipped their jobs overseas.  They want those jobs back or, if they can't get them back, they want to be allowed to be trained for the new world they didn't want.

That makes those voters much more conservative than Democrats like Clinton or Wasserman-Schultz, and even where they are liberal, they aren't the same kind of liberal.  Clinton looks and sounds like she's staring in a guest episode of Maud!, which doesn't mean much to a group of people who think The Big Bang Theory is funny.  She sounds like an artifact of the 1970s, because she is.  Sanders, who is older, doesn't.  Because he's an artifact of the 1930s, which now seems oddly fresh again.  When Clinton up talks the end of her sentences in her harsh voice about what is going to be achieved, it sounds oddly like a cry from 1974 more than 2016.  Sanders rhetoric may read like Huey Long, but it sounds fresh in 2016.

Looked at that way, the Democrats would be wise to reconsider the hard slide to the general left they are taking right now, although that frankly means accommodating themselves to flexibility which they do not seem inclined now to do.  Democrats don't seem to trust any state to make its own laws, and they tend to come across, on the national level, as a party headquartered in Greenwich Village that thinks everyone, everywhere else, is stupid.  No matter what they declare their policies to be, deep down they give the strong impression that they thought their platform up in a Vegan Deli where only graduates of East Coast universities with trust funds were admitted. That is, they sound like snots and they don't seem to realize what matters to a lot of voters, including their own party members.  They need to get over that.

For one thing Democrats need to realize that in a lot of areas, for example the knee jerk side of an argument, and lurching to the left, isn't how people think on things.  In the rural ares of the country, for example, tacking to the left on gun control is not appealing to Democrats, not actually relevant to that region, and it wipes out any chance that local Democrats have on anything.  That's partially the reason that Democrats are nearly dead in Wyoming. Democrats would be wise to leave that as a state issue, which basically has been the approach of Sanders who is to the right of Clinton on this issue.  On social issues involving life, death, and marriage, the Democrats should realize that they're driving away ethnic groups and religious groups that have traditionally supported them and they don't need to for any reason.  They've been driving them away since the 1970s, and have lost a lot of ground in some areas here, and they really cannot afford to continue on this path long term.  This points to the Democratic support of statism, that is control from the top, which is anti-democratic and something the Democrats should learn to reverse themselves on.  Democrats nearly everywhere tend to be lock step in line with the Greenwich Village Vegan Party while most of the country isn't.

The Party, however, as a party that doesn't dislike government and which is in favor of an active role for government shouldn't be afraid of actually addressing modern problems on a state or local level, but it has to have some flexibility to do that.  Taking my state as an example again, the field should be wide open for Democrats this year as the GOP has become hostile to much of what the state stands for in terms of open spaces. And some Democrats have taken advantage of that this year. But with a party that can't resist campaigning in opposition to the views of the majority of residents on social views, it's not going to do well.

And they shouldn't ignore economics which is their actual natural defining point.  Economics, more than anything else, is what put them in power in 1932 and which has defined them since.  Democratic insurgents who accuse the Democrats of selling out to Wall Street put their argument well.  There's really no difference between the Democratic Party and the GOP on economic matters.  The Democrats need to rediscover that its the voter in urban Detroit that maters to them, not the voter in Manhattan.

In other words, the Democrats shouldn't lurch to the left on everything, and they shouldn't use 1973 as their defining moment in the world.  And they ought to pick up their copies of Keynes and maybe even find Belloc and Chesterton.

More than anything, the Democrats have got to let the party leadership that's stuck in the 1970s go.  Claiming to be the party of diversity, the Democrats this year ran two elderly candidates who were both white.  Sanders is Jewish, of course, but post Obama that hardly matters.  He seems to be an elderly white man, which is odd for a candidate who is the hippest and coolest of the year.  Hillary Clinton seems to have been transported, Star Trek style, right out of 1974.

A good example of what I mean here might be given, again, by Wyoming.  This year there is a Congressional race going on in Wyoming. The GOP field has quite a few candidates, but because of the nature of the last couple of legislative sessions, right now the field is being dragged to the far right.  The field is open for the Democrats to try to challenge, and they are.  One of their announced candidates is a young man from the coal industry.  He's clearly a liberal, but he's also a liberal in a fashion that addresses some issues that are deeply appealing to Wyoming voters, such as access to public lands.  Well, of course, just yesterday Charles Hardy announced. Hardy symbolizes what's wrong with the Democratic Party.  He's 75 years old, a 1970s type liberal, announced right away that he was concerned with equality issues based on gender identification, and he's notable for having been a Catholic Priest that left his vocation to get married.  He may be, and probably is, a very admirable, deeply Christian man, but he calls to mind, in this sort of thing, the Berrigans of the 1960s and 1970s, and that ship sailed and sank long ago, for the US and for the Catholic Church for that matter.  That Hardy would feel he'd need to run, with a young more vigorous working class man actually running, says volumes about what the Democratic Party is, and what it needs to become.

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Tracking the Presidential Election, 2016

Tracking the Presidential Election, 2016, Part II

Tracking the Presidential Election, 2016, Part III Sic Transit Gloria Mundi.

Tracking the Presidential Election Part IV

Tracking the Presidential Election Part V