Thursday, May 8, 1975. The last to get out.

550 occupants of the French Embassy in Phnom Penh crossed into Thailand. They included 300 Khmer Muslims.

The People's Republic of China and the European Community agreed to establish trade and diplomatic relations.

Last edition:

Wednesday, May 7, 1975. End of the Vietnam War Era.

Labels: 1970s, 1975, Being in college in the 1980s, Being in the military in the 1980s, Cartoons, Growing up in the 1970s, Growing up in the 1980s, Military, Vietnam War, World War Two

2024 Elections In Other Countries.

Taiwan

Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party returned an historic third Presidential victory in a blow to the People's Republic of China.

The party regards Taiwan as de facto independent, which it should be.  President Biden, following the election, stated the US didn't support Taiwanese independence, which it very much should.

January 14, 2024.

Hungary

The President of Hungary, Katalin Novák, age 46, has resigned due to a scandal involving the pardoning of an accomplice in a child sexual abuse case.

February 11, 2024.

Ireland

I had a post on the Irish referendum to amend its constitution, and was frankly way off 

Blog Mirror: On marriage, family, and the Irish constitutional referendum.

The referendum failed massively.  Actually two proposals, the one that sought to expand the definition of family from a relationship founded on marriage to include other durable relationships, failed 67.7% to 32.3%.  The one to replace language surrounding a woman's duties in the home with a clause recognizing the role of family members in the provision of care was rejected 73.9% to 26.1%.

This deserves its own thread.

March 10, 2014

Russia

Putin.  Gee, what a surprise.

March 18, 2024.

South Africa.

The ANC lost the majority of parliamentary seats so, if it is to stay in power, it needs to form a coalition with minority parties.

Mexico

Claudia Sheinbaum won the presidential election, becoming the countries first woman elected to this office.

She is a protégé of the incumbent populist Manuel López Obrador and served as his pro oil environmental minister, in spite of having a degree in the field.  Mexican presidents may only serve one six year term.

June 3, 2024

European Union

Far right parties gained overall in EU parliamentary elections over the weekend, although in Scandinavia, the far left did.  President Macron dissolved the French parliament as a result, and France will now have elections.  Poland's governing conservative party came out on top for that country, edging out the further right wing party that had governed Poland before it came to power last year.

June 10, 2024

France

In round one of a snap French election, the far right Le Pen RN bloc took 33.15% of the vote, the left-wing New Popular Front (NFP) coalition came second with 27.99% and President Emmanuel Macron’s Ensemble alliance took 20.76%.  Voting concludes next week, but it's clear the far right is going to take the most votes, but not enough to form a non coalition government.

And so the far right, globally, continues its rise.

July 1, 2024.

United Kingdom

Labor won the recent election and Sir Keir Starmer will become Prime Minister.

July 5, 2024.

Iran

Reformist candidate Masoud Pezeshkian won Iran’s runoff presidential election.

July 7, 2024.

France

In an amazing one week long rally, the French left and Macron's Ensemble stages a comeback with the left wing NFP now having the majority of seats in the French Assembly and Ensemble the second largest.  

None of the parties have enough seats to form a government, and nobody is certain what will occur.  If a government is to be formed, it will have to be a coalition government.

July 8, 2024.

Venezuela

Both sides have declared victory in the election for the nation's president, with the incumbent having the current reigns of power.  The election has been accused of having irregularities.

July 30, 2024.

Georgia

Georgia’s ruling Georgian Dream party has likely won a simple majority in the Georgian parliamentary election held on October 26, 2024, according to preliminary results. Partial preliminary results released by the Georgian Central Election Committee (CEC) on October 26 indicate that the Georgian Dream party will likely win the majority of seats in parliament, but the results are neither complete nor final.[1] The results suggest that Georgian Dream will form the new Georgian government, but that it will not have the 113 seats required to obtain the  “constitutional majority” it needs to pursue some of the goals it has outlined, including outlawing nearly all opposition parties.[2] The CEC reported that voter turnout was nearly 59 percent- the highest since 2012 when Georgian Dream first came to power.[3]

Institute for the Study of War.

October 26, 2024. 

Moldova

Pro Western President Maia Sandu has won a second term against a pro Russian opponent.

November 4, 2024

Wars and Rumors of War, 2023, Part IX, Late Summer.

September 15, 2023

Russo Ukrainian War

Vasily Popov, commander of the Russian 247th Guard Air Assault Regiment, was killed in a counter-attack in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia area.

The European Parliament adopted a resolution recognizing Belarusian President Lukashenko as complicit in Russian crimes and called upon the International Criminal Court to issue a warrant for his arrest.

The Duma proposed blocking WhatsApp as part of the Kremlin’s effort to control the Russian information space. 

cont:

Pro Russian Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov is critically ill.

September 16, 2023

Russo Ukrainian War

Ukrainian forces liberated Andriivka near Bakhmut.

September 19, 2023

Russo Ukrainian War

Six Ukrainian deputy defense ministers were fired on Monday as part of an ongoing cleanup of corruption in the Ukrainian defense department.

Post Soviet Union Ukraine has been plagued with corruption, as has post Soviet Union Russia.  This is no surprise, as the Soviet system encouraged corruption by its very nature, and so that post Soviet societies would feature a lot of it is to be expected.

Ironically, this fact has led opponents of supporting Ukraine, which is democratic and is fighting a just fight, to cite the corruption as a reason to allow the country to be conquered by Russia, although they don't put it that way.  While the country has featured a lot of corruption, Russia's is now endemic and currently not only that case, but watching modern Russia is a lot like watching Goodfellas in real time.

Following 2013's Euromaiden protest, the country has moved increasingly towards the west and has had a strong desire to join the European Union and NATO.  That is what has, in no small part, brought the current war about, as Putin, a Russian nationalist at heart, is opposed to that and sees Ukraine as a mere Russian province.  Efforts to join NATO have lead to a list of further items Ukraine must address in order to do so, once the war is over, and cleaning up corruption will no doubt continue.

The ISW is giving praise to Ukrainian offensive efforts near Bakhmut, which it cites as having kept Russian forces committed in that area, leaving the Russians unable to reinforce further south.  It's reporting that Russian forces in both areas are suffering severe degradation.

Iran v. Kurds

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard has deployed unis to the border with Iraq in an effort to put pressure on Iraq to arrest Kurdish efforts in Iran.

Iran messes heavily in regional conflicts, taking an active pro-government role in Syria for example.  Here, however, the war in Syria and the conclusion of the war in Iraq has led to Kurdish semi autonomy, which has in turn lead to Kurdish activity in northern Iran.

cont:

Azerbaijan v. Armenia

Azerbaijan’s declared an “anti-terrorist” campaign in Nagorno-Karabakh region, which is under Armenian control. Armenian media indicated air raid sirens and mortar fire in the regional capital of Stepanakert had been observed.

Armenian forces recently trained with U.S. forces.

September 21, 2023

Russo Ukrainian War

The Prime Minister of Poland has announced; "We are no longer transferring any weapons to Ukraine because we are now arming ourselves with the most modern weapons".

Poland and Ukraine have been in a dispute over grain, which has been flooding the Polish market as Ukraine's ports have been blocked, even while Poland has been a major supporter of Ukraine's war effort.

In spite of the way it's been portrayed, historically Poland and Ukraine have not gotten along and following World War One fought over their respective borders.  During World War Two, Ukrainian nationalist militias committed acts of genocide against Polish villagers.  The recent Polish support of Ukraine may reflect Polish animosity towards Russia as much as anything else.

U.S. Senator Rand Paul, who is a libertarian with isolationist tendencies, is holding up the most recent funding for Ukraine.

What both of these stories point out is that the slow moving progress of the Ukrainian offensive, while receiving support from some analysts such as those from the ISW, presents real problems in terms of ongoing Western support.  Ukraine's strategy, from those supporting it, is reputed to be a slow moving offensive using artillery to attrit Russian forces, made necessarily in part by a lack of air assets.  That may be correct, but if it is, Ukraine may find itself with decreasing material support from the West including the United States should the U.S. far right gain in Congress.

Wagner is withdrawing from Syria.

Cont: 

German Marder AFV, some of which appear to be beyond prepared Russian lines.

Ukrainian light armor appears to have pushed through Russian lines near Bakhmut, which would be significant, if substantial and correct.  Indeed, the fact that there are reports of this is significant as it would suggest Russian forces must be very downgraded in the area.

American Stryker AFV, some of which have also been reported having passed Russian prepared defenses.

September 22, 2023

Russo Ukrainian War

Russian Navy Admiral Sokolov, the Commander of Black Sea Fleet, was killed today by a Ukrainian missile/drone attack on the Black Sea Fleet's Sevastopol headquarters.

September 23, 2023

Russo Ukrainian War

Poland walked back its earlier statement about not transferring arms to Ukraine, indicating that what was meant that new arms it is acquiring for itself will not be transferred.

September 24, 2023

Russo Ukrainian War

According to ISW, the Ukrainian Army has broken through Russian field fortifications west of Verbove in western Zaporizhia Oblast. This is not, however, the final Russian defensive line.

September 25, 2023

Russo Ukrainian War

Ukrainian forces are attacking north of Verbove appear to be close to surrounding the 56th VDV Regiment deployed in Novofedorivka.

September 26, 2023

Russo Ukrainian War

The Ukrainian Special Operations Forces reported on September 25 that a precision Ukrainian strike on the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet (BSF) in occupied Sevastopol, Crimea, on September 22 killed 34 Russian officers, including BSF Commander Admiral Viktor Sokolov.

Azerbaijan v. Armenia

Armenia effectively surrendered, and the subject enclave will be abandoned.  Armenia is blaming Russia for its peacekeeping forces being ineffective.

US v. ISIL

The U.S. announced the capture of ISIL official Abu Halil al-Fad'ani in a raid in northern Syria.

September 27, 2023

Russo Ukrainian War

Russian Navy Admiral Sokolov, the Commander of Black Sea Fleet, was in fact not killed on the Ukrainian missile strike on the HQ of the Black Sea Fleet.

A Russian drone strike cut the ferry ties between Ukraine and Romania.

September 30, 2023

Armenia v. Azerbaijan

Almost the entire population of the ethnic Armenian enclave Nagorno-Karabakh, some 100,000 people, have since Azerbaijan seized the region last week.

October 1, 2023

Russo Ukrainian War

The emergency stopgap bill to fund the U.S. government for 45 days omits funds for Ukraine.

October 5, 2023

Russo Ukrainian War

Ukrainian drone attacks now occur inside of Russia daily.  Two Russian cargo jets were destroyed at the Russian air base at Pskov yesterday, with the Russians claiming that the attacks were launched from inside of Russian territory.

Ukrainians have carried out a second commando raid on Crimea.  The Russian navy has pulled out of Sevastopol and dispersed.

October 6, 2023

Syrian Civil War

A drone attack on a military graduation ceremony in the Syrian Homs, killed 80 and wounded 240.  Some civilians were amongst the casualties.

China v. Everyone

A Chinese nuclear submarine is reported to have been caught in a Chinese submarine net last December, resulting in its sinking and the loss of the entire crew.

October 7, 2023

Hamas v. Israel

Hamas launched a large scale offensive against Israel yesterday, sending both ground forces and rockets across the border.  Israel has termed it a war and has called up reservists.

Russo Ukrainian War

Ukraine has deployed snipers overseas against Wagner forces.

October 8, 2023

Russo Ukrainian War

Belarusian leader Lukashenko stated to newsmen last week, "I have to say that Zelensky is acting absolutely appropriately", a surprising statement from a Russian ally.

Hamas v. Israel

Russia bizarrely called for a ceasefire between the warring parties.

Civilian casualties are about equal so far, each standing at about 250 persons.  Hamas took hostages back into Israel.

Last prior edition:

Wars and Rumors of War, 2023, Part VIII. The high cost of freedom.

Monday, January 1, 1973. Economic matters.

The United Kingdom, Ireland, and Denmark entered the European Economic Community.

The addition of the UK in particular would have global economic impacts, as it seriously undercut the economic arrangement of the British Commonwealth.

The EEC was the predecessor to the EU, which of course the UK left recently.

I can very dimly recall this news story from when I was a kid.

Exxon came into being with the merger of Standard Oil and Humble Oil.

The Rose Bowl was of course played, with the USC Trojans beating the Ohio State Buckeyes.

Zambia officially became a one party state.

Sergei Kourdakov, age 21, who had been a KGB officer who had been involved in raids on Christian communities, but then converted to Christianity as a result of the reading material he found in them, and then defected to Canada, was found dead from a gunshot wound in a ski resort hotel in Canada. The firearm was his own and the death was ruled accidental, but suspicions remain regarding it.

It's not just here. The Italian Election and the further rise of the hard right.

Fratelli d'Italia, the "Brothers of Italy", have won the Italian election.

Not outright, but with 26% of the vote.  Enough of a command that, together with another right wing party and a center right party, Giorgia Meloni's neo-fascist party will govern.^1 2  The party, in second position, is the Italian center left Democratic Party, but it can't put together a ruling coalition.

This gives Italy, when in the 1945 to early 1970s period teetered on the edge of falling into Communism, its most right wing government since Mussolini was strung up.

The Fratelli d'Italia is nativist, anti-immigrant, anti-European Union, and traditionalist.  It's leader, Giorgia Meloni has said of herself; "I am Giorgia. I'm a woman, I'm a mother, I'm Italian, I’m Christian".  The slogan is sufficiently popular that it's been set to techno pop with her saying those things, in Italian, and it's pretty effective.  You can also find clips of her saying, but to members of the Spanish Vox party, in Italian;

Yes to the natural family, no to the LGBT lobby, yes to sexual identity, no to gender ideology... no to Islamist violence, yes to secure borders, no to mass migration... no to big international finance... no to the bureaucrats of Brussels!"

So where is she basically coming from: Well, here:

It's impossible at this point not to see that something is going on in the Western World.  It's not just Orban, or Trump.

Its the entire Western World.

Indeed, if anything, Trump's version of this is the most decayed and perverted.  Meloni's may be the most open and honest.

So how did we get here?

This might be the reaction, long delayed, to 1968, and all it brought about.

Indeed, it almost certainly is.  The question is what form that takes, and where that form takes shape.  In Italy, Meloni, running from the hard populist right, will form a coalition government in a parliament in which, perhaps ironically, nobody is claiming a minority government reflects corruption in the vote, whereas in our country, with a Federal democracy that's designed to work slow and defeat "coalitions", or parties, one side is.  Therefore, ironically, Italy, which has a history of fascism but never endured de-fascism, democracy may actually be less imperiled.

At any rate, we noted here earlier that in post Boomer generations, liberalism was waning and conservatism building.  What we missed is that it's waning quicker than we anticipated, and the reaction to 1968 seems to be very widespread, and increasingly strong.

Footnotes

1.  "Meloni" means just what it sounds like.  

Indeed, Meloni in a short video clip, can be seen holding two cantaloupes chest high making a joke about it. Something that's somewhat unique to Italian politics, which remains occasionally ribald.

2.  The FdI denies that it's neo-fascist, and while we've referred to them here that way, this wants again raises the topic of "what is a fascist".  It's not as easy to answer as it might at first seem.

The FdI may have a point here, although I frankly don't know.  At the end of the day, fascism implies an element of totalitarianism.  The Italian fascists of the 1920s through 1940s made no bones about not approving of democracy.  The Spanish fascist were of the same mind set. By and large, neo-fascist have also been anti-democratic.

This contrasts with the Illiberal Democrats, who tolerate a degree of democracy, but within a preset framework.  They're okay with the vote, up to a point, and that point is the point at which a society is supposed to have a cultural set of concepts upon which it operates. That's not up for a vote. That concept has a lot of sympathy, it seems, all over the Western World right now.

Thursday, October 28, 1971. The House of Commons votes for British entry into the European Economic Community and the UK launches a satellite into orbit

On this date in 1971 the British House of Commons voted to join the European Economic Community.  This did not bring the UK into the EEC, however, but only supported a move to enter into negotiations to do so.

There had been two prior efforts to do so, but the EEC President at the time, Charles DeGaulle, had vetoed British entry.  DeGaulle had just stepped down from that position.  His leaving office, and the Commons vote, assured British entry in the near future.

On the same day, the UK became the sixth nation in the world to launch a satellite into orbit, something it undertook from Australia.  It sadly is the only such example from a British rocket, the UK having decided to abandon such efforts the prior July.

Both events were signs of British decline at the time. The UK had concluded that being a loner in space endeavors wasn't something it could do, and gave it up, never to return.  And reluctance to join the EEC, which the British had been a standoffish founder of, had been completely overcome, with all that meant, in the wake of a long-lasting post World War Two economic decline.  The sun was truly setting on the British Empire.

And then the UK left. . .

Yesterday, that is.

Brexit took effect.

It's January 31, 2020 and the European Union now lacks. . .

the United Kingdom.

Flag of the European Union.

That means quite a lot, but not as much as might be imagined as well.  For example, it doesn't change the ability of Brits to travel and work in Europe at all.  Trade also continues unabated and without penalty.

At least for the rest of the year, when that might change.

Germany won't expedite criminals to the UK now, however. That will change as Germany won't extradite to a country that's not part of the EU.

The British 2019 Election. The tell of the tape.

Conservatives took 364 seats.

Labour Party took 203.

In Scotland, the Scottish Nationalist Party took 48.

The United Kingdom, Scottish protests aside, will leave the EU.  This will probably occur by the end of January.

A new British immigration system will be ushered in which will be similar to the Australian one, requiring immigrants to have a job before entering the country.  EU citizens will have no preference over non EU immigrants.

Scottish nationalist will howl, but their ability to impact anything will decline.  Indeed, this result can be partially attributed to the fact that a referendum occurred on Scottish independence some years ago, something that was wholly unnecessary under the law but which boosted the power of Scottish nationalist, something which had been largely absent before that.  They'll howl now, but they'll be along for the ride, like it or not.

The Labour Party will start to reform and retreat from the hard left positions it was espousing.

The EU will be weakened significantly.  Anti EU sentiment exists in numerous localities within the EU itself, particularly outside of the few dominant nations, but even within them.  And the resurgence of the British right will lead to a resurgence in the European right as well, which is much further to the right than the British right is.

Friday Farming: "Trump’s olive siege of farming fortress Europe".

It's mostly the headline that caught my attention on this one:

Trump’s olive siege of farming fortress Europe

Brussels fears that fast-moving US trade case could undermine €58 billion-per-year Common Agricultural Policy.

But this item is quite interesting:

For Brussels, the case could set an alarming precedent. Under the sacrosanct Common Agricultural Policy, the EU pours about 40 percent of its budget into farm subsidies and it is highly protective of any trade investigation that questions the legality of those payments. Last year, Brussels pushed back hard against Australia’s moves to put tariffs on Italian tinned tomatoes.

40% of the budget in farm subsidies?  Wow.

Does that mean 40% of the EU's overall budget, or of its Common Agricultural Policy budget?  It appears to mean 40% of its actual budget, which would be an impressive figure.

This fight apparently comes about due to olives:

The U.S. Department of Commerce opened a probe last month to determine whether to slap duties on ripe olives from Spain, after Californian producers argued their Iberian rivals receive an unfair advantage because of the EU’s lavish farm subsidy scheme.

I do like Spanish olives.

Tracking the Presidential Election Part VIII. Is there a Brexit lesson for the US election?

There were a lot of early comments about what the British vote to depart the EC means in the context of the US election, and my early view was "no". But in looking at it, and events around the glove, I'm not so sure now and I think there might be something to the suggestion that the vote reflects something going on in the US, and the UK, and indeed perhaps around the world.

In thinking of this, I determined to make this post on it, but sure enough by the time I got ready to do it, at least two national columnist had stolen a bit of my thunder, although to my credit I'd posted on this topic somewhat prior to my reading their columns already.  Anyhow one of the columnist was George F. Will, who wrote an excellent column on the Brexit vote. The other columnist was Susan Stamper Brown.  

A comment of Brown's which mirrors something I posted in my post, was:

It's hard for elitists to comprehend that the commoners they seek to control aren't obsessed with money and power the same way they are. Ordinary people care more about freedom, their kids' future and their country than they care about the mighty Euro or dollar. 

Indeed, I think that's a lot of it.

One of the distraught comments I saw in some columnist's article was the suggestion that the British had voted "for the past".  Maybe, but maybe note, and maybe if they did, there's a lesson in there as well.  Maybe there were things about the past that they liked better than current times, or the future they were headed in.  No "future" is inevitable unless we choose it to be, and if we're headed towards one we don't like, we should change directions.

Will rejects the proposal that the British were voting against history and noted:

By breaking the leftward-clicking ratchet that moves steadily, and only, toward more “pooled” sovereignty and centralization of power, Brexit refutes the progressive narrative that history has an inexorable trajectory that “experts” discern and before which all must bow. The E.U.’s contribution to this fable is its vow to pursue “ever-closer union.” Yes, ever .

Will interestingly also cited Nicolas Sarkozy, on French sovereignty, to the effect that, France was “born of the baptism of Clovis,” and is“a country of churches, cathedrals, abbeys and shrines.” 

The point of this is that people might simply not want what European and American politicians have consistently acted to give them since World War Two.  Seemingly at first they did, but starting in the early 80s, after they had a dose of it, the better evidence is that they no longer desire it. And what that "it" is, is a fully integrated global economy and the globalism that goes with it. Elites have assumed that everyone will be happier with an world that increasingly resembles a cubicle farm, and that everyone wants to live in some version of a bland  big urban area.  One big economic unit with one big boring culture and the goal being to make as much money as you can, so you can live in your bland urban apartment equipped with Netflix.

It turns out, however, that people like their countries and they like their cultures, and they want to keep them.  People  would like to go to the corner pub or bar at the end of the day that's owned by a local, after coming home from their middle class job that might involve turning nuts and bolts.  And they'd like to think that their kids can work those jobs in those towns as well.  It also turns out, as part of that, that people aren't all that keen about shipping out manufacturing jobs to "developing countries".  Not everyone wants to work in a global version of a Microsoft office, and people miss their old farm towns and their blue collar manufacturing jobs.  The promise of a big box world doesn't entice them much.

And it never did.

Nor, really, should it. That benefits mostly the elite themselves who do value money over anything else, it would seem.  Or perhaps only understand that.

This has reflected itself in the Brexit vote.  And it has shown up in the US election in the form of a populist insurgency in both parties.  On the European mainland, it has shown up in the form of rising support of right wing parties mild and extreme.  And of course, the extreme elements that are showing up, including in the current US election, have tended to do so as the concerns mentioned above have been held down by those in power so long that to some extent they've festered and come out in an extreme form.

Where this ultimately goes, of course, nobody knows.  But what it might suggest is that there's something out there that should be given more of the light of day and hasn't. Perhaps the old ideas of Chesterton and Belloc, that were tamped down in the interest of supporting the war effort in  World War Two, deserve to be really considered.  An economic and political economy based more on the locals and principals of subsidarity seem to address the real concerns of average people a lot more than the big concepts of globalism do and are better calculated towards really maximizing people's chances for happy lives.  Unfortunately, they don't get much discussion.

I'm not going to bother with a "tale of the tape" on this one, as this is likely a one off comment post, or if it isn't, unless something surprising happens, there's no real reason to address that topic again until the conventions start, at which time new posts will be entered.

Followup 

In the election year that just won't keep from being bizarre we were treated today with the spectacle of the FBI criticizing Hillary Clinton for her email situation in no uncertain terms, but also finding that there is nothing to indict her on.  Anyway it is sliced, the news is good for Donald Trump.  Outside of her actually being indicted it actually couldn't be any better.


Part of that, of course, is the incredibly boneheaded move of Loretta Lynch actually visiting for about thirty minutes with Bill Clinton in Lynch's airplane on a tarmac where both happened to be.  It couldn't look worse.

I don't actually mean to suggest that the FBI's conclusion is incorrect or that Lynch was engaging in improper conduct, but what a gift to Trump.  I doubt it will be enough to turn the election around for him, but it sure doesn't help Clinton, even if she is elected. She will likely not be able to live this down in the minds of at least some sections of the electorate that already distrust her.

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 VII

Lex Anteinternet: Brexit Comment Panic

After I posted this;

Lex Anteinternet: Brexit Comment Panic:   As an American, I feel disinclined to get too worked up over the British deciding to leave the EC.  Actually, although this view (or ...

I read two op ed posts making very similar points, the best of which is George F. Will's.  His essay on the topic is excellent and calm.

Brexit Comment Panic

 

As an American, I feel disinclined to get too worked up over the British deciding to leave the EC.  Actually, although this view (or the admission of this view) is rare, I actually understand it.  I'd likely have voted to leave myself, if I were a British voter, but it's not my country and its not my decision.

Anyhow, its been interesting to watch the reaction by those opposing the departure. Some is very well reasoned, if a bit late, but some is really overblown, panicky, and snobby.  Indeed, I wonder if some of the wounded "stay" folks realize that their attitude might contribute to the view why others wanted to leave.  I've read some of the most amazing commentary, from those blaming it on an "older" (boomer) generation, when that generation in fact voted to get in, in the first place, to one snobbish voter who condemned his entire middle class home town.  Some of it reads very childishly.

Well, folks, keep calm (and carry on).  The UK has been around for a long time and the economy isn't going to collapse, Europe isn't going to spin off the globe, and things will be okay.

Maybe the EC, which has strongly anti democratic statist tendencies, will actually reform and realize that it has to let the residents of the various European states actually have a bit of a voice.  And while I'm sure that the EC will survive, if the entire creaking edifice cracked and the European states had to go back to being fully independent nations without the EC, I'm sure they're quite capable of getting along with each other in 2016 and they will in fact do so quite nicely.

For the history minded, I amazed to note that nobody has seemingly noticed that this story is not a new one. Not even close to being one. The first "EC", if you will, was the Roman Empire, which of course fell apart.  And then there was the attempt at the Holy Roman Empire, which never really got rolling.  For that matter, Charles the Great's domain (Charlemagne, Carolus Magnus) wasn't a minor matter.  Well after that, Napoleon's invasion of everything European was an attempt at getting everyone in Europe together in the name of liberal ideals of a sort, even if a pretty badly flawed one.  I'll omit other such attempts.  In the long history of Europe, it's come together and flown apart, showing I suppose that people who assume that history has one obvious direction are often pretty far off the mark, and showing that a concept of nationhood is a pretty strong one.  But we can take comfort in the fact that no major European power is going to start shooting at another, and therefore perhaps the real foundational thesis of the EC itself is now obsolete.

Not everything is about the money. . .

in fact a lot of things aren't.

Maybe most of them aren't.

Which is why I'm sick to death of reading "How Brexit may effect your portfolio".

Yes, a lot of the British are voting to leave the EC. And yes it'll have some effect (probably a lot less dramatic than claimed) if they do on their economy, on Europe's economy, and on our economy.

And they know that.

But so what?

That's not what the vote is about, and the analysts who seem to think it is are out to lunch.

Questions of sovereignty have little to do with economics.  Ireland would have been better off staying in the UK right after World War One. Yugoslavia made better economic sense than Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia.  Czechoslovakia was certainly a better economic unit than the two countries it ended up being.

And Switzerland, in terms of its economy, ought to join the EC.  Canada, if its thinking only of money, should become part of the US.

But that's now how people think, nor do we want them to think that way.  It's sad that so many do think that way. 

Whether the UK should get out, or stay in, the EC, isn't a question solely based on pounds and euros.

Cudos go out to. . .

Catherine Rampell for using the word "autarky" in her column in the Washington Post.

She gets a C- however in her article for straining its meaning.  It almost seemed to read like an essay written by somebody who just learned a neat word and felt compelled to use it, no matter what.

Autarky, for those who might not know, and that would be most people, is an economic theory based upon national self sufficiency.  A country that uses autarky for an economic theory, and Rampell is correct in putting North Korea in this category, operates in such a manner as to produce all goods, or attempt to, within its own borders.

Where Rampell falls of the train is in comparing national movements or Brexit to autarky, or claiming that they represent autaraky. They don't.  Just because approximately half of the British electorate wants to depart the European Union doesn't mean that the UK is turning to autarky or anything close to it. The example is extremely strained.

I should be frank that I don't really like Rampell's writing. The 2007 Princeton graduate's writings strike me the way a lot of the writing by the very young crop of writers that are now on the scene. They lack sufficient worldly experience to actually be commenting on anything and they trend towards being snots.  That doesn't mean that all her writing is that way, or even most of it.  But at least a little is. 

That's another topic, of course, but it is interesting how the concept hat a writer had to experience real writing before being a columnist has vanished.  Instead, much like with the law, an Ive League education is substituting for actual experience, and that's not a good thing.

But it does, at any rate, apparently expose a person to a word like autarky.

Tracking the Presidential Election, 2016

The focus of this blog, at least theoretically, is on events of a century ago.  Indeed, the event that really motivated the concept of a novel and hence this support blog occurred 100 years ago, and is coming right up.  So we should be looking at the 1916 Presidential election.

That election, as the readers here well know, featured Woodrow Wilson in a contest against Charles E. Hughes. Wilson, of course, campaigning on "He kept us out of war" won.

President Woodrow Wilson.

Charles E. Hughes.  Maybe the beard, in the post bearded era, did in his chances.

I can't compare that election to the current one, as it was nothing like it.  I can compare, and often have, President Obama with President Wilson (without Wilson's racism, however) as in my view they're both guilty of confusing talk with action.

I note all of this as I've been struggling for an analogy between the current election and a former one.  This one has been very different to say the least.  Perhaps there's no comparison with any prior election, this one is so off the charts in some ways.  I had been tempted however, to look at the 1972 election, as that election was also pretty wild at start.  In the end, of course, it featured Richard Nixon against George McGovern, with McGovern being fairly left wing (but Nixon being fairly centrist), but early on it also featured Hubert Humphrey, George Wallace and Shirley Chisholm, so it did  have a real range of candidates, including at least a couple who were quite extreme in their views.

I'd also thought of trying to link it in with the times of this blog, so to speak, in which case we have the example of the 1912 Presidential election, although that doesn't quite work either.  In that one, as we well know, we had the "establishment" Republican President, William Howard Taft, in a titanic fight against former President Theodore Roosevelt, who had always been "progressive" but who became, in fact, quite radical during the four years he was out of office.  To the left of Roosevelt was Eugene Debs, a Socialist who made his fourth run for the office.  To the right, but still a "progressive", was Woodrow Wilson's, whose victory would make the Democrats the "liberal" party in the north, while they remained a very conservative party in the south.  Taft was the only real conservative, and really a middle of the road conservative, in the race.  Taft would have won but for Roosevelt bolting the GOP after he was not nominated as its candidate, to form the Progressive Party. Wilson benefitted as a result.

The results of the 1912 election were 435 Electoral College votes for Wilson, 88 for Roosevelt, 8 for poor Taft, and none for Debs, who nonetheless received over 900,000 votes.

Again, I can't say that that election is analogous tot his one, but it did have a bonafide Socialist running in it, a radical, and semi conservative and a second progressive.  It was the last US election where a third party run actually stood a chance of winning, and quite a few Republican Governors switched over to the Progressive Party to support Roosevelt, including Wyoming's.  Wyoming's vote went to Wilson anyway.

This particular election has truly been a remarkable one in several ways, but most notably in lower middle class discontent.  I'm not going to opinie on who I support and why, assuming that I even know that right now, but I wills way that teh very surprising campaigns of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders show some very strong simularities as they both are strongly based in a demographic that feelse its loosing out, and has been for a long time.  Their proposed solutions aren't at all similair, but in my view their support comes from the same sense of angst and anger.  Sanders has further tapped into a young demographic that has no memories of Socialism in the world and is willing to entertain it.  Trump support comes from the lower middle class but, having said that, everyone that I personally know well who supports him is upper class, so the analysis there isn't necessarily a simple one.

As part of this, there's a really strong feeling in the common rank and file that they get ignored by their own parties. Whether the topic is the economy, war or immigration, there are very strong opinions that are in the respective parties that it can't be denied pretty much get ignored by those in office. At this point, combined with other factors, there's a lot of rage in the parties about it.  The two main surprise candidates, Trump and Sanders, are willing to say a lot of things that the other candidates would not, and they, at least up until Iowa, have profited by it.  This may have an impact on the campaign as a whole, and given the level of discontent, it might actually have a long term impact on politics itself.

Against them we have, in the Democrats, now only Hillary Clinton.  I did comment on her candidacy, and that of Jeb Bush's, earlier.  Clinton is proving to be a candidate that is hard to like for a lot of Democrats, so what was an anticipated coronation isn't going so smoothly.

The GOP has a broad field of candidates, which will show in the delegate count on the first day I post this.  In spite of the punditry, right now their campaign is wide open.  Of interest, however, is that the GOP field is much more diverse ethnically and demographically than the Democratic one, in spite of what the Democrats like to maintain about their own party.  Indeed, the GOP is the party that stands a decent chance of nominating a non "white", non Baby Boomer, to the Presidency.  The Democrats are going to nominate a white Boomer no matter what.  That's not really a comment so much as it is an observation, but it does fall in with a recent political commentator's book about the Democrats maintaining its lost its working class base in favor of an urban elite, which causes it to loose a lot of elections.

So, having tried to make an analogy, and with really examining this year in depth, I'm going to track the primaries so we can see who has what in the way of a delegate count as we move along.  First, some facts:

Delegates Needed to Win:

This isn't the same for both major parties.  In the GOP there are 2,472 delegates and, a candidate must get the support of 1,236 delegates to win.

For the Democrats there are  4,763 delegates to their convention, with 2,382 need to win.

I don't know why the Democrats have so many more.  They must like big conventions.

Okay, here we go with the delegate count. This will be updated, and probably commentary added, as we move along.  This could get to be a long thread.

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February 3, 2016.  Post Iowa Caucus.

Leaders to Date in national count:  Clinton and Trump/Cruz

In second position:  Saunders and Rubio.

Following the Iowa Caucases, the delegate count is:

Democrats:   

Hillary Clinton:  29

Bernie Saunders:  21.

Uncommitted (following O'Malley's withdrawal):  8

GOP

Ted Cruz:  7

Donald Trump 7

Marco Rubio:  6

Ben Carson:  3

Jeb Bush:  1

Carly Fiorina:  1

John Kasich:  1

Ron Paul:  1 

Commentary

For weeks, going into this election, the common assumption is that Donald Trump was going to do well, and Hillary Clinton would easily beat Bernie Sanders.

This shows, I think, the weakness of analysis, as it seemed pretty clear to me that Sanders and Cruz were going to do well.  I've been assuming for a couple of weeks that they'd each win.  I was wrong on Sanders, but only barely so, and  his strong showing was a type of moral or practical victory for him.  Clinton is not going to be coronated and might not even win.  Indeed, my prediction is that she'll do poorly in New Hampshire and at some point after that we will have Vice President Biden enter the race to come and seem to be the Democratic Savior.  So, as early as it is, my prediction right now is that Biden will be the nominee for the Democrats.

I won't predict the GOP race yet, but Cruz's victory doesn't surprise me.  He's followed in Trump's wake, but with a better political resume and less of a gadfly type of persona, he's been able to pick up those GOP votes that Trump had earlier amongst those who have concluded that Trump cannot beat Hillary Clinton in an actual race.  He's also picked up "establishment" GOP votes which would have gone to somebody else, but went to him out of the fear that Trump would win Iowa.  And of course he has his own base.

Added to that, however, Marco Rubio did amazingly well, which I would not have predicted, and he's clearly on the rise.  The trailing votes for other candidates, however, show that things are far from over in the GOP. 

Commentary followup:

As of today (I should have posted this yesterday), Sen Paul has dropped out.

Logic would lead us to presume we're going to see more drop outs soon.  Fiorina probably ought to drop out as she has no chance at this point, and surely knows that.  However, we'll probably see most of the other candidates hang through New Hampshire, and have a new one appear in the states, that being Christie.

Second Commentary followup:

Rick Santorum had dropped out of the race.

Mike Huckabee has suspended his campaign.

Neither candidate took any delegates in the Iowa Caucus.

February 3, 2016

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 Populist candidate James B. Weaver in 1892.  He took Wyoming's electoral vote that year. See Elections and History in Wyoming.  The Populist were a left wing third party, perhaps somewhat akin to what Bernie Sanders is today.  It's telling that we don't always accurately recall history when we recall that Weaver did well in Wyoming.

February 10, 2016:  Following the New Hampshire Primary

Leaders to date in national count:  Clinton and Trump.

Second position:  Saunders and Cruz

So, here's the present tell of the tape following New Hampshire:

Democrats

Hillary Clinton:  Picking up 9, for a total now of 38

Bernie Sanders:  Picking up 13, for a total now of 34.

So, Clinton is still ahead in committed delegates.

But, wait! What is the actual delegate count in the Democratic Party right now?

Here it is:

Clinton: 394

Sanders: 42

How can this be? See below.

Republicans

Donald Trump 17

Ted Cruz: 10

Marco Rubio: 7

John Kasich: 4

Ben Carson:  3

Jeb Bush: 3

Carly Fiorina:  1

Ron Paul:  1

Commentary

In a trend that's getting hard to ignore, Bernie Sanders trounced Hillary Clinton in the February 9 primary and Donald Trump did the same to all of his competitors.  The once seemingly remote possibility, which I still think unlikely but now conceded as a possibility, of the Presidential race being Trump v. Sanders is a real possibility. That two candidates so outside the mainstream of American politics and even life would be the front runners speaks rather loudly to the massive level of discontent with both parties and the perception that they no longer represent the American people.

Sanders defeated Clinton by 22 percentage points, a massive defeat which Democrats would be foolish to ignore.  Clinton is proving to have very little base of popularity and the effort by the Democratic party to simply coronate her as their candidate is failing hugely.  While she has time to recover, the lesson is quite clearly that she is not a popular candidate, and younger voters more clearly identify with the 74 year old Sanders.  This includes younger Democratic women who seem to be turned off by Clinton.

Trump in contrast received only 35% of the GOP vote with the rest shared by the rest of the field, but that percentage, while it indicates that the majority of New Hampshire's Republican voters did not support him, was still significantly larger than any other candidates.  John Kasich came in second with 16% of the vote, which while that is less than half of what Trump got, in this context it is not insignificant. Trump's victory therefore, however, is more subtle as it would indicate that he cannot yet claim that a majority of voters in any one state actually supported him, and if his opposition was unified, which it isn't in fact or in view, the results could possibly have been different.  Cruz, who is being treated in this primary as a fading star, still received 12% of the vote. Trump and Cruz combined are viewed as the "protest" vote in some ways and combined they poll 47% of the vote, not yet clearly half.  If Carson's 2% is added in they still aren't quite there.

Turning back to the Democrats, why, after all of this, is Clinton so far ahead of Sanders in the delegate count? Well, quite simply, the Democrats have "Super Delegates", which the Democrats have but the GOP does not. Superdelegates aren't elected by the people, but are current and former Democratic leaders who get to vote at the national convention.  These numbers could therefore change, but so far this is how these numbers play out. So, in spite of not doing well in the polls, Clinton right now is far ahead of Sanders, as she's the "establishment candidate".

This is rather massively unfair, as it allows the Democratic Party to really stack the deck against the people in their party. And its another rich irony of the system.  The Democrats are less democratic, as well as being older, in terms of the people they are running, and "whiter", than the Republicans.  At some point this has to be noticed by voters.  A party that is increasingly waiving a the red flag of the far left this year is actually sort of run like the true, really hardcore, left wing parties of old; i.e., they decide what's best for you.  At  least in terms of their candidates, they're very east coast white. Sanders is Jewish, and he is the first Jewish candidate to win a primary in the United States, so there is an element of diversity there. Still, the GOP field is much more diverse in age, race, region and religion.  The demographic advantage that Democrats have long imagined themselves to have doesn't reflect itself in their candidates.

And that's partially what's causing Clinton to sink.  The Democratic party establishment simply assumed she'd win and she'd be the first woman President following up on the first black President.  But she's basically not likable and the rank and file of the Democratic Party are as unhappy with their leadership, apparently as the Republicans are with theirs.

Commentary followup

Carly Fiorina and Chris Christie have suspended their campaigns, the functional equivalent of ending them but perhaps giving them some slight control of the outcome of the GOP race depending upon how tight the convention is and whether or not they can control their delegates.

Fiorina's campaign never really got off the ground even though she can claim a background that isn't entirely unrecognizable to Trumps in that she is a business executive.  Her campaign style, however, is rather obviously different.

Christie has been mentioned as a possible Presidential candidate for quite some time and had pinned his hopes on New Hampshire, where he was rising for awhile.  However, he did very poorly there and his essential contribution to that race may have been to damage Rubio while not helping himself.

Second Commentary followup 

I generally don't link in, or even watch, video clips that go "viral" on Facebook, but after having seen this one mentioned several times, I finally watched it.



First let me say a couple of things. Democratic spokesman Debbie Wasserman Schultz is an impressive person by any calculation.  She rose in Florida politics at a very young age and went on to Congress at a comparably young age. She's also a survivor of a terrible battle with cancer. There's a lot to admire about her.

But her role as Democratic spokesman is not one of them.

I know that I'm not the only one with that view, and there's even a petition circulating in left wing internet circles to remove her from this role. She tends to be abrasive and actually sort of define for people a lot of what tends to turn off even Democrats from the Democratic Party, as she comes across as a highly self assured East Coast liberal when most Americans are not highly assured East Coast liberals.  So, she's sort of the flipside, really, of personalities like Ted Cruz and comes across as dis-likable for pretty much the same reason.  The Democrats would be well advised to look for a less abrasive spokesman.

Having said all of that, she doesn't come across as abrasive here in this clip, but rather as somebody who was confronted with the irony of the Democratic Superdelegate system. She really blew the answer here big time.

Superdelegates are really starting to come into public focus as it dawned on people that in spite of two poor performances, Hillary Clinton is way ahead on the delegate count.  The system seems to be rigged is what some people are observing. And, whether by accident or design, it is.  Wasserman Schutz's answer is far more telling than perhaps she wanted it to be. Superdelegates, by her definition, are sort of like the administration in a high school office.  They want and encourage all the students to participate in student elections  but. . . .they retain that choice to decide (maybe) what ought to be done if you had  the best interest of your school at heart.

Now, of course, I'm exaggerating a bit, but basically what Wasserman Schultz said, in a really confused way, is that the Democrats want everyone in their party to participate including grassroots movements, but they want to make sure that the benevolent party is there to do the right thing in case things get out of hand.  They don't have 100% control of the outcome, to be sure, but the Party itself makes sure that it has a say.

So, is this good or bad?  It can be debated both ways, but the thing thing that is sort of bad is to pretend that a party stands for a really broad democratic process, and then not have one.  It's sort of bizarre, and highlights again one of the current oddities of this year's race. The Democrats claim to be the party of liberality and diversity but in fact the party is running to two old candidates who are tacking hard to the left and competing to do so in a system that is designed to give the party itself a chance to make sure a party establishment candidate comes out on top.  In short, the system actually appears to be geared to keep a hard left wing candidate from seizing the nomination.

Now, that might be for a good reason. The Party probably realized some time ago that most Democrats aren't all that left wing just as most Republicans aren't all that right wing.  Prior campaigns allowed relatively left leaning urban candidates to seize the nomination and tank in the general election as regular Democrats crossed over and voted Republican.  Perhaps, therefore, the system makes sense.

But it's hard to explain in that fashion.  Wasserman Schultz tried, and came fairly close to being honest, if muddled, about it, but it's embarrassing.

Which brings up this. Why bother with this giant first run election system at all?  These are, after all, just party elections.  They aren't a true national general election.

Conventions used to be highly brokered and it was only after the franchise expanding movement of the early 20th Century, which also lead to the direct election of Senators, that the concept that every state had to have some sort of broad franchise for picking candidates (which some still do not) came to be accepted. The idea is now so widely accepted that even in those states that don't have a primary election for the President, like Wyoming, most voters believe that they do and are surprised every four years when there isn't.  Some states allow voters to cross over as well, so the voter can determine his party affiliation right at the polls.

As these are supposed to be efforts, however, by the parties to pick a candidate to run that reflects the values of the party, maybe this doesn't make much sense.  After all, the parties could just act on their own through their state organizations and come up with somebody.

But that isn't going to be happening of course.

And that leaves a situation like the one that Wasserman Schultz was left to handle.  I think she better practice her response a bit.  The GOP, for its part, doesn't have to handle this one, as they don't have Superdelegates and rely on their rank and file to get it right, by and large.  So, ironically, once again, the party that's supposed to represent "the establishment" has no way of making sure that its own establishment gets an establishment candidate, while the party that claims the opposite, particularly this year, has a means of trying to make sure that its establishment can get a say.

Third Commentary Followup

Yesterday, I ran this item; Antonin Scalia passes on.

Already by that time  I have to admit I was surprised by how gloating and mean spirited some of the commentary about Scalia's passing was.  Not to mention at least one article, that by Paul Krugman, that seemed to be afflicted with political amnesia.

The funny thing about the reality of Scalia's personality is that he got on famously with some of his fellow justices, including some who were of opposite views.  The Scalia's, for example, were good friends with the Ginsberg's.  The nasty political venom that seemingly attaches to analysis of the Supreme Court thankfully doesn't seem to attach to the justices themselves in their interactions with others.  But it will make for a much more heated election, as now who will replace the originalist Scalia is a very significant issue.

Krugman seems to count that fact in with evidence of the impending death of the republic, which he blames on Republicans.  If this has become a problem, then he might well remember that it became one, however, when the Democrats in the Senate viciously blocked Robert Bork, with the current Vice President taking a major role in that effort.  That occurred because Bork was a well known originalist and the Democrats were trying to keep an increasingly threatened liberal majority on the Court at that time against a rising tide of conservative discontent. And the discontent was not without merit, as the existing Court had fairly clearly strayed from what could really be read in the Constitution in some instances to impose what really amounted to a set of rulings based on conceptualizations of liberty, rather than text.  At least one of those rulings has become increasingly criticized in recent decades, but the fact that the Court had acted in that fashion gave rise to originalism, which sought to apply the text as actually written and originally understood.

This battle has been going on ever since the 1970s and continues on, with other competing theories reflecting themselves in the Court as well.  But because the Court is so evenly split five to four, it will become a central issue in this election.  Perhaps in a weird sort of way it should be, as it was something at stake in any event as it's been obvious for a long time that at least three and now two, of the current justices were going off the bench soon, with those individuals reflecting one conservative, one swing, and one liberal vote.

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February 20, 2016 

February 20 saw additional changes in the delegate counts, but in a disjointed way. South Carolina held its Republican primary, but not its Democratic one, and Nevada held its Democratic caucus, but not its Republican one. There were some surprising and some expected developments.

The surprising news was that Marco Rubio performed much better than expected and Ted Cruz worse than expected in South Carolina, resulting in their getting a near tie in the vote, right around 22% each.  That placed Rubio in second, but only barely, with Cruz in third. Trump finished first at 32.5%. At this point it is clearly possible that he might carry through this momentum until the end, particularly after March 15 at which point Republican primaries become winner take all contests.  Almost nobody would have predicted this occurring early on and GOP stalwarts are gravely concerned about the possibility, which is feared on the basis of it resulting in a near certain loss to Hillary Clinton in the fall and an internal crisis in the party.

Jeb Bush dropped out yesterday, conceding the inevitable.  The race is now essentially down to three men, although a candidate like Kasich can be a spoiler and even take a few states.  The question is whether he wants that role or not.  Chances are high right now that Carson, who has no chance, is acting as a spoiler probably impacting mostly Ted Cruz, although perhaps Trump as well.  The ongoing presence of Kasich is hurting Rubio.

On the Democratic side, Clinton took Nevada, but even though it isn't being talked about much, Sanders did much better than he would have been expected to earlier, taking 47.2% of the vote.  Clinton won, but should be regarded as under performing.

So, here's where things are currently at:

Democrats (needed to win 2,383)

Clinton:  503

Sanders:  70

As should be obvious, the Superdelegates are really beginning to have an impact now.  If there were no Superdelegates, Sanders and Clinton would be very close in delegates.  But the committed Superdelegates are pushing Clinton far ahead in the Democratic race.

Republicans

Donald Trump  61

Ted Cruz: 11

Marco Rubio: 10

John Kasich: 5

Ben Carson:  3

Jeb Bush: (now out).

Carly Fiorina:  1 (now out)

Ron Paul:  1 (now out).

As these results show, Trump is now far ahead of any of his rivals.  That doesn't mean that he's won by any means, but he is winning right now.  On the GOP side of the house there should be some serious soul searching on  the part of the two bottom runners about whether they wish to play the spoiler or not.  We can anticipate a good performance by Cruz in Texas and by Rubio in a host of states, but their ability to cleanly take the nomination by the convention is growing increasingly poor, and Trump's increasingly good.

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February 24, 2016

The State of Nevada held its GOP caucus yesterday, an event which drew heavier than usual participation.  Trump was expected to win the caucus vote and did, with Marco Rubio moving up to second again.  While this again boosts Rubio, it is getting increasingly difficult to ignore Trump's staying power in the process and the split in the GOP over his potential nomination is now fully open.

So here is where things currently stand:

Democrats (needed to win 2,383)

Clinton:  503 (of which 52 are not Superdelegates)

Sanders:  70 (of which 51 are not Superdelegates).

Republicans (needed to win, 1,237)

Donald Trump:  81

Ted Cruz: 17

Marco Rubio: 17

John Kasich:  6

Ben Carson: 4

Jeb Bush: 1  (now out).

Carly Fiorina:  1 (now out)

Ron Paul:  1 (now out).

Commentary

This total will remain as the candidates approach next week's "Super Tuesday", which the press has irritatingly now nicknamed the "SEC" primary after the university level athletic conference in the south, apparently.  I had to look that up, and find that yet again another mysterious sports' analogy is applied to something else in life leaving me baffled.  Notwithstanding that, something to keep in mind is that even with the huge number of delegates decided in those contests, they will not be sufficient to push either front runner over the top.  It may make any one seem inevitable, but it does not, mathematically.

That's something to keep in mind during this race, which has been treated in some ways in a rather odd way by the press. The press, perhaps understandably, didn't take Trump that seriously early on, but now its treating him as a near inevitability.  He does have twice as many delegates as his nearest rivals combined, but even with that being the case, he has a very long ways to go, which even he is acknowledging in interviews.  Not as well noted right now, his combined rivals have 47 delegates.

Sanders, for his part, is very, very close to Clinton's totals in actual elected delegates and in terms of the percentage of the vote he is attracting he is never far from Clinton, that even being the case in Nevada where the Press has treated Clinton's fairly marginal victory as a landslide.

Indeed, at least as of today, Clinton and Sanders are neck and neck in elected delegates.  Superdelegates are committed by the party, but they can switch their votes.  It's unlikely that all of those presently declared for Clinton will remain so if Sanders continues to have a strong showing, but certainly most of them will.  It's curious that the press was so inclined to treat Nevada as a Clinton runaway and seems to ignore that he is essentially tied to Sanders in actual votes.

To the extent that is being noted, it's being nearly universally noted now that Clinton is a fairly disliked candidate by most voters.  Interestingly, the Democratic rank and file has been shown to be more willing to go with their party establishment even for a candidate that isn't particularly popular, while the Republicans so far are bolting in huge numbers.

I'll add to it later, but in terms of historical focus, this is turning out to be one of the strangest U.S. Presidential elections in at least a century.  Whether it will continue to be so has yet to be determined, but there's at least a fairly high chance that it shall continue to develop in this direction.

Commentary followup

A legitimate question, regarding the last elections noted here, i.e., the Nevada ones, is how much does that really tell us about anything?

It might not actually tell us that much, although it's dangerous to assume that.

Clinton took Nevada, but only barely, on the Democratic side of the house.  Trump dominated in Nevada.  Does that make sense?  It might, in context.

On the Republican side of the house it has to be recalled that Nevada is a particularly odd state.  Most outsiders tend to think of Las Vegas or Reno, but generally Nevadans, if they aren't from those locations, bristle a bit at that.  Outside of those two border towns, as both are on the edge of the state, there's a lot of empty state.  Only not really empty, but rather thinly populated by rural people, some of distinct demographics.

Nevada is the state that gave us the  Bundy's, the ranchers with an anti government mindset and a unique view of property rights.  Only not so unique, the same view has spread throughout the West in the past few years, but it has gained real strength only in two Western deserty states, Nevada and Utah.  Indeed Nevada and Utah, outside of the big urban areas of Reno, Las Vegas, and Salt Lake City, are very much alike demographically.

In those areas the economy has been insular and hurting for a really long time.  The Federal government has correspondingly not been popular for a really long time.  And starting in 2008, Las Vegas crashed.

Combined with this, Nevada has been one of the state that has been basically on the front line in terms of illegal immigration.  The corner has really turned on that, a story that hasn't been noted by anyone anywhere, but nonetheless it left a huge sense of bitterness on the part of people in border areas, who basically felt that they were being overrun with a problem that the government was choosing to ignore. And, indeed, the government, ironically up until the current administration, did not do much about illegal immigration.  Illegal immigration, and immigration in general, is an issue in areas like this that is of huge significance, far, far more than in other areas of the country.

Moreover, in Nevada, Trump did not do well with those who were well educated.  This reflects on the above, and it strongly reflects on the "left behind" feeling of the less educated white demographic that is no longer reflective of the majority of white Americans. 

So the Trump vote strongly reflects this.  GOP voters in this demographic feel that they've been lied to by their party and betrayed by the Federal government on these issues.  Generally, in the US immigration reform of a very significant nature is widely popular, and in areas such as rural Nevada it's regarded as a very significant issue.  The GOP has toyed with the issue for years now and the voters are reacting to being toyed with, in part because the GOP has seemed to campaign on this issue and then turn to business friendly policies that are of little concern to the same demographic.  The GOP is going to now have to get a handle on this and attempt to unite both ends of its party, before it flies apart.  The party has to now struggle with being a classic conservative party and a nativist populist party at the same time and effectively unite those two separate groups.  They were united in the past, but the GOP has sort of cynically campaigned for one and supported the other in recent years, and is now very much paying for it.

Rubio, for his part, did surprisingly well, although in my view he has to at least take one or more states in Super Tuesday (sorry, I'm not going for the "SEC' thing) in order to keep building his momentum. Rubio generally appeals to a different demographic to some extent, but it has to be remembered that both Rubio and Cruz are the sons of immigrants that were campaigning in a state that has a demographic that is really upset with immigration issues.  Rubio made a strategic decision to focus on the large Mormon population in Nevada which is a distinct demographic with distinct views and this proved to be a wide decision.  There was quite a bit of speculation over the weekend that Mitt Romney would endorse Rubio, but he did not.  There almost certainly was an effort to secure Romney's endorsement but it appears to have failed for now, but in terms of identifying voters and going after them, in the environment that we are currently in, Rubio did a good job.

On the Democratic side of the house the results are less clear to me, but I think perhaps somewhat reflective of the same thing.  Nevada's urban population is strongly concentrated in two states and in narrow industries.  They are in the classic working class and Sanders appeal has been strong amongst this class, just as Trump's has been in the GOP. And a lot of the same issues that upset the GOP base are probably reflecting themselves in the Democratic base as well. Given that the Democrats have a two person race, and therefore the two candidates are more sharply defined and there are only two choices, Sanders, in my view, can almost claim a moral victory in Nevada.  If he can gain that many votes in a Western state in which he would generally be regarded as quite distant in views from the base, he did much better than the press would allow there, and may continue to do so elsewhere.

Second Commentary Followup.

In a really surprising move, Chris Christie endorsed Donald Trump today.

Almost nobody would have seen that coming.

And after it came, Christie spent some time going after Rubio, who just recently started to rise in expectations.  It would appear that the animosity directed at Christie in the last debate he was in may have been genuine.

At any rate, having an establishment Republican governor endorse the maverick Trump campaign, and then go after Rubio, is extremely surprising.  If this signals a beginning acceptance of Trump campaign by the GOP establishment must now be questioned, although it could simply be something purely unique to Christie himself.

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February 27, 2016 

South Carolina held its Democratic primary today which was a true blowout for Clinton.  Sanders did very poorly in it, which may be a sign of how things may be developing for Super Tuesday.


So here is where things currently stand:

Democrats (needed to win 2,383)

Clinton:  542 (of which 52 are not Superdelegates)

Sanders:  83 (of which 51 are not Superdelegates).

Republicans (needed to win, 1,237)

Donald Trump:  82

Ted Cruz: 17

Marco Rubio: 16

John Kasich:  6

Ben Carson: 4

Jeb Bush: 1  (now out).

Carly Fiorina:  1 (now out)

Ron Paul:  1 (now out).

Commentary

The South Carolina primary is the first one in which African Americans were a significant demographic.  Bill Clinton always did very well in this demographic and it appears that Hillary Clinton has its solid backing as well.

This by extension  tends to show that the discontent that's given rise to the Trump and Sanders campaign tends to be heavily concentrated amongst lower middle class and lower class whites.  That's bad news for Sanders in the Super Tuesday primaries of next week and it will be bad news for the Republicans in the Fall, and will be particularly bad news for the GOP if Trump becomes the nominee.  We may be entering one of the most divided races in decades.

Followup Commentary

Meanwhile, recounts go on in the complicated Irish Dail election which occurred on Friday.  Preliminary results indicate that Fianna Fáil is two seats ahead of Fine Gael with 30 seats, the Irish Labour Party acquired four seats, Sinn Féin has 14, AAA- PBP has four seats, the Social Democrats three seats, and the Green party has one seat. Independents and others have 16 seats.  Gael has the lead, as noted, but only very narrowly and Labour has taken a pounding.  This means the Irish government has fallen in the elections.

Ireland has gone through some really turbulent politics recently and this vote might suggest that opinions that Ireland had essentially opted to mirror mainstream EC states in its politics (which itself is poorly understood) were in error.  Irish voters might not be that comfortable with recent events. Fianna Fáil is "The Republican Party" and was founded by Eamon de Valera.

This is interesting in the remote context of the United Kingdom voting this summer on whether to remain the EC.  Voters the globe over seem unhappy right now.

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March 2, 2016

Yesterday saw the big Super Tuesday primaries.  Here's the tell of the tape:

Democrats (needed to win 2,383)

Clinton:  1001 (or 962), (of which 52 are not Superdelegates)

Sanders:  371 (or 378), (of which 51 are not Superdelegates).

Martin O'Malley:  1 (now out)


Republicans (needed to win, 1,237)

Donald Trump:  285 (or 293)

Ted Cruz: 161 (or 148)

Marco Rubio: 87 (or (105)

John Kasich: 25 (or 27)

Ben Carson:8 (or 9)

Jeb Bush: 4  (now out).

Carly Fiorina:  1 (now out)

Ron Paul:  1 (now out).

It should be noted that there is, at this point, some slight discrepancies, oddly enough, on total delegate counts.  On the Democratic side this results in a 39 point deficit on Clinton's part, depending upon how counted and a 7 point gain on Sanders, depending upon how counted.  On the Republican side it results in a 8 point gain to Trump but a 13 point deficit to second place Cruz.  It also results in a large gain, however, to Rubio of 18 points.  As these numbers correct, and hopefully they will, I'll repost them.

Commentary

The first thing worth noting here is, in this unusual election year, the repeated press pronouncements that the election is over, at least in regards to the Republicans, is bunk. This election could and by appearances is changing.  Indeed, while its a risky prediction, this election showed signs of Rubio finally emerging towards taking the GOP nomination, which is now my prediction.

How can a person maintain that?  Well, in spite of repeated press glee about Trump being the GOP front runner, which he now clearly is, his combined opposition in delegates is reaching parity with him.  If all the delegates chosen in the primaries so far are added up, Trump has 285 by the New York Times tally, while his opposition has a combined 287.  This is a change from recent tallies in which Trump was outpacing his opponents.  If we look at the alternative count Trump has 293 delegates to his oppositions 295, and therefore is now slightly behind his opposition.

This doesn't mean, as some seem to think that all those delegates would go against him if freed from their candidate, but quite a few certainly would.  It's a safe assumption that the Fiorina, Paul, Bush and Kasich delegates would largely back Rubio if freed from their pledges, which would bring Rubio up to 118 at this point.  If Rubio were to drop out, which he will not be doing, the net result would be to place Cruz in an effective tie with Trump.  If Cruz were to drop out, which he will not be doing, the net result is more difficult to predict as many of Cruz's voters might break for Trump. My assumption is that Carson's voters would go for Trump, but of course that's just an assumption.

Anyhow, the point is that there's a lot of primaries left to go, and we seem some interesting trends.  A big one we have seen is that the old "Solid South" which used to vote Democratic no matter what sort of repeated its behavior of the past and voted for a populist Trump who is now associated with some fairly distinct ideas on race. That has boosted him into the lead, but what's forgotten is that Super Tuesday, or the SEC Primary as the press has been calling it, was created for that very reason, as the South felt it was marginalized in recent years.  It votes distinctly, and now that wave has broken.

And in breaking, the states outside of the old political Solid South didn't vote for Trump the same way. Some did, as in Massachusetts, where old working class demographics voted in large numbers for Trump, even though they are actually an old cross over Democratic demographic that found the Democratic Party had left it. But others definitely did not.  Texas went for their home candidate, Cruz, in spite of some concern that it would not, which would have been the end of Cruz, but to everyone's surprise Oklahoma went for Cruz as well.  Alaska, the western most continental state, went for Cruz thereby ignoring the endorsement of its former governor Sarah Palin.  Minnesota, a northern Mid Western state, went for Rubio.

All of these races split delegates, of course, and some of the result there were telling as well.  Vermont went for Trump, but only technically as Kasich took as many delegates, six, as Trump did.  Rubio failed, however, to get any delegates out of Texas, missing the 20% threshold to do so, to Trump's advantage.  In Oklahoma the second and third place finishers all took nearly as many delegates as the winner did.  In Massachusetts the combined other candidates nearly took as many delegates as Trump did, with Kasich and Rubio sharing second position.

The reason all of this is significant is that from here on out almost none of the primaries is in the Solid South, but rather they go north and west. So far, in the north, both Rubio and Kasich are proving to be strong candidates now, with Kasich perhaps particularly so, surprisingly enough, given how far he's been trailing.  Rubio, moreover, is starting to break out.   Here are the upcoming March 15 primaries, the last of the ones where delegates are split:

Florida
Illinois
Missouri
Northern Marianas
North Carolina
Ohio

Of these, it's already fairly certain that Florida will go to Rubio, giving him at least one other win.  Ohio is likely to go to Kasich, giving him his first win.  North Carolina, I'd guess, is likley to go to Trump.  The remaining three are anyone's guess but I would guess the Northern Marianas will go for Rubio, Illinois for Rubio and Missouri to Cruz.  That won't place anyone ahead of Trump, but it will make his decline looked to have set in, and I think it might be setting in.

If it is setting in, it would be because his popularity doesn't seem to extend north and west. Colorado, for example, which went for Sanders yesterday isn't going to go for Trump.  California certainly is not.  Trump is starting to take a lot of heat for comments he cannot defend, and yesterday Rubio noted that a "vote for Trump is a vote for Clinton in the fall" which, in spite of the ardency of his backers, is highly likely to be true.  

So, it wold appear that by the time we see the remaining delegates chosen, Trump might not get the extra thousand he needs.  Indeed, it appears unlikely.  The question would be if anyone does, but that also appears unlikely.  If this goes into a convention, a Trump candidacy is unlikely.

If it does result, however, a Republican third party candidate is becoming increasingly likely.  For the first time since 1912 a large section of the GOP is talking about bolting, although if ti does it will be the reserve of the 1912 election where Progressives bolted in favor of Theodore Roosevelt, who did not secure the GOP nomination, dooming him and Taft in favor of Wilson.  In this instance, it would be the conservatives bolting in favor of a conservative candidate as yet unknown, but perhaps a drafted Rubio.  I think this unlikely, but it is now being openly discussed.

On the Democratic side, Clinton had a good night for the same reason that Trump did, that being that the South demonstrated its old demographics and went with a native son by marriage and African Americans continued to support Clinton over Sanders.  Sanders, however, won in Colorado, Minnesota, Oklahoma and Vermont.  Save for Vermont, all of these are surprising wins.  He's far, far behind, however, in no small part due to the operation of Democratic superdelegates which are going to be very difficult if not impossible for him to overcome.  Still, those who count him out are counting on too much.  He's consistently over preformed and did once again. As the campaign moves west and north, back into areas where he's been doing well, he may do increasingly well.  Support in the West for him has been surprising but quite real.

So the race goes on, but it seems to be evolving.  Rubio and Cruz are rising, Trump's ascent is slowing.  Kasich is doing better than expected and drawing in delegates that will ultimately go to somebody other than Cruz.  Clinton is winning but the perception that she's already won is in error.  She's likely to, but it may be more of a close run thing than the pundits presently allow.

Amongst all this turmoil, the Republicans in this county held their caucus last night.  However, the Wyoming GOP has a fairly controlled in some fashion process, and the results of county caucuses are not released when they occur, but rather are taken to a state delegation on March 12 where they are revealed but are not binding. So the county vote is an advisory poll.  The convention will decide how to commit the Wyoming GOP delegates at that time.

 1912 Progressive Party Convention, the one that nominated Theodore Roosevelt.

Commentary Followup: 

New corrected tallies.

Democrats (needed to win 2,383)

Clinton:  1052 (of which 52 are not Superdelegates)

Sanders:  427 (of which 51 are not Superdelegates).

Martin O'Malley:  1 (now out)

Republicans (needed to win, 1,237)

Donald Trump:  319

Ted Cruz: 226

Marco Rubio: 110

John Kasich: 25 (or 27)

Ben Carson:8 (or 9) (race in some sort of flux)

Jeb Bush: 4  (now out).

Carly Fiorina:  1 (now out)

Ron Paul:  1 (now out).

The new tallies all give more delegates to the top three Republicans and to both Democrats.  Indeed, looking at the tallies, and not the commentary on them that a person can find, Sanders is doing surprisingly well, particularly if you consider that 457 of Clinton's delegates are Superdelegates.  Superdelegates aren't fixed at this point, and so Sanders, in elected delegates, is really only 200 or so delegates behind.

On the GOP side Cruz is very much within striking distance of Trump.  Sure, he's 80 delegates behind, but Trump got off to big start and had big results in the South.  Those factors are unlikely to continue to have the significance that they seem to be having right now as we move forward.  Combined, once again, Rubio and Cruz have more delegates than Trump, which if that continues will guarantee a brokered convention.

Carson is sort of lurching towards out.  He's stated that he sees no way forward but hasn't formally withdrawn.  He will not be participating in an upcoming debate.

Chris Christie has been taking a lot of heat for his recent endorsement of Trump.  Other mainstream Republicans, although darned few of them, have endorsed Trump, but none have taken the heat that Christie has.  His endorsement, combined with the earlier bridge scandal, may prove to be the effective end of his political career.  Meg Whitman, who ran his campaign finances, has come out condemning Christie for his endorsement and the deer in the headlights look that he had at a recent function with Trump went viral on the political internet.

Former candidate Mitt Romney is coming out with a speech on the election today. Advance notice on its content indicates that it will go after Trump.  Romney's campaign against President Obama was a failure, of course, but he seems to have some influence in the GOP as a senior statesmen.  His endorsement of a GOP candidate could be important in the Rocky Mountain states where he is well respected in in the GOP.

Second Commentary Followup

Former candidate Mitt Romney unleashed on Donald Trump yesterday in a speech delivered at the University of Utah.  In that speech Romney declared Trump "a phony, a fraud".  There are reports that Romney is studying blocking Trump at the convention, and part of the strategy is to urge voters to support any non Trump candidate in their respective primaries, an interesting, if perhaps somewhat risky in that it is divided, approach.

Additionally, yesterday over 90 Republican foreign policy figures came out with a statement that they would not support Trump.

Clearly  forces within the party are lining up against Trump, and in my view Trump will in fact fail as he's past his support threshold.  Real questions remain, however, on what sort of party the GOP will reconstruct itself as after the general election in the fall.  The 1912 split in the party took some time to heal, but surprisingly little time, resulting in the generally conservative party that the GOP became.

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March 5, 2016

I managed to completely forget that yesterday was "Super Saturday", and I"m not sorry about that either. This race already feels like it's gone on to long.

Super Saturday is a little odd in that it mixed southern, southern mid-western and a New England state.  It's sort of like Super Tuesday, but not so much.

Here are the current standings:

Democrats (needed to win 2,383)

Clinton:  1,121 (458 Superdelegates)

Sanders:  479 (or 482) (22 Superdelegates).

Martin O'Malley:  1 (now out)

Republicans (needed to win, 1,237)

Donald Trump:  378 (or 391)

Ted Cruz: 295 (or 304)

Marco Rubio: 123 (or 125)

John Kasich: 34 (or 37)

Ben Carson: 8  (now out)

Jeb Bush: 4  (now out).

Carly Fiorina:  1 (now out)

Ron Paul:  1 (now out).

We once again have some difference in the tallies, depending upon the source.

Yesterday Trump picked up Louisiana as did Clinton, two states with a lot of delegates, but perhaps more significantly as the race evolves  Mid Western states aren't, so far, going for Trump or Clinton.  Kansans went for Cruz and Sanders, repeating what occurred in Oklahoma just a couple of days ago.  Nebraska Democrats had their caucus (the Republicans have not yet) and went for Sanders.

In New England, where  Trump had been strong, Maine went for Cruz.

Moreover, in terms of delegate allocation Cruz did nearly as well last night as Trump.  In Louisiana where Trump won he picked up 15 delegates but Cruz picked up 14.  In Kentucky where Trump also won he picked up 16 delegates but Cruz picked up 14, and Kasich and Rubio combined picked up an additional 13.  In Kansas and Main, however, Cruz did far better than any of his opponents.

After Super Tuesday (forgetting about Super Saturday) I predicted that Rubio would start to break out.  Well, he sure didn't yesterday.  Cruz is appearing to however.  At this point Cruz and Trump are only about 80 to 90 delegates apart with Cruz gaining strength.  Rubio's campaign declared that he was focusing on post Super Saturday races, pointing out that the Florida race will award more delegates in and of itself than were awarded on Saturday, but he needs to start doing much better to stay in the race.  Kasich, who came out of Super Tuesday looking revived doesn't look that way so much now, but he is now doubt focusing on Mid Western races.  I still think Rubio is the likely nominee, but if a person was reading the tea leaves based on the past few days the safer prediction would be that nobody takes enough delegates to go into the convention a winner and that Cruz will emerge the consensus candidate.

 Bryan with a stage double.

In the Democratic race Sanders is showing strength in the same localities that William Jennings Byran did over a century ago and largely, but loosely, for the same reasons.  His campaigns for the Presidency failed, of course, but his last one ended up in Woodrow Wilson bringing him into the cabinet.  At this point, it would appear that Sanders is likely to fail as well, but he's not doing so badly, particularly if Superdelegates are removed, such that he will drop out. And at this point he still has a chance. 

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March 6, 2016

The Republican primary was held today in Puerto Rico given Marco Rubio his second win and adding 23 delegates to his total.

Here are the current standings:

Democrats (needed to win 2,383)

Clinton:  1,129 (458 Superdelegates)

Sanders:  498 (22 Superdelegates).

Martin O'Malley:  1 (now out)

Republicans (needed to win, 1,237)

Donald Trump:  384 (or 391)

Ted Cruz: 300 (or 304)

Marco Rubio: 151 (or 154)

John Kasich: 37

Ben Carson: 8  (now out)

Jeb Bush: 4  (now out).

Carly Fiorina:  1 (now out)

Ron Paul:  1 (now out).

Still some flux in these tallies.

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March 8, 2016

And another series were held yesterday, with the Republicans holding more than the Democrats in this instance.

Here are the current standings:

Democrats (needed to win 2,383)

Clinton:  1,120  (or 1,229) (461 Superdelegates)

Sanders:  571 (or 575) (25 Superdelegates).

Martin O'Malley:  1 (now out)

Republicans (needed to win, 1,237)

Donald Trump:  446 (or 452)

Ted Cruz: 347 (or 355)

Marco Rubio: 151 (or 154)

John Kasich: 54

Ben Carson: 8  (now out)

Jeb Bush: 4  (now out).

Carly Fiorina:  1 (now out)

Ron Paul:  1 (now out).

Still some flux in these tallies.

Commentary 

It was another good night for Donald Trump who took the lead in Hawaii, Michigan and Mississippi. Cruz surprisingly took the lead in Idaho in spite of coming out for transferring Federal lands into private hands, a massively unpopular concept in much of the Rocky Mountain West, but one which is popular with certain demographics in Utah that Idaho shares to some extent.  Nonetheless, in at least some quarter in Idaho this unpopular idea will not doubt cause election time cross over to the Democratic Party if Cruz is the nominee.  Trump opposes the idea.  What is surprising is that Rubio did not do better in Idaho as a result of this and pressure against Trump inside the GOP, but much of that pressure now seems to be benefiting Cruz.  Having said that, more Michigan Republicans voted against Trump than for him, equally splitting their votes between Cruz and Kasich, with Kasich slowly resing in fortunes in the election but still very far behind.  Kasich has to be basically equal with Rubio after Ohio in order to be in position for a brokered convention.  For his part, Rubio has to really preform in Florida, a winner take all state, in order to seriously keep on for late primaries. 

A lot of pressure is being built up for everyone but Cruz to drop out of the race, but this misses the point that the GOP is basically split into two wings right now, with both Trump and Cruz in an insurgent tea party wing.  Rubio and Kasich generally reflect the more mainstream wing of the GOP and likely the majority of voters registered Republican in the general election.  There's good reason to suspect that many of these voters will not support Cruz or Trump in the general election, if they are the nominees.

On the Democratic side there were only two races, Mississippi and Michigan.  Clinton, who remains very popular with black voters, took Mississippi by a huge percentage.  Sanders has been unable to appeal at all to this demographic.  On the other hand, in Rust Belt Michigan he did well with voters and beat Clinton, showing that he remains competitive in a lot of the same areas that Trump is, and probably for a lot of the same demographic reasons.  He's also shown himself to be popular in the old William Jennings Bryan Midwest.  In elected delegates he's only 200 delegates behind Clinton.

This last fact, the 200 delegate deficit, shows in some ways the weird influence of the Press in this race.  The press has treated Sanders as a doomed candidate from the onset, when in fact he's doing well.  A person has to wonder how well he'd be doing if the press took a less gloomy outlook for his fortunes.  By the same token, the press has treated Trump's campaign as an exiting freak show all along and given it massive amounts of attention, basically sucking the air out of the room for all the other GOP candidates.  Now the press is treating Cruz as the only alternative in some ways.  Again, had the press been more even in its coverage a person has to wonder to what extent that would have benefited Rubio or Kasich.

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March 12, 2016

Our states Republicans chose their delegates today. To my surprise, Cruz, who has come out for doing away with public ownership of the public lands, a unpopular position in Wyoming which would be a disaster for the average Wyomingite, took the state's votes.  Of course, the caucuses happened a couple of weeks ago prior to Cruz announcing his position on that, which still has not received much press. Trump did poorly in Wyoming, taking third position. Rubio took second.  Both Rubio and Cruz each took one delegate, however.

Republican primaries were also held in Washington D.C. and Guam. Marco Rubio took Washington D.C and its ten delegates.  Kasich took one delegate in that contest.  Guam's GOP chose delegates but did not dedicate them to any candidate. The Northern Marinas held their Democratic primary.  Clinton won there taking four delegates.  Bernie Saunders took took two.

Wyoming's delegates, it should be noted, are not officially committed until April, so they can change their commitment if events transpire requiring it.

Here are the current standings:

Democrats (needed to win 2,383)

Clinton:  1,231  (461 Superdelegates)

Sanders:  576 (25 Superdelegates).

Martin O'Malley:  1 (now out)

Republicans (needed to win, 1,237)

Donald Trump:  460

Ted Cruz: 369

Marco Rubio: 163

John Kasich: 63

Ben Carson: 8  (now out)

Jeb Bush: 4  (now out).

Carly Fiorina:  1 (now out)

Ron Paul:  1 (now out).

Still some flux in these tallies.

Commentary

Several times in this long, and due to get much longer, trailing post, I've compared this election cycle to the one of 1912. That one, as anyone who has slogged through this far knows, saw the GOP split into two parties, a conservative Republican Party and the liberal Progressive Party. The Progressive Party died in the next couple of years and the GOP was cemented as a conservative party as a result.

But, what if not 1912, but 1964 is the better analogy?

In 1964 the Republican Party nominated Senator Barry Goldwater as President in an election season, which featured a lot fewer primaries back then, that split the party between its conservative elements and its moderate-liberal elements.  The moderate-liberal candidate Nelson Rockefeller had been the front runner until his campaign fell apart after the divorced Rockefeller married the recent divorced Margaretta Murphy.  Goldwater was picked in the end.

And he went on to a complete electoral disaster.  In the general election, President Lyndon Johnson, who of course was in office due to the death of John F. Kennedy, took every state outside of the South except Arizona.

Goldwater was not just a conservative, but a hard edged conservative who appeared unyielding.  Johnson was a more pragmatic candidate.  In the general election the voters went for Johnson, not Goldwater.

In the current election the top two GOP front runners are both hard edged and there's reason to believe that they will not appeal to the general voter in the fall.  Trump, while he as taken the majority of GOP delegates, has only barely done so and has not taken the majority of GOP votes.  Additionally, it's now know that a lot of Trump votes are coming from cross over Democrats. They may be crossing over for legitimate reasons, although press speculation seems to be to the opposite, but will they remain Democrats in the fall?  Maybe, but maybe not. And indeed in the unlikely even that Sanders takes the nomination it would be questionable whether these Democrats, who may be Hard Hat Democrats, might not go back to their own party.

There's been a lot of speculation about a brokered convention, and whether Republican voters would fee betrayed.  Well, if the nomination went to somebody other than Trump or Cruz, certainly the Trump voters would feel that way (and if Sanders was nominated, some would go to him).  But the majority of GOP voters, including some who have stampeded to Cruz in an effort to stop Trump, might not feel that way.

Playing out the rest of the story, Goldwater's 1964 defeat revived the moderate-liberal Republicans and caused the conservatives to rebuild.  The conservatives emerged in 1980 when Ronald Reagan was elected.  So it took 16 years and a lot of reformation before it emerged.  Conservatives worried about the current state of the country in relation to their cause ought to consider that, as if history is a guide, Trump or Cruz might stand to fare poorly in a general election, leaving them with a long period of rebuilding to face, and a lack of power during much of that time.

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March 15, 2016

I'm going to wait for the new tallies until tomorrow at the earliest as they tend to change too much. What is clear now is that the GOP is down to a three man race, with Kasich far behind.  Rubio has dropped out. Cruz took nothing tonight, at least so far.  It looks rather like Trump will in fact be the GOP nominee.  Clinton did very well and almost certainly will be the Democratic nominee.

Looking at the 1964 race, one thing that is impressive is how many states have gone to a primary system since then. Very few had primaries in 1964, and it's questionable if these over weight voter preferences.  It is the parties, after all, that are supposed to present candidates to the electorate in the fall. We do not have a first, then a second, election. But that's effectively what's evolved.

What's also clear is that this election will have serious long term consequences for the GOP.  Doubts about the electability of Trump are genuine.  If he looses, it may actually be kinder to the GOP than if he wins, as if he wins the party will have little opportunity to address its obvious internal conflicts.

Of course, the race isn't over yet.  But with it down to three men, and one of the three very far behind the other two, the result seems predictable.  But maybe not. A brokered convention remains a possibility, although less of one after tonight. A brokered convention does not favor Trump, but it also doesn't bode well for the GOP in the general election at this point.  This is particularly the case now that the  Democrats seem to have put their house in order and have started to put Sanders behind them, even though he remains in the race.

__________________________________________________________________________________

Okay, let's look at the tell of the tape as of this morning.  These do not reflect the Missouri GOP votes, as there's less than 1% between Trump  and Cruz this morning.

Democrats (needed to win 2,383)

Clinton:  1,561 (467 Superdelegates)

Sanders:  800 (26 Superdelegates).

Martin O'Malley:  1 (now out)

Republicans (needed to win, 1,237)

Donald Trump:  621 

Ted Cruz: 395 (1 of which is s Superdelegate, yes, really).

Marco Rubio: 168 (now out)

John Kasich: 138

Ben Carson: 8  (now out)

Jeb Bush: 4  (now out).

Carly Fiorina:  1 (now out)

Ron Paul:  1 (now out).

Still some flux in these tallies and I haven't put up the alternative count here, as I don't know if it includes Missouri.

Commentary

Okay, some other observations.

Clinton is now truly pulling out in front of Sanders.  She has less than 1,000 delegates less to go, but that's still a lot to cover.  Nonetheless, with a 700 delegate lead, she's going to be the nominee unless something spectacular happens.

On the Republican side Trump picked up a lot of delegates due to the "winner take all" nature of the GOP primaries yesterday, one of which was not of that type, but the rest of which were. Because of that, he's pulled out fairly far in front, taking all of Florida's delegates where the contest was not close. Even at that, however, Trump actually took 45% of the vote, not up over 50%.

In Missouri the vote is too close to call, with Trump and Cruz both contesting for a few votes that would take them over the top, to about 41% of the vote. Between the two of them, however, they've pulled about 80% which shows a very strong tea party bent to the vote in Missouri.

In North Carolina Trump took just over 40% with Cruz taking 36%, showing that in the South the tea party type candidates are doing well.  In Ohio, however, both "establishment" candidates dominated the vote in spite of some thought that blue collar rust belt voters would go for the anti establishment candidates.

It's probably fairly predictable where this vote goes from here, but not completely so.  On the Democratic side, Clinton has gotten her act together and is outperforming Sanders at this point.  Sanders will remain in, but it is highly likely that Clinton will secure the delegates she needs prior to the primary.    Sanders would have to perform spectacularly in the remaining states in order to reach an opposite result.

Trump, while clearly winning, has a less clear situation.  Cruz is now consistently running so close to him that it would appear likely that nobody will go into the convention with adequate delegates, particularly now that Kasich is starting to do well.  Right now, Rubio and Kasich combined have enough delegates to be within eyesight of Cruz and it is not likely that Rubio's delegates will go to Trump or Cruz.

Indeed, there were some pleas for Rubio to remain in the race to draw off voters that might not go for Kasich and would end up with Cruz or Trump, but he obviously felt he cold not remain in the race after losing Florida, which is embarrassing and hard to understand.  He is not running for his seat in the Senate again, although he has time to announce.  He is unlikely to do so.

I put up some commentary yesterday in which I made some sort of predictions.  I'd note that predictions so far this election cycle have been very much off the mark, so I'm not doing well (I guess like a lot of other pundits) in that area.  Nonetheless, I'm not deterred and I'll tray again.

While right now I feel that Trump is likely to take the nomination prior to the convention, if he does not, and there's a strong chance he will not, he will not get it in the convention.  That would have been a strong reason for Rubio to stay in to the end and will be a strong reason for Kasich to stay in.  Kasich will have to do extremely well to take the nomination in a brokered convention, and I'm sure he knows that, but it's not wholly impossible.  More likely than that Rubio and Kasich delegates may end up forming the base for the nomination of a candidate who hasn't run.  That sounds radical, but the fact of the matter is that a high percentage of the GOP dislikes Trump enormously and they don't feel much better about Cruz.

Indeed Cruz quietly draws just about as much dislike in the GOP as Trump and in some quarters of the country he's probably effectively dead in the water.  He was supported by the Wyoming GOP but the votes for him came before his anti public lands comments.  Clinton cannot win here but if a strong third party candidate was fielded here or a GOP breakaway candidate chances are good that a fair number of voters would go that way.  This is even more the case for Trump.  And a lot of the nation outside of the south would react the same way.  Indeed, while we're likely to see if I'm correct, my prediction is that in a race between Trump or Cruz and Clinton the GOP stands to suffer an epic defeat.

Which brings me to my next observation.

I've pondered if this race resembles 1912 or 1964, and I do think it resembles 1964 more and more.  But it also is starting to resembled the political period of 1932 to 1952.

A twenty year period?

Yes.

Here's why I'm making that observation.

Due to the disaster of the Great Depression the United States turned to a definite left wing President in 1932 and dramatically changed the nature of American government. From 32 to 52 the GOP was simply unable to take on the Democrats and FDR was elected a record four times.

A four time President is impossible now, and if it were possible it seems pretty clear that President Obama would be in good standing right now for a third term.  But what's also clear is that President Obama is the most liberal President, if a quite ineffective one, we have had since perhaps Roosevelt.  As he's been fairly ineffective that's only really become apparent in the last two years of his term, but like with the FDR the Republicans have railed against his liberalism during his term in office.

While the GOP has done that, it's now set to nominate the most conservative, maybe, candidate that it has fielded in many decades.  The Democrats, for their part, have been pulled leftwards by the most left wing candidate they have pondered since Huey Long.  With a real chance of nominating a candidate that won't appeal to much of the electorate, even in spite of the genuine unpopularity of Hillary Clinton, the GOP may end up effectively causing a true highly liberal period of Presidential occupation that will stretch out to  a total of sixteen years.  Maybe longer.  And even it its only sixteen, or for that matter only twelve, Hillary Clinton is likely to be effective for at least part if not all of her Presidency, unlike President Obama.

FDR's Presidency changed the nation and the nature of its government.  A process that started with Theodore Roosevelt came into full effect during FDR's administration and we've had big government, a powerful Presidency, and a developed sense of government involvement in daily life ever since.  Ronald Reagan reversed that a bit, but only a bit.  Tea Party elements have attempted to very much reverse that but they do not have the popularity to do that.  Conservatives of the 1930s evolved their thinking during their long period of political winter, which stretched all the way into the 1970s, but when they emerged they had to accept the liberal changes of the 1930s, 40s and 50s, the latter of which came during a period of moderate-liberal Republican government.  Indeed, the GOP not only saw its conservatives go into a long remission, but the GOP itself became less of a conservative party in that period and moved to a centrist one.  All of this is likely to repeat should the Republicans fail in the fall by nominating either Trump or Cruz, with the practical implications that a conservative political force in this country may be so long in remission afterwards that many reading this, including the author, will have long since passed into the next world.

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Current corrected totals:

Democrats (needed to win 2,383)

Clinton:  1,630, or 1645 (467 Superdelegates)

Sanders:  880 or 870 (26 Superdelegates).

Martin O'Malley:  1 (now out)

Republicans (needed to win, 1,237)

Donald Trump:  680 or 696

Ted Cruz: 424 or 425 (1 of which is s Superdelegate, yes, really).

Marco Rubio: 166 or 167 (now out)
John Kasich: 143 or 144

Ben Carson: 8  (now out)

Jeb Bush: 4  (now out).

Carly Fiorina:  1 (now out)

Ron Paul:  1 (now out).

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March 23, 2016 

Primaries were held yesterday in Utah and Arizona.  Idaho chose its Democratic delegates.

Democrats in Utah and Idaho favored Sanders, who took most of their delegates.  In Idaho they favored Clinton.  Cruz won in Utah, as expected, and Trump in Arizona, as expected.  It was a bad day for Kasich who took no delegates at all in two results that were winner take all, but given that they were winner take all, he was not expected to have a good day.

The results:

Democrats (needed to win 2,383)

Clinton:  1,681, or 1,702 (467 Superdelegates)

Sanders:  927 or 941 (26 Superdelegates).

Martin O'Malley:  1 (now out)

Republicans (needed to win, 1,237)

Donald Trump:  739 or 755

Ted Cruz: 465 or 466 (1 of which is s Superdelegate, yes, really).

Marco Rubio: 168 or 169 (now out)

John Kasich: 143 or 144

Ben Carson: 8  (now out)

Jeb Bush: 4  (now out).

Carly Fiorina:  1 (now out)

Ron Paul:  1 (now out).

Some flux in the tallies once again.

Commentary

Yesterday's results were basically to confirm the existing results as to Cruz and Trump while putting Kasich further behind on the GOP side.  On the Democratic side, Sanders had a good day in the west.

Kasich really needs to perform well in some of the remaining GOP decisions.  Even after Ohio he remains behind Rubio, who has dropped out.  Races like yesterdays tend to confirm that the race is a two man race now in the GOP and if Kasich expects to be taken seriously at the convention, he needs to give the convention a reason to do that.

Yesterday's races came against the backdrop of serious global news which the GOP also needs to start focusing on.  The GOP race right now seems out of touch with the rest of the globe, and if this continues their chances in the fall, which are already poor in my view, will grow poorer.

March 23, 2016 

2016.  Perhaps showing how contested the election season really is this year, former President Bill Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders both planned whistle stop tours in Wyoming on this day, but both had to cancel due to the massive spring storm that shut down the Interstate and which closed the Denver airport for most of the day.  Clinton was to have campaigned for his wife in Cheyenne, which by early morning was impossible to get in and out of, and Sanders was to have campaigned in Casper and Laramie.  At least Sanders has indicated an intent to return to the state prior to the Democratic Convention taking place.

March 26, 2016

Today a series of caucuses occurred for Democrats.  Democrats in Hawaii, Washington and Alaska all chose Bernie Sanders.

The current tell of the tape:

Democrats (needed to win 2,383)

Clinton:  1,712, or 1,722 (467 Superdelegates)

Sanders:  1004 or 1044 (26 Superdelegates).

Martin O'Malley:  1 (now out)

Republicans (needed to win, 1,237)

Donald Trump:  739 or 755

Ted Cruz: 465 or 466 (1 of which is s Superdelegate, yes, really).

Marco Rubio: 168 or 169 (now out)

John Kasich: 143 or 144

Ben Carson: 8  (now out)

Jeb Bush: 4  (now out).

Carly Fiorina:  1 (now out)

Ron Paul:  1 (now out).

Some flux in the tallies still.

Commentary

One thing that's become rather aggravatingly obvious in this most unusual of election years is that the press has been quick to declare the election all but over from the start.  According to the press, Clinton has won the Democratic nomination and Trump has won the GOP nomination.  But that is appearing to be less certain all the time.

Even with the Superdelegates Clinton is only 708 delegates ahead. That may sound like a lot, but the Democrats award more delegates in each primary, and also eschew winner take all systems it should be noted, with each state.  Yes, Sanders is behind but he continues to pick up states all the time.  In elected delegates he's 268 delegates behind right now.  New York awards 291 delegates in and of itself.  It really isn't impossible by any means for Trump to close the elected gap.

Either Trump or Clinton need 2,383 delegates to take the nomination.  Right now, even with Super delegates, 671 delegates to go.  In other words, with no winner take all systems, it's going to be hard for Clinton to close that distance even if it would be extremely hard for Sanders to do it.  Less hard would be for the Democrats to end up with neither candidate with enough votes to determine the race prior to the convention.

And for all the misplaced talk of the GOP being required to give Trump the nomination if he enters the convention with a plurality of votes there's no real reason, at this point, to believe that all 469 of the Super delegates will continue to support Clinton.  It's pretty apparent that dislike of Clinton in the Democratic party is widespread.  If the Democrats enter the race with the race undecided, I doubt very much that Sanders would be picked over Clinton, but it's not wholly impossible that both could be dumped for a candidate that everyone generally likes and who has just as much claim to the nomination by hereditary right, that candidate perhaps being Joe Biden.  Biden would look just as good as Clinton or Sanders in a race against Trump, and probably better in a race against Rubio (yes, I said that), Cruz, Kasich or Romney.

Okay, that last collection of names makes it pretty clear that at this point I doubt that the GOP is going to pick a candidate prior to the convention either.  Oddly a week or so ago that was widely acknowledged by the pundits.  Now many are saying that Trump will have it sewn up prior to the convention.  Maybe he will, but there's a really strong chance he will not.

Trump needs to pick up 498 more delegates to take the GOP nomination.  That's going to take awhile no matter what.  Cruz would need 772, more delegates than Trump presently has.  Kasich, who clearly isn't angling to take the nomination in a majority of pre convention delegate fashion, would need 1094, which isn't going to happen.  The problem for every GOP candidate is that most Republican contests award small amounts of delegates, not large ones.  The GOP New York contest, for example, awards only 95 delegates.  A lot of these are now winner take all or winner take most, and Trump will not take them all.  He is very unlikely to take the remaining Western contests, outside of California, maybe.  Indeed, the race is showing more and more that the GOP is split not only on ideological lines and demographic lines, but on geographic lines.  So a brokered convention is highly likely.

If the Republicans have a brokered convention, Trump will not be the nominee.  At this point, more Republican delegates have been chosen against him rather than for him, which his campaign is aware of as it is arguing that a plurality of votes entitles Trump to the nomination.  It doesn't.  Even a majority would not, if that were not in the system, but the system is geared to choose a nominee for the party, not to simply pick the person holding the most votes.  There is no reason that the parties must adopt a first past the post system, and indeed there's real reason to question why the general election system is first past the post.  Some countries, when choosing leaders, use a primary round of voting to weed out candidates until two are chosen, and then choose from them.  That essentially is what the party selection system does in the US.

If the current trend holds, and it might very well not, and Trump goes into a convention without enough delegates to take it, but a plurality, what will occurs is that the convention will be noisy and embarrassing, but some other candidate will be chosen.  Maybe Cruz, maybe Paul Ryan, maybe Mitt Romney, and maybe even Rubio or Kasich.  The combined Rubia and Kasich delegates are unlikely to support Trump or Cruz if they can avoid it,and are never going to support Trump.  Cruz delegates, at the end of the day, would likely support a compromise candidate if a position was left for Cruz.

All the parties at this point are looking towards the Fall, and Clinton is already operating on the cautious assumption that she will be the Democratic nominee.  The current polls indicate that if the contest is between Trump and Clinton she will win by margins not seen since Reagan.  There's little doubt that Clinton would beat Trump.  While it's highly speculative, chances aren't bad that Sanders could beat Trump as well, which has to be emboldening the Democratic left.  Why not, they must be thinking, try to put in Sanders, a true left wing non establishment candidate, if Trump is going to be the nominee?  Indeed, Sanders has shown surprising strength in some traditionally conservative areas of the country, such as the West.

Knowing that, and figuring things from the reverse, the GOP knows it faces a disaster if Trump is the candidate, but that if Clinton is the Democrat they have a good chance of beating her if they can survive their own convention and if they can choose somebody else.  Cruz doesn't quite seem like that guy, but Romney or Rubio might be.

So the race goes on.