2016 | The Bitchy Pundit - Part 3

I’m Worried About The General Election

March 1, 2016 by Bitchy

I haven’t been all that concerned with how the presidential election is going to turn out until this week. I had no doubt that whether it’s Hillary or Bernie on the democratic side, no republican candidate was going to pose a threat.

I can now see Trump’s path to the presidency. Let’s be clear: Trump is going to be the republican nominee. Unless the RNC pulls a seriously unseemly maneuver to stop him, I don’t see how Trump can be stopped.

When Trump announced, I didn’t think there was a snowball’s chance in hell that he was going to be the nominee. I was wrong. When Trump’s numbers were at around 24% of republican voters, I didn’t think that it was possible for his numbers to go up because they held steady at about 24% for months. I was wrong. When his poll numbers moved into the 30s, I thought that the republican party apparatchik were going to strategize over who they needed to get to drop out in order to consolidate the “establishment” vote. I was wrong.

So now Trump is almost certainly going to be the nominee. He steamrolled the entire republican party establishment and outbullied the bullies who like most bullies, were so scared when confronted, they were literally stunned and unable to act.

Donald Trump is the populist candidate on the republican side. He doesn’t have a platform other than his hatred for all things not white, and his seeming disdain for politicians and the establishment. He’s unpolished, unscripted, unconventional, and completely unconcerned with what politicos have to say about him. When you mix those qualities with the factphobia that republicans have contracted from their exposure to nearly twenty years of Fox News propaganda, you have an unstoppable force.

The disdain for the establishment isn’t sequestered within the republican party. Bernie is our populist. Despite a main stream media blackout until the day after the Iowa caucus, despite the (as Larry Wilmore puts it) top secret democratic debates that were all scheduled when television viewership is at its lowest, despite massively handicapping himself by refusing to have a superPAC, Bernie has managed to draw the biggest crowds we’ve seen at any political rally in this election cycle. He’s managed to keep up with Hillary in fundraising. Liberals aren’t any happier with corporatist, establishment candidates than republicans are.

Here’s where my worry lies: if Hillary is the nominee, we’re putting up a corporatist, establishment candidate against a populist. Ugh. That’s not a bet I feel good about. Head to head polls consistently show Bernie beating Trump by a larger margin than Hillary does. If you average all the polling, you get Hillary beating Trump by 2.8 points, while Bernie beats him by 6 points.

Why? Because it’s populist versus populist. More importantly, it’s a populist who has nothing but fear and hate to offer you, versus a populist who wants to give you back what the rich looted from you. I’m a sunny optimist so I don’t believe that Americans are more hateful than they are hopeful.

I feel great about putting a liberal populist up against a right wing populist. I feel great about putting a liberal corporatist up against a republican corporatist. I do not feel good about putting up any establishment corporatist against any populist in this climate.

I especially don’t feel good about it given the polling we have on Hillary versus Trump and Bernie versus Trump. I know what a lot of people are going to say at this point; “polls this early out are meaningless“. To which I say, no information is ever meaningless so stop dismissing information you don’t like. You never get the luxury of hindsight voting before an election happens. This information is the best information you have right now, and objective decisions are made by examining the information you have before you at the time that you have to make a decision. So unless you have other information to contradict this information, please spare me your efforts at dismissing information. This isn’t one, two, or five polls. This is information based on seven months of polling. At no point does Hillary ever do better against Trump than Bernie does. There are no outliers on this in any of the polling. You can’t logically dismiss this.

Let me address something else that is being said about democratic voter turnout. It’s true that democrats almost always have a voter turnout problem, but there is a cyclical element to primary election turnout that no one is talking about. Historically, the party who hasn’t held the white house for eight years are more fired up to vote in the primaries. That’s just a fact. Republicans were always going to be more fired up this primary season than democrats, just like democrats were more fired up after being Bushwhacked for eight years. Yes, president Obama had a lot to do with the numbers we saw in 2008, but that cyclical component was also a factor. The “problem” isn’t an issue with Bernie’s base not showing up to vote. The problem is that the cyclical voting patterns aren’t being taken into consideration here, and this election is being compared to a historic and anomalous election when Obama ran.

I don’t believe that millennial apathy is Bernie’s biggest issue in this primary.

I believe that Bernie’s biggest issue is that independents can’t vote in a lot of democratic primaries. More people refer to themselves as independents now, than in the past two decades. Do I really believe these people are “independent” and regularly vote across party lines? No. But I do believe that referring to ones self as an “independent” is a pretty good indication of how that person feels about establishment politics. Today, 39% of the electorate calls themselves independents. 32% call themselves democrats, and 23% refer to themselves as republicans. Yes, you read that correctly: the biggest block of the electorate refer to themselves as independents.

Here are some responses from a Quinnipiac poll of independents done in December:

Shares our values – Clinton 33%, Sanders 47%
Cares about the needs of people like me – Clinton 40%, Sanders 59%
Honest and Trustworthy – Clinton 26%, Sanders 64%

Sanders leads Clinton among independents by a range of 20 – 50 points, depending on which poll you read. I could only find three polls of independents by credible polling firms. I don’t normally put too much weight in a mere three polls, but the results I’m seeing would explain how Bernie has a wider margin over Trump than Hillary does. More “independents” would have to be supporting Bernie than Trump. Populist versus populist.

I’m not as comfortable with a 2.8 point lead over Trump, as I am with a 6 point lead. If just one San Bernadino style event happens in the next eight months, that 2.8 points could evaporate. If you look at the polls, San Bernadino is what increased Trump’s support from the mid 20s (where he had been for a couple of months) into the low 30s.

I’m starting to see Trump’s path to the presidency, and it’s terrifying. Why did I highlight all of the ways I was wrong in the beginning of this post? Three reasons;

I can admit when I’m wrong so that
I can learn from my past mistakes and
Never underestimate Trump again

The “electability” argument that Hillary and her supporters have been making until now has been completely turned around on her by Trump. That’s the reality based on the information that we have today. Since I’m neither clairvoyant, nor am I prone to dismiss information just to make myself feel better about the opinion I started off with, I’m very worried about the general election.

This would be a change in my position from four months ago, that we had nothing to worry about from any republican nominee. That change in opinion is based on information that I didn’t have four months ago.

The Most Important Election Of Your Lifetime

February 14, 2016 by Bitchy

We always hear that. Every single election is “the most important election of your lifetime”. That’s almost always hyperbole, but not this time. This time, we’re voting for a four or eight year term for the next president and a twenty to thirty year term for the next Supreme Court Justice. This really is the most important election of your lifetime because the balance of the Supreme Court is in play.

Now that Antonin Scalia has moved on to the big Klan meeting in the sky, we have the opportunity to move the court from the far right to the center. I’m going to pause my train of thought for a moment to articulate that Klan comment I just made. I meant it, and I’m sick of people trotting out the old “respect for the dead” line today. I believe that you die as you lived. Here’s how Antonin Scalia lived (these are all direct quotes).

On equality:

“Of course it is our moral heritage that one should not hate any human being or class of human beings. But I had thought that one could consider certain conduct reprehensible—murder, for example, or polygamy, or cruelty to animals—and could exhibit even ‘animus’ toward such conduct. Surely that is the only sort of ‘animus’ at issue here: moral disapproval of homosexual conduct[.] It’s true that people generally disapprove of murder, but there’s more going on in laws banning murder than mere disfavor—the rights of the person being murdered, for example.”

“[The Texas anti-sodomy statute] undoubtedly imposes constraints on liberty. So do laws prohibiting prostitution, recreational use of heroin, and, for that matter, working more than 60 hours per week in a bakery. State laws against bigamy, same-sex marriage, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, fornication, bestiality, and obscenity,” along with any other law “based on moral choices,” are now “called into question” by the court’s decision.”

“This Court has no business imposing upon all Americans the resolution favored by the elite class from which the Members of this institution are selected, pronouncing that “animosity” toward homosexuality is evil. I vigorously dissent…Coloradans are, as I say, entitled to be hostile toward homosexual conduct, the fact is that the degree of hostility reflected by Amendment 2 is the smallest conceivable”

On the second amendment:

“It doesn’t apply to cannons—but I suppose there are hand-held rocket launchers that can bring down airplanes, that will have to be decided.”

On a woman’s right to choose:

“The right to abort, we are told, inheres in “liberty” because it is among “a person’s most basic decisions,”…it involves a “most intimate and personal choic[e],”; it is “central to personal dignity and autonomy,”; it “originate[s] within the zone of conscience and belief,”; it is “too intimate and personal” for state interference; it reflects “intimate views” of a “deep, personal character,”; it involves “intimate relationships,” and notions of “personal autonomy and bodily integrity,”; and it concerns a particularly “important decision”. But it is obvious to anyone applying “reasoned judgment” that the same adjectives can be applied to many forms of conduct that this Court has held are not entitled to constitutional protection–because, like abortion, they are forms of conduct that have long been criminalized in American society. Those adjectives might be applied, for example, to homosexual sodomy, polygamy, adult incest, and suicide, all of which are equally “intimate” and “deep[ly] personal” decisions involving “personal autonomy and bodily integrity,” and all of which can constitutionally be proscribed because it is our unquestionable constitutional tradition that they are proscribable. (citations omitted)”

“I write separately to reiterate my view that the Court’s abortion jurisprudence, including Casey and Roe v. Wade, has no basis in the Constitution.”

On equal protection:

“Sorry, to tell you that. … But, you know, if indeed the current society has come to different views, that’s fine. You do not need the constitution to reflect the wishes of the current society. Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex. The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn’t. Nobody ever thought that that’s what it meant. Nobody ever voted for that. If the current society wants to outlaw discrimination by sex, hey we have things called legislatures, and they enact things called laws. You don’t need a constitution to keep things up-to-date. All you need is a legislature and a ballot box. You don’t like the death penalty anymore, that’s fine. You want a right to abortion? There’s nothing in the Constitution about that. But that doesn’t mean you cannot prohibit it. Persuade your fellow citizens it’s a good idea and pass a law. That’s what democracy is all about. It’s not about nine superannuated judges who have been there too long, imposing these demands on society.”

And finally, Scalia’s blatant racism:

“There are those who contend that it does not benefit African Americans to get them into the University of Texas where they do not do well, as opposed to having them go to a less-advanced school, a slower-track school where they do well.”

“Whenever a society adopts racial entitlements, it is very difficult to get out of them through the normal political processes. I don’t think there is anything to be gained by any Senator to vote against continuation of this act. And I am fairly confident it will be reenacted in perpetuity unless — unless a court can say it does not comport with the Constitution. You have to show, when you are treating different States differently, that there’s a good reason for it.

That’s the — that’s the concern that those of us who — who have some questions about this statute have. It’s — it’s a concern that this is not the kind of a question you can leave to Congress. There are certain districts in the House that are black districts by law just about now. And even the Virginia Senators, they have no interest in voting against this. The State government is not their government, and they are going to lose — they are going to lose votes if they do not reenact the Voting Rights Act.”

I won’t even go into his disdain for democracy with Bush v Gore, Citizens United or McKutcheon. Anton Scalia does not deserve any respect from me, and he won’t get it.

Back to my point. This really is the most important election of your lifetime. I’m talking to you, democrats. I know that the primaries aren’t over yet, but you all need to start wrapping your minds around embracing whoever the democratic nominee is going to be. I know, I know….you can’t ever see yourself voting for Bernie or Hillary. Well guess what? It’s time to get your vision checked so that you can see it.

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I’m on team Bernie. But I’ve also made it very clear that I will go out and vote for Hillary if she’s the nominee. I’ve defended (you should click on that link) Hillary when she’s been falsely accused, and I’ve stood up for Bernie when he speaks the objective truth. I have also criticized both when they’re wrong. Politics isn’t emotional for me, and it shouldn’t be for you.

You need to start focusing on your own self interest. That self interest is stopping a lunatic republican from putting a young, spry Scalia clone on the Supreme Court.

Republicans in the senate are going to do their damnedest to make sure that President Obama doesn’t make this Supreme Court appointment, as is his right per our constitution. That means they’re going to punt this nomination until after inauguration day. That also means that their biggest donors are about to pick who the republican nominee is. They’re going to have to coalesce around one candidate. And they’re going to throw every smear they can on Hillary and Bernie.

You shouldn’t help them.

At this point, I would like to get into the difference between a smear and an objective truth. Here are some examples to help illustrate:

“Hillary broke the law when she used her private email server to orchestrate an attack on Benghazi.”

That would be a smear, since using her private server broke no laws, and investigation after investigation has found nothing untoward in regard to Hillary’s actions pertaining to Benghazi.

“Bill and Hillary Clinton are completely corrupt.”

That would also be a smear, since no one in the history of our country have been more investigated than the Clintons. Those investigations have resulted in finding precisely no illegal activity.

“The financial industry are among Hillary’s top donors, and they’re expecting a return on their investment.”

That would be an objective truth, and over 80% of us agree that corporate money is corrupting our politics. That would also be an objective truth that you won’t be hearing in the general election, should Hillary become the nominee because her opponent will be significantly more guilty of participating in this particular form of legalized corruption than she has been.

“Hillary is much more qualified to be president than Bernie.”

That would also be an objective truth, which I laid out in the post I linked to above. Bernie is pretty weak on foreign policy. That’s just a fact, but so was President Obama. Getting corporate money out of politics is my primary policy concern, so Bernie is my candidate. That doesn’t mean that I have to retool this particular objective truth in order to make the choice I’ve made.

“Bernie has taken money from Wall Street too.”

That would be a smear. Bernie has received a tiny fraction of his total fundraising efforts from the democratic party apparatchik over the course of his career. Some (or most) of that money may have come from Wall Street. This is not the same as accepting donations from Wall Street, who clearly despise him. If you want to use this smear, you’re going to have to start talking about Elizabeth Warren’s Wall Street contributions too. It’s just not an intellectually honest point.

“[Bernie] [Hillary] can’t win the general election.”

That one is not a smear, but it’s also objectively false. This one is simply projection. We have a mountain of polls demonstrating that either Hillary or Bernie can resoundingly beat any republican who may end up being the nominee if we all support our nominee.

That’s precisely what we all have to do. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t support your chosen candidate in the primary. We all should, and I’m with Bernie for as long as Bernie is in the race. But I am saying that you need to start getting used to the idea of supporting whoever the democratic nominee is going to be.

So maybe, instead of putting up posts against either Bernie or Hillary, we can focus on posting for the one we support? We can support our chosen candidate without tearing down the one we’re not voting for in the primary. I know that’s hard, and I know that some people are so emotionally invested in this election that they can’t see the difference between posting an objective truth and a smear.

So let’s make a deal: how about we all agree to post an 80/20 ratio of positive posts supporting our candidate? And how about we use the same ratio for our comments? Why am I proposing this? Because I believe that focusing on the positive will make it easier for everyone to do what needs to be done in the general election. If you’re constantly making vitriolic comments about a candidate, your emotions are more likely to get in the way of your pragmatism.

Let’s all try and advocate our primary positions with more positivity than what’s been happening on our side of the primary so far. The next thirty years worth of Supreme Court decisions is dependent on decisions that democrats make over the next nine months. Let’s make smart choices that are in our own self interest.

What New Hampshire Means

February 10, 2016 by Bitchy

This one will be short and sweet. Here’s my analysis of the democratic primary so far. Yes, New Hampshire was good for Bernie but don’t get too excited yet Bernie supporters.

In my estimation, we won’t have a real race on our hands until after South Carolina. Right now, Hillary is up by about 30 points in South Carolina. Let me tell you what the first 3 primary states mean these days. New Hampshire and Iowa don’t really represent America at all anymore so the only real relevance in those states lies in viability and momentum. They’re always going to be terribly troubling places for the national front runners because they have almost nothing to gain by winning those primaries. New Hampshire and Iowa can however, make an “unviable” candidate viable. Not very viable, but merely viable. On the democratic side, South Carolina is a barometer for how the black vote will go. Without significant black and Latino supporters, a democrat’s chances of winning the primary aren’t awesome.

Bernie needs to come within 5 points of Hillary in South Carolina before we officially have a race on our hands. If he can pull that off, her inevitability will completely evaporate and it will be 2008 all over again. We’ll know who the nominee is going to be on Super Tuesday. If Bernie doesn’t come within 10 points of Hillary, his viability shrinks considerably. He will definitely hand in until Super Tuesday, but her inevitability won’t be damaged much.

Bernie met with Al Sharpton in Harlem this morning. My assumption when I heard about the meeting was that they were strategizing about South Carolina. When I heard Ben Jealous’ representative walk into the restaurant, I knew that they were planning a serious effort to bring in the black vote. Jealous endorsed Bernie 5 days ago. That was no accident. He knows that it’s all about South Carolina now.

Since I’m not one to prognosticate without some solidly unimpeachable evidence, I’m still not prepared to pull out a crystal ball and predict the winner. Anything is still possible.

On the republican side, I have no freaking idea what the hell is going on. The most interesting thing to me at this point (it was clear to me that Kasich was going to come in second) is the fact that Chris Christie (who will never be the nominee) may have succeeded in blowing up Rubio’s chances. Remember how I kept saying that Rubio was as dumb as a bag of rocks when he announced? Well, Christie managed to successfully point that out. The more Rubio does his Ruboto shtick, the more he will become a laughing stock. But he’s so dimwitted, that going off script may actually be even more damaging. Watching him implode will be nothing but fun though.

Oh, there’s never a dull moment in presidential politics!

6 Coin Tosses

February 2, 2016 by Bitchy

So a lot has been made of coin tossgate in Iowa last night. Let me weigh in with my two cents. The unlikeliness of the coin toss outcomes is irrelevant, so let’s stop focusing in on how dubious that whole thing was. The “it was rigged” talk is pointless. We’ve known that the democratic apparatchik has had their thumb on the scales of this primary for a while now. There’s no point in crying over milk that hasn’t even been spilled.

Why do I say that? Because there were six coin tosses involved in the process of electing a presidential nominee. Let’s leave the absurdity of the coin toss procedure aside for now. Bernie Sanders, who we’ve been told for months has no chance of ever getting the nomination necessitated six coin tosses against the unbeatable establishment candidate, who we’ve all been told is a foregone conclusion to be the democratic nominee for president. Every single time a coin had to be tossed, Bernie emerged victorious by demonstrating that narrative about his having no chance completely wrong.

The outcome of the coin toss was completely irrelevant, and focusing on on who “won” Iowa in terms of delegates gained is the wrong way to look at it. Bernie won a big victory for people-powered politics. I would go as far as to say that Bernie won a big victory for democracy. The idea of having an unchallenged primary should be repugnant to anyone who believes in democracy. We don’t have coronations in America, we have elections.

The fact that a dark horse candidate who put himself at a massive disadvantage by not superPACing himself through an American election, tied in a primary race should make everyone happy, regardless of who they support. This is what democracy is supposed to look like.

So Bernie supporters, calm down. You won. The cloud under which Hillary was declared the victor is enough to make that victory irrelevant. It doesn’t matter. There’s no reason to dwell on the declared winner. The fact that most of the headlines said that Hillary “eked out a victory” isn’t really a win for her. I actually think that it’s hurt her. I also think that the cloud under which she was pronounced the victor will energize more people onto team Bernie.

Speaking of being energized, I want to say one thing; the vitriol between Hillary supporters and Bernie supporters is ridiculous and unproductive. Approaching politics emotionally is precisely the wrong way to approach politics. I have heard liberals say the most ludicrous things in support of their candidate of choice over the past few months. At the end of the day, either Bernie or Hillary is far more preferable to any republican candidate running for president. Please don’t lose sight of that. Your emotional investment in your primary candidate needs to end when the primaries do. We have a minimum of two likely Supreme Court nominations on the table for the next president. Don’t let your emotions get in the way of doing what needs to be done on election day because that would be an incredibly foolish mistake.

So let’s please table the “Hillary is corrupt” or the “Bernie can’t get anything done” talk after Super Tuesday, when you all need to shake it off. If you don’t get over it, you will regret it deeply when a 42 year old version of Clarence Thomas or Antonin Scalia are appointed to the Supreme Court.

As an aside, I think that Rubio was the big winner on the republican side last night. He’s the establishment candidate who did pretty well. I promise you that Jeb! has been on the phone with the big donors all day, getting his marching papers. I don’t know why he would stay in the race until New Hampshire, but I promise he won’t see anymore superPAC money coming in. Cruz is universally despised by both the republican and the democratic establishment, so his path to the nomination is going to be hard if the establishment band together around one candidate. The only possible candidate left for them is Rubio.

Yes Trump can still pull it off but I do suspect that he’s going to continue to be the outlier in the polls because I don’t believe that a lot of his supporters aren’t likely voters. I think that if there’s another upset in New Hampshire, he’s basically done (even though he will push through to super Tuesday).