Month: November 2022

Nate Cohn and Nate Silver have been arguing with each other on Twitter lately, but one thing they agree about is that the midterm election outcomes are too uncertain to risk their reputations making a firm prediction. It’s the day before the election, though, and people want some kind of commitment.

Instead, Silver gives us the predictable “two scenarios” treatment. On the one hand, could be the polls suck but so do the fundamentals for the Democrats. Either way, big Republican win! Or, on the other hand, maybe “pollsters face more reputational risk from again missing high on Democrats than the other way around” and are skewing things in the GOP’s favor–the Democrats do better than expected!

Meanwhile, Cohn is even less committal.

Everything from a Democratic hold in the Senate and a fairly close race for the House to something like a Republican rout is well within the range of realistic possibilities on Tuesday.

In Cohn’s case, I believe he’s far more skeptical than Silver about the overall quality of the polls this cycle, which provides justification for throwing up his hands rather than going out on a limb.

However you look at it, the overall pundits’ narrative is definitely giving Republicans reason to rubs their hands in glee and expectation. And there’s a line of thought that there’s value to looking like a winner on the eve of Election Day because people don’t like to vote for losers. This is one reason why Democrats are fighting back against the narrative, arguing that the polling averages are inundated with low-quality Republican-aligned surveys, or that the early vote is great or youth turnout is up, etc.

But there’s a flip side to high expectations. Democrats know that they’re predicted to lose, but they also see that a lot of races are very tight. They aren’t complacent, although there surely are some who are resigned. They feel like they’re fighting for their lives and the future of democracy, and it might be better overall that they’re not convinced everything will be okay. It could help their turnout.

All this stuff is probably close to a wash, to be truthful.

To me, the problem is that the Republicans are competitive after four years of Trump, a failed coup attempt, and the overturning of Roe v. Wade. The electorate is fucked in the head, which means the country is probably fucked, too. Today, I have some (probably delusional) hope that the Democrats will hold the House and expand their majority in the Senate. But if Dems lose one or both chambers of Congress, I don’t think I’ll experience hope again in this lifetime.

I really do feel, if that’s the outcome, that everything I’ve done for the last 16 years was nothing more than sticking me finger in the dyke. The town couldn’t be saved.

I don’t know if Mandela Barnes will defeat Senator Ron Johnson or not. It seems right now that it would be a bit of an upset, but not a completely shocking result. If you step back and think about it, though, Wisconsin is 87 percent white. Even if Barnes, an African-American, falls a little short, if nearly half of the state’s citizens vote for him, that’s something positive.

But then I also remember that not too long ago, Wisconsin was represented in the U.S. Senate by two Jewish men (Herb Kohl and Russ Feingold) despite there being only 42,000 Jews (less than one percent of the population) living in the state. Currently, in addition to Sen. Johnson, the state is represented by Sen. Tammy Baldwin who is openly lesbian. I don’t have statistics, but that definitely makes her a small minority.

It seems to me like Wisconsinites are not hung up on voting for people who look like them, worship like them, or have family structures like them. They get past that and vote on how think candidates will represent them, and that’s to their credit.

That doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot of racism in Wisconsin. It doesn’t mean anti-Semitism is uncommon or that LGBT people don’t suffer violence and discrimination. It just means that there’s a refreshing amount of open-mindedness and tolerance in the state’s political culture, as reflected by the results.

At least historically, people there aren’t voting tribally in sufficient numbers to turn every election into a battle about identity. It’s not the Deep South. But politicians like Ron Johnson are doing everything thing to change that. They want to Southify the North so that whites vote as whites, and they vote as conservatives.

Democrats can walk right into that trap if they’re not careful, but it looks to me like Barnes is savvy enough to resist that temptation. His campaign isn’t centered around racially polarizing issues.

But Johnson is doing his best to say that it is:

In his stump speech during the past several days, Johnson has repeated some of Barnes’s past comments about systemic racism and said the Democratic nominee has shown “contempt” for America. “That’s what he thinks about you. Literally, do you want him representing you?” Johnson asked a crowd in Black River Falls.

“No!” several people yelled.

Johnson continued: “Why does he want to represent people that he views are just systemically racist?”

Johnson has run ads that darken Barnes’ face and write his name in graffiti.

I hope Wisconsinites look at this behavior and ask themselves why they’d vote for Johnson if that’s what he thinks about them and their racial beliefs and prejudices. Because it’s Johnson who is working on the operating assumption that the state’s electorate is so bigoted that they’ll respond positively to his messaging. He’s the one who thinks the state is so systemically racist that he can tap into it and win reelection.

That would almost definitely work in most of the Deep South, but it might not work in the Upper Midwest.

Hello again painting fans.

This week I will be continuing with the painting of Bodiam Castle in the UK. The photo that I’m using is seen directly below.

I’ll be using my usual acrylic paints on a 5×7 inch canvas panel.

When last seen the painting appeared as it does in the photo seen directly below.

Since that time I have continued to work on the painting.

For this week’s cycle I have concentrated my efforts to the far rear. I have begun the hedgerows and green areas. More detail to come. More next week.

The current state of the painting is seen in the photo directly below.

I’ll have more progress to show you next week. See you then.
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Maybe John Ganz and I are sharing a brain, I don’t know. But I endorse what he’s written about the problem we face with the Republican Party’s aversion to allowing free and fair elections or accepting the results when they lose. Before I get to that, though, I do want to acknowledge the basic point that Josh Barro is making with his complaint about the Democrats’ pro-democracy messaging.

When Democrats talk about “democracy,” they’re talking about the importance of institutions that ensure the voters get a say among multiple choices and the one they most prefer gets to rule. But they are also saying voters do not get to do that in this election. The message is that there is only one party contesting this election that is committed to democracy — the Democrats — and therefore only one real choice available. If voters reject Democrats’ agenda or their record on issues including inflation, crime, and immigration (or abortion, for that matter), they have no recourse at the ballot box — they simply must vote for Democrats anyway, at least until such time as the Republican Party is run by the likes of Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger.

This amounts to telling voters that they have already lost their democracy.

On the surface, Barro has identified a contradiction. On the one hand, the Dems are saying that they’re the defenders of political choice and then on other hand they’re insisting that there’s only one choice in this election. Can both things be true?

First, let’s be clear that voters most definitely have the freedom to vote for whomever they want in the 2022 midterm elections, and if they don’t like their options they can write someone in or stay home. There are no Democrats arguing that only Democratic candidates should appear on the ballots or that voters should be restricted in their choices. There are no elected Democratic election officials or gubernatorial candidates promising that if they or their party wins, the opposition will never be victorious in their state again.

What President Biden and other Democrats are arguing is that this freedom of choice isn’t guaranteed in future elections and is, in fact, imperiled by the Republican Party. So, they’re not saying, for example, that anti-choice Republicans have to vote for pro-choice candidates. They’re saying that one risk of voting for an anti-choice candidate is that you could lose your political choice baby along with your reproductive choice bathwater. This isn’t a threat. It’s not coercive. It is information. It is prognostication.

Now, if you accept that this risk is real, it can clarify your options in the voting booth but it doesn’t restrict them. Contrary to what Barro says, this isn’t a matter of having already lost your democracy but a matter of taking measures to preserve it. And if you believe what the Democrats are saying, even if you oppose them on most or all of the other issues of the day, the restriction in choice you’re feeling is coming entirely from the Republican side’s anti-democratic characteristics.  The GOP is forcing you to oppose them even though you prefer their policies in other respects. Objectively, this calculation exists and is the same whether the Democrats talk about it or not.

Now, Barro goes on to make a more political point, which is that the Democrats would do better, if what they’re warning about is true, to follow the example of other political parties and coalitions from other countries who show more ideological flexibility when faced with some kind of existential threat to their democracy. As Ganz points out, Barro’s examples from Israel and Hungary are comically bad, but the premise makes a good degree of sense.

Shouldn’t the Democrats temporarily abandon their ideological agenda in an effort to be as welcoming as possible to anyone who is concerned about preserving our democracy for the future? It’s true that Republicans Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger have done this with their own ideology and are out there campaigning for some Democrats. Couldn’t the Democrats meet them halfway in the middle?

It’s an attractive idea, but since it’s presented in a strategic wrapper, it worth noting that blowing off your base’s political ambitions is far from a slam dunk way to win elections. Elections are won by getting the most votes, not by assuaging John Barro’s struggles with cognitive dissonance.

…if you’re going to tell people they must vote for your side to keep a dangerous authoritarian out, you also do what you can to make them feel ideologically comfortable within the coalition on issues besides elections themselves.

If it were possible to win elections with just crossover votes, without turning out your own natural coalition, this strategy would be solid. But, realistically, the best that can be done is to tone down some of the messaging’s hard edges in a bid to be more welcoming.

The problem the Democrats have right now is really not that they’re doing an inadequate job of explaining the threat to democracy if the Republicans win, nor is it that their platform is too partisan to attract independents and conservatives. Their problem is that they’re in charge at a time when people are very unhappy. Voters tend to express their unhappiness by punishing incumbents. A winning strategy has to convince a lot of people that the Republicans are the source of their unhappiness, and that’s a heavy lift.

Not a few political strategists think any discussion of the threat to democracy is wasted energy that should be put to talking about issues that are more likely to drive voter choice, like inflation, abortion and crime. So, maybe the Democrats should focus less on being the place for a broad non-threatening coalition of supporters of democracy and more on what voters indicate they care about the most.

To me, though, Ganz gets to the heart of the matter when he writes that the Republicans “don’t want the country to be a democracy anymore. They know it. We know it. But for some reason all these pundits say we shouldn’t say it.”

We should say it, and by saying it there are some voters who will actually listen.

Enough to save the day?

We will soon find out.

There’s evidence is support of either party exceeding expectations in the upcoming midterms, which is why I’m a little confused that seemingly every reputable or semi-reputable prognosticator is saying the tide is turning the Republicans’ way. It could be armageddon.

https://twitter.com/BooMan23/status/1587785678280019970?s=20&t=k09bqlZ-5W0IU7DvfuCEIQ

But the Democrats are noting that they have their usual early voting advantage, and that many of the better pollsters are showing some good, or at least modestly encouraging, results in many key races.

What has me worried more than anything else is just the general trend of the polling. If there’s late movement, it doesn’t appear to be favoring the Democrats. The likely voter models seem to pretty consistently look better for the Republicans than the registered voter numbers, which indicates a possible differential in turnout enthusiasm. Relatedly, early youth turnout is down, although they strongly prefer the Democrats and say they’re going to vote. On the other hand, young voters really don’t like the job Joe Biden is doing.

Also troubling, issue polling is pretty emphatic that inflation is a bigger driver of voter preference than abortion, democracy or any other factor, especially among independents. Relentless crime messaging by the GOP is probably having an impact, too.

Yet, to be truthful, while I’m prepared for a possibly fatal blow to our country next Tuesday, the available evidence isn’t so one-sided that I feel safe predicting it. More likely than not is a reasonable guess, but outlets like Axios aren’t justified in saying, “just about everything is breaking in Republicans’ favor.” In some places, like Nevada, it seems like the Republicans peeked last week and the movement is currently more toward the Democrats. There’s also a lot of junk polling, and the preponderance of it seems to be produced by Republican-aligned outfits.

However you feel about it, most of the really crucial races look very tight, which means we could be seeing some late calls and even some recounts. That means all the usual election strategies still apply, and it’s possible that knocking a few doors or making a few calls or dragging a few adult children to the polls could make a difference in some races. So, rather than making yourself crazy, it’s best to keep active.

Hi everyone at the Frog Pond. When life is stressful, it helps to have some calming music. This track by Aphex Twin has worked for me since the early 1990s (wow, that’s been a while then):

The YouTuber who created this video must have been recording in and around Budapest. I visited some of the locations depicted in the video when I visited Budapest in 2014. You see some Soviet-era apartment buildings on the Pest side of Budapest, as well as some scenes around the park that houses some museums, Heroes Square, and a monument to those who fought the 1956 Revolution that would be, tragically, quashed by the USSR. That monument gets featured at the end and is given a fun abstract treatment.

I like this video because it seems so hopeful. Then again, there was still some hope when this video was first uploaded. I actually sensed a hopeful mood among the people I met with while I was in Budapest in 2014. Reality hadn’t quite yet sunk in that the Orban regime was devolving its democracy. These days, Hungary seems more an ally of a different Kremlin dictatorship than the one that dominated it in the Soviet era. I wonder what a visit there would feel like now. This is a video that belongs to an era that is now increasingly in the rearview mirror.

I hope this post finds you all well and I hope some of you will take a moment to give me a shout. I know there are still plenty of lurkers who visit.

Cheers!

Last Christmas Eve, a meteoroid struck Mars causing a substantial marsquake. Despite being the largest observed planetary impact “on record in the entire solar system,” it wasn’t such a big deal.  The rock was only an estimated 39 feet across, and the hole it created was only about 70 feet deep. It would have burned up in Earth’s denser atmosphere.

Of more concern is that “astronomers have discovered a giant asteroid hiding in the glare of the sun that might one day cross paths with Earth.” This sucker would probably sterilize the surface of our home planet. It’s called “2022 AP7,” and it’s almost a mile wide. It travels around the Sun between Earth and Venus, but it’s orbit intersects with our own.

“Over time, this asteroid will get brighter and brighter in the sky as it starts crossing Earth’s orbit closer and closer to where the Earth actually is,” Dr. Sheppard said.

It’s possible that “way down the line, in the next few thousand years, it could turn into a problem for our descendants,” said Alan Fitzsimmons, an astronomer at Queen’s University Belfast who was not involved with the study.

And if, in the unluckiest of timelines, 2022 AP7 ultimately impacts Earth?

“This is what we call a planet killer,” Dr. Sheppard said. “If this one hits the Earth, it would cause planetwide destruction. It would be very bad for life as we know it.”

Your level of concern about this may vary. You won’t be here in 100 years, let alone a few thousand. Two thousand years ago, Emperor Tiberius of Rome probably would have found such a warning of secondary importance.

In any case, NASA recently demonstrated that they can push an asteroid into a different orbit. Surely, our capabilities will be far greater with a couple millennia to develop our scientific knowledge, right?

But in the entire history of mankind, it’s only in the last few weeks that we could say we might be able to survive such a challenge. And a lot of things had to come together to give us this power. Even today, only a handful of human beings have the knowledge required to pull it off, and only a handful of nations have the needed resources. The rest of us are as helpless as sheep.

And most of us don’t care to learn what we’d need to know, assuming we’re even capable of learning it. Most of us are likely to resent the people who understand the science because they make us feel stupid and inferior. Most of us don’t want to invest resources in science if it takes away from things that can more immediately and directly help us.

This is roughly the same problem we have when it comes to climate change. It’s the same problem we have we preserving our representative system of government here in America. All indications suggest that the equivalent of a meteoroid impact is going to hit our country a week from today when the votes are counted for the midterm elections. Someone like Donald Trump taking over one of the country’s two main political parties may have been a low probability event, but in the context of centuries, low probability events can take on the flavor of inevitability.

The smartest among us understand what’s coming, but elections are not decided by the minuscule fraction of humanity that can reliably discern fiction from fact.

Personally, I have my doubts that a few thousand years from now, people will still have the capability to divert an asteroid. I see no signs that we have what it takes to preserve our current technological level of civilization, or to survive at all.

If you knew with a certainty that life on Earth will come to an end within the next few thousand years, would it change what you believe or how you act? What if I told you that armageddon isn’t inevitable, but requires that people behave and act differently?

I still have a modest amount of hope both for our democracy and for life on our planet, but I’m mostly just bracing for impact.