I was sorely tempted to write nothing more about the election until it's all over. I doubt I'll write much below, but when I start out I never know. Part of this is just plain disgust at how the last couple weeks have played out. Part is that I've been sick, and that hasn't helped my mood one bit. A big part of the disgust is simply that Hillary Clinton seems to have blown a huge lead: FiveThirtyEight gave her an 88.1% chance of victory on October 17, 81.5% as late as October 28. Today that's down to 64.5%. In terms of states that posits her as losing six states she was previously leading in: Arizona (her odds there are now down to only 25.8%), Iowa (27.1%), Ohio (32.9%), Florida (47.4%), Nevada (48.0%), and North Carolina (48.4%). That's still based on a 2.8% popular vote margin. Some polls are closer than that, with at least one showing Trump ahead. TPM had a narrower spread yesterday (2.4%) but a larger one today (3.9%, despite Clinton dropping to 45.9% of the vote).
Throughout most of the election, the median state (as far as the electoral college is concerned) has been New Hampshire: if Clinton wins New Hampshire and every other state she's been polling better in, she gets 272 electoral votes and wins the election. She's still given a 61.2% chance in New Hampshire. Trump could win the election by capturing New Hampshire, unless he loses a larger state he holds a slim lead in (Nevada, North Carolina, and Florida are all very close, and early voting looks especially good for Clinton in Nevada). On the other hand, Trump could lose New Hampshire and still win if he pulls an upset in Colorado (where he's currently givens a 26.9% chance) or Pennsylvania (25.9%).
At this stage, the presidential race has been reduced to these nine "battleground" states. Kansas (97.5% R) isn't one of them. In fact, I don't think I've seen a single street sign for either Trump or Clinton. I did see two Trump advertisements last week, and thought they hit an effective note: it is, after all, easy to tag Clinton as the candidate of the status quo, without suggesting how attractive more status quo would be compared to Trumpian change. I haven't seen any Clinton ads, but am haunted by at least one of her soundbytes, where she warns us of the danger of entrusting "America's nuclear codes" to someone as "thin-skinned and impulsive" as Trump. That's probably as carefully phrased as could be, but it mostly reminded me that she is decidedly hawkish, someone who believes strongly in flaunting America's military power, and someone who views the presidency as almost a secondary role to being Commander-in-Chief. Isn't it odd that the numerous "checks and balances" that limit what a president can do aren't sufficient to keep a mad person from blowing up the world? I've said all along that the surest way Clinton could lose would be to remind us of her appetite for war, and she's found an inadvertent way of doing that. I figure that must be part of her blown lead, even though the emails and her linkage to Anthony Weiner (perhaps the most universally reviled man in America right now) have gotten more attention.
By the way, as I was preparing this, FBI Director Comey says agency won't recommend charges over Clinton email, admitting, in his usual backhanded way, that his previous letter about re-opening the Clinton email investigation -- the event that precipitated Clinton's polling losses -- had come to nothing. Too bad we can't inspect the internal FBI emails discussing why he exposed this baseless innuendo in the first place. The FBI has a terrible legacy of politically-minded "investigations" but they've rarely set their sights on someone as mainstream as Hillary Clinton. Once again they've embarrassed themselves.
More I could write about here, but let's wind up this intro with Seth Meyers' "closer look" at the Major Clinton and Trump scandals:
That's a problem for a lot of Americans: They just don't love the two choices. Do you pick someone who's under federal investigation for using a private email server?
Or do you pick someone who called Mexicans rapists, claimed the president was born in Kenya, proposed banning an entire religion from entering the US, mocked a disabled reporter, said John McCain wasn't a war hero because he was captured, attacked the parents of a fallen soldier, bragged about committing sexual assault, was accused by 12 women of committing sexual assault, said some of those women weren't attractive for him to sexually assault, said more countries should get nukes, said that he would force the military to commit war crimes, said a judge was biased because his parents were Mexicans, said women should be punished for having abortions, incited violence at his rallies, called global warming a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese, called for his opponent to be jailed, declared bankruptcy six times, bragged about not paying income taxes, stiffed his contractors and employees, lost a billion dollars in one year, scammed customers at his fake university, bought a six-foot-tall painting of himself with money from his fake foundation, has a trial for fraud coming up in November, insulted an opponent's looks, insulted an opponent's wife's looks, and bragged about grabbing women by the pussy?
How do you choose?
Problem here is that Meyers is still reducing the election to a choice between two celebrity personalities, as opposed to the real differences between the parties and interests they represent. Not that there are no real issues buried in the Trump litany, nor that some of the personal traits (like his seething contempt for women and non-whites, and for that matter workers) don't portend policy dangers, but one thing this campaign has spared (or cheated) us was an opportunity to debate and vote on two radically different political visions. Imagine how much different this election might be if the choice was Bernie Sanders vs. Ted Cruz? One might learn something there, and emerge from the election with a mandate and a direction. But with Clinton vs. Trump we're stuck with muddled results -- both candidates are widely viewed as crooked, greedy, deceitful, treacherous, untrustworthy, pompous, arrogant, and full of ungrounded bluster -- their few differences attributable to irreconcilable identity allegiances. And even if Clinton wins, her margin isn't going to be nearly large enough to win Congress as well and to force a rethinking of those divisions. Republicans running for Congress have pledged to block her every appointment, to stalemate government and disable her administration from day one. Trump has already convinced most of his supporters that the only way he can lose is if the system is rigged against them.
It's fair to say that America is more divided now than at any election since 1860, which precipitated the Civil War. In terms of ideas and policies, those divisions have been growing since the Goldwater and Reagan campaigns, with conservatives demanding ever more complete domination of government and business, making the state a tool of the rich while eliminating any countervailing support government might provide for working people. Of course, conservatives rarely argue their agenda coherently -- they prefer to describe clear-cutting as their "healthy forests" initiative -- because they're aware that they'd lose. What Trump adds here is an unprecedented degree of paranoia, and a demagogic style that insists on degrading and dehumanizing his opponent and all of her supporters, and that's what's made him so vile and dangerous.
Some scattered (election) links this week:
Nate Silver: Election Update: The Campaign Is Almost Over, and Here's Where We Stand
Spencer Ackerman: 'The FBI is Trumpland': anti-Clinton atmosphere spurred leaks, sources say:
This atmosphere raises major questions about how Comey and the bureau he is slated to run for the next seven years can work with Clinton should she win the White House.
The currently serving FBI agent said Clinton is "the antichrist personified to a large swath of FBI personnel," and that "the reason why they're leaking is they're pro-Trump."
The agent called the bureau "Trumplandia," with some colleagues openly discussing voting for a GOP nominee who has garnered unprecedented condemnation from the party's national security wing and who has pledged to jail Clinton if elected.
David Atkins: Trump Would Be a Radical Policy Disaster:
This dyspeptic election is finally coming to an end in just a few days amid ugliness the likes of which has not been seen in modern American history. This nastiness has focused on the personal and the irrelevant, from the ridiculous non-scandal of Clinton's emails to the revolting but ultimately superficial fact that Donald Trump apparently carried on an affair for years that we're only just learning about.
Follow the article if you want the affair link. Read everything else. Still, he missed the policy proposal that bothers me most: one that would make it easier for rich guys like Trump to sue anyone and everyone who said anything negative about them.
Jonathan Blitzer: A Scholar of Fascism Sees a Lot That's Familiar With Trump:
[Ruth] Ben-Ghiat has been broadening her studies ever since the primaries, and is now considering a book-length examination of strongmen, from Mussolini to Trump, with stops in Franco's Spain, Erdogan's Turkey, and Qaddafi's Libya. In the speech of Mussolini, Putin, Trump, and also Berlusconi, Ben-Ghiat notes a pattern: they are at once transparent about their intentions and masters of innuendo. "Trump trails off. He uses ellipses and coded language. He lets his listeners fill in what they want." When Trump seemed to suggest that gun owners should deal with Hillary Clinton themselves, or when he talked about needing to "watch" certain communities out to steal the vote on Election Day, his statements were more powerful for their ambiguity. "It's all about letting listeners convince and mislead themselves," she said.
Amy Davidson: Bernie Sanders's Hard Fight for Hillary Clinton: Seems like the Obamas and Joe Biden get all the media notice, but did you know?
The truth is that Bernie Sanders is very, very angry -- at Donald Trump. He is angry enough to have spent weeks traveling on behalf of Hillary Clinton, speaking for her in union halls and arenas, to students and activists. When he talks, he is entirely Bernie -- "We are going to fight for that democracy; we are not going to become an oligarchy" -- and he hints strongly that he has done some negotiating with her before getting on the stage, and will continue to do so after, as he hopes, she is elected. When praising her positions, he often says "Secretary Clinton has told me" or "Secretary Clinton has promised," as though he knows that it might not work, with the sort of swing audiences he is dispatched to persuade (students, working-class voters), simply to declare that taking these stands is in her nature. But he knows what he wants: for her to win. [ . . . ]
"There are many, many differences between Secretary Clinton and Mr. Trump," Sanders told the crowd. "But there is one that is very, very profound. Are you ready for a very radical thought right now? I don't want anyone to faint! I think we have some paramedics here" -- "paramedics here" is, it turns out, an excellent phrase for demonstrating a Brooklyn accent -- "but I do want to make this announcement. Are you ready for it?" The crowd indicated that it was. "All right. Madam Secretary, you correct me if I'm wrong here; I don't want to misspeak for you -- Secretary Clinton believes in science!" [ . . . ]
A few hours later, Sanders was off on his own to Iowa. Trump is ahead in that state, in the latest average of polls, by about two and a half points. Sanders had three events scheduled for Friday -- Cedar Falls, Iowa City, Davenport. On Saturday, there would be more.
Kerry Eleveld: Latino electorate both on track for historic turnout and routinely undercounted in polls: One tidbit: in 2010, polls showed Republican Sharon Angle leading Harry Reid by 3-5 points, but Reid wound up winning 50.3-44.5%, largely due to a huge 90-10 Latino vote split.
Ron Fournier: Hillary Has No One to Blame but Herself: Concerns itself with trivial pursuits like that email server. For insight into the deeper Clinton problem, see: Matt Stoller: How Democrats Killed Their Populist Soul. Or Thomas Frank's latest book, Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? -- although I don't recommend reading the latter until Wednesday (either way).
Charles Franklin: Party Loyalty and Defection, Trump v Clinton: Chart tracking polls so both parties with identically high (86.8%) support for their candidates, after Republicans had trailed all year. Defection rates similarly low, although Democrats (6.8%) more so than Republicans (5.2%), the margin growing lately. Billmon's conclusion: "The November non-surprise. The zombies came home."
Neil Irwin: A New Movement in Liberal Economics That Could Shape Hillary Clinton's Agenda: The concept is "labor market monopsony," which has to do with how monopoly businesses are not only able to charge rents (fix prices), they're able to use their power to depress labor markets (wages). Ways to ameliorate this problem include higher (and more comprehensive) minimum wages and stronger antitrust action (something Democrats have not been good at, while Republicans have abandoned any pretense of enforcement).
In his own telling, he, not the women he's demeaned or assaulted, is the abused one and he's taking it for us, for America. It's quite a self-portrait when you think about it and should make us appreciate all the more those women who stepped before the cameras, reported his sexual assaults, and left themselves open to further abuse from Trump and his supporters. They have done something rare and brave. [ . . . ]
On the dark side, you never know what a sore loser and his loyal, bullying, misogynist followers might do. Say, for example, followers of the type who show up outside Hillary rallies with banners reading "Trump that Bitch!"
Paul Krugman: Conservative Intellectuals: Follow the Money:
We're supposed to think back nostalgically to the era when serious conservative intellectuals like Irving Kristol tried to understand the world, rather than treating everything as a political exercise in which ideas were just there to help their team win.
But it was never like that. Don't take my word for it; take the word of Irving Kristol himself, in his book Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea. Kristol explained his embrace of supply-side economics in the 1970s: "I was not certain of its economic merits but quickly saw its political possibilities." This justified a "cavalier attitude toward the budget deficit and other monetary or financial problems," because "political effectiveness was the priority, not the accounting deficiencies of government."
In short, never mind whether it's right, as long as it's politically useful. When David [Brooks] complains that "conservative opinion-meisters began to value politics over everything else," he's describing something that happened well before Reagan.
Martin Longman: Chris Christie Convicted By Proxy in Federal Court: Would be a bigger story if Trump had picked Christie as his running mate, but still . . . for anyone who wants to talk about locking people up, we can start with "two of Chris Christie's 'loyal lieutenants' who were taken down by Section 666 of Title 18 of the United States Code," who now "each theoretically face 20 years in prison (although nothing close to that will be imposed)."
Caitlin MacNeal: With the End in Sight, Trump Goes All In on Criminalizing Hillary Clinton
John Nichols: Republicans Won't Stop Talking About Impeaching Clinton: Specifically, Sen. Ron Johnson, likely to be defeated in his reelection bid in Wisconsin. But that's only one example.
Amir Oren: Comey's Revenge: The Real Reason the FBI Intervened in the Campaign:
The large spoke [Comey] put into the Hillary Clinton's wheels of victory won't be enough to stop her but could well reduce her coattails enough to keep the Democrats from regaining control of Congress, leaving Washington paralyzed by the warring branches of government. His motive was a personal grudge that Comey has held against Bill Clinton for a decade and a half, along with fresh residue from the investigation he closed this summer against Hillary.
Oren dates that grudge from Bill Clinton's pardon of Marc Rich and Pinchas Green, financiers who "fled the country as they were about to be indicted for tax evasion and doing business with Iran during the hostage crisis," but who found advocates in Israel's government. But Oren also points out that Comey is a Republican, a deputy attorney general under Bush, but he supported Obama's nomination of Eric Holder as attorney general, and was himself nominated by Obama to be FBI director.
Also: Yochi Dreazen: The anti-Clinton insurgency at the FBI, explained.
Daniel Politi: Key to Trump's More Disciplined Campaign? He No Longer Controls His Twitter Account:
Although Trump may be keeping some of his thoughts away from the public spotlight, the Times also paints a scary picture of a candidate who is obsessed with getting revenge from those he feels have wronged him. "Offline, Mr. Trump still privately muses about all of the ways he will punish his enemies after Election Day, including a threat to fund a 'super PAC' with vengeance as its core mission," notes the Times.
The Times piece: Inside Donald Trump's Last Stand: An Anxious Nominee Seeks Assurance.
John Quiggin: Trump voters are (mostly) Romney voters: Who in turn were mostly Bush voters:
Trump is getting overwhelming support from self-described Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, and almost none from Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents. The same was true for Romney four years ago, and for Bush before him. [ . . . ]
This makes nonsense of much of the discussion of Trump voters as the dispossessed, protesting against globalisation, predatory capitalism and the destruction of American manufacturing. Conversely, it turns out that the discussion of Romney's "dog whistle" appeals to racism was misconceived. Replacing the dog whistle with a bullhorn has turned out to be no problem for the great majority of those who voted for Romney. [ . . . ]
Corey [Robin] here at CT and elsewhere has probably been the most consistent exponent of the view that Trump is a traditional Republican, in the line of Goldwater and Reagan. I broadly agree, though I'd put more stress on new developments over the past 20 years or so. Trump's complete disregard for truth, norms of decency and so on, is an extrapolation of a process that's been going on for quite a while, at the popular level with Fox News, birtherism and so on and in the Republican intellectual apparatus with climate denial, zombie economics and attacks on "political correctness."
The links are to pieces in Jacobin by Corey Robin. They're both worthwhile, but an even better title is Robin's The Conservative Movement Has No Decency. This piece, of course, is mostly about Joseph Welch's 1954 rebuke of Joe McCarthy, but ties in to Trump's denunciation of Khizr Khan after his speech at the Democratic Convention. Still, Trump's outburst wasn't isolated or even uniquely his own. Robin offers many other examples without ever mentioning the abuse conservatives have heaped on Hillary Clinton -- a subject for whole books, likely to sprawl into multiple volumes if she wins.
Robin titled his latest thoughts on the election Viva Las Vegas! In it he includes a Brecht quote from 1942:
. . . to present Hitler as particularly incompetent, as an aberration, a perversion, humbug, a pecuilar pathological case, while setting up other bourgeois politicians as models, models of something he has failed to attain, seems to me no way to combat Hitler.
Joe Romm: Trump just proposed ending all federal clean energy development
Alexis Sottile: The Trump Effect: How Hateful Rhetoric Is Affecting America's Children: Solar, wind, efficiency, batteries, clean cars, and climate science, too.
Matt Taibbi: The Fury and Failure of Donald Trump:
The best argument for a Clinton presidency is that she's virtually guaranteed to be a capable steward of the status quo, at a time of relative stability and safety. There are criticisms to make of Hillary Clinton, but the grid isn't going to collapse while she's in office, something no one can say with even mild confidence about Donald Trump.
But nearly two-thirds of the population was unhappy with the direction of the country entering the general-election season, and nothing has been more associated with the political inside than the Clinton name. [ . . . ]
The "scandal" of the Wiki papers, if you can call it that, is that it captured how at ease Clinton was talking to bankers and industrialists about the options for the organization of a global society. Even in transcript form, it's hard not to realize that the people in these rooms are all stakeholders in this vast historical transformation.
Left out of the discussion over the years have been people like Trump's voters, who coincidentally took the first hit along the way in the form of lowered middle-class wages and benefits. They were also never told that things they cared about, like their national identity as Americans, were to have diluted meaning in the more borderless future.
This is why the "basket of deplorables" comment rankled so badly. It's not like it was anywhere near as demeaning or vicious as any of 10,000 Trump insults. But it spoke to a factual disconnnect.
Matthew Yglesias: The real Clinton email scandal is that a bullshit story has dominated the campaign
Matthew Yglesias: Melania's illegal immigration problem reminds us what Trump's campaign has always been about: OK, now we have proof that she entered the country to work illegally. American nativists should be up in arms: isn't a big part of their spiel how we shouldn't offer amnesty to people who don't follow the rules? Yet if they're so devoted to deep American roots, why are they backing a guy who has only one native-born American ancestor? Unless it matters what kind of immigrants we're talking about?
Indeed, going back to when the Nixon administration sued Trump for discriminating against black and Latino tenants, Trump's long record of racism isn't really disputable.
So there's really nothing so surprising about the Melania story. Trump doesn't like immigrants who change the American cultural and ethnic mix in a way he finds threatening and neither do his fans. Europeans like Melania (or before her, Ivana) are fine. I get it, David Duke gets it, the frog meme people get it, everyone gets it.
But it does raise the question of why mainstream press coverage has spent so much time pretending not to get it. Why have we been treated to so many lectures about the "populist appeal" of a man running on regressive tax cuts and financial deregulation and the "economic anxiety" of his fans?
PS: Just shook up by a 5.3 earthquake centered 3 miles west of Cushing, Oklahoma. Fairly sharp for about 15 second here, unsettled for another 20-30 seconds, but I doubt we suffered any damage. On the other hand, Cushing bills itself as the "pipeline capital" of America, so they have a lot of dangerously fragile infrastructure real close to the epicenter. Happened at 7:44:25 local time.