stevenkesslar

Oh God, yes! The politician who I worked with most was Senator Proxmire and his staff (on banks and redlining). So one significant change is that he never took a penny to get elected. He could, and did, sit the most powerful bankers in America down and rip their assholes open, if he had reasonable cause to. It was marvelous. Democratic Senator Chris Dodd should be in jail, in my mind. He chaired the Banking Committee, like Prox. But he took all the money in the world. He was a Friend Of Angelo. (CEO of Counrywide Mortgage.) If he didn't actually break any law, that explains why the laws need to be changed. If you want me to say something bad about Biden, it's that he put Dodd on his VP committee. When Dodd trashed Harris (who is not my favorite Black female politico) it just reinforced why I don't respect Dodd. I've read stories about how him and Kennedy would rent private rooms in tony DC restaurants and at least a few times by the end of the night they were both drunk and fucking women on tables, to the dismay of the waitresses. Maybe it's true, or maybe it's urban legend. Maybe I'm being a judgmental bitch. But I think Dodd was part of the problem. Barney Frank deserves mentioning. I did know him, early in his House career, and I like him. And I think he got blame he didn't deserve for subprime. I always have to point out that all that shit happened in 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006. In other words, while Republicans ran the White House, the House and Senate Banking Committees, and all the regulatory agencies. (Republican Richard Shelby chaired the Senate Banking Committee those years, when most of the worst subprime loans were originated. I still believe Chris Dodd, the Ranking Democrat, went along for the ride.) What I blame Frank for is his wishful thinking about lobbying. There was a great article in TIME about the banking reform bill that passed under Obama, which for example empowered Warren's Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Frank and others made a point I strongly agree with. That bill was as good as it was in part because, unlike most bills, there was a massive degree of public scrutiny while it was being passed. That made it harder for the lobbyists to work behind closed doors. (Of course, the lobbyists struck back later when it came to writing the regs). Frank made another point I absolutely disagree with. He said lobbyists don't really corrupt things. He said he is like the judge. And having lobbyists is good because they are like having lawyers on both sides making the very best arguments pro and con about any given law. That is how he genuinely feels, I suspect. And I think he's a good guy. So it probably is how he actually acted as Banking Chair. But he didn't mention that in practice many of those lawyers are handing out lots of money, along with their ideas. And the money can either get you re-elected, or crush you. There are rich liberal lobbyists, of course. But having personally been in the game as a low-income/grassroots lobbyist with no money to give away, it can very easily tilt the scales. Had Proxmire had to raise millions from bank lobbyists to win election, who knows whether he would have been a fair-minded leader. Or whether he would have even wanted the job. The other key difference back than was that compromise mattered more and obstructionism mattered less. Being a Democrat, I'll never be a fan of Ronald Reagan. On some issues - poverty and AIDS in particular - he absolutely sucked. But it is true that if he ran today, the Republican Party of President Toxic would have nothing to do with him. He was far too interested in compromise. And in competent government. (He was, of course, once a Governor.) At that time Democrats had run the House forever, and control of the Senate went back and forth. So in practice it meant that both parties always had to compromise, more or less. I actually feel like, in the scope of my life so far, I missed both the best of times and the worst of times in DC. The worst times are, of course, today. Robert Costa of WAPO said on Morning Joe today that he dates the beginning of Trumpism to 2013. That's when McCain and The Gang Of Six voted out immigration reform from the Senate by a bipartisan 68-32 margin, with Obama's consent. And the House Freedom Caucus killed it. Costa says Republican insiders (he didn't say who, but I'd guess people like Boehner) were beginning to learn at that time they could no longer control their base. Or the Tea Party members that base elected, who viewed compromise - and to some extent government itself - as evil. I think that's a key point. President Toxic is the symptom, not the cause. This did not start in 2016. In my mind, the best times were the 1990's. To quote TIME's Joe Klein, under Clinton conservative means were used to accomplish liberal ends. It is one of the reasons I deeply respect John Kasich. He was present at the creation. Yes, I'm 100 % against where he stands on abortion. But on the budget surplus and CHIP and EITC and a lot of other issues that moved the dial on health care and poverty and basic US financial stability, he was on my side. Which was the side of compromise to get important and meaningful shit done. This actually shows up in elections. Kasich barely won his Guv race in 2010, the Tea Party year. He won re-election in 2014 by a 2 to 1 margin. That has a lot to do with how he governed, I think. Clinton proved that governing matters, and that good governing actually works. That is why I say I missed the best of times. I have my own birds eye take on it, based on what I did in the 80s' and 90's. In the 1990's Clinton took all these piecemeal affordable home ownership programs and redlining fights from the 1980's I played a co-starring role in. And he turned them into a national strategy to create wealth from the bottom up. And to fight racism. Black average net worth has never come close to Whites. But helping Blacks (and Hispanics and working class Whites) buy homes in the 1990's and gradually build net worth has probably been, objectively speaking, one of the most significant ways to build Black net worth in all US history. All that went to shit a decade later. And since I went here, I have to mention that conservatives and Sean Hannity will say that's because the whole idea sucked. Which is very much like saying that AIDS proved that Gay sex is a bad thing. In fact, what AIDS proved is that you have to take precautions. Clinton did. It is Fox News bat shit crazy to blame Bill Clinton, who was President from 1993 to 2001, for foreclosures in 2008 or 2009 or 2010 on loans that were't even originated until 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006. The loans originated under Clinton did just fine - unless the people who got them were duped into doing a predatory loan refi a decade later, after they had home equity built up. This leads me to the future, President Biden, and Elizabeth Warren. Every Democratic candidate running for President in 2019 and 2020 talked about redlining. Warren was the only one who talked about what the predators did to Blacks and Hispanics and working class Whites in a way that made you think she was actually in the room when the schemes were being developed. And that's because, at the time, she was a consumer advocate who was watching it like a hawk. And she was warning anyone who would listen. I don't get the sense that Republican President George W. Bush, Republican House Banking Chair Mike Oxley, Republican Senate Banking Chair Richard Shelby, or even Democrat Chris Dodd for that matter really wanted to hear much of what Elizabeth Warren had to say. Joe Biden, for whatever reason, has a far better record of actually listening to what Elizabeth Warren has to say. She may be his Treasury Secretary. My own personal and political plan to recover from President Toxic and the Toxic America he helped create and now rules is incredibly clear. America actually would be greater if we could bring back the 1990's. We need more people like Bill Clinton (at least a non-predatory version) and John Kasich. People who actually do want good government. And who agree that usually means compromise. This is exactly why, even though I intentionally sounded like an inflammatory Bernie nut to Republican former friends who thankfully no longer want to hear anything I say, I send my money to Democrats like Harley Rouda and Claire McCaskill and Mark Kelly and Kristen Sinema. Many progressives would argue they are almost as bad as "Kasich Republicans". If we are going to get shit done, I think right now California is an effective model. It's going to take a room full of Democrats, some of whom speak for the people in the center and center-right. Harley Rouda, Democrat, got elected in Orange County because he is very different than Bernie or AOC. Bernie and AOC have yet to prove they can get elected in places like Orange County. My experience in the DC of the 1980's is kind of relevant to this point, in a sideways way. House Republicans had not actually run the US House in my lifetime, at that point. So they basically had two choices. First, you can have it your way. Which means you can sit there and shut the fuck up and get nothing done, since you're the minority. Or we can talk, and compromise. Democrats of course had to do that, anyway, since Reagan had to sign whatever bill was passed. Same thing when Gingrich ran the House, but Clinton had to sign the bill. My best guess, or at least my best hope, is that decapitating the snake this November, and letting Toxic Republicans wallow in their minority status with their guns and ammo for a few years, may be enough to put the John Kasichs of the world back in power. I will keep repeating this. The Governors of Maryland, Vermont, and Massachusetts are all Republicans. They are among the most popular Governors in America today. So this should not take a miracle. The right people are in the room. In fact, many of the right people are in power. Putting people like Biden and Warren in power will help, I obviously think. And if I am right, everybody who voted for President Toxic in 2016 or 2020 is going to get to enjoy a long time out. It may be lonely. But as I will keep saying, they will at least have their beloved guns and lots of bullets to keep them company. Meanwhile, hopefully, leaders like Biden and Warren will actually get shit done. It is not rocket science. Which is, of course, why politicians can do it. There's one other demographic factor that weighs in fairly heavily and fairly quickly. I was watching a book club talk on YouTube of former Republican Rick Wilson, of Lincoln Project and "Everything Trump Touches Dies" fame. He was speaking to a room full of mostly seniors. So he very tactfully pointed out that many of President Toxic's most ardent supporters are, to quote him, "at the extreme end of the age spectrum". Being blunt like I am, I'll say it. By 2024, a lot of President Toxic's biggest fans will have met their maker. In some cases thanks to COVID-19, actually. (God bless Herman Cain.) For their sake, I certainly hope that means they'll be with God. And not the other place, where President Toxic will no doubt be.

I'm going to keep pivoting my comments back to Lichtman, whose ideas I obviously have a hard on for. One of the frequent criticism of his ideas is that they don't account for new things. So identity politics, for example, is not on his radar. At least overtly. Nor are poverty or racism, at least directly. They do show up through the back door. I'm sure Lichtman would include LBJ's legislative wins on civil rights and the War On Poverty as turning Key 7, since they were major policy changes. And I bring that example up for a specific reason. In part, Lichtman's Keys are just a fun intellectual parlor game to play. But most of what he says I take as wisdom relating to how a President leads and governs so they get re-elected. Or, if they are in a second term like Obama, so that their party stays in power. Lichtman would argue that it mattered that Obama won a major policy change in his first term (Obamacare), but not in his second. (Thanks in large part, of course, to Mitch's obstructionism.) If you buy that theory, that single factor was enough to turn one of the keys in Trump's favor, and put him over the top in a very close race in 2016. I think this is instructive for Biden. If Democrats don't win the Senate, it's almost certain to be more gridlock under Mitch. So to avoid your nightmare of some quasi-fascist Republican regime coming to power in 2014 that is actually much worse than President Toxic (Is Satan available? That would do the trick better than Haley, I think.) Biden is going to have to win important stuff in Congress. On issues like poverty, health care, racism, and hopefully real job creation. As a Warren fanboy (as in, possibly, Treasury Secretary Warren), I'm not too disappointed that it's Joe rather than Elizabeth. I am 100 % certain I agree with Warren's ideas more. But if the critical task at hand is getting laws passed that move the needle on poverty and racism and people living or dying, Joe Biden is actually particularly good at getting laws passed. Lichtman's theory suggests that will matter a lot in 2024, whether he is on the ballot or not then. Like I said in my first post, I've been waiting for Lichtman's prediction all year. I Googled his name several times a month just to see what he was saying. So his evolution has been interesting. He was mentioning the Black Lives Matter protests when they started as something that could potentially rise to the level of major social unrest, and turn one of his keys. Obviously, at some point recently he decided they rose to that level. In that sense, like I said, "identity politics" enters his theory through the back door. Since the social unrest is basically the result of both racism, and income inequality, I think. I'd bet money that one big reason young Black and Brown and White adults are mostly on one page is that they all feel they got the shit end of the stick in a very unequal economy. One that is tilted to the very rich, as well as a small minority of meritocratic/technocratic winners. Everybody else gets to struggle to pay the rent. And maybe buy a house they can barely afford. So I think the issues you raised above - identity politics, income inequality, minimum wage - are all actually embedded in what's happening on the streets. And they are embedded in why the earthquake coming will take Trump out. If you watched that NYT video in my first post, you'll know Lichtman developed this theory with (at the time) one of the world's leading experts on predicting earthquakes. The whole idea was to try to come up with objective criteria that reliably measure stability on the one hand, or volatility on the other - just like with earthquakes. So as it relates to politics, poverty and racism are not new things. They are not unique issues in 2020. I think Lichtman is right about how this plays out. When it rises to the level where you have massive social unrest in the streets on racism and income inequality, that may be an indicator that an earthquake is coming soon to a ballot box near you. I'm going to go back to my "alternative Planet Earth" idea to talk about wages and incomes and poverty and what might happen in November. President Toxic was very good at making sure we all knew that, until recently, Black and Brown poverty were at an all time low. For some strange reason, he always forgot to mention that was ALREADY the case the day Obama and Biden left office in January 2017. So if there were no COVID-19, I can't imagine that all-time low poverty would have hurt President Toxic with Blacks and Hispanics. Even if something like 80 or 90 % of the reduction in poverty from The Great Recession to Spring 2020 happened on the watch of Obama and Biden. There was a lot of talk by Republicans and Fox News in 2018 and 2019 about how President Toxic's policies were finally helping the people at the bottom. I kept hearing they were enjoying some of the biggest bumps in income of anyone. It's actually hard to find data that nails that down, which I've tried to do. But I suspect the claim in mostly accurate. Partly because that is, as any economist would say, what happens at the end of every economic cycle. Demand for labor is high. So the people at the bottom who had a hard time getting a job or pay raise are likelier to get both. It's not exactly good news for low-income Blacks and Browns that you are the last in line to get hired, or get a raise. And now, of course, it already has worked out you were the first to lose your job when the plague and recession hit. Regardless, on my alternative Planet Earth where there is no COVID-19 I have to imagine all these economic factors would have helped President Toxic at the margin. Which is obviously what he was hoping for. And maybe still is. Since you pointed out that the federal minimum wage has been flat for over a decade, this is worth adding, too. One day this Spring, as part of my daily intellectual masturbation routine, I actually tried to figure out whether the increases in low-end incomes or pay President Toxic wanted credit for might have something to do with minimum wage laws that Democrats passed, and most Republicans oppose. That's really hard to nail down, too. But as that chart shows, the bluer the state, the more likely they are to have a minimum wage significantly above the federal level. On my alternative Planet Earth, I suspect President Toxic would be slightly more likely to win because some Blacks and Browns and low-income Whites made a little more money - because of a law Democrats passed and Republicans opposed. Sometimes life is just unfair. Speaking about life being fair, it is of course wildly unfair that none of this is going to happen, because of COVID-19. It is wildly unfair that despite President Toxic's heroic efforts to rally the nation in January to the danger, and get us all to wear masks, and the way he told his "Liberate The Virus in Michigan!" supporters to shut up and go home, he is still going to pay a very big political price for his unprecedented competence in governing. (Remember, I'm on an alternative Planet Earth. So I can make up any delusions I want, just like President Toxic does every day.) In fact, the other thing that is interesting and touchy to talk about is this: White poverty is perhaps more stubborn than Black poverty. It's good news that while there is a huge gap between Black and White net worth, income, and poverty - as there always has been - the gap in poverty rates has very gradually been closing over a period of decades. At least until now. If I had to pick one word to explain why, it would be this: education. More Blacks are going to college than ever before, and more Blacks are graduating than ever before. (Hispanics, too.) I think that's one of the biggest drivers. It's also a touchy subject. The rate of White poverty looks pretty much flat going back to Reagan. The rate of poverty for Blacks dropped by about 10 points over several decades. But at every point you're still much less likely to be poor if you are White - as opposed to Black, or Hispanic, or Asian. Meanwhile, there's no evidence that life is a whole hell of a lot better for those "poorly educated" White folks in Scranton that President Toxic loves. With all this stuff, it's very hard to find data for 2018 or 2019 that really nails anything down. But there's certainly no evidence that millions of factory jobs were created. Or that struggling Whites got better jobs or pay raises. Or that poor Whites were a lot less poor - or had cheaper health insurance. There's no evidence the opioid addictions and "deaths of despair" have run their course. I actually found it sad and sick that some people were arguing that government shut downs are bad, because they were supposedly causing more opioid deaths. It was a very confused argument. You mean having more people get sick, be hospitalized, or die from COVID-19 causes fewer opioid deaths? Or dying from COVID-19 is better than dying from alcoholism or a drug overdose? The best solution is obviously to contain COVID-19. And substantially reduce poverty, like what happened under LBJ, Clinton, and Obama/Biden. None of these factors - COVID-19, deaths of despair, minimum wages, poverty, racism - are explicitly mentioned in Lichtman's 13 keys. But I think all of them are implicit in them. They are measured as social unrest and bad news for the Toxic Party on both short-term and long-term economic trends. I think they are all stress factors that are building the earthquake likely coming soon to a ballot box near you. To make this a truly classic Kesslar post, I'll close my rant with a final chart. I think this reinforces what I said above, about Biden and legislation and 2024 and trying to prevent Satan (or Nikki Haley and fascism) from winning. It's the Times' prediction published after COVID-19 hit about where poverty rates may be headed, by race. If that chart proves to be right, it actually means WHITE poverty will be higher than at any point since the Reagan Recession in the early 80's. And I'd guess those poorly educated folks in Scranton and other places that lean heavily toward President Toxic will get hit harder than tony urban areas. So this will potentially just increase the polarization. Because President Toxic-loving Whites will just be angrier, and hurting more. (Hopefully all those extra guns and ammo will provide at least a little consolation.) And the people who vote for Biden, including some 2016 Trump voters, will very much be expecting him to get laws passed and policies changed, that provide them with relief. Like I said above, part of why it is worthwhile to me to follow Lichtman is not just the prediction parlor game. I think his ideas are helpful in drawing a map to the future.

There you go again. Just being negative. Grenell actually made a bunch of good points, I think. What surprised me is that he hit on all these relatively small ball criticisms. He left out the thing that, as a Gay man, really bugged the shit out of me. Namely, the Obama/Biden White House had the absolute worst decorating impulses ever. Example: Fact Check: Was the White House lit in rainbow colors on Obama's last night in office? But can we just give some credit where credit is due? President Toxic may be out of touch on income inequality, or tax cuts to the rich that don't create factory jobs as promised. But when it comes to identity politics, he's always been way ahead of the curve. Frankly, I'm surprised he didn't point out that back in 1989 you also would have been better off as a well educated Gay man. Particularly if your husband was a well educated Gay man, too. Had Pete and Chasten run for President and First Man in 1988, they no doubt would have beat Bush I. But that's just me being bitchy, again. Trump was so busy being compassionate and empathetic to Black men that he just must have overlooked the whole Gay thing in 1989. But on race, at least, he's already been pitch perfect. As in, stick a pitchfork in them. He was way ahead of the curve on why we need to hate Blacks, for example. Other than just throwing shade, I do have other points I want to make. First, let's of course state that this is all about how President Toxic runs. If you're an affluent Gay conservative like Grenell or Thiel, and you support Trump, that's all good. If you are a Black drag queen who gets murdered .... well, that's on you. It works the same way if you're a Saudi king or prince who chops up educated dissidents and conducts mass executions of Gays. Why should President Toxic let little things like that get in the way of a friendship? Second, I've developed some very harsh feelings about lifelong Republicans I've known for decades, and have ended friendships with, because they voted for and have shilled for President Toxic. They appear to be willing to tolerate anything he says and does. But I at least realize this. As Meacham said so eloquently, it's always easy to pretend we're running with the angels, while we're actually letting the darkness out. That's not a partisan thing. There's a good argument that Democrats (think Gloria Steinem) were just as bad with Bill Clinton's predatory nature. You can make distinctions about consensual sex among adults, blah blah blah. But what Meacham said, and Kasich actually demonstrated, is that it takes real courage to stand up against your own team when they go to hate and lies and ignorance and bigotry in order to win. The ends do not justify the means. Third, I have particular contempt for Gay men who are willing to go along with this, because President Toxic will pay lip service to some members of the LGBTQ community. As long as you're not a Black drag queen. Or someone Gay with pre-existing conditions. Or one of those godawful people who want the government to pay for your sex change. There are some particular rants I am just holding on to until Biden wins. Because only then will the true shame of being a Gay man who threw your own community under the bus really begin to hit and be real, I think. Until President Toxic loses and is gone, the denial and race baiting and rationalizing will all continue and intensify. Heads and hearts What victorious gay-marriage campaigners can teach others I've posted that essay from The Economist a bunch of times. It is one of my favorite pieces of journalism ever. The organizer it quotes, Thalia, is one of my close pals from my organizing days. I don't have an inside view of the Gay mafia that led this fight. But I'm pretty sure Thalia was one of the smart and empathetic people who cracked the code. Which is to say, she helped figure out that it's fine to talk about "basic rights" and fairness and principles. But if we really want to win a war that can't be won, what we needed to do was open our hearts about what it feels like to be Gay and be in love and just want to get married. And if we happen to be the brother or daughter or uncle of the person we're trying to persuade - well, that helps a lot. It's something Harvey Milk figured out. We have to come out, and make it very personal. And the Gay mafia perfected the technique during the same sex marriage fight. In my organizing days I organized coalitions and masterminded fights against Enron, GE, the American Bankers Association, God knows how many big banks that redlined, and pretty much every large corporation in Oregon that was enjoying corporate tax breaks while schools suffered. Thalia helped me win that last fight. But the fight I fought that I want on my gravestone was the Gay marriage fight. Thalia was part of the fun. I hadn't seen her for years, until one night in 2008 when I was a volunteer phone banker for same sex marriage in San Francisco and Thalia walked into the EQCA office to train us. So for a year or two I got to be the volunteer who trained door knockers and ran house meetings while she came in as the high powered consultant. I had a fucking blast. And somehow it all added up from the grassroots to the SCOTUS to the Gay Flag on the White House as an incredible victory. in part, thanks to Joe Biden, actually. I also want a line from Jeb Bush on my gravestone. In 2016 he said something like this about same sex marriage: thousands of years of religion and culture are changing at warp speed. And I just don't get it. Jeb was right on both counts. The entire human history of dealing with homosexuality has been overturned during my lifetime. And people like Jeb just don't get it. That's why I am incredibly proud of having been one of the millions of ants. We all know what happens to ants, right? They are crushed. They are fumigated. There is no fucking way all those little fucking annoying ants are ever going to win. Especially when it comes to something very basic and universal. Like marraige is between one man and one woman. It has always been that way. It always will be that way. And if you don't agree, you are an annoying ant. And you are going to be crushed. So as far as I am concerned, I lived more than a good life already. Not because I led anything, or was a director of this or an organizer of that. Because I was a little fucking useless, powerless ant. And I fucking won. I won something that couldn't be won. Ever. And I won it because I was one of millions of little fucking useless, powerless, annoying ants, saying the same fucking thing all over the planet, about how I felt. So, actually, we won. Some people say the lawyers won the fight. That's true. But Justice Kennedy and others who made the call said that they did it with a mind to the fact that public opinion had changed. And that happened because we organized. Like I said, this is deeply personal to me. I have a problem with Republican former friends who have 0 % of the courage John Kasich does. Or the Independents who won't come out and speak the truth like Jon Meacham did. But I have an even bigger problem with a former Gay drag queen saying that "Black Lives Matter is racist". There's two possible explanations for a White Gay man who is a former drag queen performer to say "Black Lives Matter is racist". One is that he is an overt racist, and he just harbors lots of racist bile. The other is that he's a free ride racist. A free ride racist is a Gay man who thinks that Gay Lives Matter, and Drag Queens' Lives Matter, because I'm Gay and I like to wear dresses. But don't give me that shit about Black Lives Matter, because that's racist. So Gay men like this want a free ride, whether they are willing to recognize it or not. They want all of society to feel empathy for them - a tiny minority of Gay men who like to wear dresses. But they feel absolutely no obligation to feel any empathy whatsoever for anybody else who has gotten shit on, ever. They feel comfortable rejecting the words "Black Lives Matter" as racist. As well as all the ideas about it. Even though Gay Lives Matter, of course. I'll say it again. This is personal to me, as a Gay man who fought my heart out for broad and deep societal acceptance, like millions of Gay men and lesbians and drag queens and Straight allies did. If we weren't able to summon up the empathy of Whites and Catholics and Blacks and immigrants and Straight women and soccer Moms and all these different groups of people, who are 97.6 % or so NOT GAY, we never could have won. We would have just been more little fucking annoying ants that were crushed or tortured or hung from crosses, like those guys in Saudia Arabia who President Toxic is pals with still do to Gays IN 2020. What that article from The Economist, which is hardly a progressive journal, is saying is that Gay men ought to be leaders and allies with Black Lives Matter. While the discrimination is not the same, the LGBTQ community and the Black community have both suffered some of the worst discrimination ever in human history. We have both suffered it for thousands of years. And the LGBTQ community actually figured out how to do something historic and truly transformative about it. One of the reasons I want the reckoning on this to happen after Biden wins is that it of course more complicated than my feelings, which is what I am intentionally focusing on here. There are very smart Gay men who thought the focus of so much energy on same sex marriage was misplaced. There are Black conservatives who reject most of the ideas of Black Lives Matter. I'm all for freedom of speech, and disagreement and debate. So this all needs to get sorted out. And before we do that, we have to finish pushing President Toxic into the political grave he has been carefully digging for himself through his own cruelty and incompetence. But this thing about Gay men backing President Toxic when he goes off on his hate and race baiting leaves me feeling deep, deep contempt. Of course they don't know what they are doing. And I'm not God. But I feel like they are just throwing our whole fucking community under the bus. For a little bit of money, or a little bit of power. Our historic victories and continued support and respect depend exactly and entirely on empathy. As Meacham said, on being able to call forth the better angels in people's hearts. Educated Gay men with any power ought to get that. We ought to be able to ally with Blacks who are fighting for the very kinds of acceptance in a truly equal community we fought for, and won. So Grenell and Gay men like him just suck, as far as I'm concerned. The reckoning can happen after President Toxic loses. But this is an internal fight I think the LGBTQ community has to eventually have with itself.

Before the pandemic hit, Lichtman was saying it was going to be a very close race that was too early to call. But it favored Trump. Which I believed, too. If Trump was going to win, it would have boiled down to one thing. It's the economy, stupid. The logic goes like this: President Toxic "built a rocking economy that worked for everyone." Other than the Toxic part, that is a direct quote from a credible Republican, Scott Jennings. I'm going to label Jennings as a "W. Republican". As opposed to a "Kasich Republican" or a "Toxic Republican". By that I mean Jennings came up through the conservative Republican Establishment ranks. He is credible. He is probably a very decent guy. And like your friend Jon, he's been a sort of boy wonder - and still even looks like one. Jennings does not embrace toxic thinking, hate, and intentional division. Unlike Kasich, though, he does not break ranks and say bluntly that this is morally repugnant and destructive political behavior. He's basically willing to do what it takes to get and keep power. Any Republican who does that, including President Toxic, he'll shill for. Case in point: Biden wants a referendum on Trump the person. That's because Trump's agenda is better than his. That's probably one of the best arguments I've read about why President Toxic deserves a second term, based on the fundamentals. Which is actually to say that they really don't have much of an argument at all. Frankly, maybe it's actually better to just race bait and hate and divide and agitate, like President Toxic does. Jennings is trying to make a rational argument that makes no fucking sense whatsoever, when you think about what he says. At least race baiting and hating gets your base all riled up. We all know that President Toxic knows that. (I was slightly wrong about one thing I said above about gun sales going through the roof after Biden wins. Here's the correction: sales of guns and ammo are ALREADY going through the roof.) To Scott's credit, he starts by admitting President Toxic drives everyone crazy, regularly makes his own supporters defend the indefensible, and is "corrosive to our national political culture." (Great selling points, huh?) But we still need him ........... because. The one "because" Scott cites that I agree with is that President Toxic has "delivered on deeply held Republican priorities." That explains two things, perhaps. First, why most Republicans are loyal to their President, despite everything else. Second, why there are now more registered Independents (and Democrats) than registered Republicans, for the first time in US history. Great logic, Scott. But the political math sucks. The main point I am going to get to is that Jennings is just wrong, wrong, wrong about the fundamentals of the economy. That explains, I think, both why President Toxic barely won in 2016, and why he will lose pretty badly in 2020. But before I get there, let me just tear poor Scott's asshole apart on several of his claims. I think it goes to the heart of what is happening in America. And why President Toxic will lose. Jennings does articulate the greatest hits the Republicans have to work with. And they all just sound tone deaf. First, there's the "Biden is senile" trope. To quote directly, Jennings says Biden is "confused" and "out of touch" and "past his prime". So here's the part that makes no sense to me. How "out of touch" is it for Joe Biden to get on the phone to Republican or Independent guys he's known and respected for decades, like John Kasich and Jon Meacham, and ask them to say whatever they want about decency and history and unity at his convention? Is that out of touch? Is that senile? Will President Toxic be getting W. or Reagan's kids or George Will - or anyone that isn't a Republican Party hack - to do the same at his convention? (As was stated above by @Buddy2, President Toxic certainly doesn't want his sister or niece to open their mouths and speak honestly.) I'll get to the substance of Jennings' key argument - that President Toxic built a "rocking economy that worked for everyone" - below. But before we get to the substance, can I just ask. How incredibly fucking out of touch is that statement, on its face? Did you not hear about Bernie Sanders, Scott? Did you not see the endless graphs on income inequality? Warren ranting about wealth taxes? Does anyone really believe that before COVID-19 the "rocking" US economy "worked for everyone"? To quote Scott, "...come on." You have to be fucking kidding me. If you believe that, you are completely and totally out of touch. And you have made Biden's (and Pelosi's) case that even the "rational" Republicans just don't get how much people are hurting. And have been. For a long time. Then there is Jennings arguing that Michelle Obama thinks anyone who disagrees with her is "stupid or racist", to quote him verbatim. It's a great argument. Other than that Michelle didn't actually use the words "stupid" or "racist". Or even anything close. What she actually said, as Scott notes, is that she is a Black woman speaking at the DNC. And for that reason many people in a divided nation will not hear what she says. Which was mostly about voting, and democracy, and how President Toxic will try to steal the election. Again, I think Jennings made Obama's case. He is saying in USA Today, in writing, that he did not actually hear what she said. It is empirically true that she is a Black woman speaking at the DNC. People may disagree with her about President Toxic's malevolent words and scheming. But they are his words. President Toxic votes by mail, and thinks that voting by mail leads to fraud. Except in Florida, where it helps Republicans and is fine. But wherever it helps Democrats, it is fraud. To again quote Scott, " ... come on." Give me a fucking break. There is something more fundamental here, which is why I lost friendship and respect with several Republican former clients and friends I was very close to after decades of whoring, sex, travel, and fun. President Toxic has made it acceptable to simply dismiss racism as a problem. He's not racist. Republicans are not racist. If the Obamas go off about racism, that's because THEY are racist. In fairness, Scott did not call Michelle Obama a racist. But, sorry, I've heard Republicans I was close to and respected tell me, repeatedly, that they are not racist, but the Obamas are. Again, who is out of touch here? Do they say these things to Black people? Do they talk to Black people? Do they have any idea how most Blacks would feel if they said, "I'm a White conservative, and I think Barack and Michelle Obama are racists." Again, who is out of touch here? Again, to quote Scott, " ... come on." Meanwhile, Biden just called Kasich and Meacham and asked him to say what they deeply believe. How racist is that? How senile is that? You may not like Kasich, @tassojunior . I don't know him personally. But he's exactly the type of Republican I have worked with for decades, cut deals with, and deeply respect. As a former lobbyist and organizer, I've worked with and cut deals with Republicans I actually respect a lot less than Kasich. (As well as Democrats I respect less than Kasich.) I would never vote for Kasich, because I'm a lifelong loyal Democrat. Unless, perhaps, Democrats elected a "homegrown Mussolini", which thankfully we have not. I'll repeat what I said above. If there was a blip for President Toxic after the first few days of the DNC, as Rasmussen seems to be saying, I think it was because centrists who don't really like or agree with Bernie or AOC or The Green New Deal got more than a mouthful about that. Time will tell. But as a Warren fanboy who voted for Bernie but is at heart a political whore, it was very clear to me this week that President Toxic was right about one very important thing. He is far worse off running against Biden than either Sanders or Clinton. To center all this stuff back to Lichtman and fundamentals, I do think it is a key reason why President Toxic will lose. Lichtman calls this key "charisma". I actually think "character" might be a better word. Lichtman's core point, which I think is true, is that once in a generation or so, a war hero like Ike or a Reagan or an Obama are able to command respect and trust that crosses partisan lines, and brings a majority of the nation together. Lichtman literally argued that in 2008 Obama turned the "charisma" key, but in 2012 he didn't. It makes no sense to argue that in 2008 Barack Obama had charisma, but in 2012 he lost it. What Lichtman basically means is that in 2008 Obama was perceived as someone who could rise above and unify. By 2012, he'd been taken down to the level of a Democratic Party hack. I agree with Lichtman on that. My point here is that I think all this racist and nonsensical bullshit that comes out of President Toxic's mouth, and that Republicans like Jennings clean up and try to package as actual rational thought, is one of the fundamental keys that voters have decided on. The majority of Americans simply don't trust or believe Trump anymore - if they ever did. The polls are incredibly clear about that fact. Now on to the core argument Jennings is making, which is simply not going to fly. Sorry, Scott. Nice try. But before COVID-19, the "rocking" economy did not work for everyone. As Lichtman argues, the short-term and long-term economy are the keys to Trump's impending and now almost inevitable defeat. All Employees: Manufacturing in Wisconsin All Employees: Manufacturing in Michigan All Employees: Manufacturing in Pennsylvania On this one, a picture (or graph) is worth more than 1000 Kesslar words. And, as a caveat, the United States is bigger than those three states. And most jobs are not factory jobs. But the theory of the case is that President Toxic won in 2016 because of angry Joe Sixpacks in the Rust Belt who lost their factory jobs. So I'm only going to focus on that. That said, I think the trends in these states mostly apply in all 50 states, and for all kinds of jobs. Long term, as you can see, the picture is unrelentingly bleak. In all three states, factory jobs are a fraction of what they used to be. Bill Clinton could argue in the 1990's that a rising tide did lift all boats. Although even then it was shaky in Pennsylvania. The W. Administration was a disaster for factory workers, even before the Great Recession. That's the case Hillary should have been making in 2016. All these factory job losses happened on a Republican's watch. One thing that I really like about Lichtman is that, like me, he is a lifelong Democrat. But he is willing to admit that President Toxic won in 2016 because people cast a very close but ultimately fatal judgment on the eight year track record of Obama/Biden. It gets very tricky now. Are Obama and Biden responsible for the massive job losses that occurred in these states from roughly January to June 2009? As a political question, David Axelrod will tell you that's a no brainer. He says he knew by Spring 2009 that Democrats would have political hell to pay for this in 2010 - even though it wasn't their fault. He was right, of course. If you count from Summer 2009, when The Great Recession ended, Obama/Biden created about 1 million manufacturing jobs on their watch. If you count from the day Obama took office, it was mostly a wash in all three states. Obama/Biden more or less got factory jobs back to where they were when they were elected. So these factory workers and their communities do have a legitimate reason to be pissed, I think. When that led them to vote for President Toxic, I felt I had to give them a pass. Particularly the ones that voted for Obama and Biden in 2008 or 2012 or both elections. It's hard to believe Whites who voted for Obama twice are malevolent racists. There's another thing that is worth mentioning here, if we could test different outcomes on an alternative Planet Earth. Between November 2008 when President Toxic won, and January 2009 when he was inaugurated, there was a bunch of stories written in lefty journals that worried that Trump would govern as a centrist. That he would cut deals with Democrats (if needed) to invest in infrastructure and create lots of blue collar jobs. Some progressives worried that Trump would be the new Reagan. The fear was he'd move just enough to the center and compromise just enough to create an unshakable political coalition based on undeniable massive job creation. I was one of those Democrats - like Pelosi, I think - actually HOPING he would do that. For the good of the country, and those broken factory towns. And the families dying "deaths of despair". We now know that President Toxic was too stupid or too mean or too incompetent to do that. He'll say he cut taxes (mostly for the 1 %, in fact) and that created jobs. Look at the data in the charts above. To the degree that factory jobs were created, it mostly happened in 2017 - before the tax cuts. And it was mostly on the same trend line of what has been happening from 2010 to 2016, under Obama and Biden. On an alternative Planet Earth, it would be fascinating to see what would have happened this November if COVID-19 never happened. If you just look at 2019 in those three states, it actually looks at lot like 2015. Which is to say that factory job growth was flat. If the huge Republican tax cuts to billionaires and "job creators" created lots of factory jobs in the Rust Belt in 2019, the factory workers themselves missed it. In fact, in calendar year 2019, manufacturing employment was actually DOWN by a few thousand jobs in all three states. If something similar hurt Obama/Biden/Clinton in 2016, would it have hurt President Toxic in 2020? We'll never know. But we do know he certainly didn't make America great again. Not if that means getting factory jobs back to what Bill Clinton managed to do. Was the economy rocking "for everyone" before COVID-19, like Scott says? Come on. Give me a fucking break. Now the question is different. Lichtman's keys on the economy are essentially like Reagan's question: are you better off than you were four years ago? Today, the answer is overwhelmingly obvious in all three states: NO, NO, and NO. They are all worse off than when President Toxic took power. Pennsylvania is actually worse off in terms of manufacturing jobs than at the bottom of The Great Recession. And President Toxic thinks he can win by talking about how Biden is going to destroy fracking jobs? Give me a fucking break. Again, the United States is bigger than the Rust Belt. And most jobs are not factory jobs. But no matter what part of the economy you look at, the trend is the same. It was "rocking" for Apple stock owners and employees before COVID-19. And it is rocking for them now. Everybody else? Not so much. All Employees: Manufacturing in Florida I'm throwing in Florida just to reinforce my points about fundamentals, the economy, and the political price President Toxic will pay, if Lichtman is right again. We don't think of Florida as a manufacturing state. But it has almost as many factory jobs as the three I listed above. Unlike the other three states, Florida is still better off in terms of manufacturing jobs than the day President Toxic took office. I think most people know that some of those factory jobs that left the Rust Belt actually moved to Florida or Alabama or the South - not China. Arguably, President Toxic should be doing okay in Florida. But he isn't. He's about 5 points behind Biden. Almost as much as he is in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. Is it because of the job losses? Or the COVID-19 deaths? Or just that seniors there think President Toxic is a mean prick? Who knows? I don't. Ask Scott Jennings. He'll tell you.

Part of what I liked about Biden, Kasich, and Meacham this week was their tone of decency, unity, and sobriety. So if we're going to be sober, let's face facts. It's not that 40 % of Americans support our "homegrown Mussolini". It's 51 % of Americans that approve of President Toxic. At least according to the latest daily Rasmussen poll, taken a few days into the DNC. That's a fact we should not stop knowing, too. Like I said, be vigilant. And send money to Democrats. I thought the blip about 51 % was worth stating for several reasons. First, it suggests it is all about the base. In 2016 Rasmussen nailed the polling. They predicted Clinton would win the popular vote by 2 points, which is exactly what she did. (The RCP polling average in 2016 said Clinton would win by 3 points, which was also very close.) But in 2018 Rasmussen predicted that Congressional House Republicans would beat House Democrats by 1 point. Rasmussen was way off in 2018 - by almost 10 points. In 2018 the final RCP average was that Democrats would win the House popular vote by a 7.3 % margin. In fact, Democrats won the House popular vote by 8.4 %. (Meaning all the votes cast for all US House members.) So the overall polling, when you look at the averages, was way more right than wrong in both 2016 and 2018. But the huge difference between Rasmussen being dead right in 2016 and dead wrong in 2018 was about the base. In 2016 President Toxic lost the popular vote by millions. But he won a minuscule electoral college victory of less than 100,000 votes because the right parts of his base turned out just enough in just a few of the right places in the Midwest. It's not the most democratic way of winning an election, to be sure. Even so, winning is winning. In 2018 the electorate was just different. Some of the Trump base didn't vote. And some of the 2016 "Trump base" was suburban and working class women who by 2018 were thoroughly disgusted with President Toxic, and voted Democratic. Rasmussen is again way out on the margin. Their most recent daily poll (August 21) shows President Toxic with a shocking +4 % net approval rating. The RCP average on the same day was closer to what you said, @caeron: 54.2 % disapproval, 43.7 % approval, for a net disapproval rate of - 10.5 %. So Rasmussen is close to 15 points off the RCP polling averages. Second, I think Lichtman is fundamentally right that daily ticks in any one poll, or even in these broad polling averages, have just about nothing to do with the election outcome. My main reason for posting that video/article is that I think Lichtman is right that people care about fundamentals. And President Toxic will lose in November based on the fundamentals. I do think all this base politics may help explain what seems like a small and seemingly odd "Trump bump" for President Toxic coming out of the DNC this week - at least according to Rasmussen. My read of the first few nights of the DNC in particular, which is perhaps what these Rasmussen polls captured, was a play to the base of the Democratic Party. There was a lot of talk about Black Lives Matter. Bernie Sanders reached out to his progressive base, which thinks Biden is too moderate. Michelle Obama told us that President Toxic will of course steal the election if he can. If some of the language and tone turned centrists off, that would not surprise me in the least. If and when President Toxic preaches his typical bile next week, the centrists will likely be reminded how much they dislike him. Democrats were talking to their base this week. We'll know in November whether it worked. We know this week Democrats raised money in droves. They also made the case that you have to get your ballot early and vote early, and make sure your vote is counted. President Toxic went even further down the road of saying any election he does not win is not a legitimate one. This does not suggest Democrats fucked up the DNC in any way. And after you send in your ballot - again, send a check to a Democrat. Or several. The best criticism I've read about what was missing at the DNC was this one by Ron Brownstein, one of my favorite (and most data-driven) journalists. That whole article of his I hyperlinked is a very thoughtful read. His main point is that Biden and Democrats missed an opportunity to lay out with laser precision an economic plan that would appeal to exactly the White working class voters that bailed on the Obama/Biden legacy in 2016. Instead, Biden himself focused on broader themes like unity and the "soul" of the nation. On CNN Democratic talking heads were bending over backwards to argue that Biden's speech addressed all kinds of policies, at least broadly. But I think Brownstein is basically right. Brownstein also lays out in the article what is the most logical explanation for why Democrats did what they did. They want this to be a referendum on President Toxic. Not a choice between his economic vision and Biden's. So Biden mostly needs to keep his mask on, and his mouth shut. I also suspect Team Biden is smart enough to know how to play to low expectations. Even Fox News and Karl Rove admitted that the passionate guy delivering his acceptance speech this week was hardly "Sleepy Joe", or senile. I suspect Biden will also shine in the debates, when he passionately goes after President Toxic's seeming obsession with policies that are unhelpful. Like race baiting. Or giving tax cuts to the 1 %. Or talking about investing in infrastructure but not actually doing it. Or still trying to take away protection for pre-existing conditions, for example. It worked in 2018. I'm guessing it will work again in 2020. I'm doing an odd thing here. I'm using polling data to argue that Lichtman is right: fundamentals are what matter to voters. Even though Lichtman mostly dismisses polls. But I'll offer the following as an addendum to Lichtman, which to me reinforces the idea that people are not stupid. They understand what is going on. And they make decisions about who is trustworthy based on judgments about competence and character and performance - not campaign slogans or silly red hats. UPDATE ON THE APPROVAL OF EXECUTIVE PERFORMANCE DURING COVID-19 That's part of a really interesting series of polls that have been going on since Spring about how voters in all 50 states feel their Governor is doing handling COVID-19. Not surprisingly, given how incompetent our national "non-plan" to deal with COVID-19 has been, and the deep consumer-driven recession it has caused, very few Governors got higher approval ratings in late July than they did in late April. In almost every state, President Toxic's approval rating for handling COVID-19 is far worse than that of the state's Governor, whether Republican or Democrat. There's only one state in which President Toxic just managed to get 50 % approval on his handling of COVID-19: Wyoming. His national approval rating for handling COVID-19 was 32 % in late July. In any state that is not deep red, it is about that bad, or worse. This is very bad news for many Republicans, including Republican Governors. Republican Governors in Florida, Texas, and Georgia are all deep underwater. What seems likely to happen this November may well ripple out into gubernatorial elections in 2021 and 2022. That said, what I find most interesting and salient to the broad point I'm making about unity and decency and competence is which Governors are doing well. 5 Governors had approval ratings over 70 % for their handling of COVID-19 in late July. In order: Hogan in Maryland (76 %), Scott in Vermont (75 %), Cuomo in New York and Raimondo in Rhode Island (both 71 %), and Baker in Massachusetts (70 %). Note that three of the those five are Republican Governors, and all three of them happen to govern solid blue states. What explains how voters feel? It's not actual deaths. New York has by far the most COVID-19 deaths in America, as well all know. If you adjust for deaths per 100,000 state residents, New York is # 2, Massachusetts is # 3, Rhode Island is # 6, and Maryland is # 13. In other words, they were deadlier than most states in terms of your chances of dying of COVID-19. Only Vermont at # 47 can brag about being a small "safe" state where a total of only 58 people have died of COVID-19 so far. Now I'm going off into a subjective guess. But my strong hunch is that everybody knows that New England was the "COVID-19 corridor" this Spring. They got hit hard before anyone (especially President Toxic) really focused on what the virus was capable of doing on US soil. Significantly, Biden was an exception. He staked out a public position in USA Today on January 27th that this was an impending disaster an incompetent President was not preparing the nation for. Geez! How senile is that? I'm guessing voters are giving Governors that got to work on COVID-19 early and aggressively an "A" for effort. I'd also argue all three of those Republican Governors are "Kasich Republicans". Meaning they work hard to unify voters in their state. They appear competent and concerned, whatever their ideology. All three broke with President Toxic on handling COVID-19 very early. Meanwhile, the Republican Governors who sided with President Toxic on aggressive reopenings are deep underwater. The approval ratings of both President Toxic and the incumbent Republican Governor are so bad in states like Arizona and Georgia that Republicans ought to be seriously worried about public disapproval handing those states to Biden, as well as newly minted Democratic Senators. Cuomo and Raimondo were not particularly popular in 2019. Raimondo in particular is a Governor I've liked from a distance, because she is a deficit hawk. But that has made her unpopular with unions, who were defending underfunded pension plans. So she went from the # 3 most unpopular Governor in the US in late 2019 to one of the most popular ones today - even though her state was hit harder by COVID-19 than most. Why? I think because she is perceived as having been on top of whacking the virus back effectively, just like Cuomo is. Again, these are my hunches, not facts. But I went into detail about these polls because they are very broad and consistent. Wherever Governors have sided with President Toxic, even in red or purple states like Georgia and Texas and Florida, they are mostly in deep trouble. Wherever Governors put handling the health crisis first - which is how polls consistently show the vast majority of Americans feel - Governors of either party are doing well. To tie this back to Lichtman, I would argue that most voters are not stupid. And they are not into home grown Mussolinis. As he argues, they are focused on fundamentals. To the degree that President Toxic has had something even remotely close to majority support, at least in a few Republican-leaning polls like Rasmussen on a very few days out of over three years, it boils down to this: it's the economy, stupid. He inherited an economy that on the day he was inaugurated ALREADY had the lowest Black and Hispanic poverty in the nation's history. Whatever he did, it amounted to putting a cherry on the cake Obama baked and Biden put the frosting on. And now that has all gone completely to shit. The polling data also pretty much prove that in every one of all 50 US states, voters are putting dealing with the virus first. This makes sense, because we now know that consumer demand fell off a cliff before any government shut down. Because consumers stopped consuming. Consumers also seem to know that wherever the virus is raging, the economy and jobs can't really recover. This is, of course, what most economists have been saying for most of 2020. All of this is a long dance around your statement about 40 % of the voters. I certainly believe that some percentage of Americans, which is way less than 50 %, are what I think of as residual racists. They are so deeply emotionally committed to their version of America - the one they grew up in where legal segregation and legal voter suppression and racism (and, of course, legal discrimination against "homosexuals") were norms - that like President Toxic they just can't change. He is actually modeling how his strongest supporters are likely to react, both before and after the election. They will grow increasingly frantic as they move toward defeat. And increasingly bitter after they are defeated. As I said above, gun sales will skyrocket. We'll know just how bad it is once history kicks President Toxic's divisive ass into the political grave. I'm not that worried about 51 % of Americans telling Rasmussen they approve of Trump on August 21st. Most of the data has been consistent all year: President Toxic is in a downward spiral that now can not be reversed. And Lichtman is right. It's because of fundamentals. Not blips in polls after some viewers in the middle perhaps heard a bit too much about Black Lives Matters or AOC on TV last night. I was ambivalent about Biden all through 2019. One thing I do appreciate about him more than ever is this: he clearly plays the long game. That is, of course, what Lichtman and Meacham and Kasich are all speaking to. The long game. The fundamentals. The core values. The need for unity and compromise. So like many Democrats, I will never be truly excited about Biden. But I don't have a hard time accepting that he offers some things that right now the majority of Americans do in fact notice, and feel strongly about. Mostly he offers a reasonable alternative. That is what Lichtman is saying. And that is what really matters. And I'm glad you won't forget the fact that 35 % or 40 % or 45 % or whatever actually supported the hate and racism and incompetence and dividing. Even though they allowed President Toxic to convince them that this was actually somehow "healing" America. And, of course, making it great again. However many they are, we should not forget. Most of them are just going to get older, and more bitter. And we'll have to deal with them for the rest of their lives.

He Predicted Trump's Win In 2016. Now He's Ready To Call 2020. I couldn't resist commenting on this. I've been waiting for this shoe to drop. And now it has. Allan Lichtman, "the prediction professor", says President Toxic is going to lose. It's locked and loaded, he says, if you watch the nicely produced seven minute video above. The caveats he adds are that Trump will try to change the outcome with voter suppression. And Putin will, too, with Round Two of "fuck up democracy good" election interference. But history is against President Toxic and his hate and racism. Maybe MLK was right after all. There are people who think that Lichtman is selling snake oil. If you think that, go right ahead. But people like Lee Atwater disagreed. I've watched lots of videos on YouTube of Lichtman addressing conventions of political scientists. He tells a story about how when he first published his theory in the early 80's, and predicted two years in advance that Reagan would win re-election in 1984, Lee Atwater asked him to visit him at The White House. Atwater asked if it would change Lichtman's prediction of a Republican victory if Reagan did not seek re-election in 1984. Lichtman said yes: you lose the power of incumbency, and you lose the charisma of Reagan, which are two of his 13 "keys". Atwater took him seriously in the early 1980's, apparently. Being right about every election since, months or in some cases years in advance, has not diminished Lichtman's stature. I won't comment on the keys themselves, since Lichtman goes through them all in the video above. I'm a data guy. So what I buy about this, other than the important fact that Lichtman has been right every time so far, is that his keys are almost all objective criteria. As an objective measure, the economy has gone to shit this year. As an objective measure, there is mass social unrest. Blacks in particular, but also most Millennials, have had enough of President Toxic stirring the pot of racism, hate, and division. So history is going to give this major national embarrassment and complete asshole exactly what he deserves. And the prediction itself is based on mostly objective facts. (I added the word asshole myself just to be mean, like President Toxic is.) What I also particularly like about Lichtman's theory, as a political science theory, is that it is built on respect for the American people. As he says in the video, ignore the polls and the politicking. It's governing that matters to people. Voters are making reasoned judgments on the performance of the party in power - and whether they have earned the privilege of more power, or the need for punishment. So Lichtman is basically saying it's always been the economy, stupid. Or the war, stupid. It makes common sense. John McCain was a profoundly decent man, and a genuine hero. Nothing he said or did in 2008 could have overcome the weight of Iraq War fatigue, and the Great Recession. So President Toxic can flap his racist and hating lips all he wants, and it won't mean a thing. All Trump is going to prove is that in 2020, it's the racism, stupid, too. But as Lichtman says, Putin trying to fuck with America and democracy again might mean something. So we have to be vigilant. And we have to send money to Democrats. In 2018 I picked my Democracy Dozen and sent each of them $100 a month all Fall. About half of them were House candidates trying to flip Republican seats, mostly in California. Then there were moderate Democratic Senators like Heidi Heitkamp and Claire McCaskill. In 2018 almost all the House Democrats won, and flipped a boatload of Republican seats. Almost all the Senate Democratic incumbents I sent money to lost. (Senator Sinema in Arizona was the exception.) What seemed to determine the outcome was simple and consistent. If your constituency is old, White, and rural, and you are a Democrat, you will lose. That's how it worked out in Indiana, North Dakota, and Missouri. If your constituency is anything else - young, Black, Brown, Gay, urban, suburban - and you are a Democrat, you will win. It seems likely to pretty much work out the same way this time. But, no. There's no racism in America, is there? My basic theory is that most young people, say under 40, pretty much see the same thing: a country and an economic system that hasn't worked all that well for them. Even when times were supposedly good. So while Black Lives Matter, and young Whites feel the same way as young Blacks, a big chunk of that is that they both know what it feels like to be crippled by debt and left behind in a top-down economy. And we now know for sure they don't like it. Smart Republican activists have been saying for years a huge tidal wave is going to take out Republicans soon. And it is a tidal wave of youth. Will 2020 be that year? We'll know soon. My 2020 Democracy Dozen is built on the same principle as 2018: go for the restoration of moderation, decency, fact, and reason. So in 2018 that meant people like Harley Rouda, a former Republican who flipped an Orange County House district. The heart of Reaganism in the 1980's, Orange County, is now solid blue, thanks to people like Rouda. He's favored to win re-election in 2020, but it will be close. So I'm sending him money. More important in 2020 is the Senate. So my priorities are people like Mark Kelly in Arizona, John Hickenlooper in Colorado, Theresa Greenfield in Iowa, Steve Bullock in Montana, Jon Ossoff in Georgia, Sara Gideon in Maine, Cal Cunnigham in North Carolina. All of them are leading or tied in polls. I think all could win in November. As a progressive who voted for Bernie in the California primary, I don't see one of these men and women I'm prioritizing as a progressive. Rev. Warnock in Georgia is. A Black pastor from MLK's home church winning a Senate seat would be very exciting. But it's not very likely. What matters most to me about the people above is that they want to restore decency, unity, reason, and good governance. Bernie himself (and my personal 2020 favorite, Elizabeth) obviously get why that matters, as they proved this week. And on the subject of decency, kudos to John Kasich and Jon Meacham for saying exactly what needs to be said repeatedly and relentlessly until Election Day. One of the breaking points I had with a former client and friend of 20 years who is a moderate Republican was when he trashed John Kasich to me for writing the book, "Two Paths". At the time, in 2017, this Republican friend said the only thing Kasich can do that matters is run for Senate in Ohio in 2018 and try to take Sherrod Brown out. Other than that, Kasich should just shut the fuck up. He has nothing of value to say. That was one of dozens of moments I can now look back on as leading me to the conclusion that something sick and vile was happening in the hearts of Republican friends I actually used to listen to, and respect. Moments like that, which ended friendship and respect, will be my lifelong recollection of the hate and ugliness of the era of President Toxic. Kasich is a man of principle. He will be heard. Kudos to him for standing for what he deeply believes in. He is, to me, an American hero. I'll close with this. Jon Meacham is another one who, like Kasich, I think eloquently defined this particular moment. If you believe Lichtman's theory, the beautiful and moving rhetoric of someone like Meacham doesn't really matter. Because it's the economy, stupid. Or it's the war, stupid. Or it's the racism, stupid. That's what will drive President Toxic's loss. While that may be true, I think Meacham at least helped define how we FEEL about this moment. His call for decency and unity was deeply felt. Just like Brayden Harrington, the kid who stutters and wants the world to feel better in 2021. Even if Lichtman's "keys" will drive the outcome, like they have in every election he correctly predicted, it matters a lot how we FEEL about what happened. I predict the residual racists will double down on the three things they did right after Obama won in 2008: they will buy guns, buy more guns, and buy even more guns. And this time they'll get a double dose of bullets. So they basically need to sit at home with their guns and bullets and have a very long time out. The rest of us will hopefully take Meacham's words to heart. In a unifying way, I think he defined the mission and purpose to come.

Sorry to disappoint, my friend. But when I bend over, it's for one of only two reasons: to suck cock or get fucked. As far as politics goes, I rely on my mouth. Not my knees or ass. Anyhoo, I still strongly agree with your passion about calling out and fighting racism. Now is the time. Keep it up.

70% of Americans say Trump’s actions tied to Ukraine were wrong: POLL Majority of Americans say Trump did not cooperate with impeachment, sought to hinder investigation, poll says The sad part is that 60 -70 % of Americans know Trump did something wrong, and then obstructed the effort to disclose it. But the Republicans don't give a shit. This is tribal politics. Fuck the truth.

Hunter Biden’s Ukraine gas firm pressed Obama administration to end corruption allegations, memos show Solomon, the author of that piece, is a controversial journalist. And as Hunter says, he did nothing illegal. But this is another example of the drip, drip, drip of corruption porn we can expect in Fall 2020 if Biden is nominated. It will weaken Democrat's ability to argue that President Toxic promised to drain the swamp, and instead deepened it. I assume that if Warren is nominated that at some point the GOP will go after her for some of her corporate legal work decades ago, and try to make it look anti-consumer. That will be interesting to watch, since it implicitly undercuts their case that she is a raging anti-corporate socialist.

And while it's not related to the deficit, I can't resist the temptation to point out this other example of Republican hypocrisy McConnell: Obama demeans presidency February 9, 2012

US budget deficit smashes $1 trillion mark, highest in 7 years Wow! That's harsh. We better get an update from Rush. I bet he's steaming that we are back to $1 trillion deficits - even though the economy under Trump is "perfect" and growing like never before in human history! What do you make of this Rush? Rush Limbaugh admits GOP's fiscal attacks on Obama were "bogus," defends Trump's deficit Death of the deficit hawks: "Nobody is a fiscal conservative anymore," says host who drove the Tea Party uprising

Hunter Biden's legal work in Romania raises new questions about his overseas dealings Hunter Biden provided legal advice to a Romanian charged with real estate fraud, at a time when his father was pushing corruption reforms in the country. Ya think? Sorry, Joe. But three strikes and you're out. 1. Ukraine 2. China 3. Romania My question all along has been why make the father pay for the sins of the son? But this makes a pattern. Whatever anyone things about the substance of this, the optics look fatal for a general election. It's like a repeat of Crooked Hillary, only this time it actually seems more fair to say it does actually stink.

Possibly. The sad thing is that you don't need to go there to explain it. Miss Graham, like any other politician, is interested in one thing above all else: survival. Most politicians have some integrity, and simply would not go this far. A former client and friend told me he was at some Republican meeting in Orange County that Graham spoke at. After the speech my friend had a brief chat with Graham. My friend did a typical little speech of his about how the California Republican Party has too many purists who insist on abortion being illegal - which is why Republicans now can't get elected for dog catcher. He says Graham said something like, If I were running for the Senate in California, I'd probably agree with you. But I'm from South Carolina, so ................. I think this is another example where Graham is as much symptom as cause. The sad thing is that his base in South Carolina - which are of course the same people who elected Sen. Tim Scott - will stand for this. How weird is that?

U.S. envoy says he was told release of Ukraine aid was contingent on public declaration to investigate Bidens, 2016 election And why am I not surprised that The Divine Miss Graham is going for her second consecutive Best Supporting Actress Oscar? 'This is a lynching, in every sense': Lindsey Graham says Trump's impeachment description 'accurate' This is a lynching, in every sense," Graham said. "This is un-American." He said lynching involves people "who are out to get somebody for no good reason" and who take "the law in their own hands." "Yes, African-Americans were lynched, other people have people lynched throughout history," Graham said. "What does lynching mean? That a mob grabs you, they don't give you a chance to defend yourself, they don't tell you what happened to you, they just destroy you."

I'm gonna go way out on a limb and assume you are not a liberal Democrat. But even if you are a Republican, even your own party is for "soaking the rich" to help the middle class and have nots. I'm gonna go even further out on a limb and assume that despite the great promise of trickle down economics, your bootstraps have not pulled you into the class of the ultra-rich who are worth over $50 million. So the good news is you have nothing to worry about.

President Toxic is so fucked. He is so totally fucked. quid pro quo /ˌkwid ˌprō ˈkwō/ noun a favor or advantage granted or expected in return for something Mulvaney brashly admits quid pro quo over Ukraine aid as key details emerge -- and then denies doing so Gallup poll: Majority of Americans now support Trump's impeachment, removal I'm actually confused. Mostly, I have been simply assuming that the Republicans will NOT convict in the Senate. And the polls still show Republican voters have barely budged on their support for Trump. It's feeling more and more like a cult. Now it's stinking so bad that I think they may have to force him to resign, like Nixon did. So is it better to clear the slate, even if that means a President Pence? Or is it better to have the Republicans vote not to convict, so they can all go off to election together, like lambs to slaughter, next Fall?

Sorry, but Democrats need to talk about Hunter Biden Democrats are afraid to talk about Hunter Biden. Trump won’t be. By Ezra Klein

Just to be clear, that was sarcasm on my part. John Bolton will never be a hero.

Bolton Objected to Ukraine Pressure Campaign, Calling Giuliani ‘a Hand Grenade’ Of President Toxic's many unexpected and remarkable achievements, this one has to go near the top of the list. Who woulda thunk he'd figure out a way to turn John Bolton, The Hawk Who Wants To Blow Up The World, into a national hero?

CNN Wisconsin Focus Group: Not A Single Person Said They Will Vote For Trump I'm adding this as an addendum to the post directly above. I actually think it is a perfect example of the civil war that is happening in America right now. It is a civil war that is civil. And it is a war being waged with facts, not guns. There's a 5 minute video of Independent voters from Wisconsin embedded in that article that is worth watching. And I get that one could argue this means nothing. It's nine Independent voters. And of these nine, only one voted for Trump in 2016, anyway. The telling thing to me is that of the 9, none will even consider Trump in 2020. All 9 support the impeachment inquiry. 3 already feel they know enough to say that Trump should be removed from office, before he can do more harm. The other 6 want to hear more facts as they are uncovered. Bottom line: whether it's through an election or impeachment, a majority of the American people now want President Toxic to be removed from power. This video of Independents explains why, I think. He is losing the civil war. I am not surprised. It is increasingly becoming a question of how, and when, President Toxic's war against truth will end.

As Russia collusion fades, Ukrainian plot to help Clinton emerges BY JOHN SOLOMON — 03/20/19 07:30 PM EDT So I have another way to think about President Toxic's statement about needing to have a civil war. I think he is right. I think we need a civil war. Kind of like we needed to have a civil war over slavery way back when. The difference is that this time, the civil war needs to be fought and won over the truth. And the good news is that we don't have to use guns to fight this war. We can instead use facts. The civil war can, in fact, be civil. That article above now reads completely differently than it did when John Solomon wrote it in March of this year. Solomon at the time worked for The Hill. He was widely unpopular among his professional journalist colleagues, who thought he was pushing propaganda in the guise of "facts" and "news". Solomon, no surprise, has now left The Hill and just got a job at - wait for it - Fox News. He is now spreading his fake news there. This article was part of the Trump/Ghouliani hit campaign to go after Marie Yovanovitch, the fired US Ambassador to Ukraine who just gave testimony to Congress that will go down in history as another "Have you no decency?" moment. She uncovered the fact that she was taken out by Trump and Ghouliani because she was a professional working in the interests of the United States and fighting corruption. Trump wanted her to work on his interests, instead. Solomon was the one who reported the lies made up by former Ukraine Prosecutor General Lutsenko, who alleged that Yovanovitch gave him a list of people not to prosecute. She has now been vindicated. Lutsenko has now lost his job, and admitted that was a lie. If you scroll down, you will see the letter from former Republican U.S. Rep Pete Sessions to Pompeo dated May 9, 2018 stating Yovanovitch should be fired. We now know that President Toxic himself called Yovanovitch "bad news" in his call to President Zelensky, and implied vaguely that something bad was going to happen to her. We also know that Rep. Sessions got campaign contributions from the town clowns associated with Ghouliani who were just indicted and arrested when they were trying to leave the country with one way tickets. We know that the afternoon before they were arrested they were sitting with Ghouliani in the lobby of the Trump International Hotel in Washington. Recall that Rep. Sessions was the Republican Chairman of the House Rules Committee. Really? What rules? Anybody wonder why America fired the House Republicans? We also know that part of the problem with Yovanovitch is she was getting in the way of the Ukraine business dealing of Ghouliani's Soviet Republic-born clowns. Now that they've been arrested, I'm sure more details will be forthcoming, just like they were with Cohen. So much for Ghouliani being a corruption-fighting hero. And it goes without saying. Ghouliani and his clowns will be thrown under the bus by President Toxic. Just like Michael "Who? Why would I believe my long-time lawyer?" Cohen. So we definitely know Trump and Ghouliani did not drain the swamp. We know they dredged it and deepened it. We don't know all the details of how they did it yet. But the stench and taint is now everywhere. Meanwhile, the official "fake news" of the Republican Party is that there is no there. Trump is innocent. He is perfect. He is as wise as all the prophets of The Bible combined. If you buy his most recent tweets, he is perhaps as wise and all knowing as God. You want scandal? Go after Joe Biden and Ukraine. I agree with President Toxic that we need a civil war. We need to fight for the truth. And we need to fight in a civil and factual manner. We knew how this was going to end even before President Toxic was elected. We knew he was going to find a way to pull the trigger, if given the power to do so. And we knew the result would be his own political suicide.

Marie Yovanovitch says Trump ousted her over ‘unfounded and false claims’

There's some interesting and somewhat contradictory data just out from the US census. I'm actually not sure what to make of it. That said, it proves that the US economy is a complex thing. And also that if we want to really shift things, like income inequality, we really should be thinking about "big structural change". Let's start with the most common headline: Census: US inequality grew, including in heartland states That's the factoid that got the most coverage. Median incomes went up slightly less than one percent, from $61,423 per household in 2017 to $61,937 in 2018. The Gini Index went up from 0.482 to 0.485, meaning more income inequality. That means we have the highest level of income inequality in the US in 50 years, as long as this index has been measured. Trumpians responded that the report showed that income is up, unemployment is down, and poverty is down. All of which is true. The data is somewhat confusing. If you go to the actual report, you can download all kinds of tables. And some of them actually seem to slightly contradict each other. Here is one example of that that was reported by the conservative press: What that chart from a conservative publication shows is that the increase in income was actually concentrated more toward the have nots. And that appears to be true. For the second quintile, median income went up from $36,367 in 2017 to $37,293 in 2018. For the Top 20 %, it actually went down slightly, from $234,603 in 2017 to $233,895 in 2018. The most ridiculous argument made by a few conservatives is that this "proves" Trump's tax cuts really did benefit the have nots, not the rich. False. We know for a fact that 75 % of the benefit went to the Top 20 %, and about 5 % of the benefit went to the Bottom 40 %. So what is interesting is that, despite the tax cuts, the rich did not get richer, and the have nots got a little more. The likely explanation is that the Top 20 % derives more income than other Americans from things like investment income and divideneds. During 2017, the stock market boomed, and average income for the rich did, too. Their median income for the Top 5 % went up over five percent from 2016 to 2017, from $394,6681 in 2016 to $416,303 in 2017. In 2018 the stock market was actually down. Median income for the Top 5 % rose to only $416,520. That's $200 bucks more, on average. The tax cuts showered on the rich probably kept their investment income from going down, like the stock market did. There's several points there. First, it doesn't make the Trump economy circa 2018 look all that great. Second, it doesn't suggest that somehow the tax cuts really grew the economy, for anyone. Third, it suggests that the richer you are, the more you make your money off investments, as opposed to work. Unless you call collecting dividend checks work. Speaking of work, it's not clear why incomes went up most for the have nots. One logical theory is that the tight labor market has finally actually resulted in a little bit of trickle down, and wages went up at the bottom of the wage scale. There's probably at least some truth to that. Ironically, that may be bad news for Trump. This kind of trickle down is usually associated with the end of a business cycle. Next stop: recession. Another theory is that whatever gains have come for the have nots came as the result of Democrats, who pushed increases in the minimum wage. That is probably a factor, too. A total of 20 states, pretty much all Democratic "blue" (although they are marked in red in the graphic below), increased minimum wages between 2017 and 2018. And if you do the math, it likely would help people in the second quintile the most, since that group is above the poverty level, but probably tends to have a lot of people who work at the low end of the wage scales. There's some other data that suggest minimum wages may have had an impact. The biggest increase in income by age went to 15 to 24 year olds, which is a relatively small group (6 million people). They make on average about $40,000 a year, and that group's income went up 9 % in one year. Meanwhile, the much larger group of people (24 million) aged 55 to 64 make about $70,000 a year. Their incomes actually went down 2.3% from 2017 to 2018. So the people most likely to be paid at or near minimum wage - the young - made the most gains. Since Trump voters are heavily skewed towards the older, not sure it's a good thing that incomes went down for the age cohorts mostly likely to vote for Trump. Ouch! And those young Californians or Oregonians that got the benefit of a minimum wage hike? Probably not voting for President Toxic in 2020, I'd guess. Regionally, same thing. The region with the biggest income gain was the Northeast, where incomes went up 4.3 %. The region with the lowest income gain was the South, where incomes went up 0.3 percent. The Northeast states are more liberal, and many of the minimum wage increases occurred there. The South is the only region where a number of states have NO state minimum wage law - they just go by the federal level. Only a few states, mainly Florida, increased their minimum wage. That said, I'll also post at the bottom of this thread the changes by state. I was curious, so I actually looked at the 20 states that had a minimum wage increase. There's no obvious and clear correlation. In about half the states that had minimum wage increases (like California, Oregon, Washington, Florida) incomes went up way more than the national average - 2 to 3 %, as opposed to about one percent nationally. In Maine, which increased minimum wage, average incomes went down more than any other state, by about 3 %. On the face of it, California and Florida are a lot bigger than Maine, so when you average it all out it would suggest that nationally the net impact should be positive for people who are one step below the bottom of the ladder. And that is basically what happened. Relatively few people actually make the minimum wage. So while it may have been one factor, it probably was not the biggest. We either are in or near a manufacturing recession thanks to Trump's trade war. That has hit the heartland harder than the coasts. My guess is that when you add it all together, the trade war had more impact than minimum wage hikes. Now let's look at the real big picture. Here is how these numbers have changed for the Top 5 % and the Bottom 20 %, if you adjust for inflation and go back to the start of the Reagan Era: Top 5 %: inflation-adjusted median income rose from $202,165 in 1980 to $416,520 in 2018. That's a 106 % increase in real income, after you adjust for inflation. Bottom 20 %: inflation-adjusted median income rose from $13,093 in 1980 to $13,775 in 2018. That's a 5 % increase in real income. I picked 1980 because I would argue that this is the outcome we should have expected from 40 years of trickle down, with occasional respites under Clinton and Obama. Tax cuts for the rich, no or paltry minimum wage increases for the people at the bottom, and sending factory jobs to China or giving them to robots all had an impact. But it all came back to government policy. Which is why I agree with Elizabeth Warren. We don't need tinkering. We need big structural change. There's people that say the war on poverty failed. That's bullshit. The war on poverty actually slashed the poverty rate dramatically, especially among seniors due to Medicare and Medicaid. We went from about 40 million poor people in 1959 to about 25 million by the end of the 60's, thanks to the War On Poverty. And it also fell under Clinton, to the tune of about 10 million less poor people. The median wage for the Bottom 20 % went from $12,628 in 1993, the year Clinton took office, to $14,852 in 2000 when he left. That's an 18 % increase. In other words, it went up three times higher under Clinton than it has during the entire era of trickle down from 1980 to today. The Bottom 20 % actually make less today,adjusted for inflation, than they did in 2000. For the Top 5 %, median income went from $298,215 in 1993 to $369,069 in 2000, a 24 percent increase. So under Clinton a rising tide did lift all boats. The Top 5 % did slightly better than the Bottom 25 %, but it was comparable. My point is that that happened by design. Clinton pushed things like the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Childrens Health Insurance Program (CHIP) that did in fact spread out the benefits of economic growth. We need to go back to the idea of big structural change, like The New Deal and The War On Poverty, and also the buildup up factories in a dynamic Main Street economy that was supported by federal investments and policies, like research and building highways. Hmm.Wonder who could do that? Here's the chart of income changes by state, in case anyone is interested: https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2019/09/us-median-household-income-up-in-2018-from-2017.html?utm_campaign=20190926msacos3ccstors&utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery