CLUELESSNESS, THY NAME IS DEMOCRAT!

11/29/16

Bloomberg Radio reported this morning that Senator Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y), who is the closest thing the Democrats have to a national leader at the moment (perhaps more on this in a later post), is objecting to the apparent selection of Georgia Congressman, and vehement Obamacare opponent, Tom Price as Health and Human Services (“HHS”) Secretary.   Mr. Schumer’s reason?   Mr. Price is “out of the mainstream.”

Leave aside the relative merits of Mr. Price’s selection for HHS; simply concentrate on Senator Schumer’s reasoning.    Mr. Price is “out of the mainstream”?   Was Mr. Schumer awake during that election we just held?   Was he sentient during the campaign?    Mr. Trump’s election was, above all, a scathing rejection and repudiation of “the mainstream.”  What else but utter disgust at “the mainstream” and what it has done to this country could explain the election of Mr. Trump over the poster person for the mainstream, Hillary Clinton?   Yet Mr. Schumer is surprised, or at least appalled, by Mr. Trump’s selection of somebody “out of the mainstream” for HHS Secretary.

This is only the latest example of Democratic cluelessness.   A perhaps even richer example was provided by the Democrats in the immediate aftermath of Mr. Trump’s election.   The Dems finally decided that, yeah, maybe they were out of touch with working people, and especially with white working people, who not that long ago formed the Democratic base.   So the bi-coastal leadership of the former party of the people decided that perhaps they ought to move further left, to give a warmer embrace to the Sanders/Warren wing of the party, in order to win the hearts of the white working class voters who turned, in legions, to Mr. Trump.   So the sauvignon blanc crowd that controls the Democratic Party from the tonier burgs of Washington, New York, and San Francisco actually believes that they lost the white working class because the party moved too far to the right by nominating Hillary Clinton.

Yours truly has a number of cop friends who have often told me that it is indeed fortunate that your typical criminal is not very bright; otherwise, a lot fewer crimes would be solved.    My Republican friends, as they ponder their good fortune of having the Democrats for opponents, have to share many of the feelings of those officers of the law.

OF SEXISM, COATTAILS, AND SAFE STOCKS

11/18/16

While I haven’t been writing much of late, I did take time to make the BIG prediction of a few weeks ago and to write a few letters to the Wall Street Journal.  The big prediction is a few posts down (TRUMP WILL WIN, AND WIN BIG, ON TUESDAY, 11/4/16) and I have reproduced below my latest three letters to the Journal.   Two (the first and the last) were published; indeed, the first was published today (Friday, 11/18/16).   The second letter, a piece relating the election of 1960 to the “reverse coattails” the “experts” were telling us in September that Donald Trump would be needing in November, never made it to the Journal’s pages.   I thought you might enjoy all three.

ON SEXISM AND THE RECENT DEFEAT OF SECRETARY CLINTON

11/12/16

Yet another of the “experts,” Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg, weighs in on Hillary Clinton’s inability to run up the predicted overwhelming margins among women voters: (page A5, Weekend Journal, 11/12-11/13/16)

“There are women, especially blue collar women, who are skeptical about women’s political leadership.  We still live in a sexist country.”

Once again, the experts have dropped the ball.   Women, even the “blue collar women,” who, for the experts, are little more than sociological curiosities, are not “skeptical about women’s political leadership.” They are instead skeptical about Hillary Clinton’s political leadership.

Do the experts regard it as remotely possible for someone, regardless of gender, to vote against a woman without being “sexist”?   Who indeed is being sexist here?

Mark M. Quinn

ON REVERSE COATTAILS, JOHN KENNEDY, AND DONALD TRUMP:

9/30/16

Reid Epstein speaks of Ohio in 2016 being a “rare case study in reverse coattails,” (“A Surprise Ohio Trump Card,” page A1, 9/30/16).   Reverse coattails may be rare in other parts of the country, but in my hometown of Chicago they are a component of the normal course of politics.  

The most famous and consequential case of reverse coattails in Chicago took place in 1960.  Mayor Richard J. Daley feared the reelection of then States Attorney Ben Adamowski, a political nemesis and 1955 mayoral primary opponent.  So the Mayor pulled out all the stops to inflate Democratic turnout in an effort to defeat Mr. Adamowski.   At the top of the Democratic ticket that year was a young man named John F. Kennedy.  Mr. Kennedy rode the coattails of Dan Ward, Mr. Adamowski’s opponent, to a landslide victory in Cook County, which resulted in his carrying Illinois and winning the presidency.   The rest is history.

Contrary to popular opinion, it was not Mayor Daley’s consanguineous affection for a young Irishman that motivated him to carry Cook County for the Senator from Massachusetts; it was the Mayor’s fear of a determined political opponent with prosecutorial powers.

Mark M. Quinn

 ON SAFE COMPANIES, SAFE STOCKS, AND THE DIFFERENCES

9/13/16

James McIntosh (“ ‘Safest’ Shares Prove They Are Anything But,” Streetwise, 9/13/16) makes a great point when he argues that Friday’s increase in long rates, prompted by more Fed talk of a rate increase, rocked investors in bond equivalents out of their state of complacency, causing them to abandon their high yielding stocks as quickly, and perhaps as thoughtlessly, as they jumped on the dividend bandwagon.

There is something more fundamental at work here, however.   The “safety” of a stock is as much a function of its price as it is of the underlying fundamentals of the issuer’s business.   The stock of even the safest company can be fraught with risk if that stock is too expensive.   That is precisely what has happened to the big dividend payers that have seen something of a comeuppance of late.   The last seats on the bandwagon are far more expensive, and dangerous, than the first seats.

Mark M. Quinn

THAT WHICH DONALD TRUMP MUST DO HE MUST DO LATER

11/13/16

Of all the things Donald Trump said he would do when he became president, far and away the most important was the institution of term limits for Congress.   Term limits would forever alter the thinking of those who get elected to Congress and never find their way back home.  If a House member knew that he would eventually have to live with the laws that he passes, perhaps he would look at those laws and their consequences more carefully.   If a Senator knew that a career in politics were just about impossible, perhaps that career would not be the foremost thing in her mind and she would not be so desperate for the cash needed to sustain such a career…and not so willing to make the compromises with one’s principles that come attached to that money.  

Term limits would break, even destroy, the political careerist mindset, and it was the rejection of, and the revulsion at, the professional politicians and their condescending and usually misguided way of thinking that made Mr. Trump President-elect Donald Trump.   Therefore, the most important thing that Mr. Trump must do to deliver on his promises is not tax cuts, a border wall, a war on ISIS, renegotiation of trade deals or a sweeping reform of the regulatory structure in Washington.   Mr. Trump must work ardently and incessantly for term limits to be true to his candidacy, to those who made it successful, and to his political reason for being.

However…

Mr. Trump must wait, perhaps longer than any of us would like, to make the big push for term limits.   There are two reasons that Mr. Trump must move gingerly on what should be his most important policy initiative.   First, the chances of his actually achieving term limits are close to nil because such limits would have to be passed by people who would be voting themselves out of a job, certainly the best job they could ever have; it’s hard to beat making a highly remunerative living getting one’s hindquarters smooched.   Even if one were to grandfather all existing officeholders in a term limits proposal, the pols still would not go along with such a proposal; note the opposition among senior citizens to proposed changes to Social Security despite their being grandfathered in every serious Social Security reform proposal that has come down the pike.

Second, pushing for a term limits amendment, either through the Congress or through a Constitutional convention, would certainly antagonize the Congress.   While most of us have little problem antagonizing Congress, doing so makes no sense from a practical perspective if one wants to get things done.   If the Congress knows, rather than merely suspects, that Mr. Trump would like to throw them all out of office, their enthusiasm for working with him would doubtless wane.   Why antagonize people you will need, especially if antagonizing them is, from a practical perspective, pointless?

So as much as those of us who voted for Mr. Trump would consider his presidency a failure, and our votes as misguided, if he were to abandon term limits altogether, he ought to put such limits on the proverbial backburner.   He ought to first push for the easy things, the things on which he can gather bi-partisan support, like corporate tax reform and infrastructure spending.    Go for the relatively easy stuff, accumulate power and chits, develop a sense of inevitability and the pointlessness of resistance, then go for the big things.   The biggest of all the big things is term limits.   Achieving this goal may ultimately prove impossible, but making an honest, forthright, and vigorous pursuit of this perhaps quixotic goal would point out to many of us that Mr. Trump is indeed not a closet member of “the club” and has heard the calls and cries of those who are simply fed up with the political professional’s mindset and all the damage it has one to our once great nation.

TRUMP WILL WIN, AND WIN BIG, ON TUESDAY

11/4/16

Loyal readers will notice that I’ve written nothing for this blog for a long time.  Not only has time been tight, but one begins to wonder what the point of all my blogging was.   So I have pursued other more fruitful pursuits.  However, with the election coming, I feel compelled to break my silence and predict that Donald Trump will win Tuesday…and it won’t even be close, at least in the electoral college.

Loyal readers will remember that I have been all over the Trump situation since the beginning.   In the interest of brevity and efficiency, I will cite only two posts.   One

NOBODY SAW THIS TRUMP THING COMING, RIGHT?   WELL…SOMEBODY DID… (5/4/16)

 Summarizes the others and refers the reader to them.   The other

TRUMP, THE “REVERSE BRADLEY EFFECT,” AND THE MAN’S UPCOMINGLOSS IN IOWA (12/23/15)

is key to my prediction of a Trump victory.   Notice the date on that piece; yours truly may have been the originator of the “reverse Bradley effect,” which is now common wisdom.  But I digress.

Admittedly, I think I must be doing something wrong here because the insightful experts who populate cable television and the networks are either predicting a Hillary victory, though not so much in the last week or so, or saying that the race will be incredibly tight.

So how do I get to a Trump victory?   First, I use the RealClear Politics polling data.   Second, and here is where those who think I have lost it will argue with me, I give Mr. Trump every state in which he is within five percentage points of Mrs. Clinton.   This is not an outlandish assumption because of the aforementioned, and often wrongly dismissed, reverse Bradley effect.   Simply put, a lot of people who are voting for Mr. Trump are not admitting it.   I heard an “expert” a few weeks ago on the local CBS radio affiliate saying that people who are telling their friends that they will vote for Mr. Trump will not tell a pollster they are voting for him.   She was right but did not go far enough; there are plenty of people who are voting for Mr. Trump who will not even tell their friends they are voting that way.   How do I know this?  I, of course, don’t know this, which is what distinguishes me from your typical talking head on television who knows everything.   However, I strongly suspect I am right in this regard for at least two reasons.   First, I am reluctant to admit to people that I am voting for Mr. Trump and I’m not reluctant to admit much of anything.  Second, I know plenty of people in the same situation and my experience and circle of friends is far less limited than those of most election observers.

If you combine the margin of error in most polling being 2-3% and the reverse Bradley effect outlined above, it is perfectly reasonable to give Mr. Trump every state in which he is either ahead or less than five points behind.   Thus, Mr. Trump carries, besides the more obvious GOP states, the following:

Florida

Georgia

Michigan

New Hampshire

North Carolina

Ohio

Pennsylvania

Of the other close states, Mrs. Clinton carries Virginia and Wisconsin.   My gut, by the way, tells me Mr. Trump carries Wisconsin, but I’ll stick with the methodology above and give it to Mrs. Clinton.  I also think there is a possibility of at least one big state that has been Democratic forever going Mr. Trump’s way, or at least coming far closer than anybody thinks, but, like a pre-redemption Rick Blaine, I won’t stick my neck out on that one.

I certainly could be wrong here.    I heard another “expert” on Bloomberg radio the other morning saying essentially the opposite of what I am saying; she argued that Mr. Trump must be ahead in a given state by more than 5% in order to really be ahead because Mrs. Clinton’s “ground game” is so much better.  As one who grew up in Chicago and knows the former, but long waning, importance of the “ground game,” I think that contention is ludicrous.   But, again, I’m no expert; I’m just a guy who pays attention and has a good sense of people, two of the advantages of getting older.

Further, yours truly made a couple of predictions during this campaign that have turned out to look silly.  Remember my prediction that Carly Fiorina would definitely be on the GOP ticket?   I can’t even find the post in which I made that prediction, but I know I made it because I bet a beef sandwich on it and had to buy.  I also predicted that Mrs. Clinton would pick Elizabeth Warren as her running mate:

HILLARY WON’T PUT BERNIE SANDERS ON THE TICKET; INSTEAD,SHE’LL SELECT… (5/21/16)

So I’ve been far, far from infallible in my predictions during this immensely entertaining campaign.   And I could be wrong in my prediction of a big Trump electoral victory.   But I don’t think so.