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
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