Some predictions, less than a month before our 2020 elections

A plausible Biden/Harris landslide victory, one possibility

 I haven't been paying close attention to the 2020 elections in the United States because I've been so busy with work and some family projects.  Today I checked up on the Senate and House races, and studied the map to see how the Presidential election is likely to go.  Here is a summary of what I've learned.

Will the Democratic Party take control of the Senate.  Probably yes. Here is how:

In the Senate, The Republican challenger Tuberville will defeat Jones and take back a seat for the Republicans in Alabama. It is very unlikely that Jones can hold his seat, but it would not be a miracle if he somehow did.

But the Republican incumbents Collins in Maine, Tillis in North Carolina, Gardner in Colorado, and McSally in Arizona will all lose their seats to the Democratic challengers (Gideon in Maine, Cunningham in North Carolina, Hickenlooper in Colorado, and Kelly in Arizona).  This gives the Democrats four new seats. Colorado and Cunningham are the closest of these races; Maine and Arizona are pretty obviously going Democratic.

The result is a net shift of three seats from Republican to Democratic.  The Republicans will control 50 seats and the Democrats will control 48.  Two independents caucus with the Democrats, so the Senate will be split 50-50, with the Vice President casting the deciding vote. 

There are four races to watch which, if the Democrats win any one of them, they could get up to 49 seats and put the Republicans down to 49 seats, so that the two independent Senators would give the Democrats a 51-49 advantage.  Here are those races:

Iowa, where the Democratic challenger Greenfield could possibly defeat the Republican incumbent Ernst.  If this happens, the Democrats will have the majority in the Senate without needing the Vice President to break tie votes. Iowa is the tightest and most significant Senate race if you think the Democrats are pretty sure of taking Colorado and North Carolina (and of course they will take Arizona and Maine). 

Montana, where the Democratic candidate Bullock might possibly defeat the incumbent Daines, is another opportunity for the Democratic Party.  Bullock would be a conservative Democrat, and his chances of actually defeating Daines are not very good.  It's still a close race, however.

In Georgia, Ossoff could possibly defeat the Republican incumbent Perdue, but I’m not counting on it.  The Republicans are spending a lot of money to keep Perdue in office, but if the Democrats pull off a landslide in the Presidential race, maybe Ossoff could win in Georgia.

In South Carolina, Harrison has a slight chance of defeating Graham.  It would be a huge victory for the Democrats to take a seat in South Carolina. It is not likely, but it is certainly within the realm of possibility.

So, if you hope Democrats really get control of the Senate, be looking to the returns from South Carolina, Georgia, Montana, and Iowa.  Iowa is the best chance for giving Democrats control (assuming they win in Colorado and North Carolina as well as their fairly certain wins in Arizona and Maine).

If you want Republicans to keep control of the Senate, you need to hope that somehow the Democrats don’t win in Arizona, or Maine, or North Carolina, or Colorado. In all four of those races, it looks like the Republicans will probably lose, but the races are close enough to imagine that the Republicans might hold on to one or more of those seats.  So, the Republicans can still hold out hope.  Republicans often point out that polls tend to underestimate support for Republican candidates, but most polling experts have tried to improve their sampling remove the systematic bias that made the 2016 elections such a surprise.

If the Democrats totally dominate the election, they could even pick up the seat in Kansas where Bollier seems pretty far behind the Republican Marshall, but an upset does look possible.  Likewise it’s within the realm of possibility that Jones, the Democratic incumbent in Alabama, could somehow keep his seat against the Republican challenger Tuberville, but that seems unlikely.  I've seen claims that the Democrats could pick up a seat in Texas, Kentucky, or Mississippi, but those all seem unlikely to me. Democratic Party supporters are certainly hoping they could win those long-shot races.

In the House, the only district I really care about is my own Illinois 13th district, where the Democratic challenger Betsy Londrigan has a good chance of defeating incumbent Republican Rodney Davis.  I think she will.

Aside from that, it’s very likely that the Democrats will pick up four seats to add to their majority (North Carolina’s 2nd and 6th districts, Georgia’s 7th district, and the 23rd district in Texas).  There are about 26 seats that are toss-ups, and those are evenly split between Democratic and Republican seats. In Iowa the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Districts are likely to remain Democratic. Interesting toss-up races where I think the Democrats might pick up seats include the 21st, 22nd, and 24th districts in Texas; the 1st district in Ohio; the 5th district in Indiana; the 25th district in California; and the 10th district in Pennsylvania.  I also think Democrats could pick up seats in a few districts that normally lean Republican, including my own (13th district in Illinois) as well as the 3rd district in Ohio, the Montana and Alaska all-state districts (Alaska and Montana only have one Representative), the first district in Minnesota, and the 3rd and 6th district in Michigan.  Keep on eye on these races as returns come in on Election night.

In the Presidential Race, Biden and Harris are almost sure to win.

They will easily win in the “safe” Democratic states:

Hawaii, California, Oregon, Washington, Illinois, New York, New Mexico, New Jersey, Maryland, the District of Columbia, Delaware, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Vermont.

That gives them 187 electoral college votes right there. 

They will also win in some states that usually vote for Democrats, including: Colorado, Virginia, Maine’s 1st District, and Minnesota.  That gives them an additional 33 for a total of 220.  

They are also going to win some states where the races are a bit closer, including Nevada, Arizona, Florida, Maine’s 2nd District, Nebraska’s 2nd District, Michigan, and North Carolina.  That will give them an additional 79 votes, so they end up with 299, and they only need 271 to win.  

In addition, they could very well win in New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Iowa.  If they do that, they add 58 votes in the Electoral college, and end up with 357 electoral college votes.  But, they don’t need any of those states if Florida is a clear win for Biden, and I think it will be.

But, suppose I’m wrong about Florida and North Carolina.  That would knock them down to 255 votes before adding the “possible wins” in NH, PA, WI, OH, and IA.  They would only need to win either Pennsylvania or Ohio to get from 255 to over 271.  If they won Iowa and Wisconsin, they could lose both Pennsylvania and Ohio.

A close race with a Biden/Harris victory without winning Florida. One of many plausible outcomes in the upcoming Presidential election.

I think Trump is going to win West Virginia, South Carolina, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, the 1st and 3rd districts in Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, and Alaska. So, Trump is sure to get at least 191 electoral college votes.  But, I’m not sure if he will win Georgia, Iowa, or Ohio.  And, I think Biden and Harris have about an equal chance compared to Trump of winning in New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Florida and North Carolina, which are supposedly too-close-to-call seem to me clearly likely to go for Biden and Harris. The states that lean for Biden but seem competitive for Trump such as Michigan, Nevada, and Arizona also seem very likely to go for Biden and Harris. 

Factors to consider include: Democrats are more likely to have voted by mail, and in some places the mailed ballots will not be counted until after Election Day evening. So, in some races, Republicans might appear to be leading on Election Day evening, but Democrats will win after all the mailed ballots are counted.  Some people are concerned that there will be malicious attempts to stop counting votes after Election Day, but I don't see how such attempts could be supported in courts.

Recent polls show that many Democrats expect rioting from White Nationalists if Trump loses, and many Republicans expect rioting from BLM and Anti-Fascists if Biden loses.  Many Independents and non-affiliated people fear violence from both sides.  Looking at the polls, I'm pleased to see that almost no one thinks their own side is likely to resort to violence if they lose.  When polls show people telling the surveys "we will be violent if we lose" we know we are trouble, but when the fears are all directed at the "other side" the expectations of violence are less likely to be signals that actual violence will occur.

****** UPDATE AFTER THE ELECTION *******

A month before the election, in retrospect, I was too optimistic about Biden’s chances in several states.  I was very confident that he would win Florida and North Carolina, and he lost both.  In the weeks between when I posted this and election eve, I had learned enough about Florida to guess that Biden would probably lose it, but I remained surprised by Trump’s victory in North Carolina.  I became less certain that Biden would win Ohio, but more hopeful (even confident) that Biden could win Wisconsin.  By election Eve, I had a “pessimistic” projection that was only wrong about two states: I never guessed that Biden would win Georgia, and I never guessed that Trump would win North Carolina.  My pessimistic projection, which was correct on 48 of 50 states, was based on an assumption that polling models were generally oversampling Biden supporters by about 5-percentage-points, and Trump would beat the polling forecasts by about that much.  Since polls had Biden up by more than 5-percentage-points in critical states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and significantly up in Arizona and Nevada and North Carolina, I watched in the first hour that returns came back.  At first, the returns apparel to show Biden far out-performing the polling in Ohio, Texas, and some other states, so I was pretty sure that polls had not been biased by more than 5-points in Trump’s favor.  As the night wore on, and I could compare results in some states to the polling, it did appear that Biden was underperforming the polls by a significant amount, but not by such a great amount that the 5-percentage-point bias in polls would be exceeded in most of the critical battleground states. And, as I looked into where the votes had not been counted yet (mail-in ballots and big city areas), it was pretty clear that Biden would win in most of the close states.  So, in other words, after about 8:00 pm on Election Day evening I was no longer in any doubt that Biden would win.  

As it turned out, the race was very close, and much closer than I had imagined, in Arizona (0.3 percentage-points), Pennsylvania (1.2 percentage points), and Wisconsin (0.7 percentage points). Michigan and Nevada ended up right around where I expected (Biden won by 2.8 percentage points in Michigan, 2.4 percentage points in Nevada). The states where I was totally wrong in all my predictions finally had Trump winning in North Carolina by 0.4 percentage points and Biden winning in Georgia by 0.2 percentage points.

   

Trump received almost 74 million votes, and Biden got 80.1 million (Biden won the popular vote election by 3.9 percentage points).  I was surprised that Trump received (slightly) over 47% of the popular vote, as I expected him to win about 46 percentage points.

The aftermath of the election opened my eyes to the interpretation that about 30% of the American population has given up their rational thinking and joined a sort of cult of Trump, which does not really bear much relationship to traditional conservatism, but seems more in line with the American tradition we could trace to the Know Nothing Party, the John Birch Society, Charles Coughlin, Charles Lindbergh, the Ku Klux Klan, the Christian Identity Movement, and other sorts of reactionary populists who resisted diversity and viewed the world through a lens of conspiracy theories.  It occurs to me that if the United had a multi-party system with a party of Trump populism, a traditional Conservative party (never Trump Republicans), a labor party (liberal Democrats), a centrist party (moderate Democrats), and the Greens and Libertarians, the Trump populist party might easily have the plurality. I'm just guessing here, but in a system with the six parties I've outlined, I guess the support for them might be like this (assuming there was no longer a dominant two-party system, which depresses support for Libertarians and Greens):

The American Right   (about 48% of the population)

30% Trump Populism

5% Libertarians

13% Republicans

The American Left  (about 52% of the population)

26% Moderate Democrats

6% Greens

20% Labor (Liberal and Radical Democrats)

Before the election aftermath, I had supposed that traditional Republicans who voted for Trump were about half of his support, and now that polling is showing how many people are believing Trump’s claims about the stolen election, I am realizing that those traditional (and reasonable) Republicans probably make up only about a third  or less of the electorate who voted for Trump. 

I tend to vote third-party, and I noticed that Howie Hawkins won only 0.3% of the national vote (nearly 400,000 votes).  The Green Party should probably focus on running candidates in local elections and state legislature districts, and put fewer resources into campaigns for the US Senate or the Presidential Office.  Back when the Green Party formed as a political party I thought it was a mistake, and thought the best way to promote the core values of the Green Movement was to work for them inside both the Republican and Democratic Parties, but now I think possibly Green Party candidates can do good services to their communities by running for school boards, county boards, city councils, and maybe when one of the two dominant parties has a “lock” on a state senate or house seat, the Green Party could offer an alternative so fewer races are uncontested. In the Illinois 96th House District a Green Candidate (John Keating) won 4.1% (1,607 votes) in a race against a fairly popular Democratic Incumbent (Sue Scherer, who won with 20,183) and a serious Republican challenger (Charles McGorray, who received 17,322 votes).  Earning 4.1% is better than earning 0.5% (Howie Hawkins got 0.5% of the Presidential vote in Illinois). In Governor races Green Party candidates have done well in Illinois: Rich Whitney won 10.36% of the vote in the 2010 Gubernatorial race, but then dropped to 2.7% when he ran again in 2014. 

I'll be voting for Hawkins in 2020

I don’t think I’ll ever join any political party, and I don’t typically endorse candidates, but I am happy to share who I intend to vote for and why. In the past I’ve sometimes written up my feelings about the candidates and shared these with neighbors (in Illinois one can get a list of registered voters and check out which party’s primary ballots they took, so I tend to address such letters to neighbors in my precinct who vote in Democratic primaries).  I think it’s important to engage in the democratic process and the culture of civil debate in the public sphere, and as a non-partisan voice, I think I sometimes add something to the debate. When it comes to ideologies and political preferences, I think our voting proclivities are somewhat like our tastes in food; you may like food that I find too spicy or too salty, and I may prefer vegetarian food over the meat you enjoy eating, but such differences don’t create any animosity between us or any feelings of superiority. This is my perspective because I think most people vote for candidates based on ethical values they have, and I believe we mostly have the same basic ethical values; and our political differences come mainly from the relative emphasis we put on these various shared values.  

In the United States, however, for a minority (about 20% of the population, fairly evenly split), personal identity is wrapped up with ideology or political party, and for such committed partisans, politics takes on the power of a religion. For such persons, it’s difficult to discuss the relative merits of policies advocated by various candidates, or the degree of wisdom and integrity each candidate may possess, since these highly partisan persons have such strong cognitive bias that they seem only able to process information about the correctness of their beliefs and the fallacies or idiocies of their opponents’ beliefs.

Political alignment surveys show that I prefer equality over markets, and I’m rated at 81% equality preferring (where a 50% equality / 50% markets preference would be completely in the center on that scale).  That gets me a label as “socialist” and I’m comfortable with that label describing my economic preferences. I’m in favor of confiscatory taxes to reduce extreme wealth so long as poverty exists (if we end poverty, I’d have few objections to low taxes on the wealthy). I do not think the public sector is inherently less efficient or impractical in solving distribution and production issues compared to the free enterprise for-profit sector. In some cases government tends to be more wasteful, but it needn’t be so, and in other cases government probably tends to be more efficient and effective, but it won’t always be, depending on the quality of persons in the government.  

I have a more global vision and not much national preference. I’m about 69% world-oriented rather than nation-oriented, which gets me a label as a “peaceful” oriented person. That seems right to me. I have always been concerned with the military-industrial complex, the threat of war, the history of American imperialism, and the toxic masculinity that feeds belligerent nationalism. I like to listen to Noam Chomsky’s critiques of American foreign policy, and I often agree with him, but I certainly perceive him as being too one-sided and anti-American in some of his interpretations of American national behavior in international relations. As a youth I was active in the nuclear freeze movement, the global protest movement against apartheid in South Africa, and I demonstrated against my country’s violent aggression and support for murderous regimes and terrorists in Central America. I demonstrated against the Iraq War before it started.  But, although I was opposed to the American invasion of Iraq, my main opposition was based on my (correct, as it later proved) perception that America would bungle the occupation and that we should not act unless we had a broad international coalition to remove the tyrannical dictatorship of the Baath Party. I'm not inherently against the international community intervening to remove murderous totalitarian despots, but as a practical matter, America hasn’t the ability or authority to do this. The U.N. Security Council, which does have the authority, is blocked from intervening by having Russia and the P.R. of China and the United States all on the Council with veto power, and those countries do not have a shared interest in intervening in “domestic affairs” to stop atrocities and promote human rights—China and Russia have regimes that actively oppose human rights. That is unfortunate, but until a large community of nations unite under a shared commitment to intervene militarily on humanitarian grounds, it isn’t right for any single nation or small coalition of nations to do so, especially not when the United Nations exists with the potential legitimacy to do so. 

I’m more for liberty than authority (64%), and so I’m labeled as “liberal” in that axis, and this seems right.  As a social work professor, I’m aware that many humans are troubled and behave in ways that harm others, so I’m not a total libertarian or anarchist (although I look forward to a time when humanity is ready for anarchy, probably after another hundred generations of social evolution).  On the axis of tradition versus progress, I rate 65% on the progress side. I do not entirely abandon tradition and traditional views, but like to imagine I share with most Americans a cultural bias that makes me more eager to see our society try new things and experiment with systems that might improve conditions.

In 2020, I intend to vote for Howie Hawkins and Angela Walker. I live in Illinois, a state where Biden will defeat Trump by more than 8-percentage-points, so I have the luxury of voting for Green Party candidates knowing my vote will have no chance of giving Trump a victory. The Democrats also control this state to such an extent that I can legitimately blame them for not instituting an instant run-off (ranked choice) election system such as the one used in Maine, where my second-choice vote for Biden-Harris would be available to the Democrats when Hawkins-Walker don’t win the state’s electoral college delegates. I like both Biden and Harris as human beings. They seem decent enough. They will probably win, and their administration will probably help us overcome the Pandemic Depression and the COVID-19 pandemic. They have fewer flaws than many of the other Democratic candidates I’ve known in my lifetime. But, I do not really think they have especially good policies or particularly good visions for the country.  Their records both indicate to me that there is a wide gap between my values and policy preferences and theirs. So, I prefer to vote for Hawkins and Walker, whose values and policies are much closer to mine.

I am not a person who tends to vote Democratic, who is disgusted with Biden and Harris, and will vote for Green candidates in protest.  Not at all.  On the contrary, I am a voter who has only rarely been excited by the Democratic Party nominations, and has usually supported or voted for third party candidates. I've met third party candidates and bought them to my universities (I helped bring Lenora Fulani of the New Alliance Party to Redlands in 1988 when I was an undergraduate student there; and in 2016 I helped bring Jill Stein to the University of Illinois in Springfield when I was a professor there). My understanding is that political scientists who examine third-party voters like me find that many of us would only vote for a third party candidate, and we would simply not vote for either mainstream candidate if our ballots lacked third-party options.  That is, third parties aren’t taking away our votes that would go to mainstream candidates; we’re so alienated from the mainstream parties that the only reason we cast any vote at all in the presidential elections is that there are third party candidates for whom we want to vote.  I think lots of people who identify as Democrats or Republicans haven’t read about this political science research, and they live with such a partisan world-view that they can only see the possibilities of Democratic or Republican candidates, and imagine that all other third party candidates are somehow illegitimate or unworthy of taking seriously. 

In 1980 I was inspired by John Anderson, a liberal Republican from Rockford, Illinois, who ran as an independent in the presidential race. I was lucky to meet him many years later and tell him how influential he had been to me. Yet, if I had been old enough to vote, I probably would have voted for Barry Commoner and LaDonna Harris of the Citizen’s Party. In 1984 I still wasn’t old enough to vote, but if I had been I would have again voted for the Citizen’s Party candidates (Sonia Johnson and Richard Walton), with Mondale-Ferraro (the Democrats) as my second choices.  I was old enough to vote in 1988, but I was in Kenya and did not have the time to get a ballot sent to me from the United States to vote absentee. I had been instrumental in bringing the third-party candidate Lenora Fulani (New Alliance Party) to the University of Redlands earlier in the year, to discuss her candidacy for president, and I might have written in her name, but then again, I might have voted for Dukakis, the Democratic nominee. I had of course met Fulani and her election staff, and liked her personally, but after meeting her and hearing her rhetoric, and also after some of my classmates had been involved in the California Peace and Freedom convention where Fulani’s campaign had tried to win the Peace and Freedom Party nomination for President, I had doubts about whether I really would vote for her for president. Had the Democrats nominated Richard Gephardt, a congressman from the St. Louis area whom I liked very much, I would have voted for him, but I suppose I would probably have voted for Fulani despite my misgivings about her.

In 1992 I voted for the first time in a presidential election. I wanted Clinton and Gore to win the election, but I was not happy with the Democratic Party platform or the candidates, so I made a protest vote for Ross Perot and James Stockdale, hoping that Perot and Stockdale would do well enough to possibly create a third party that could undermine the hegemony of the Republicans and Democrats. Lenora Fulani was again running for president, and I preferred her policies (and even Clinton’s policies) over those of Perot and Stockdale, but I thought Perot might help break down the two-party system, and that is the only reason I voted for him.

In 1996 I finally had an opportunity to vote for someone I really liked, and so I cast my vote for Nader and LaDuke (Green Party).  Nader and I had mutual friends, and those friends told me that he would actually be a horrible president because of his personal style of leadership and his inability to compromise, but I knew there was no danger of his winning the election, and I agreed almost 100% with the Green Party platform, so of course I gladly voted for him, not seeing much of a difference between Clinton (the Democratic Party incumbent, who was obviously going to easily win re-election) and the Republican Dole.  In 2000, I was again able to vote for Nader and the Green party, despite the race being fairly close between Bush and Gore.  Gore won the popular vote, and would have won the electoral college if all the votes in Florida had been re-counted, but the Supreme Court staged a sort of coup and installed Bush in the White House (I know I'm overstating it, and Gore conceded, which really ended the race), so we were stuck with the worst president since Millard Fillmore or James Buchanan. I was voting in Missouri that year, and the election in my state was projected to be close; so I offered to do a vote exchange with a friend in Massachusetts, where Gore was sure to win.  My offer was rebuffed.  My friend did not want to encourage anyone to vote for Nader, and would not cast a vote for Nader in a safe Gore state to get me to vote for Gore in Missouri. 

In 2004 I again, for the third straight election, voted for the Green Party candidate (David Cobb). This was my first time voting in Illinois, and Cobb wasn’t even on the ballot, so I had to write-in his name. As a high school and college student I had been a supporter of the Green Committees of Correspondence, and I was one who thought the Green Movement ought to exist as a party-inside-a-party like the Democratic Socialists.  That is, rather than running candidates as a political party, the Green movement should find candidates to run as Democrats or Republicans or non-partisan candidates in local elections, and support (presumably) the Democratic candidates in Presidential elections. So, while I thought it was a mistake to create a Green Party to run in elections, and I continue to think it’s self-defeating and silly to run Green Party candidates for President, I still vote for Green Party candidates. I would rather see more Green Movement people run in local elections or for state-level offices; until we have thousands of Greens in positions on local school boards, city councils, county boards, and so forth, I don’t think the Greens have the practical experience or depth of knowledge to run candidates for the US House or Senate, let alone the Presidency. And yet, I’ve voted for Green Candidates in 1996, 2000, 2004, and 2016, and I intend to do so again in 2020.

I voted for Obama in both 2008 and 2012. I have several mutual friends with him, and people who know him really seem to like him. Living in Springfield, many people around here knew him as a state senator. I even communicated with him a couple times about using his memoir in my community organizing class at UIUC, and mentioned that I had a student who knew him back in the days when he was an organizer in the Roseland neighborhoods up in Chicago. Had he not become a U.S. Senator and then President, I’m sure he would have come and spoken to my classes. Anyway, I think Obama was a great president, and given the hostility and opposition he faced, and the lackluster leadership in the Senate and House for the first two years of his Presidency when the Democratic Party controlled Congress, I think he did much better than anyone could have expected him to do.  Obama was an exceptional person with qualities that set him up among FDR, Lincoln, and Jefferson as a great American statesman, but he had not had enough time in the Senate to develop a talent for getting legislation passed, and his theory of the Presidency was that the Executive Branch leadership should not try to command the legislative branch, and this inexperience and theory of his role resulted in weakness when he was in the White House.  Anyway, with Obama on the ballot, I “crossed over” and voted for the Democratic candidate instead of the Green Party candidate in two election cycles.

Although I admit that the Green Party attracts some fairly flakey and fringe people, when I look abroad to countries where it is more of a serious party, I note that the Green Party has a fairly good track record of governing in places where it has won elections or served in coalition governments. The Four Pillars of Green Ideals and the Ten Core Values of the Green Party are good, and I enthusiastically agree with eight of the the ten core values. I do have some misgivings about decentralization, which is one of the ten core values. In general, I do think people ought to give far more attention to local and state government, and I prefer local government because common people can have a greater say in what happens (grassroots democracy).  But in practice, for many types of policy related to social welfare, it just seems far more efficient for national policies.  And, even at a local level, regional coordination seems to me the best strategy for addressing many problems, rather than efforts at the neighborhood or municipal level. I’m also very much in favor of community-based economics, but again, there are some aspects of international trade and globalized economics that benefit everyone, and I’m not generally in favor of protectionism just for the sake of protecting the interests of local producers and service-providers.  That is, I have a nuanced attitude toward community-based economics. 

Check out https://www.isidewith.com/ to see whose positions best match your positions

Years ago, there were many Republicans who might be called liberal or moderate, and I respected and admired many of those.  In this group I would include Richard Lugar of Indiana (whom I met when I was a child), John Danforth of Missouri, Mark Hatfield of Oregon, John Anderson of Illinois, and John Chafee of Rhode Island. Had I voted in 1988, I would have voted against John Danforth, but I still liked him and admired him.  These days I am unaware of any Republican on the national scene for whom I have much respect.  At the local level, I know some people involved in county or city politics with Republican affiliations whom I like and have supported, but really only a few.  I wish there was a party that represented the intellectual and moral preferences of conservatives, but did so in a way that had integrity and decency. I think that ever since about 1994, this country has been harmed by a dysfunctional insanity that has swept away what was the Republican Party and replaced it with a monstrous imposter; the current Republican Party is like a changeling child some wicked fairy has exchanged to replace the natural human infant.  

Basically, I vote for Green Party candidates if they are on the ballot, and since they usually aren’t, I tend to vote for a lot of Democrats.  And when it comes to donating money to candidates, I give more to the Democrats than the Greens. I do this because I know my own values and know the values that guide the parties, and there is a very close correspondence between my values and those of the Green Party and its candidates.  There is a moderate correspondence between my values and the Democratic Party, so I also often vote for Democrats, and there is only a very weak correspondence between my values and those of the Republican Party as it currently exists, so I hardly ever vote for Republicans. When it comes to policy proposals, I again tend to think that the Green Party candidates offer policy suggestions that would do the most to improve our society. The Democrats tend to offer policies that seem to me fairly good, or not too terrible, and the Republicans have lately offered very few sensible policies, and what few policies they have suggested are often, to my way of seeing things, ridiculous.  That said, when Democratic Party politicians suggest impractical or unsustainable policies, sometimes Republicans give very good critiques of the problems in those Democratic Party proposals. Sometimes it seems to me that the best Democratic Party policy proposals are inspired by things the Green Movement or Green Party candidates have already suggested years earlier. 

Many of my friends and family members strongly identify with the Democratic Party, and there are a couple who are on the other side, voting Republican. I think most of the Democrats I know think it’s a waste to vote for the Green Party candidates, but I obviously disagree. In most states, the election for the President is not in doubt; probably in thirty or more states you can vote for a third-party candidate without any realistic expectation that there will be an upset in your state. In perhaps 20 states (the so-called “battleground” states) you might hesitate to vote for a Green Party candidate, because you fear that the race is close enough that the votes for the mainstream candidate you like least will overwhelm your preferred mainstream candidate if too many people vote for third-party candidates. In such states, it does make sense to vote for the mainstream candidate you prefer. Even better, you should try to get your state to have second-choice (instant run-off) elections where you can vote for a second or even third choice candidate, and if your first choice candidate doesn’t win sufficient votes, your vote will count for your second choice candidate instead of being “wasted” on someone who couldn’t win the election. 

People who say, “a vote for Hawkins is a vote for Trump” are obviously wrong. Ideally, parties must nominate persons we genuinely want to elect who propose policies we want to see enacted in order to win our votes. I like Hawkins, and I like his background, and I think he is far better a representation of me and my values than Biden or Harris. I prefer the Green Party policies to those of the Democrats.  And so, ideally, people who share my values and preferences ought to vote for Hawkins, at least in the safe states where the presidential election is a foregone conclusion. On a practical level, any one person’s vote does not make much of a difference, and so people can vote their conscience without any serious concerns about an election being decided by their one vote. Also on a practical level, the mainstream parties have it within their power to change election laws to allow instant-run-off second-choice balloting in elections, and if Democrats have not advocated for such election rules, they have no moral standing to criticize anyone for casting a vote for a third party.  They have protected and perpetuated a system that creates the problem they are complaining about, so I blame them, rather than the Green Party voter, for the threat to their victories posed by third-party candidates. 

Although I will vote Green again this year in the Presidential race, I'm not endorsing or advocating for anyone else to vote as I will. Everyone should vote for the candidate they prefer, and if you live in a region where the vote between two mainstream candidates will be close, you might want to vote for the mainstream candidate you prefer even if your favorite candidate is running on a third party ticket. I'll be donating money to a Green candidate for a seat in the Illinois General Assembly (challenging an incumbent Republican in a district where the Democrats aren't even running a candidate), and making contributions to the Democratic candidate in the Illinois 13th Congressional District (where I live) and some Democratic Senate candidates in states where the Democrats might unseat a Republican or where Democratic incumbents are threatened by Republican challengers. If you have time or money, you might want to donate some of it to candidates you think are likely to improve our country and enact good policies. That is what citizens ought to do in a functioning democratic society.

I do think, however, we have a duty to listen to the people with whom we disagree, and we ought to try to understand why people support candidates who seem awful to us. We also ought not allow partisan sentiments to cloud our hearts so that we feel alienated from people who prefer different politicians or policies from what we like. Yes, if there is a politician who is actually and obviously an odious person who is advocating belligerent wars of conquest, or stripping away our civil rights, or violations of human rights, or racist policies against people based on their nationalities or ethnicities, in those cases we might indeed rightfully feel emotionally upset that anyone would support such things, as those are all obviously morally wrong.  

There are issues even between mainstream candidates that seem obviously wrong to some people.  Abortion, for some, seems as obviously wrong as murder, while for others abortion seem to have almost no moral implications and it is the desire to take away the rights of privacy between a woman and her doctor (and thus, her right to decide to terminate a pregnancy) that seems obviously wrong. I, for one, feel that abortion is probably morally wrong, but I also want to live in a secular society that doesn’t impose theocratic laws over the citizens, and a law forbidding all abortion would be a violation of that separation of church and state I value so much. Thus, I do not care much about a candidate’s position on abortion. It is often thus when people feel polarized and angry and hostile in political conflicts; they see things as being morally clear, and for most of us, the arguments do not seem so obvious, and we don’t see how the harms and benefits compare to give us obvious conclusions. So, we care more about the process of debate and political conflict, and we want that conflict to be peaceful, civil, respectful, and in the end, a shared and common search for the best compromise. 

*********

Less than two years after writing the above post the Green Party voted to endorse a statement that was essentially repeating Putin’s propaganda about Ukraine. In other words, the Green Party in the USA had become so dominated by Putin-loving radical leftists that it no longer represented (to my way of thinking) an attractive option.  The Green Party as it exists in European countries generally has much better policies and higher quality candidates, and so the Green Party sometimes wins significant elections or gets to participate in ruling coalitions.  

We have lasted some 400 years.

I've been thinking of how spectacle distracts and numbs people so they won't take time to live authentic lives and make meaningful connections with others and that sort of thing.  Today I happened to see a headline that distracted me: "Dem Congresswoman Says the Constitution is 400 Years Old" and I wondered if an elected representative had actually been so ignorant, but when I read what the woman (Sheila Jackson Lee) had said, I realized the article and headline were very, very misleading.  She had not claimed the Constitution was 400 years old, she had said, with reasonable accuracy, but rather awkward phrasing:

. . . Frankly, maybe I should offer a good thanks to the distinguished members of the majority, the Republicans, my chairman, and others for giving us an opportunity to have a deliberative constitutional discussion that reinforces the sanctity of this nation and how well it is that we have lasted some 400 years, operating under a Constitution that clearly defines what is constitutional and what is not. . . 

She simply left out (but implied) the phrase "more recently" or "since 1787" or "later" or something like that.  The "nation" (as opposed to the state or the country) can reasonably be said to begin around the time Europeans started establishing permanent colonies and settlements in North America, which would indeed be about 400 years ago, when initial Spanish, French, Dutch, and English colonial settlements began in New Mexico, Texas, Florida, Virginia, Massachusetts, New York, and Maine.

 Sheila Jackson Lee could have meant ". . . sanctity of this nation and well it is that we have lasted some 400 years, operating since 1787 under our Constitution. . ."  and anyway, I think it was understood by the Continental Congress that as Englishmen they were protected by the [unwritten] Constitution of England, or at least that would have been the common understanding, and it was the failure of Parliament and the British Monarch to abide by the American [correct] understanding of the unwritten English Constitution and the inadequacy of the Articles of Confederation that led to our constitution.

The more egregious and disturbing error in Sheila Jackson Lee's poorly phrased statement is the silly claim that the Constitution "clearly defines what is constitutional and what is not."   That is her serious mistake, and the headline should read, "Dem Congresswoman Says the Constitution Clearly Defines What is Constitutional, Implies No Need for Supreme Court to Interpret Its Meaning."

Meaningless news anyway, the inarticulate ramblings of persons in the House of Representatives don't really matter.  Bills that are introduced and have some chance of passing (or should have some chance of passing) are newsworthy, and I wish media outlets would give more information about those.

Recently discovered a wonderful Pro Publica investigative piece on what images have been censored from Sina Weibo, and I highly recommend taking a look.  By the way, Blogger sites, including this one, are also blocked (censored) in China.

Recent Right Wing Violence or Threats

When you combine serious mental illness, depression, horrible life circumstances, and social isolation with some sort of ideology or rhetoric that blames a group of people for the world's problems (liberals, Jews, Democrats, whatever), you get situations where bad stuff can happen.  There is an interesting question, through, whether certain crazed lone gunmen wouldn't just kill randomly anyway.  I mean, is it worse for a violent maniac to shoot down a politician or judge or a bunch of people at a political meeting than a group of school children or a group of shoppers, or a group of sports fans?  If people didn't have a certain right-wing paranoid narrative to focus their hatred toward police or liberals or federal agencies or politicians, wouldn't they just find some other group to focus their hatred and fear?  Perhaps there would be mass shootings on Wall Street, or in banks, or in customer service departments of cable companies or phone companies, instead of attacks on Democrats or abortion doctors or whatever.

 But when I think of shooting rampages or violent threats against political figures, I can't think of any in the past 40-50 years that were motivated by Communist or Socialist ideologies, unless possibly the Assassination of JFK had some connection to Marxism. There have been many threats against liberals and Democrats, but do conservatives and Republicans get the same degree of threats and murder attempts?  In most of the shooting sprees, I think untreated mental illness plays a role, and the shooters are not politically motivated (think of Charles Whitman, the University of Texas shooter, who was suffering from a brain tumor, or John Hinckley, Jr., Ronald Reagan's would-be killer).  Here are some reminders of the sort of attacks Democrats and liberals have experienced in recent years:

On December 10th of 2010, Charles Turner Habermann, of Palm Springs California, called Democrat James McDermott and threatened to kill him. Mr. Habermann threatened to assault and murder a United States official, with the intent to impede, intimidate, and interfere with the official’s performance of official duties (he tried to persuade McDermott to vote in favor of tax cuts for the wealthy).  It’s Case MJ11-16.  Read the Complaint of Violation, and see how Habermann said, “He [McDermott] advocates stealing people’s money to give it to losers.”

Last April, Charles Alan Wilson made a threat against Patty Murray, another Democrat of Washington State.  He opposed the health care bill, and didn’t like the fact that Patty Murray had voted in favor of it.

John Troy Davis, A Colorado man who claimed to be suffering from schizophrenia, also threatened a Democrat, Senator Michael Bennet. Mr. Davis was having difficulties getting his Social Security, and he warned Bennet’s home office staff that he was “going to come down there and shoot you all.”

In July of 2008, Jim Adkisson killed two people in a Unitarian Church. He wanted to kill liberals, and every Democrat in the Senate and House.

In April of 2009, Richard Poplawski shot and killed three police officers. Mr. Poplawski was fearful that the Obama administration was going to ban guns.

In July of 2010, Byron Williams was on his way to kill people at a liberal non-profit in San Francisco when he became involved in a gun battle with police.

In late May of 2009 Scott Roeder assassinated Dr. George Tiller. Mr. Roeder had been a member of the Freemen group.

Would it be possible to think of a similar list of conservative and Republicans who have been threatened or attacked?  If not, why not?

FOLLOW UP
The first comment on this post was an excellent observation from an anonymous source, who pointed out that there were indeed many threats made against prominent conservatives.  I followed up on some advice from the comment, and found some good links to share here.

Here is one about threats made against President Bush.  I'd make a distinction between people who carried signs saying "kill Bush" (awful and illegal and unethical) and those who wanted to see Bush put on trial, found guilty, and executed (awful and legal, and of debatable ethical quality). I personally would find it satisfying to see Bush put on trial, and if he is guilty of crimes, which I suspect he is, I'd like to see him forced to make restitution or receive punishment for it, although I'm open to the possibility that he is innocent, and I certainly don't think putting him or his worst cabinet officials and administration functionaries on trial should be a priority. But at any rate, as the page I've linked to shows, there was very hateful and angry and violent imagery at some anti-Bush rallies, and I think it's clearly in the same category of troublesome rhetoric as what we see aimed at Obama and his administration.

And here are other stories about conservatives being threatened: Ann Coulter; Freedomworks and the Tea Party; and other famous conservatives.  Compare those to the cases I've cited and linked to above, or similar threats.

And yet, I see a difference as well. It seems to me that some of the voices using the violent rhetoric and exhibiting hateful paranoia against liberals and the president now (and during the Clinton administration) are relatively famous mainstream people. And while it's now clear people on the left can be just as vicious and divisive, it just seems to me that there aren't so many public figures on the left that are this angry or hostile.  I guess two of the harshest anti-conservatives I know of on the left are people like Michael Parenti, Ted Rall, and Jim Hightower, and comparing them to their conservative equivalents (perhaps Ann Coulter, Michael Savage, or Sean Hannity), it just seems to me that the rhetoric from the mainstream far right conservatives is harsher than the rhetoric from mainstream far left liberals. When it comes to name-calling or threats from the mainstream left, I think of Al Franken and his mildly amusing book "Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot," but it was not the sort of book that claimed Limbaugh was an enemy of America, at least I don't remember it being so.

And it's clear that there have been death threats against people on the right, and disgraceful violent rhetoric against some people on the right.  But, does the left have anyone like Jim Adkisson, who really did kill a bunch of Unitarians because they were liberals, and really did take some of his inspiration from right-wing radio personalities and mainstream far-right authors?  Or is there anyone on the left who acted beyond theats, and really shot at people or attempted to kill people, like Byron Williams?  The closest thing I can think of is Washington Beltway sniper John Allen Muhammad, who was apparently somewhat motivated by class and race (against European-Americans and middle-class or wealthy persons).

I'm not sure I have a point here with this post.  I'm just asking some questions, and trying to see if there is a fair cause to distinguish between political sides in assigning blame for the debasement of rhetoric and debate. It is clear there are crazy people on the far left who will threaten violence, just as there are on the far right. Maybe there is a difference in degrees or frequency or style of threats and actions by these partisan extremists and hateful persons.

This past year I listened to the debates between Lincoln and Douglas (acted by Richard Dreyfus (as Stephen Douglas) and David Straithairn (as Lincoln).  The debates were heated, and there were personal attacks, but although the debates were aggressive and full of conflict, I thought the tone and style was far more agreeable, and less demagogic than what I've heard or seen in modern media. I wish partisan debates today were as full as substance and eloquence and courtesy as these debates were over 150 years ago.

Update on April 1, 2011: The left now has a person crazed by her anger, who threatened the lives of Republicans. This is Katherine Windels of Wisconsin.

Politically-Motivated Assassination in Arizona

It is dangerous to have rhetoric of talking about "taking out" political opponents and having political campaign rallies in which people shoot guns at targets (I find it difficult to believe reports that Gabrielle Giffords' opponent in the 2010 mid-terms actually had supporters shoot at photos of Gabrielle in a campaign rally—that must surely be an exaggeration). The hateful partisan rhetoric, using violent imagery, is most dangerous because in a nation with over 200 million adults, some fraction are unbalanced, and suffer from disorganized thinking, delusions, and perhaps hallucinations, and some fraction of these persons are highly suggestible, and some fraction of those highly suggestible persons with psychotic disorders will pay attention to the hateful rhetoric with violent imagery, and take it seriously and literally.

There is also a danger that persons who are cunning and calculating and not suffering from a diagnosable mental illness will be pulled into conspiracies to assassinate or act violently against our democratic system and political figures with whom they disagree, but it always seems to me that poisonous rhetoric is most likely to poison persons who minds are weak and vulnerable, as Jared Lee Loughner's mind clearly was. Some terrorists, whether claiming Islamic or Christian religious identity or no religious identity, have had loose connections to reality in their minds (think of Michael Enright and Zacharias Moussawi).

Judge Roll, who was assassinated, had been threatened, and local Arizona rhetoric against him was very heated. This was partly because he had presided over a court case in which undocumented immigrants were suing an Arizona rancher. It seems possible that someone older (and less mentally disorganized) person helped Jared Loughner get to the rally.

This reminds me of the reaction to Timothy McVeigh's terrorism, where people talked about how bad the anti-government rhetoric had become, and suggested it be toned down. Really, we ought to instill in Americans a sense of disgust with rhetoric that crosses a certain line, so that hate-mongering demagogues wouldn't be so popular. The quality of public debate and rhetoric ought to be a subject for consideration in middle school and high school, and perhaps even elementary school.

Christina Taylor Green, 9-years-old, wanted to go to college and learn how to help people. Maybe she would have been a social worker, a nurse, or a lawyer. She was recently elected to her student council, and this interest in leadership and being an elected representative might have inspired her to go see her congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Christina was evidently born on September 11, 2001. Her uncle, Greg Segalini described her as, "real special and real sweet."

Another person killed in the assassination was Gabe Zimmerman, a social worker with an MSW, who worked as Gabrielle's community outreach worker. I will certainly mention him and describe his life and work to my future classes of students in social welfare policy or community organizing. "He had a heart for people" said Doug Hart.

Obama concessions on tax extensions explained.

Why didn't the Democrats in the Senate and House pass their version of an ideal extension of the Bush-era tax cuts back in September or October? It seems Reid and Pelosi missed a chance to take care of this issue before the election. Because they didn't get the job done, Obama seems to be in a position where he must give concessions to the Republicans, because the Democrats couldn't get their version without concessions through the Senate. Liberals should be putting more blame on the Democrats in congress and less on the White House.

The White House has a fine little presentation by Austan Goolsbee at the White House White Board. It's quite good, and mostly expresses feelings with which I'm in entire agreement. There are two things I would have said differently. First, when he points out that the changes in taxes and programs are only temporary (two year) he suggests this implies they don't have a long-term impact on our federal deficit. I would have said, "they only add to the deficit at this level until we revisit this question in 2012, so if we decide to reduce spending to balance our budget we can decide whether we want to cut these in two years. There's no long-term commitment to these things so we can be flexible about them." I personally would cut defense spending or even Social Security benefits long before I'd cut tax deductions for parents with children going to college or the EITC. But any way, framing the issue as I'm suggesting would have been more honest and more representative of how Obama thinks (he's really into the idea of consultation and negotiation to reach the optimal compromises). The other thing I would have said would be, "Republican intransigence and the inability of Democratic leadership in the House and Senate to push better tax changes through congress months ago have brought us to this situation where we have no time to get a better deal and end the tax breaks for the very wealthy" Of course the White House isn't going to take a swipe at Democratic congressional leadership, but as a non-partisan observer who wants to see the budget balanced as soon a feasible (which seems a long way off, given the current unemployment), I'm angered that Democratic legislative leadership has been so incompetent to get us to this point where fiscally irresponsible policies of the Republicans get shoved down our throats.

If I thought lower taxes for the wealthiest Americans was an efficient way to stimulate the economy I'd be with the Republicans on this, but all the economic research evidence I've seen from non-partisan sources seems to confirm that these particular tax reductions to the wealthy are about the least efficient way to stimulate the economy we have. I personally wouldn't mind if we taxed household income over $150,000 at a flat rate of 55% or 60%. (I think the midpoint of the Laffer curve is somewhere between 50% and 70%, and I think our wealthiest citizens ought to be taxed at such a rate, but I'd have deductions for state taxes, sales taxes, and property taxes, so that after all taxes even the wealthy would keep at least 35% to 45% of their total income).

If you've seen the White House White Board presentation, here is some more I have to say about the presentation:
Some people say the expenditures (whether they are tax cuts or tax expenditures or just spending isn't clear) on the right (Democrat's) side would also be on the left (Republican's) side, but this isn't exactly right (or wrong). Many Republicans have traditionally supported things like the EITC and the Child Tax Credit, but the rhetoric from the Republicans in the election and most recently has been very much about framing the issues with Republicans in favor of shrinking government, cutting spending, balancing the budget, reducing deficits, and opposing "spending we can't afford" like extending unemployment benefits (unless there are cuts elsewhere in the budget to pay for them). But realistically, what tax expenditures or spending would Republicans cut in order to support continuation of generous EITC benefits or the child tax credit? Are they opposing the $80 billion plus tax expenditure of the mortgage interest deduction? Are they proposing reductions in Social Security benefits? Do they want to significantly cut Medicare? Are they talking about reducing the Defense budget? No, they mostly aren't. I think it's fair to say that things like a reduction in the Social Security payroll contribution, the child tax credit, or the EITC are significantly higher priorities for the Democrats, and in general are not protected by the Republicans. So the White House was being fair in showing these in the right (Democrat) column.

Primary Elections

Today I voted in an Illinois primary election. In Illinois you must ask for a particular party's primary ballot. I had a choice of Republican, Democratic, or Green ballots, and it was difficult to make up my mind. I have some opinions about the Democratic candidates for governor and senate, and so I was tempted to vote on the Democratic Party ballot, but then there are several other contested races where I hadn't done any work to investigate the candidates, so I would have left many choices blank. Likewise in the Republican races there were a couple candidates I would have wanted to vote against, but I generally knew very little about most of the Republican candidates, aside from one who is a personal friend (and running uncontested) and another I like who is going to win her primary easily anyway. So, I took a Green Party ballot. I'm very happy about the Green Party's senate candidate LeAlan M. Jones. Also, it was easier and faster to vote on the Green Party ballot, because none of the positions were contested, and there were many offices where no Green Party person was running.

I checked out my county clerk's election results (Sangamon County Election Results). It appears that 92 other persons in this county took Green primary ballots as I did. That is only 0.41% of all the persons who voted in the primary election, the numbers are probably low because the Democratic and Republican parties have interesting contested elections, and on the Green Party Ballot all you could do was confirm that you supported the uncontested candidates (or just not vote for some of them, if you only supported some Green candidates -- the Greens have put some fairly flaky people to stand for elections before).

I'm the only person in my precinct who took a Green primary ballot, and the precinct across the street from me didn't have anyone take a Green ballot. But at least 93 of us in the county did, so that's comforting to know.

Some of my coreligionists (Baha'is) don't vote in Illinois primaries because you must ask for a particular party's ballot or else ask for a nonpartisan ballot (and there was nothing on the nonpartisan ballot today). Baha'is aren't supposed to become involved in partisan political party politics. Well, I'm an independent voter and I've never actually joined a political party. Taking a party's primary ballot doesn't mean one is a member or partisan supporter of that party. I think we all have a duty to be involved in elections and political discussions. We just must do so with our allegiances to basic principles and ethical motives, rather than agendas to help a particular political party gain more power.