Violence

 Up to now I've been optimistic on the state of the nation's politics, saying today isn't as bad as many fear.

I may be in the process of changing my mind.  I remember the conflicts in the 60's and 70's between the Weathermen and the Black Panthers and the hard hats of some unions. There was violence then, lots of bombs.  But I don't remember the group conflicts then.  The groups on the left were anti-establishment, and often still adhered to the ethic of nonviolence--although a few were killed, the bombings weren't intended to kill. The Black Panthers and police/law enforcement had violent clashes in which people died.  But except for union hard hats disrupting anti-war demonstrations there was little left-right violence with the police caught in the middle.  

That seems to be what's changing.  And what's dangerous is the likelihood of escalation--paint guns and rocks and fists can move to knives and guns, first displayed, then used.  That sort of dynamic is inherent in people, and it's dangerous.

I'm worried.

No Longer the Party of Limited Government?

From Reason.com:

So under Trump's signature, before any true crisis hit, the annual price tag of government went up by $937 billion in less than four years—more than the $870 billion price hike Obama produced in an eight-year span that included a massive federal response to a financial meltdown.

The Slow Progress of Videophone/Videoconferencing

 I'm not sure whether "videophones" is a comprehensive enough term but I'll go with it. I'm referring to the idea of being able to see the person with whom you are talking over long distance.  ("Long distance" for the young means the rest of the US beyond roughly 20-40 miles from your position which incurred a charge per minute,)

I vaguely remember participating in a test in ASCS in the 1970's--I think an innovative deputy administrator for management sprang for it.  It didn't work--too expensive, too little advantage.  Again in the 1980's I think there was a trial, maybe five or six managers in DC and Kansas City had special phones with the idea it would replace our trips back and forth.  It didn't work--too new, too much of a change, too awkward. Again the 1990's there was a trial, but this time it was televised conference calls, with a TV camera covering a conference table with maybe 10-12 seats. Again this was for DC-KCMO conferencing.  It worked better, although the facility had to be reserved at each end.  It was competing against email by this time, not something that the 1970's trial had to face.  I don't remember whether it was still in operation at the time I left.

Up to this point the process was using special phone/camera equipment--really "videophones".  I don't know for sure whether the 1990s were using the internet to communicate, likely not. Fast forward through the 2000's and the development of Skype until you reach 2020 and the wide use of Zoom, and competing services. 

Apparently it works now because almost everyone has the equipment--computer/smartphone with camera and broadband access--to participate. So there's not much hassle to setting up a call. And with the pandemic video conferencing becomes the only way to go.  Email with cc's to everyone works in some situations, but when you want back and forth conversations among a group, conferencing is the only way.  

Social Capital Equals the Dead Weight of the Past?

 In this century the term "social capital" has become popular.  (For some reason I can't embed the ngram viewer from Google, so you'll just have to take my word for it.)

The idea is that people accumulate relationships and knowledge which improve the functioning of society.  It's a positive term.  

The other side of the coin is seeing much the same phenomena as "the dead weight of the past", as Marx did in this quote. Or, as Lincoln wrote: " The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise -- with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country."

One example from my lifetime: Germany and Japan recovered relatively quickly from the destruction of WWII partly because they had social captial.  Their people had knowledge, and they had institutions which could operate.  In the last century that was often compared with the situation in developing countries, where the people lacked the knowledge and the institutions.

However I can look at the other side of the same example: much of the social capital of pre-WWII Japan and Germany was useless or dangerous in the post-war situation.  They had to discard some and keep and exploit other aspects.

I think we're finding the same thing as we exploit algorithms in automation--the algorithms are based on past experience, so they reflect the past, both good and bad.  

Interesting FSA Notice For Farmers.gov Positions

 Some 35 years ago ASCS advertised 2-year positions in DC called "SCOAPers".  IIRC the acronym stood for "state and county office automation project".  Leroy Mitchell was, I think the Kansas City Management Office person who pushed it.  He was recognizing that the job of converting our manual and batch processing operations in the field to applications running on our new IBM System/36s couldn't be handled by the personnel on hand in DC. He had also been very impressed by the program assistants KCMO had worked with in the guinea pig counties (first one county--IIRC Osage Kansas, and then a group of 6 or so counties.

The DC office had big problems in hiring field people the way we had done in the past--i.e., hiring county executive directors for permanent positions.  Typically they'd get a grade increase to GS-11 or 12, with the possibility of getting to GS-13. In the old days that may have been a good enough carrot for an ambitious type, but as DC area housing prices soared in the 70's and early 80's due to inflation and a housing boom, it just didn't work.

Another problem, which I don't think most of us realized, was CED's could be at a loss in trying to handle automation.  A lot, most IMHO, were used to being the public face of the county office, relying on their clerks/program assistants to handle the nuts and bolts, the paperwork.

So the bosses worked out a deal with the Civil Service Commission and USDA's Office of Personnel to offer 2-year positions to program assistants and CED's to work on the automation from the DC side. The key to the deal was that they would technically still be county employees, not federal, so they didn't count against federal personnel ceilings. 

The program turned out to be key in changing the ASCS DC workforce from almost male-only.  In the end many of the SCOAPers stayed in DC, converting to GS status and advancing up the ladder to management.  There was another batch in 1987-8.

It sounds to me as if FSA is taking a similar approach to staff the farmers.gov initiative, as outlined in this notice.  Good luck to them. 

I note some differences:  it's a 2-year minimum with possible extensions up to 5 year max. And there's the possibility of relocation allowances. Despite the innovation of locality differences in pay, I suspect the problem of attracting field employees to DC remains, possibly not improving any since 1997. I also suspect management has underestimated the problems of implementing the farmers.gov.  

Chill: My Words for the Country

 I'm reminded of Wouk's "The Caine Mutiny" which I read multiple times in youth.  There was a couplet in it which I remember, notable because I don't remember much poetry.:

When in trouble or in doubt

Run in circles,

Scream and shout.

IIRC it was being applied to the USNavy, as their response to problems, perhaps by Lt. Keefer, but I may be wrong.

Anyhow it's a corollary of the Harshaw Rule--trouble and doubt occurs often when you're doing things for the first time, at least the first time within living memory.  That's what we as a world and a nation are doing now with covid-19.  It's new enough we have no assurance in what we're doing, so we get uptight and snap and fight.

Someone today noted that we have a huge number of different school systems, private, public, parochial, in different jurisdictions, all of which are using different approaches to handling schooling for the fall. Different because we don't know what are "best practices" for sure.

Lots of recriminations among the politicians about whose positions in the first quarter of the year were correct. I'm firm in my belief that the president screwed up, and continues to screw up the response. But, it's true enough we're all screwing up because we don't know now what we'll know in a year from now.  

So I think people should chill, at least a bit, and put more emphasis on who's learned what and what process will be most enlightening and educational. 

Why I, a Liberal, Worry About the Federal Debt

 Most liberals these days don't worry about the debt.  Even Kevin Drum, whose view I mostly follow, is rather blase about it.  So why do I worry?

One word: history.

I've lived throughabout a third of the life of the nation, which included some big increases in the debt, some severe inflation, and lots of changes.  Lessons I've learned:

• nothing lasts forever--the fact that inflation has been low, contrary to expectations of economists and conservative debt hawks, for many years doesn't mean it will always be low.
• inflation causes problems--it works for those with real assets, like homeowners, but not for people like those receiving aid from the government. 
• rising inflation rates leads to rising interest rates, which can rapidly eat up all flexibility in government budgets.  (See Clinton--whose 1992 program was killed by the bond traders.)

If we go on adding debt, it's like living at the foot of a mountain.  It snows on top of the mountain and the drifts build up.  But everyone says it's okay, it's been years since the last avalanche. So people build more houses at the foot of the mountain, and each time it snows there's no avalanche.  Comes the day when there is an avalanche and all the houses are wiped away.

Bottom line, I remember the 1950's, and 1960's when the Dem economists thought they had things figured and inflation was low enough.  Then Vietnam war heated up, debt increased, and money got tight.  We struggled through years of fighting inflation.  LBJ's Great Society dreams were sacrificed as a result.

I Don't Understand the Iowa Governor

 From the Gazette:

Gov. Kim Reynolds on Sunday requested an expedited federal disaster declaration to aid Iowa counties ravaged by last week’s a derecho that caused damage preliminarily estimated at nearly $4 billion — including $3.77 billion in crop damage in 36 counties.

What I don't understand is the crop damage request--given the changes in crop insurance and disaster programs in the 1990's I don't think there's any basis for it; at least there's no program under which USDA could make the money available.   

Ducks Pick Ducks

Rand did a big study of how the different US armed forces recruit and promote their general officers, particularly what are the features of each one's culture.  I skimmed it, finding it interesting, with some resonance with the differences in the cultures of the different USDA agencies I once knew.  

I hadn't run across the saying in the title before, but it makes sense.  It explains a lot of patterns in the bureaucracy.  A paragraph:

 “Ducks pick ducks.” We were unable to obtain data on exact compositions and backgrounds of promotion board members in order to compare them with the backgrounds of the candidates they ultimately chose for promotion. But we heard repeatedly from interviewees in each service that there is a tendency for promotion boards to select officers whose career experiences are comparable to their own, and for senior officers to select officers with backgrounds similar to theirs for aide jobs, positions that serve as a signal of O-7 potential to board members and can provide access to powerful networks of G/FOs. We also observed this trend in the SLSE. The notion of “ducks picking ducks” serves to cyclically reinforce service culture by perpetuating the selection of officers who similarly reflect service goals and preferences. As far back as World War II, Morris Janowitz wrote about the propensity of senior military leaders to fill their staff roles (e.g., military assistant or executive officer) with people who could “speak the same language.”582 However, this observation does not mean that the officers who are selected for promotion by similar, more senior officers are necessarily less qualified; it is possible that the “ducks pick ducks” tendency in some cases occurs because well-qualified officers sitting on promotion boards are selecting for other wellqualified officers.

More From Klein

Finished Klein's "Why We're Polarized".  It's due at the library on Sat., but I may get it out again--it's that good.

One point he made struck me: the Democratic Party is an assemblage of identity groups, while the Republicans are more one identity group.  (Not sure that's 100 percent accurate, but they lean that way.)

The result is that the Dems can elect moderates who can appeal to several of their groups, while the Reps don't have that option--it's striking the balance between moderate Reps and conservative Reps.

The Competition for Attention

 Ezra Klein in his "Why We're Polarized" points out there's been a big increase in the competition for attention (my term). In the 1970's we had 3 TV networks plus PBS, a newspaper and a handful of magazines which provided political information.  And access to material published in the past was limited.

Now of course we have more networks, more channels, more social networks and almost everything written remains available.  Perhaps even more significant, the same explosion of channels has happened for ally and all interests one can imagine.  Consider the availability of porn, with every peculiar interest/fetish being served up in a way unimaginable back in the 1970's.  Consider the handcrafts, all the networks and organizations set up to serve knitters, weavers, etc. etc.  

Everything I've mentioned is competing for attention.  People don't have unlimited time and money to devote to everything which might be interesting, so they have to specialize.  In the case of political interests, that tends to mean more controversy--controversy sells.

More on Election/Mail Problems

 As is often the case, I'm not as alarmed as the media or others concerned about the decline of USPS capacity and its impact on the election.  These considerations:

• the media have done their job of crying the alarm (and exaggerating it.  One meme has been the need for USPS to deliver social security checks, but they've been direct deposit for years now.  It's true that rural areas in particular are dependent on USPS.  I agree with the mandate of universal service.  I agree with Kevin Drum that current charges for first class are too low when compared to other countries.  I agree with Charles Lane that charges for corporate mailings are too low, due to their lobby on Capitol Hill.  And it's likely true that many of the changes De Joy has instituted are "good management", if not wise politically.)
• leaders are responding to the alarm.  Michelle Obama urged in-person voting and/or voting early and ensuring that the ballot was received.  Gov. Northam is pushing changes in VA arrangements in a special session of the legislature.  We're 77 days out and given the publicity there will be a lot of changes across the country.
• Harshaw's rule says there will be glitches, widespread, but I'm predicting that the media around 10 pm on Nov. 3 will say the election has gone/is going better than the worse predictions.

Why We're Polarized

In the process of reading this book by Ezra Klein.  One researcher he cites is Henri Tajfel, who found that once we humans categorize things, assign labels to them whether it's groups of people, symbols, or whatever, we start acting on it.  With respect to people this led to:

"They proposed that people have an inbuilt tendency to categorize themselves into one or more "ingroups", building a part of their identity on the basis of membership of that group and enforcing boundaries with other groups.

Social identity theory suggests that people identify with groups in such a way as to maximize positive distinctiveness. Groups offer both identity (they tell us who we are) and self-esteem (they make us feel good about ourselves). The theory of social identity has had a very substantial impact on many areas of social psychology, including group dynamics, intergroup relations, prejudice and stereotyping, and organizational psychology."

Klein notes the dynamics of sports fans, where the objective differences among teams are trivial, but the fanaticism can be large. 

The Strange Death of Europe

 I skimmed through this 2017 book  by Douglas Murray. It's interesting, because it's a very Euro-centric view of migration, but you see parallels and contrasts with the concerns in the US embodied in the Trump administration.  Some points which stuck out to me:

• the decline of Christianity 
• the loss of standards by which to judge (adversely) the Muslim immigrants 
• European guilt over colonialism and German guilt over the Holocaust
• governments were always behind the curve in reacting to increased flow of immigrants
• immigrants as violent, crime-ridden, and not integrating into the society
• loss of faith in Europe
• almost total ignoring of US trends and experience
• perspective that societies are unchangeable, that Europeans don't change when they emigrate, that Muslims don't change
• perspective that European culture/society is very vulnerable to change and loss of old historic values
• alienation from modern life, art, 
• the author's perception is that migrants are unskilled, unlike the US where several groups are more highly skilled than the norm for Americans.

One thing which strikes me--human societies have problems with too rapid changes. Sometimes the reaction is over-reaction, throwing the baby out with the bathwater.  Sometimes we can succeed in what I'd call "metering change"--taking measures which tend to slow the pace of change down to a speed which is acceptable.  I think that was the case with the New Deal and subsequent farm programs--they didn't save farmers for good, but they "flattened the curve", spreading the change over a longer time with a slower pace.

Prediction on Election Problems

There's a growing number of pieces discussing various problems which could arise in determining the outcome of the 2020 election. Slate has a piece on ten of them, collected from various sources.  As is often the case, I'm more optimistic.

I'll make this set of predictions:

• I don't think there will be a major problem, because I think the Biden-Harris ticket will win convincingly in enough states on election night to make the outcome clear.  There may be some states where the outcome is a bit doubtful, where recounts are going to happen, but history tells us recounts rarely change the result.
• If there are major problems, I expect the leaders of the Republican Party, excluding the Trump-Pence camp, to react much as one would have expected in the past.  Fight for advantage within the rules, as in Florida, but not violate norms.
• Even for Trump and Pence, I don't expect major violations of norms post-election.  Pence would want to run in 2024 and the Kushners may well have ambitions of their own.  At the least a long fight with norm violations is not going to do the Trump Organization any good.  

Questions To Live By

 Reading a recent bio of Ben Franklin.  IIRC we had to read his autobiography in my college course on American Intellectual History.  I've read other books on him, a very engaging figure.  But I'd forgotten these questions which were prerequisite to someone joining his Junto Club, an early do-good nonprofit:

Have you any particular disrespect to any present members? Answer. I have not.
Do you sincerely declare that you love mankind in general, of what profession or religion soever? Answer. I do.
Do you think any person ought to be harmed in his body, name, or goods, for mere speculative opinions, or his external way of worship? Answer. No.
Do you love truth for truth's sake, and will you endeavor impartially to find and receive it yourself, and communicate it to others? Answer. Yes.

Wikipedia tells us that a possible predecessor was a British club, which included John Locke.

I observe the third question is relevant to the so-called "cancel" culture.

Harris for VP

 I'm surprised at the emotional reaction to the nomination expressed in the papers and by one relative.  I'd assumed that we'd had a woman Presidential candidate and a black President, so the combination wouldn't be that significant.  It seems it is, which is a reminder that putting yourself in others' shoes is difficult and often misses. 

More "Crops" Added to CFAP

 USDA announced more "crops" for CFAP.  I put crops in quotes because some of them I"ve never heard of.  Back in the disaster days ASCS had to deal with a lot of new crops, because the program covered vegetables and nursery.  Now FSA has:

• yautia/malanga (a type of taro root)
• cherimoya ("custard apple") praised by Mark Twain as the most delicious fruit.
•  carambola ("star fruit")
• mamey sapote ("red mamey")

Blacks as Central to American Popular Culture?

 Prof. Appiah writes a NYTimes review of Isabel Wilkerson's new book: “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents,” I'll read the book because the concept is interesting, but I was struck in the review by this:

 The place of Black workers in the American economy is surely part of the racial story, and it’s notable that the word “capitalism” doesn’t appear in Wilkerson’s book. Low-status jobs are generally low-income jobs; both income and status matter. Nor can we turn to the caste model in explaining the centrality of Black people to American popular culture.

I'm working on a post on the differences in American society between 1950's of my youth and the 2020's of my old age, but I hadn't yet touched on that. 

It's true--I could probably count on both hands the number of blacks in the culture who seemed significant to me:

Jackie Robinson

James Baldwin

Nat King Cole

Thurgood Marshall 

By the end of the decade MLKing but not Malcolm X.

Sidney Poitier

no singers that I remember.

I expect an 18 year old me in today's world would have a much longer list of singers, actors, writers. etc.  

Part of the difference between then and now is blacks coming to the fore.  But it's also true that part of the difference is the decline of hierarchy/or the multiplication of niches. 

 

 

 

Selma

Finally got around to watching the movie Selma Friday night. It was well done. It's been criticized for the portrayal of the LBJ-MLK relationship as more confrontational and less collaborative than it was.  

The DVD included two newsreel clips from the time of the marches.  There was an interesting contrast between what the movie showed and what the newsreels provided.  

• In the first newsreel, the focus was on the death of Rev. James Reeb, a white minister, was beaten and died after participating in the first march.  He became a martyr and triggered an  influx of whites to participate in the second march.  The movie shows him, his beating, and the results very quickly; understandably because the focus is on MLK. The newsreel people likely didn't have access to the internal deliberations of the marchers so they went with the most drama.
• The second newsreel shows the second march.  Where the movie portrays the marchers approaching the line of troopers, the withdrawing of the troopers, and MLK's prayerful decision to turn around very dramatically, the newsreel says there was a consultation between MLK and the major commanding the troopers and a previous agreement that the march would not proceed.  In this case the movie went with the drama, possibly or likely distorting the true history.

Women Wore Hats Too

 I think I've blogged about the photos showing men in the 1920's-1950s wearing hats.  It seemed to be universal, not an indicator of class.

In an attempt to be fair, I want to link to this tweet, with a photo showing 1920's women wore hats as well. Apparently the  gender difference was that women wore hats everywhere, but men only outdoors?

 

Aug 7, 1920 - William Hays, Chairman of the Republican National Committee, and a delegation of Connecticut suffragists at Republican National Headquarters in New York City #100yearsago pic.twitter.com/FTAoinFuKY

— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec) August 8, 2020

 

National Black Growers Council

 Hadn't heard of this group before.  There seem to be several groups of black farmers, with John Boyd's getting the most publicity (or maybe I say that just because I set up a Google alert for him).

This one is supposed to be for row crop growers.

Immigration and Rationing by Friction

I'm reading "The Strange Death of Europe" by Douglas Murray.  As you can  guess from the title it's anti-immigration but its European focus provides a bit of perspective on the US problem with immigration.

Some bits which have struck me so far:

• he asserts something about people never assimilating, totally ignoring the American (Canadian, Australian, etc. ) experience which shows me that some groups do assimilate.  Not all.
• when people are divided on the policy, as in Europe between human sympathy with boat people fleeing from the "Arabian spring" of 2011 and fear for the impact of the influx on their nation, it makes it impossible for government to do a job.  The result is decision making by friction, by the accumulation of individual choices.
• from a 30,000 foot perspective, as long as there are differences in wealth, opportunity, and particularly stability among nations, there will be migration. 

Vertical Farming of Wheat

This was a tweet which attracted attention.

Vertical farming is my favorite solarpunk invention.

Imagine humanity using less and less of the land, allowing it to revert to nature as we stack our farms to the sky. All powered by solar energy, of course. https://t.co/ZZEIQ0oYFJ

— Noah Smith 🐇 (@Noahpinion) August 3, 2020

The link is to a study of really intensive wheat farming under lights.  It got very high productivity.   From the study summary:

Here we show that wheat grown on a single hectare of land in a 10-layer indoor vertical facility could produce from 700 ± 40 t/ha (measured) to a maximum of 1,940 ± 230 t/ha (estimated) of grain annually under optimized temperature, intensive artificial light, high CO2 levels, and a maximum attainable harvest index. Such yields would be 220 to 600 times the current world average annual wheat yield of 3.2 t/ha.

The writers admit it's not economically feasible now or in "near future".  Since they're talking 20+ hours of lighting and boosting CO2 levels and temperature-controlled (i.e., air conditioning) IMHO it's not likely to be feasible until we get electricity from fusion.  I'd assume inventing the equipment to plant and harvest the wheat would be relatively easy, but their 10-layer farm assumes 1 meter separation between layers and super dwarf wheat, so rather cramped quarters.

The study turns out to be a computer modelling exercise, based on extrapolating from one real-life experiment in growing wheat and estimating theoretical maximums. 

 

FSA Sees the Light of Feminism?

Back in the day, when I moved from Directives to the program side, roughly 1978, there were three broad classification groupings: clerical, technical, professional, with the "program specialists" being in the last group.  In the division of maybe 50 people, IIRC we had two women professionals, both of whom worked in the branch which did policy analysis and statistics. The old allotment programs for wheat, feed grains, and cotton had been suspended in recent years, although they were still on the books.  Developing the allotments and quotas had been the original raison d'etre for the branch, meaning they were heavily into statistics and this, if I understood correctly, was the way the women had climbed the ladder to the professional tier.

As the years passed, one woman retired and one died of cancer so it was 1983 or 4 before I remember new  female professionals joining the division. As time passed there was more and more difficulty in recruiting county executive directors to come to DC because of the growing difference in livestyle/cost of living between a rural county and a DC suburb. So recruitment turned to the clerks in county offices, then called "program assistants" and now "program technicians". CED's had been predominantly male, PA's were predominantly  female.  So when FSA was hiring in the mid-80s in connection with installation of IBM System/36's most of the new hires were women.

By the late 80's we had the first woman branch chief: Sandra Nelson Penn, By the time I retired Diane Sharpe was my division director.

Today I see a notice of the current (I don't know if any or all are new) division directors in the Farm Programs area:  DAFP Announces Division Directors and Deputy Directors.  As far as I can tell all four are women.

Congratulations 

Google Translate or Wikipedia and German Junk Mail?

The other day I was researching Gen. Hans Leyers, because my cousin and I were reading the novel "Beneath the Scarlet Sky" in which he is a main character.  There's little in English not related to the novel, so I went to the German version of wikpedia. I used Google Translate to convert the info there to English.  

Suddenly my junk mail folder has a lot of email from German sources--apparently junk emailers have some kind of link to wikipedia.de or Google Translate.

Cultural Differences

A couple differences in culture notice in recent days:

1. Eli Saslow has been doing a series of portraits in the Post of people as they endure the pandemic.  He writes them as a monologue, using short sentences which gives a sense of the tension the person is feeling.  These days I sometimes pass on long pieces in the Post or Times, but Saslow's I read.  Today the subject was an educator--superintendent and principal--in an Arizona district dealing with the governnor's mandate to open school in person by the end of the month.  His wife is a teacher--young kids--and is quoted as saying the kids hug her several times each day. That seems strange to me: I can't remember ever having hugged a teacher, or been hugged, or even seeing a teacher hug a student. I'm not sure whether it's the difference between 1940's and 2020 or between Latinos in Arizona and WASP's in New York.
2. Back when toilet paper was vanishing off the store's shelves Safeway must have made a deal for toilet paper originally made for Latin American countries.  Now it's on sale.  Being cheap, we bought a couple of package.  It's good TP, not premium, but good.  The interesting thing is the perforations are a bit closer together than in US paper. I don't see that's a problem; over time the small difference would make a big difference in the volume used. 

My Election Nightmare

We have record-breaking participation in the 2020 election.  Democrats, being more reluctant to expose themselves to the virus, choose overwhelmingly to use the mail to cast their ballots.  Democrats, being unfamiliar with the process and not particularly good at reading instructions, make errors in completing the ballots.

On election day, the interim count shows Trump and his fellow Republicans running ahead in most states, including the battleground states.  But most states will take days to process and count the mail ballots. As the count proceeds there is a very high rate of ballot rejections, and Democrats become more and more concerned.  

When the dust settles, Trump is reelected based on accepted ballots.  Post-election analysis shows that 7 million ballots from registered Democratic and independent voters have been rejected.  Trump's margin of victory is -2.8 million votes, better than his 2016 margin, but the improvement is entirely attributable to mistakes in the mail ballot process.

Oh, in my really bad nightmare, in several key states there's a Florida-2000 style recount, reviewing the rejected balllots. 

On Changing the Political Rules

I'm reluctant to see political rules changed.

• when you change them for political advantage, you give your opponents a rationale to do the same.  It's called a "race to the bottom".
• often you can't predict the result.

I gather the Democrats will likely do away with the filibuster in the Senate if they gain a solid majority.  I'm not clear that the conservative Dem senators would go along if the votes of Manchin and Sinema were needed.

They may try to do something with the structure of the judiciary, given the games McConnell et. al. have played over the last 5 years.

I'd rather see the Dems work harder, donate more, and win longer and bigger than take the political risks of changing rules.   

But then, I'm a rather conservative liberal Democrat I suppose.