The Force of the Job

 Had a brief discussion about whether Republican victories in 2022 and 2024 would destroy our democracy.  My position is firm: No.

Why? First I define our democracy as continuing to have free elections with winners taking office and losers leaving. (I'm not worrying here about restrictions on the ballot in any real sense.) 

Next I believe in what I can call the "force of the job", which I think we saw working in 2020 and which will continue.  Theoretically our allegiance is to the United States, but in reality our allegiance is to ourselves, our family, neighbors,  etc. But part of our allegiance to ourselves is the widespread desire to do the job.  In the end in 2020 election officials did the job, judges and courts did the job, the police on Capitol Hill did the job, the military did the job--across the board people did the job. 

My prediction is twofold:

• the vast majority of people will continue to be in the system for mundane reasons with no burning desire to see Trump or Biden or whoever break the system.
• those who come into the system supporting Trump with the hope of seeing him elected in 2024 (or similar political desires) will find themselves gradually placing the integrity of their job and themselves over politics--the job (and their co-workers) will be more important than politics. So, in the end, they will do their job, just as the people involved on Jan 6 did their job.

A New Day Dawning? Leahy

 Sen. Leahy has announced he won't run for reelection next year.  On the Newshour Lisa Lerer commented on the number of old farts who are in the Dem leadership of Congress, and their impending retirements.

There's likely a transition coming for Dems, certainly in the House, more probable in the Senate if the next two elections turn out awful for the Dems.  

Currently it seems as if the Reps are on a firm course: Trump the likely nominee in 2024, McCarthy as Speaker, but McConnell won't last past 2024 if Trump is elected. The Dems are less clear: will Biden run for election, if not can Harris get the nomination or will it be someone else. If there's primary fight for 2024 will the nominee be defeated by Trump, as Carter was defeated by having a divided party behind him. 

My guess would be that Pelosi leaves if Dems lose the House in 2022. 

American Citizens Left Behind?

 Prediction:  One thing which will happen: regardless of the efficiency of the airlift from Kabul, there will be American citizens left behind, likely mostly they have dual citizenship. Some will remain by choice, some will be forbidden to leave because they are Afghans, in the eyes of the Taliban.

Outlook for 2020 Elections

 I'm pessimistic about Democratic chances in 2022 to maintain the House majority.  The Senate may be easier. 

Here's a map for the Senate, showing Pennsylvania as a tossup and Georgia as leaning Democratic.  I'm not sure about Georgia; the Republicans are working on changing the rules for voting.  On the other hand, Sen. Warnock did do better than Ossoff. 

In the House give the Republicans a pickup of 8-10 seats from redistricting and add in the historical loss by the majority party in mid-year elections and things look grim.

It's possible that Biden and the Democrats do a great job on covid and the economy, foreign affairs don't erupt into anything major, and the Republicans experience a lot of intra-party conflict resulting in weak candidates.  It's possible, but I'm not hopeful.

The Era of Commissions and Czars

 President-Elect Biden is planning a covid- czar, apparently.  I suspect we'll see more czars, task forces,  and commissions in the Biden administration than in past ones.

Czars can provide the promise of greater coordination among different silos.  There's a widespread perception the government does not act effectively, so the czar is one solution.  Cynically, it also offer another prestigious position for Biden to use in satisfying the demands of various parts of his coalition for influence.  (Think of a robin with one worm in its mouth facing four hungry chicks in the next.)

Task forces do much the same.  Trump's covid0-19 task force doesn't have a good reputation, but the Operation Warp Speed seems to be doing well at combining the efforts of HHS, CDC, FDA, and the military.

And commissions are a way to seem bipartisan and, at the least, give the impression of action while kicking insoluble issues down the road.  

My Predictions: 0 for 2

 Once again the elections defied my predictions.  I'm assuming Joe Biden will be inaugurated on Jan 20, but that's about the only thing I got right this year (won't talk about 2016).

Time enough for analysis when all the votes are in, but it seems the national polls once again were reasonably close, the state ones had their problems.

But the lesson for me, once again, is to warn that my picture of reality is warped by my desires for what reality should be. You'd think after almost 80 years I'd learn. 

What We Will Owe to Arnon Mishkin

I'm confident that the Biden/Harris ticket will win, likely tonight.  In that confidence I want to link to this NYTimes article on perhaps the most important bureaucrat/nerd involved in the election: the man running the Fox decision desk.  

He's important because the media decision desks provide the data for analysts to call a state as having firm results. He's doubly important in my scenario because the Fox news people are the ones who have the credibility to persuade Trump supporters that their man has lost.  And he's triply important because of the big unknowns of this election: the impact of early voting, of the massive turnout, and of the pandemic. And he's quadruply important because of the uncertainty of Trump's reaction to a defeat.

Will Justice Barrett Disappoint the Right?

 She's almost guaranteed to.  Only Justices Alito and Thomas have not, in recent memory at least, disappointed the right on some decision or other.  Kavanaugh is too early to be a fair case, but I'd predict he also will. (For one thing, he's the father of daughters, which research has shown sometimes leads to more liberal conclusions.)

What are some things which might lead her to surprise conservatives on some cases?

• She's a mother, unlike everyone else on the Court.
• She's the mother of two black children.
• She's a woman, and her two fellow justices who are women are also liberal.
• She's young as justices go, so she has plenty of time to evolve.

She's also likely to change the group dynamics of the court--a 6-3 split may lead one of the majority to distinguish her/himself from the others.

2020 Election Predictions

I screwed up my 2016 election prediction but that doesn't prevent me from predicting again.  Because I feel optimistic today I think Biden/Harris will win a solid victory, north of 350 electoral votes, the Democrats will control the Senate 52-48, and they'll gain 5 seats in the House. These results will come after all the votes are counted, maybe by the end of the month, but most importantly the presidential outcome will be apparent the evening of Nov. 3.

 Trump will bluster for a bit, but will find he's a lame duck and has no support in the Party to fight the outcome.

The Hullabaloo Over SCOTUS

 Back in the 1960's the right was all "Impeach Earl Warren".  Part of the outrage as I remember it was over decisions on crime, part was one person, one vote, and a good part was forbidding the "Lord's Prayer" in schools. There were divisions on the Court, but they tended to be cross-cutting: Justice Black was strict constructionist on First Amendment rights, William Douglas was the epitome of the "living constitution", neither of which fit neatly into the divisions between Democrats and Republicans.

President Nixon started the process of replacing Warren (following a filibuster of Johnson's nominee for Chief of Abe Fortas) and converting SCOTUS to a Republican dominated branch of government.  Since then, in the 52 years, Republican presidents have named 14 justices, Democrats 4.  If things had worked fairly according to the amount of time each party had the presidency, the Dems would have had 7, and the Reps 11. 

Regardless, while there have been ups and downs and decisions I dislike, the country has survived.  We've made significant advances in social areas, and Roe v Wade has survived. 

I predict however the current episode works out, someone looking back 25 years from now will not see a major turning point in legal history with the filling of the current vacancy.  In the long run, the court follows the election returns and the direction of the country. 

What Will Change After Pandemic and BLM and Election?

I think we may err in expecting a lot of change after 2020 ends. My sketchy thoughts:

• yes, if Biden wins  there will be a lot of change in government, but mostly it will be reversion to the norm.  Even if Biden carries in a solid majority in the Senate, I don't expect changes on order of LBJ's Great Society in 1965-68.  Or even Reagan's changes.  I'd add a qualifier--there may be a lot of changes on the international front, which will force more changes than we can see now.
• full recovery from the pandemic will take years. I'd expect the major changes to be the result of people getting more used to online everything. But otherwise I'd expect reversion to the norm generally.
• the current BLM protests will result in some moderately important changes in law, justice, and policing, but not much more.

The theme here is, I think, the power of old habits and the past.  I hope to live long enough to see how wrong I am.

Election Predictions

I was wrong in 2016.  Maybe I'll do better in 2020.

As of Memorial Day, I'd put the odds this way:

• 10 percent chance Trump wins a majority of the 2-person popular vote and wins back the House.
• 30 percent chance Trump wins a majority of the electoral vote and keeps the Senate
• 10 percent chance neither candidate wins with 48 hours of election day, including possibility it goes to the House
• 30 percent chance Biden wins a majority of votes, both popular and electoral but fails to win the Senate.
• 10 percent chance Biden wins a comfortable majority, and squeaks a Senate majority
• 10 percent chance Biden wins a landslide, taking House and firm Senate majority

Bottom line, I think the Dems have more upside than the Reps but it's currently a tossup.

What Will the Recovery Look Like?

I've no insight, but since when does that stop a true blogger?

Personally I think it will be slow-fast-slow. 

• the first slow will because the majority of people won't be risk-takers, they'll let others be the trailblazers.
• the fast will be as people realize that it is relatively safe--isolated incidents but nothing drastic enough to cause major political subdivisions to revert back to a lock-down.
• the second slow will be because of the drag on economic activity from the measures taken to minimize risk plus dealing with the economic damages of the pandemic--the closed restaurants, the half-empty nursing homes, etc.

We'll see.

My Predictions?

I don't really have any, but I just saw a Politico post following up on various predictions made about Obamacare.  They mostly were wrong.  So with that in mind I'll venture this: at least 80 percent of the predictions ever offered about Covid-19 will turn out to be wrong.

Nicholas Kristof at the Times sketched the best and worst cases for the outcome. I'll venture the prediction that the outcome will be closer to the best than the worst.

Be Afraid--What Are the Odds

I think the odds for the Covid virus having major impact on American society are low.  I might be unduly affected by the experience of the Ebola panic, when a certain person was panicking (initials DJT).

On the other hand, I think the odds for a very screwed-up transition from the Trump administration to a Democratic president in 2021 are about 100-1 (assuming we do in fact defeat the man).  The Obama administration started the transition process back in the spring of 2016.  Of course they knew they were leaving, but Trump will have problems imagining that process so I don't expect him to approve any advance planning before Nov. 2020.  After election day, assuming again he's defeated which I'm not offering any prediction for, he will be in no mood to facilitate any planning, so the process will have to be carried out by career officials, otherwise known to Republican partisans as the swamp.

Hemp Insurance and Bureaucracy

Farmers.gov has a page on the announcement of hemp insurance and other aspects of growing hemp.

They note the need to report acreage to FSA, including their hemp grower registration number.  I searched on that and found this page for Virginia.  Virginia, of course, requires its own series of acreage reports

IMO this is a classic instance of how bureaucratic silos develop.  Something new comes up, and existing bureaucracies are assigned the job of implementing rules/laws. But since it's likely that the new responsibility doesn't fit neatly within the scope of one bureaucracy, we get duplication. 

I'd predict that 10 years from now the Virginia Hemp Growers Association will have formed and will be lobbying for a simplification and consolidation of paperwork requirements.

Majority Minority World in Future?

This article got me thinking about our future in the US as a majority minority country.  That's inevitable regardless of any government policy.

But then I thought--just looking at the US is limited--the world is already majority minority, and it has been for millennia, likely since humans left Aftrica.

I'm comfortable saying humanity is in the process of reuniting. What will the reunited world look like and act like.  Looks is relatively easy--the majority will be African-Asian.  Acts is hard, but I'd argue that based on the imprints left on former colonies, the European influence on culture and society will remain disproportionate to their descendants representation in the population.

Electric Airplanes and Electric Motorcycles

This article discusses the developments in electric aircraft.  I had no idea they were being worked on.

Noertker and his team at the Los Angeles-based startup Ampaire are developing first-generation electric aircraft — and they’re far from the only ones. Something on the order of 170 companies have joined what Noertker calls an electric aircraft “arms race.” Several made a splash at the Paris Air Show a couple weeks back. 

I wonder though. Yesterday while I was in the garden a motorcycle roared down Reston Avenue.  I'd assume that doing an electric motorcycle would be very easy compared to an electric airplance.  However, my cynical take is that the roar of the cycle is 90 percent of the value of the vehicle.

So, a modest prediction: development and sales of electric airplanes will advance faster than electric motorcycles.

Democrat Predictions

I see Nate Silver predicting Biden, Warren and Harris as equally likely to win the nomination, with Sanders behind them.  Jonathan Berrnstein doesn't think Sanders is that likely.

As of today I'd take the field against those four, but I'd be willing to lose my money.

Mueller Report--Turtle

I see I've never commented on the Mueller operation, so I can't claim any credit for prescience nor do I have to cover up any mistaken predictions.  Just call me "turtle".

The Barr interpretation of obstruction law fascinates me: apparently you need three things: a crime, acts which obstruct justice, and the intent to obstruct.  As of today it's not clear which of the three (one or more) Barr finds missing or not sufficiently supported by the facts as Mueller's presents them.  It might be the crime, it might be that no one lied to FBI agents (as Flynn did), just lied to the public, or it might be everyone in the Trump campaign and administration is so confused they had no clear intent.

I tend to lean towards the idea that all the people involved were babies, new to the political world, and thus experienced things as babies do, in the words of William James, as "blooming, buzzing, confusion."  Thus their collusion with the Russians was accidental, their attempts to cover up things were out of fear of embarrassment, not prosecution, and thus failed on the intent.

We'll see if that's that picture journalists and historians develop as the Mueller report becomes public and more analysis is done.