Covid-19 Impacts on Society

 This FCW article argues that Covid-19 should impact the government's priorities on IT. Ir's part of a larger set of speculations over the long term impacts. Maybe:

• broadband access is more important so everyone can work and study from home?
• people who for the first time were forced into using online services will continue to use them, and expect their availability?
• on-line shopping is growing and the old brick and mortar department stores, and smaller outfits, are obsolete?
• lots of restaurants going out of business, more delivery services, and perhaps more home cooking?
• more family togetherness?

WTO Limits on Farm Subsidies

 I've wondered whether USDA would run into problems with the WTO's limits on farm program payments. A recent CRS report analyzed the problem.

The last paragraph of the summary says:

If the United States were to exceed its WTO annual spending limit, then offending farm programs (whether ad hoc or traditional) could be vulnerable to challenge by another WTO member under the WTO’s dispute settlement rules. However, if the payment programs that appear likely to cause the United States to exceed its WTO spending limits in 2019 and 2020 prove to be temporary, then a successful WTO challenge might not necessarily result in an adverse ruling against the United States or any other authorized retaliation (e.g., permission to rais e tariffs on U.S. products), depending on the outcome of a WTO dispute settlement proceeding. 

The issue is summarized as this:

The U.S. government provided up to $60.4 billion in ad hoc payments to agricultural producers cumulatively in 2018, 2019, and 2020, in addition to existing farm support. These payments have raised concerns among some U.S. trading partners, as well as market watchers and policymakers, that U.S. domestic farm subsidy outlays might exceed its annual WTO spending limit of $19.1 billion in one or more of those three years. [emphasis added]

I bolded the numbers because the last I'd heard it was $48 billion. I'm sure the $60 billion had little to do with the election results.

And the Transition Starts

 I start and don't finish a good number of posts.  One I started before the election predicted how the transition would go.  Unfortunately it assumed Biden/Harris would win FL and NC so it doesn't really work.

I join the people who point to the relatively peaceful days since Nov. 3. There's been no significant violence.  I think part of it was how long it took for the election to be called--if it had been called on Tuesday night it would have been more likely for jubilant Biden supporters and/or upset Trump supporters to explode, or get into confrontations. Another part is just the machinery operating; we're used to the pageantry and operation of elections, and the familiarity of the usual routine dampens emotion. 

So far Trump is resisting the outcome, which is inevitable. The margins in the different states are small, but not small enough for recounts or court challenges to overturn the outcome in any state, much less in the multiple states which would be needed.

I think the Trump administration will gradually sputter out, with little grace and some noise.

The Erosion of Traditional {X}

 The Post magazine has an article: "How Religion Can Help Put Our Democracy Back Together".

It includes this sentence: "Meanwhile, another parallel collapse is unfolding: the erosion of the traditional norms that have sustained our democracy. "

It's the sort of statement which I see relatively often: modern trends are undermining/eroding something from the past.

It's true enough, but what's usually ignored is the building of the new.  For example, one thing going on now, about which I know nothing except it's gathering momentum and creating professionals, is the development of online games. What sort of norms are the participants in such games learning?  What's the culture which has developed?  How might those things carry over to public life.

Congratulations to the Bidens, Harris, and Emhoff

 And most of all to the United States of America. 

The Democratic Debates Start

Reps. Spanberger and AOC seem engaged in an early debate over the course of Democratic politics.  Spanberger said Dems should deep-six talk of "socialism" and "defund police", blaming that for the defeats of some Democratic representatives who gained office in 2018, and the failure to take new seats.

AOC has a twitter thread countering that position, arguing that some new progressives won (my comment--I think they won safe seats by winning the Democratic primaries) and that many candidates were lousy in their digital campaigns.

I suspect both are right.  It's a big country, but politics is often local.  So positions which are popular in one place, like NYC and its suburbs, and not in another area, like southern Virginia, or southern Florida. Appeals which work with one voting bloc may well turn off another bloc. [Updated: and people are complicated and react differently to different stimuli.]

Hopefully the different parts of the party can mostly reconcile under (probable) President Biden's leadership.  His task will be quite difficult: he's likely to be considered a one-termer, and therefore have less clout than otherwise.  I'm reminded of 1976 and President Carter's job--he too had liberals on his left, still smarting over the failure of their dreams in 1972,  and led by a Kennedy.  That didn't work out well for him. 

Congratulations to Republicans

 Republicans made significant gains in House races, mostly it seems because they nominated and supported women candidates. For that they deserve congratulations, even though one of the successful candidates is an OAnon supporter.

This is one of the ways our politics works in the long run: one party comes up with an advance, like nominating women candidates or a fund-raising mechanism like ActBlue; the party gains an advantage; the other party then tries to catch up.

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 Dems Will Owe to Stacy Abrams and Beto O'Rourke

 As in my previous post, I'm confident of the election outcome.  Georgia and Texas might or might not vote for Biden/Harris, but it's clear that Democrats owe a lot to the efforts of Stacy Abrams in Georgia and Beto O'Rourke in Texas.

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.