In Tenure Veritas: Libations From The Ivory Tower

OK, folks.  This thing is almost done.  Maybe.  And here I am, a political scientist.  I, like, read stuff, and look at numbers, 'n stuff.  I'm supposed to dispense wisdom and insight, and whatnot, about whatever is about to happen.  Let's do this thing. Today, I put on my professional, political scientist costume. The October, 2020 issue of PS: Political Science & Politics  is our traditional vehicle for simplified mathematical models predicting a presidential election.  And I do mean, "simplified."  We use regression models based on no more than a couple of independent variables, or similarly parsimonious (if occasionally computationally complex) models to use past elections to forecast the upcoming election based on the premise that whatever is about to happen will occur following the same rules.  The rules of physics don't change, so politics shouldn't either, right?  Right ? Anyway, moving on.  Some of these models use...

 Fishbone, "I Have No Fear," from Give A Monkey A Brain And He'll Swear He's The Center Of The Universe .

 Doug Wamble, "At the End of the Day," from his self-titled album.

Tomorrow, I will be posting a discussion of the political science forecasting models from the October, 2020 issue of PS: Political Science & Politics .  Along... with... a big pile of sodium chloride with which to take these models.  When our political system is on bath salts, that's only appropriate. You may notice that I, as a quantitative political scientist-- one who spent the days after the 2016 election prostrating myself before the political science forecasting models and saying that I will never question them again because they got it right , even though the polls were wrong-- have not actually spent all that much time going through these models.  Nor... even... the... polls. In a normal election, I'd be pointing you towards the electoral college map, expounding upon the proper way to analyze polls, telling you what the trends "mean," to the degree that they mean anything, and elaborating on how past precedent can illuminate our current election.  I ain...

 Just a quick comment here, but I will come back to the general issue.  First, I like to do admissions when I get things wrong, as a check on my intellectual integrity.  After all, nobody reads this damned blog, so there is no point in lying to myself.  If I write for myself, I should use the opportunity for honest analysis. I have repeatedly asserted that Bill Barr would provide Donald Trump with some sort of October surprise.  He has not.  Trump's COVID diagnosis was enough of an October surprise, and Trump himself has expressed displeasure that Barr and the rest of the DoJ have not  actually arrested Biden, Obama and the rest of Trump's enemies list because of... I dunno.  I can't actually follow the lunacy.  Nevertheless, there was a pseudo-scandal over the "unmasking" of Flynn, Trump actually managed to convince himself that he could get Obama and Biden both arrested over it, and when Barr didn't do it, Trump decided that Barr had flunke...

Five days.  Five days until things are set in motion for the Supreme Court to re-elect Donald Trump.  Just kiddingnotkidding.  But that's my point for today. According to the averages at RealClearPolitics as of this morning, Biden is up by 7.5 points nationally .  If we look briefly at some key states, Biden is up by 3.8 points in Pennsylvania .  He is up by 6.4 points in Wisconsin .  Michigan?  He's up by 8.6 points .  I could keep going, but the point is that Biden is leading. Can we trust the polls?  I've written about this , but it is a legitimate question. And what if they are right?  Do you trust that the votes will all  be counted?  Including absentee ballots? Do you trust that they will be counted correctly?  I wrote about the problem of central count optical scan, and the disparities the method creates .  A big shift to absentee means that's where we are...  So, do you trust this process? Do you trust th...

 Six days.  Just six days  until the stage is set for Amy Coney Barrett to cast her deciding vote to re-elect Donald Trump for his second term. Kiddingnotkidding. It'll take some time for the case to work its way up to the Supreme Court.  I don't actually know how many days it will be, but it will be more than six. Anyway, the 2020 election is nearly upon us, and as I wrap up my reassessment of the Donald Trump/Jimmy Carter comparison, and all the ways I went wrong back in 2016, we turn to the 2020 election.  Beginning, of course, with the numbers.  'Cuz I'm me. 16.4%. Quiz time.  Do you recognize that number?  Likely not.  If I just throw out a number like that, you have no chance of recognizing it.  But... it was Q2 GDP growth in... 1978!  That's right, that was the second quarter economic growth in 1978, when Jimmy Carter was President.  You know, " history's greatest monster! "  Of course, some caveats are in order for...

 After a brief intermission, we pick up where Part IV left the series.  Donald Trump has been an utter failure in terms of negotiating with Congress.  He has been worse than Carter.  Carter was an outsider, elected by the McGovern-Fraser rules, and so he lacked any connection to or understanding of the processes of Washington D.C.  The same has been true of Donald Trump, who knows nothing of political processes, but in addition to that, knows nothing about public policy, making him even more legislatively ineffectual than Carter. Yet, Trump has taken a different path, as discussed in Part IV.  He has expanded executive power by relying on executive actions to an extreme beyond any peacetime president, and going beyond any constitutional boundaries.  Puzzlingly, the Republicans in Congress who had refused to pass Trump's legislative agenda also refused to do anything about his unconstitutional executive actions.  Why?  There has been one consi...

 With the impending election, I have been doing daily posts on politics, and I need a palate cleanser of pickled ginger.  Back to some science fiction!  Today, we tackle a subject I have been addressing semi-frequently in my commentaries on science fiction, in part because much of modern science fiction is not only political, but in a particular way.  Cory Doctorow is a skilled writer, and closely associated with one of my favorites-- Charles Stross-- but kind of like a kid brother.  Doctorow, though, can not only occasionally rip off his idol, he can also fall prey to some of the worst excesses of attempts at political science fiction, which I have addressed before.  So let's just get into it. Radicalized  is a compilation of four novellas, two of which I rather enjoyed.  "Unauthorized Bread" is a fun, little tale about smart appliances gone way too far, and the travails of jailbreaking them.  Are there problems in the story?  Yeah, but...

 Les Claypool, "The Awakening," from Highball with the Devil .

In Part III of revisiting the Trump-Carter comparison, I observed that Trump deviated from the Carter path through his use of extensive executive orders.  While Carter faced legislative defeat with mere acknowledgement that he failed, Trump has consistently responded by overstepping his constitutional authority in ways that... yeah, the "if Obama had dot-dot-dotted" thing is old hat, but it is still worth saying.  Trump's executive orders have ranged from sketchy to way over the line. Yet, congressional Republicans have acquiesced.  This leads to a rather strange observation.  Trump failed to convince even the Republican majorities in the House and Senate from the 2017-8 term to pass things like his wall, or the tariffs he wanted, much less "repeal and replace," which had been a Republican slogan predating Trump, empty of any "replace" plan, making it unsurprising that the party could not write a replace plan when finally put on the spot.  Nevertheless...

 I hate to be so obvious, but sometimes a music fan has to do what a music fan has to do.  Living Colour.  Here's a live performance of "Cult of Personality," from Vivid .  This way, you don't have to see the very-80s images from the famous video.  A couple of comments.  First, how dare the camera-editing ever deviate from Vernon Reid's hands?!  All other guitarists must bow down before Vernon Reid.  Second, fun tidbit.  Me'Shell Ndegeocello was almost the bassist for Living Colour!  If anything could have made the band even cooler, she could have.

 I got nothin' today.  Here's an Oscar Peterson concert.  Anyone who complains about Peterson is a philistine.

 I don't have much to say about the final debate.  A few bullet-points... 1)  When Trump equivocated on whether or not Lincoln was better, Biden should have actually quoted Lloyd Bentsen.  He could have joked about his own age in the process, and it would have been hilarious. 2)  At least the mute button saved a few people some migraines, but that's the definition of a low bar. 3)  Did you learn  anything, though?  No.  Cancel the debates.  Forever. 4)  That's the last time we ever have to watch Trump in a debate!  If nothing else, celebrate that!

 Picking up on Part II, this is where we begin to see the most important distinctions between Donald Trump and Jimmy Carter as presidents.  In Part II, I elaborated on Nelson W. Polsby's model of party connections, and how an outsider's lack of connection to the national party can lead to a president's failure to bargain successfully with Congress, even under unified government.  Carter failed to convince a Democratic House and Senate to pass much of his agenda, even with a 60-seat majority in the Senate after the 1976 election.  To be sure, that majority included more ideological diversity than it would today, but still.  Carter was a little out of his depth. Trump, of course, has always been way  out of his depth.  He has never been anything other than a fraud and a con man.  Being a con man, as I often remind people, doesn't require being intelligent.  If you are being chased by a bear, you don't have to be faster than the bear.  You ...

 Just a quick comment here. First, if we are being subjected to this, I am grateful for the fact that the mute button will be used.  The debates are, and will always be worthless.  They should be canceled, now and forever.  Yet, at least the Commission has recognized the necessity of muting Donald Trump.  (Fine, Biden gets muted too, but we know why they're doing this.)  However, my real comment here is about the strategic bind that Trump has created for himself.  In the first debate, he went full asshole.  Never go full asshole. It clearly backfired.  Overwhelmingly, the reaction to Trump's behavior was negative, and the Commission was even forced to change its procedures to enforce the rules that Trump refuses to follow.  However, what does he do now?  His whole schtick is to act like he is the man in charge by acting like rules don't apply to him.  So, if he acts differently, the reaction will be that he caved. He then looks...

 As I pick up from yesterday's comments, let's just jump right into the main substance of the Trump-Carter line of reasoning.  According to Nelson W. Polsby's Consequences of Party Reform , Jimmy Carter's consistent failure to convince Congress to pass legislation that met his approval was the result of the McGovern-Fraser reforms. Carter was an outsider.  He was the Governor of Georgia, with no connections at all to the national Democratic Party.  Being a governor, particularly now, does not preclude connection to the national party apparatus, but Carter did not have any real connections to the national party.  And, in 1976, the way things worked in Georgia was not how things worked in D.C.  You may not remember this, but the 1976 election gave the Democratic Party not just a majority in the House of Representatives, but 60 seats in the Senate.  As in... if the party could hold it together, enough to invoke cloture and override a filibuster.  In ...

 I have intended to write something about the Trump-Carter comparison for a long time.  And over the last couple of weeks, with Trump's possible collapse, my assessments are being updated in real-time, and the timeliness of the comparison begs posting. When I started The Unmutual Political Blog -- the predecessor to this venue for shouting into the Void-- it was because I had one particular series in mind:  "Trump to Political Science:  Drop Dead."  The title was an old, and obscure reference, because that's what I do, but the substance was as follows.  Way back in the before-time of 2016, my fellow political scientists were in the grips of their own, little cult.  The cult of The Party Decides .  And as a result, they were getting a lot  wrong about the 2016 election.  Trump wasn't "supposed" to get the Republican nomination.  Long before my colleagues realized that their models were being broken, I started a blog for the purposes ...