OUR DISCRETIONARY RECESSION

The fish rots from the head ~ Turkish proverb      

Let’s pause for a moment, take a deep breath, and somehow not focus on November 3. Next Tuesday has understandably become an all-consuming emphasis for obvious reasons. It may be impossible, but it’s worthwhile thinking about the abysmal economic reality we’ve been living through since shortly after 2020 began. This recession will continue to plague our nation well after next week because the Republicans have chosen to extend it.

The US has been in a harsh economic recession at least since early April, when our unemployment rate skyrocketed to 14.7%. The official arbitrator of business cycles, the Business Cycle Dating Committee (no, it’s not part of Tinder) of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), announced in June that the recession began during this year’s second quarter (April – June).

In September, the (latest) unemployment rate was 7.9% - that’s 12.58 million people, people who want a job and can’t find one. This elevated unemployment rate is the largest in 8 years, not counting the historically-higher unemployment spike between April and August. Our real (inflation-adjusted) GDP dropped 5.0% in the first quarter and a massive 31.4% in the second quarter at annualized rates. This second-quarter reduction is the largest ever. As every conscious, competent person knows, these have not been good times, despite what #45 falsely asserts.

The NBER’s proclamation noted the distinctiveness of this recession. “The committee recognizes that the pandemic and the public health response have resulted in a downturn with different characteristics and dynamics than prior recessions.” One big distinction is this recession first affected the services sector, the most prominent contributor to our national output (GDP). The services sector accounts for over 68% of our GDP and more than 80% of our national employment. Another distinction was the speed that the previous good times suddenly stopped rolling along. These distinctions are solely due to the unique cause of this recession: covid-19.

Many previous recessions have initially battered “traditional” sectors such as manufacturing and more generally, the goods-producing portions of the economy. This recession hasn’t hit as hard the manufacturing sector, which is near and dear to every politician, but now accounts for just 7.3% of national employment. That’s less than one-half as many people who are employed by state and local governments.

Econ 101 textbooks’ discussions about how governments can escape the ravages of recessions focus on implementing expansionary monetary and fiscal policies. Monetary policy is set by the Federal Reserve Bank’s (the Fed’s) Board of Governors. Fiscal policy is multi-layered, referring to discretionary funds authorized and spent by federal, state and local governments.

Most of the Fed’s monetary policy mechanisms focus on changing the money supply and interest rates for buying or selling government bonds. During recessions the Fed increases the money supply and decreases interest rates. As such, monetary policy’s principal channel for influencing the macroeconomy is narrower than that of fiscal policy. Fiscal policy expenditures can and have been much broader in scope.

Monetary policy most directly influences business investment and consumer and business loans. Lowering interest rates during recessionary periods often lead to more investment and more lending because it is cheaper to buy loans. Beginning in July 2019 and sensing up-coming weakness in the economy, the Fed has dramatically lowered interest rates, via its Federal Funds Rate, FFR. Now the effective FFR is a bargain-basement 0.09%. More remarkably, the 10-Year Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities’ (TIPS) interest rate is -0.91%. During the past year, the Fed has increased the M1 money supply 41%, to $5.5 trillion.  

The seven-member Fed Board of Governors meets about once every six weeks to decide whether or not to change monetary policy. Last February, the Fed held three emergency meetings to respond to the coronavirus crisis. They significantly lowered the FFR. Despite these efforts, gross private domestic investment has steadily declined 21% during the last 18 months.

Because federal fiscal policy requires legislative action by 535 Congresspeople (435 members of the House and 100 of the Senate), it rarely coincides with the economy’s current needs. It often lags changes in the business cycle. That’s once again true now.

Congress authorized the unprecedentedly-large and effective $2.3 trillion CARES Act stimulus seven months ago. The CARES Act increased individual unemployment benefits, provided $1,200 checks to over 150 million people, offered more than 600,000 small businesses forgivable loans to pay their workers via the Paycheck Protection Program, as well as aided large companies and state and local governments.

Federal fiscal policy has been invisible since last Spring. Despite the ever-growing need, national expansionary fiscal policy has been stopped dead by Congressional intra-mural hostility, chiefly due to Senate Repubs’ intransigence, and the Administration’s incompetent team of sycophants.

The key proponent for this disinterest in needed Congressional expansionary fiscal action is Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader. On October 20 he warned the White House not to initiate a new stimulus agreement with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi before the November 3 election. He and his Repub colleagues are consciously choosing to postpone any expansionary fiscal policy that would begin remedying this recession.

I characterize Mitch’s strategy as a discretionary recession extension. It is completely perverse from both economic and political perspectives. Sen. McConnell’s strategy also directly conflicts with #45’s latest hopes to “go big” with a second stimulus before the election.

The idea of Republican Congresspeople purposefully deciding to prolong a recession and not alleviate its sizeable, adverse effects has no precedent. One commentator mentioned that Mitch and his Repub neo-austerity caucus are not only practicing bad economics but also really dumb politics.

How would Mitch explain his refusal to help fellow Kentuckians (along with every other US resident) as soon as possible? It’s a mystery. Especially because his constituents will be voting against or for him on November 3. They have been suffering from a giant 77% increase in Kentucky’s unemployment since last year. For the intransigent Repubs, folks’ suffering makes no difference.

After Joe wins on November 3[1], the Senate and House Repubs, as well as #45 will completely dismiss any more fiscal policy support on the public’s behalf. Why? Because in their minds such support will make President Biden’s life somewhat easier. The outer, pro-deficit coat they have grown with #45 will be promptly shed as they metamorphosize back into their usual hard-shelled Republicanas hypocritus, representationally shown below.

     Republicanas hypocritus

Repubs will once again shout their disingenuous abhorrence of larger public debt, even though every Repub Senator voted in 2017 for #45s massive, debt-laden tax breaks for the already-rich. The 2020 federal fiscal deficit is $3.1 trillion, amounting for 15.2% of GDP, more than triple the deficit for last year and the largest deficit as a share of the economy since 1945.

With the expectation of Joe Biden occupying the White House, Mitch and his Senate Repubs have already begun to sermonize about their newly- uncovered distaste for discretionary fiscal policy, just as they did with President Obama. They conveniently disremembered this stridency from January 20, 2017 until now.

I recommend Speaker Pelosi promptly reconsider and act on the latest White House stimulus offer of $1.8 trillion (versus the Dems’ $2.2 trillion). Sure, it’s only 81% of what she wants and the nation needs, but Mitch’s Senate will wholly disregard it. Their utter disdain will again amply reveal the Repubs' neglect of voters’ wellbeing. The Repubs’ deep interest in extending their discretionary recession will help ensure the Dems’ recapture of the Senate in addition to the White House.

 

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[1] I’m perhaps naïvely assuming Joe’s popular vote victory will be honored in all states’ legislatures and the proscribed Joint Session of Congress, presided by the Vice President, on January 6, 2021. That’s the date Congress members will formally accept the Electoral College votes and certify the election. However, before January 6 when the States are assembling their electors’ votes, Repubs might exercise their virulent hopes by having a state, whose voters gave Joe Biden their nod, and with a Dem governor but a majority Repub legislature (prime examples are Pennsylvania, Wisconsin as well as 6 other states) could refuse to accept the governor’s certified results of their own voters and dismiss the Dem electors in the state’s Electoral College. Such a dismissal would force these electors to become Electoral College drop-outs. The Repub legislators then could substitute their own slate of Repub electors, despite the popular vote results. It’s yet another reason to wish that no person drops out of college, any college. Of course, it’s never happened before; but.

  

THE ELECTION STEEPLECHASE

If youth knew, if age could. ~ Sigmund Freud 

The steeplechase, one of the most challenging races, is an obstacle-strewn running race, which derives its name from the steeplechase in horse racing. It’s the only similarly-named event in which two different animal species separately compete. For humans, it combines three different skills into one event: distance running, hurdling, and long jumping.

The human steeplechase consists of a 3000-meter (1.86mi.) run with 28 hurdles/barriers and 7 water jumps. In the 23 Olympic men’s steeplechase events since 1900, it has never been won by an American. In 2016, Evan Jager from Portland, Oregon received the Silver Medal, the highest-placed American in the Olympic men’s steeplechase. In the third Women’s Olympic Steeplechase (2016), Emma Coburn from Boulder, Colorado received the Bronze Medal, the highest-placed American in the Olympic women’s steeplechase. In 2017, she won the women’s steeplechase at the World Championships. Tiger Roll, shown here and ridden by Davey Russel, has won the two most recent Irish Grand National equestrian steeplechases. 

There’s another difficult steeplechase race that finally is headed for a finish, the 2020 US presidential election. Fortunately, neither Joe Biden or Donald Trump needs to soar over physical hurdles nor glide across water jumps, they simply have to survive the rigors of their campaigning until November 3. The voting public also has to finish the election steeplechase by casting ballots, and then having great patience before learning who actually won.

Some voters will find this more challenging than others, independent of the many outrageous obstacles being thrown onto the process by Republicans. Right now, the Dems must re-invigorate their ground game and re-energize their house-to-house virtual and/or real door-knocking efforts.

The table below shows the average turnout and electorate share for the last three presidential elections for several groups of voters. It’s important to remember that such broad groupings represent very diverse sets of real humans who have disparate political views. Each group’s varied political opinions are approximated by its “Average Voting Margin” in the table. This column describes how each group voted in the 2016 presidential election. For example, young people (18-29 years old) provided 29% more Democratic votes than Republican votes, hence D+29. The higher this number, the greater the predominance of the group’s average voting record for either Dems or Repubs.

Turnout, Electorate Share and Margin for the 

2016, 2012 & 2008 Presidential Elections by Group

Group	Average Election Turnout (%)	Average Electorate Share (%)	Average Voting Margin*
Non-Hispanic White	63.9	74.8	R+15
Non-Hispanic Black	65.5	12.6	D+83
Hispanic	44.8	8.2	D+45
18-29 years old	44.2	16.1	D+29
60+ years old	71.2	30.9	R+15

*2016 election. Sources: United States Elections Project and Washington Post

As shown, the average turnout of young people (18-29 years old) and Hispanics is much lower than any other group. The highest is elder voters (60+ years). Black voters have provided strong election turnout and an extraordinary voting margin.

This is not news; these turnouts have been an election participation fact for a long time. Voter turnout among younger voters has been grim since 18-year-olds earned the right to vote after the 26th amendment was passed in 1971. It continues to pose a particular challenge for the Dems, despite their significant voter-turnout efforts.

In the current election cycle, young voters have accounted for just 7.7% of the 17.7 million votes cast across the US through October 16. In Pennsylvania, one of the media-designated “key/swing” states, young voters placed merely 8.7% of the total votes.

As one experienced election analyst put it regarding the youth vote this time around: “Well, we can cross off the ‘What if young people really vote?’ option. Waiting for Godot is less of a time-suck than waiting for more active participation from the 18-29 group.” I hope this analyst’s assessment proves premature; but up to now, it’s not. In terms of overall national turnout so far, young voters are turning out less than they did in 2016.

To illustrate the abundant challenges and risks of the Dems’ again pursuing a young-voter focused strategy to win I used the Washington Post’s interesting Presidential Election Model (PEM). This interactive, “black box” model predicts Electoral College votes based on user specified voter group turnout rates and margins.

After examining young voter-oriented scenarios with the PEM, I learned that there are other, potentially more effective strategies for Joe Biden to potentially become #46.

First, I increased the laggard youth voting turnout from 43.4% in 2016, to the national average 2016 turnout (59%). That’s a mind-bogglingly large increase given too many young persons’ voting histories and apparent youth proclivities. I did not change the already-substantial youth voting margin, Dem+29. The result: #45 still wins in the Electoral College 290 v 248 for Joe. With the WaPo PEM, this huge increase in youth turnout shifted only one state’s election results from red to blue, Michigan. Sorry Joe.

Why? Because Democrat-friendly youth voters are not evenly distributed across states; fewer live in either Trump’s reddish lands or in swing states. They are not clustered in the closest-voting states. Generally, more young voters live in very blue urban areas, where their marginal voting matters less than if they lived in rural Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Florida or even Texas.

If the Dems placed all of their electoral marbles with youth voters (a daft strategy), Joe only would win the November election if youth turnout increased to an astonishing 61%, a 40% gain in young voters’ 2016 election turnout shifting both Florida and Michigan to blue. Does this mean young voters don’t matter for Dems? Not at all. But despite the media’s attention on youth voters’ importance, other voter segments with higher Dem turnouts and margins doubtlessly matter much more for the Dems’ and Joe’s victory, specifically Black and female voters.

If Black voters’ turnout can be increased to 67% (from 60%; a 12% increase) then Joe’s electoral college votes (EVs) in the PEM rise to 297 v 241 for #45, winning the presidency. This optimistically realistic turnout rise is powered by maintaining the Blacks’ massive D+83 margin. If the Dems’ campaign can increase female voters’ margin from D+9 to D+10 and increases female turnout from 63% to 67%, Joe can win in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan. With this Joe can bring home the EVs bacon, 278 v 260, to begin eating in 1600’s Mess on January 20.

The 2016 election steeplechase has rounded the proverbial final turn. Every person who hopes to gain public office in two weeks continues swamping your mailbox, social media as well as large and small screens urging you to vote for them. Talk about decimating forests.

I’m wishing that Team Blue can convince enough voters and enough electors to shift America’s present and future into a better, brighter setting. The DNC and Dem voters can certainly do it with enough focus, discipline and effort. Now is the time for #46.

 

 

ALICE, THE MAD HATTER AND OUR ELECTION

Alice had gotten into the way of expecting nothing but out-of-the way things to happen, and it seemed quite dull and stupid for things to go on in the common way. ~  C.L. Dodgson  

Alice’s expectations about strange, abnormal out-of-the-way things happening have indeed been realized for all too long right now, not just 156 years ago. For her and us, the normal, common way of things has become quite endangered for all things political, especially with our upcoming election.

I decided to read C.L. Dodgson’s (aka, Lewis Carroll) famous childhood fantasy after trekking through all 85 essays that comprise The Federalist Papers. These treatises were resolutely written in 1787-88 by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay – under the pseudonymous name "Publius." The papers were created to promote the ratification of the US Constitution and originally appeared in several New York City newspapers. They realized this goal.

On June 21, 1788, the proposed Constitution was ratified by the Congress. The newly-constituted citizens began organizing our then-radical form of democracy in the following months. As they say, the rest is history. And it’s being challenged as never before.

My attempt at digesting the Federalist papers has been both absorbing and weighty. As a fictional balm, I decided next to read Alice’s Adventures Under Ground. Lewis Carroll’s 1864 story is the original, handwritten account that proceeded his more famous Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland[1] the following year. In Wonderland, Carroll added the now-legendary episodes when Alice meets the Cheshire Cat and partakes in the Mad Tea-Party along with the Hatter and his buddies the March Hare and Dormouse. It was after Carroll’s time that his Hatter became known as the Mad Hatter. Nevertheless, the phrase "mad as a hatter" was common when he was writing.

The Mad Hatter

By John Tenniel in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Reading “Alice” has turned out to be a prophetic choice. I’ve found several similarities in Alice’s adventures to our current, woebegone political situation. It’s as if all of us has fallen into another rabbit hole. I fervently hope it will be hare today, gone tomorrow. But not quite yet; with any luck and considerable effort we’ll feel better in 21 days. Like Wonderland, at this point it just gets curiouser and curiouser here.

In Wonderland the Mad Hatter utters preposterous statements, is always fecklessly changing his mind and causes Alice unyielding distress. Does this behavior remind you of someone all too familiar now in our public lives?

The severe Queen of Hearts sentences the Mad Hatter to death for “murdering the Time,” who is a character in the story. Yet he manages to escape, retaining his head. However, in retribution Wonderland’s Mad Hatter is destined to be forever stuck at tea-time.

The Queen of Hearts hasn’t yet made a regal pronouncement regarding our Mad Hatter-in-chief. His doctors proscribed drugs including powerful steroids, antivirals and monoclonal antibodies to manage his alleged covid-19 infection. These drugs may be affecting his behavior, although that’s difficult to ascertain since his usual conduct is so abnormal and erratic.

Like Alice’s Mad Hatter, our Mad Hatter is stuck in time. He’s forever re-living Wednesday, November 9, 2016, after unexpectedly winning the election the day before. Does he remember the past eight months of our devastating coronavirus pandemic, the 31.4% crash of the US second-quarter GDP, or the 14.7% unemployment rate in April? Nope. He’s 2016 all the time.

At the same time that our Mad Hatter now pleads for votes at large-scale public, potential super-spreader events, big business lobbyists also have been busy. With his certain support, they have been trolling the halls of Congress begging for additional aid money with gold-plated tin cups in hand. Are these lobbyists the Knaves of Hearts? Perhaps.

This includes the largest airlines that have taxied up to Congresspeople telling them that the $25 billion bailout they received just six months ago isn’t nearly enough. American and United, two of the four largest airlines which account for a startling 70% of all US flights[2], have been threatening to lay off at least 35,000 of their employees unless they get a lot more taxpayers’ dough to keep flying.

Movie theater owners, who don’t want to be left out of the second round of the covid-bailout sweepstakes, are also pleading for money. Less than 25% of US movie theaters were open in August because producers halted distribution of their movies and folks remain wholly-reticent to be entertained eating stale popcorn inside their theaters. The movie theater owners have gone six months without revenues, and on Capitol Hill ominously predict their big, dark screens foretell a disastrous ending for 70% of them – perhaps more fictional than factual –without a government bailout.

Unlike the airline or movie theater industries, where a trifling number of giant firms control a disproportionate amount of industry business, the more than 30 million small businesses are customarily less able or adept at receiving government aid. They usually fly way under the capitol’s political radar, except during election-time when every elected official professes love for her or his local, small business. And it’s certainly election-time; money has flown their way.

A total of $659 billion was authorized in the first two rounds of the Paycheck Protection Plan (PPP) this past Spring that was designed to assist small businesses. The PPP has provided potentially-forgivable loans to businesses for payment of their workers’ salaries. PPP beneficiaries include some not-so-small firms like the Fiesta Restaurant Group which has over 10,000 employees. So it goes…

US small businesses account for about 47% of our workforce and still face big challenges. According to Yelp data, about 98,000 small businesses have permanently closed so far due to the coronavirus. These shuttered businesses employed about 240,000 people. Sadly, small business closures are increasing.

That’s almost seven times as many workers as American and United airlines are threatening to dismiss. Does nearly a quarter million more unemployed workers open up the Senate Republicans’ paltry public purses? Not at all. Alice, and maybe even the Queen of Hearts, would be tormented at such a prospect. Nancy certainly is. Mitch is not.

I hope we provide our own Mad Hatter-in-chief with an unignorably-convincing electoral defeat, which he might deem worse than perpetual tea-time or even death. This prospect for defeat rests on Democrat voters not taking the favorable poll results as a suggestion they don’t really need to cast a ballot, since the election is superficially already “in the bag.”

The vastly over-played, now daily pre-election poll results are at best only incomplete, momentary indicators of how some group of possibly actual voters are feeling. Polls do not count of real ballots. Mistakenly deciding not to vote – especially when the Repubs are clearly focused on making Dem voting as difficult as possible – could lead to another tragic, and likely more devastating Electoral College result.

The Dems’ mantra should remain: we need each and every Dem voter to cast a ballot to halt our self-righteous Mad Hatter in his tracks. Alice would most-assuredly agree.

 

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[1] After being first published in 1865, Alice in Wonderland has never been out of print. It has been translated into at least 97 languages, according to Wikipedia.

[2] The other two of the “big four” airlines are Delta and Southwest. 

TURNOUT TELL-ALL

The end of the pandemic is in sight. ~ Donald Trump (9/29/20)     

Here we are a mere 28 days before we choose whether the incumbent, possibly covid-filled president should remain in office or cast him out in favor of his eminently-laudable challenger.

But wait, a top-of-the ninth (or is it just the seventh inning stretch) colossal curve ball has been thrown into this political game, worthy of Sandy Koufax or Dwight Gooden. The curve ball is the Friday, October 2 announcement that #45 has covid-19. It’s highjacked the election, probably just as the president hoped. To no one’s surprise, his administration has itself become a super-spreader event.

Yup, viral reality has likely stricken our here-to-fore, ever-unmasked #45. I say likely because we should balance three concurrent realities. First, this virus’ months-long, utterly non-discriminatory and all-too-successful efforts to infect everyone; second, #45’s regular no-rules denials of fact, science and truth (see his quote above, QED); and third, #45’s on-going and widening deficit in election polls. Given this state of affairs, my amply well-founded, cynical self has pondered that he could be making up his infection for his own desperate advantage on November 3.

On Sunday, the seemingly non-stricken #45 briefly left his suite at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for a short, unannounced motorcade ride so he could wave to his supporters outside. The president’s un-sick behavior was properly labeled by doctors at Walter Reed as irresponsible “insanity.” It’s only insanity if he actually has covid-19. Imagine him triumphantly returning to the White House all too soon, saying he’s facilely “fired the virus.”  

Because of his nefarious approach to politics, I urge the Dems to walk a fine line and not to be too considerate about the president’s viral condition. If they are too thoughtful, as is their virtuous inclination, they could become hoodwinked toast. Remember not the Maine, but hopeful victory on the 3rd, please.

The Repubs haven’t stopped a single one of their negative ads against Mr. Biden, as the president waved to his fans in his SUV outside Walter Reed. The Dems have ceased theirs against #45. This befits a risky tactic of perhaps being overly empathetic of the president’s (alleged) medical malady. Joe, please restart your full court press and all your ads, now.

But back to the upcoming balloting for the presidency.

In this seemingly-interminable presidential election cycle, analysts have guesstimated that the number of “undecideds” may range from 3% to 11% of registered voters; most polls show 3% to 5% at most. For the life of me, I don’t know how our presidential choice this time can be at all puzzling; which is another way of saying that the media’s obsessive focus on allegedly “undecided” voters is a misplaced ruse. At this point, there aren’t any really “undecided” voters to speak of. But the giant media election apparatus really, really requires them for their stories as well as the debates. Remember the debates?  

The incentive for someone to say now they’re “undecided” rests solely on receiving a slender, Skinnerian pellet of spotlighted, momentary media attention. “You’re really undecided; that’s fabulous, can we please interview you?” The media’s spotlight is probably bright enough for a few people to apparently want to bath in it. To assist those very, very few remaining "undecided" voters, I suggest you take this handy quiz to learn what you should do on election day. 

Other analysts believe most of these very scarce “undecided” voters aren’t likely voters. Past information indicates all too many will not vote on November 3. From this perspective, there are mainly “undecided” non-voters.

Despite the intensity and importance of every US presidential election, vast swaths of eligible voters regularly decline their privilege. The US Elections Project has determined that 39.9% of our voting-eligible population, or 45.3% of our voting-age population, did not vote in November 2016. Our paltry election turnout-participation rate ranked the US 26th highest of the 35 listed, advanced democracies, just behind Estonia.[1] The hefty number of non-voting citizens is in part why election campaigns focus on improving turnout and “getting the vote out.”

The table below shows the voter turnout and related information for the 2018 primary and Congressional elections and the 2016 presidential election for several major voting groups. Voter turnout is the percentage of eligible voters who cast a ballot in an election. In 2016, the national average turnout of voting-age people was 59%. Minnesota had the highest voter turnout of any state in 2016 and 2018.

Voter Turnout and Electorate Shares by Ethnicity and Age

Group	Voter Turnout 2018      2016	Share of Electorate 2018      2016	Share of 2019 Pop.
Non-Hispanic White	55.2%    64.7%	73.3%    73.6%	60.1%
Hispanic	36.9       44.9	9.4          9.1	18.5
Non-Hispanic Black	51.3       59.9	12.2        12.3	13.4
18-29 years old	32.6       43.4	13.8        15.7	16.4
60+ years old	65.5      71.4	37.3        33.6	16.5 (65+)

Sources: US Elections Project, US Census, Marketingcharts.com

As shown in the table, non-Hispanic White people and people 60 years old or over, aka elder voters, had the highest turnout, closely followed by non-Hispanic Black people, a key Dem constituency. Younger people, a hopeful Dem constituency, had the lowest turnout, half that of elder voters in 2018. These turnout rates are typical across many years’ elections. Elder voters account for a disproportionate share of the electorate, relative to their 2019 population share. The other groups’ population shares are more commensurate with their electorate shares.

Once again, the Dems are emphasizing increased turnout for young people and Hispanics, as well as non-Hispanic Black folks. If the Dems’ efforts succeed in improving these groups’ turnout it could likely benefit their candidates. But in past elections such efforts have largely come up short with regard to younger persons. Interestingly, California has a proposition on its ballot that would further expand youth voting privilege by allowing 17-year olds to vote in primaries and special elections if they will be 18 by the time of the next general election. OMG, say it ain’t so.

The Dems are also hoping to get Bernie Sanders’ and Elizabeth Warrens’ progressive believers to vote for Joe. Both Bernie and Elizabeth are thankfully far more engaged in promoting the Dems’ candidate than they were four years ago. The question remains whether Progs will really shed their puritanical mental frocks and actually cast a ballot for Biden, despite their believing he’s not “pure” enough. Fingers are crossed in hoping they are not all like Roger Williams, a strict Puritan leader, nearly 400 years ago.

The Dems’ challenges illustrate a long-running political dispute about election strategy: Is it better to persuade people who will likely support you to actually vote by increasing turnout or to win over swing voters and change the vote margin?

Both are important for achieving victory, but past elections indicate it is more valuable to win by changing the vote margin than by changing turnout. Why? Because successfully changing a persuadable voter to change her/his sides (change the vote margin) produces two votes: plus one for you, and minus one for your opponent. Getting an additional voter to cast a ballot through turnout is worth just one vote. Also, an election’s vote share/margin also tends to shift more than turnout from election to election. Thus, changing the margin ends up being more politically “efficient”, netting two votes versus one vote, but can entail more convincing efforts.

I’m trusting that despite #45’s relentless all tricks and no treats, the thoughts of #16’s Secretary of State William Seward (who bought Alaska for us at a pittance) remain true: “There was always just enough virtue in this republic to save it; sometimes none to spare, but still enough to meet the emergency.” In our current emergency we’ll find out soon if Sec. Seward was right, as I truly hope.

 

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[1] For you national election geeks, Belgium has the highest voter turnout with 87.2% of the voting-age population actually casting votes in their latest national election.