HOW TO DISTRIBUTE HOPE

Hope is the pillar that hold up the world. ~ Pliny the Elder  

Was I surprised when American voters cancelled #45’s next “season” at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave? No; the 75 million majority of us weren’t surprised; we were thankful and thrilled. But true to form, he certainly was surprised; saying in his mediocre Barnum-style, “How could they? I’m the greatest.”

But how could he not be surprised with his team of sub-single-A leaguers, led by the indomitably pathetic Rudi Giuliani preaching Lawn and Order at the Four Seasons Total Landscaping back parking lot. Coach Rudi later continued talking gibberish to judges in several states.

These vacuous pranks confirmed my belief that the president’s high-exposure maneuvers to reverse the election via 30 or so zombie lawsuits scattered among seven states have no legal purpose – as judges have substantiated. No, #45’s legal actions, and the media’s fawning coverage, have everything to do with keeping his base upset at the voters’ results and, most importantly, keep them contributing to his campaign slush fund. They’re purely political anti-democratic bleats of the worst kind, with Rudi as co-bleater-in-chief.

Rudi expounding on their vacuous victory at Total Landscaping.

The president’s infantile post-election anger antics echo his long-standing disregard for a key issue that if resolved can restore the physical (and mental) health of the public: how are we going to distribute hope?

The hope I’m referring to is the vaccines that hopefully will be soon available on an “emergency use” basis to mitigate the coronavirus’ onslaught that has now claimed over 268,000 US lives.

This issue encompasses the last of the three “basic questions” that any economic system must address: for whom will the scarce output, here coronavirus vaccine, be distributed? The first two questions are: what will be produced and how will it be produced.

Regarding the “how” question, the federal government decided in late April to initiate Operation Warp Speed (OWS) that has provided substantial public funding – about $10 billion – to accelerate the vaccine’s development and production. Even deceitful, fiscally-recalcitrant Repubs were in favor of providing this government support to the vaccine-developers.

The demand for a covid vaccine will far exceed the available production for the foreseeable future. There are seven major vaccine developers in the US, shown in the table below, five of which have received OWS funding.

Because of the sizeable public funding, the federal government has priority to order significant dosages of these vaccines should their Phase 3 efficacy trials prove the vaccines’ effectiveness to the CDC and FDA. Currently there are 13 vaccines in Phase 3 trials. The government has pre-ordered these OWS vaccines, and also has options to purchase more dosages in the future.

US Covid Vaccine Developers 

Vaccine Developer	Vaccine Type	Required Doses Per-Person	Doses Pre-Ordered+ (Trillions)
AstraZeneca/Oxford*	Viral vector	2	2.40
Johnson & Johnson*	Viral vector	1	0.10
Merck/IAVI*	Viral vector	2	NA
Moderna*	mRNA	2	0.10
Novavax	Inactivated	2	1.30
Pfizer/BioNTech	mRNA	2	0.53
Sanofi/GSK*	rDNA	2	0.73

Sourcist, CD FSources: Economist, CDC, FDA. *Received OWS funds. +Ordered plus options.

The covid-19 vaccine rush has been on since January, when the coronavirus’ genome was first provided by Chinese scientists, less than a month after the first reported case in Wuhan. As noted in the media, the development of these vaccines has been at light-speed, compared to any previous ones. Vaccine development time has been reduced because of a series of important biological and institutional progressions, including vastly improved virological knowledge, accelerated clinical development and more efficient regulatory processes.

The world’s first vaccine was administered by Edward Jenner in 1796 to combat smallpox. Dr. Jenner practiced medicine where he grew up in Berkeley, England. He inoculated an eight-year-old local boy with his pioneering cowpox vaccine. Dr. Jenner’s vaccine successfully prevented the boy from succumbing to smallpox.

It wasn’t until 44 years later (1840) that the British government provided the smallpox vaccine – originally devised by Dr. Jenner – free of charge to the British public. After killing possibly 900 million people over the ages, and thanks to the success of vaccination, the World Health Organization WHO declared smallpox totally eradicated in 1980. Smallpox is the only infectious human disease to date to be completely eliminated.

The 1918-20 Spanish Flu produced many of the 675,000 American fatalities by causing pneumonia in its victims. The flu (and its accompanying pneumonia) was nicknamed the captain of death. The first pneumococcal vaccine was licensed in 1977, after more than 60 years of on and off efforts.

More recently, other diseases’ vaccines have similarly taken quite some time to develop and be utilized. The Salk polio vaccine took nearly 30 years. The Diphtheria/Tetanus/Pertussis (DTaP) vaccine took 20 years. The mumps vaccine was more quickly developed in just four years, relying on medical understanding established during WWII. The FDA approved the mumps vaccine in 1967, and recommended it for general public use a decade later in 1977. The MMR vaccine is routinely administered to protect children and adults from mumps, measles, and rubella.

None of these prior vaccines have faced the challenges that now befall the covid-19 vaccine and its distribution.

Both the need and scope of the tasks surrounding this vaccine distinguish it. In theory, each of the 7.7 billion people now alive on Earth need the vaccine. Let me simplify by focusing only on each of the 330.6 million folks now in the US. We need the vaccine yesterday. This scope and need, as well as development and production realities, creates the inevitable shortage of the covid vaccine, which in turn requires a necessary prioritization for whom receives the vaccine when.

Every public authority has performed “word songs” about this prioritization, in an attempt to sweet-talk the vaccine shortages. They initially sound melodically pleasing, but turn out to be off key. Why? Because their lyrics provide negligible substance. For example, no public official has used the term “vaccine rationing.” It is never sung in their word songs. Rationing sounds negative and presumes a production shortage.

Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, referred to the process of establishing priorities more realistically. He spoke last summer at the kickoff meeting of a committee of experts helping to plan the country’s vaccination efforts, “There will be many people who feel that they should have been at the top of the list, and not everybody can be.”

The president’s words have always sung a fantasy, no matter what he’s talking about. Regarding the vaccine, he said in September the government could start distributing a coronavirus vaccine as early as October or right after the November 3^rd election. A reality reminder: both dates have come and gone without any vaccines being shot into the public’s arms. His viral word songs have nothing to do with real life, yet too many people somehow believe them.

Other prominent public experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci of the CDC have also crooned songs, although not nearly as exaggerated as #45. Dr. Fauci said in September that the covid-19 vaccine might be ready by the end of 2020, but he warned that availability will not be widespread at first. Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the CDC, mouthed an aria before Congress in September saying he expects vaccinations to begin in November or December, but in limited quantities with those most in need getting the first doses, such as health-care workers and the elderly. With some luck, he and Dr. Fauci may be right about December.

It’s December 1. None of the US vaccines shown in the above table have completed their Phase 3 trials. But on November 20 Pfizer/BioNTech applied to the FDA for an “emergency-use” authorization for their vaccine. Ten days later, Moderna also applied to the FDA for an emergency-use approval. Interestingly, Moderna has never before fabricated a vaccine for the market.

These two companies estimated they will have 45 million doses, or enough to vaccinate 22.5 million Americans, by January assuming quick FDA authorization and no unexpected delays. Prior estimates by the government as well as the companies of year-end vaccine production were much higher.

Operation Warp Speed set an initial target of producing 300 million doses this year. Now we’re all hoping for just 15% of that idealistic objective. Manufacturing biologic materials like vaccines always is challenging and often erratic.

Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna hope to meet such eased production levels, but recognize even 45 million doses is by no means not a sure thing. Rapid upscaling of vaccine assembly is a complex often temperamental process that relies on many inputs and continuously precise management 24/7.

When produced, 45 million doses basically would be provided just to highest-priority healthcare personnel. Vaccine production will continue to expand throughout the winter and spring, as more firms gain FDA approval. These firms, and others, expect they can each produce one billion dosages by the end of 2021. Let’s hope so.

Thus, believing that each and every one of the 331 million American will be vaccinated by next June, as Dr. Redfield stated in September, is very doubtful. In other words, keep wearing your masks for a long time to come.

Drs. Redfield and Fauci are certainly correct that there will be a shortage of vaccine. It will be rationed for quite some time to impatient, awaiting arms. The CDC has developed an Interim Plan for providing the vaccine’s short-supply to all of us. It has identified four generic “populations of focus for initial Covid-19 vaccination”:

1.       Healthcare personnel;

2.       Non-healthcare essential workers;

3.       Adults with high-risk medical conditions; and

4.       People 65 years of age and older, including those living in long-term care facilities.

It’s worth remembering that the CDC itself will not be making any final judgements about the sequence of who will receive the vaccines. The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (Committee) has been considering these implicit prioritizations. The ultimate distribution decisions will be made by Biden administration staff at the White House, HHS, FDA as well as the CDC.

President-elect Biden already has formed a special transition Coronavirus Team (CTeam) dedicated to coordinating the coronavirus response for the post-January 20th government. The Team will be co-chaired by David Kessler, former FDA Commissioner, former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and Marcella Nunez-Smith, an associate professor of medicine and epidemiology at the Yale School of Medicine.

The government’s decisions about vaccine dispersal will rest heavily on exactly how each of these population cohorts will be defined. I expect several of these definitions will be hotly disputed because various people’s health will be directly affected amid vaccine shortages.

The CDCs Interim Plan purposefully makes no statement about the ordering of these four groups’ access to the vaccines, but the arrangement of each group’s listing likely reflects the expected sequencing of availability, with healthcare personnel getting the vaccines first.

The first CDC category, presumably highest-priority, is healthcare personnel. Healthcare personnel already have been included in each of the 13 vaccines’ large-scale Phase 3 test samples. It’s very unlikely that there will be any major disputes about first providing vaccines to healthcare personnel. But no one knows; should epidemiologists be incorporated in this category? They (and their models) are prominent prognosticators of the pandemic. But epidemiologists are not usually considered healthcare professionals. Time will tell. The CDC Interim Plan identifies healthcare personnel as paid and unpaid persons serving in healthcare settings who have the potential for direct or indirect exposure to patients or infectious materials.

How many people can be classified as healthcare personnel? The Department of Labor categorizes people employed into 22 “detailed occupations” (and a myriad of more detailed occupations) including healthcare practitioners and related technical occupations. I made several adjustments to the DOL healthcare personal categorization. For example, I did not include veterinarians or dieticians.

My healthcare personnel totals 16.6 million workers, which is 9.8% of our workforce. Healthcare personnel consist of doctors, nurses, pharmacists, EMTs, health technologists and home healthcare providers among others. That is a whole bunch of people’s arms to vaccinate ASAP.

But let’s be clear about the trials and tribulations for counting how many folks are in each of the four CDC’s “populations of focus.” Depending on one’s persuasion and purpose, you can pick within a wide range of numbers for Healthcare Personnel, the presumed highest-priority group. Their numbers have increased almost exponentially in various public statements. Here are several other estimates of healthcare personnel, beyond mine, that show the impressive numeric “spread”:

1.       12 million (M) from a recent Washington Post story about healthcare and essential workers.

2.       Over 18M people, according to the CDC.

3.       20.5M from the Census, although this number includes social assistance workers.

The CDC’s second group, non-healthcare essential workers, is far more nebulous and open to debate. “Essential” has never been tightly defined. This band of folks could include essential folks like: police, firefighters, primary/secondary school teachers, airline pilots/mechanics (airlifting the vaccines hither and yon), funeral arrangers & morticians, power plant operators, public transit drivers and grocery store clerks. Employed persons in just these eight professions totals 10.9 million workers. Many more “essential” professions will undoubtedly be identified. One media group stated without documentation that this group was 87M strong.

The third CDC cohort, Adults with high-risk medical conditions, also is imprecise. Diabetes is but one example of a high-risk medical condition that’s listed in groupings of immunodeficiency disorders. Recent medical information about the coronavirus’ dangerous ability to induce hyperglycemia (high blood glucose) in its victims confirms the potential threat the coronavirus has for diabetics. There are more than 34 million people who have diabetes. Other immunodeficiency disorders include HIV/AIDS and cancer. Over 1.2 million people are living with HIV in the US. There are 16.9 million cancer survivors in the US. About 1.8 million people will be diagnosed with cancer this year. About 37 million US adults have chronic kidney disorders. The number of people with the above-mentioned diseases totals 89.1 million. There are many other high-risk medical conditions not mentioned here. At least one estimate of this cohort’s size was 100M.

The last CDC category of vaccine recipients is people over 65 years old, including those living in long-term care facilities. According to the Census, there are 54.2 million elders 65 years or older now living in the US. Because this group’s population is demographically determined, it’s not nearly as disputed. But where elders rest in the CDC’s four categories is very much in play.

Scott Gottlieb, a former FDA commissioner, properly stated that vaccine prioritization depends on the overall stated goal of the distribution. If the goal of vaccine prioritization is to reduce the rate of infection, he said “you would prioritize essential workers. But if your goal is to maximize the preservation of human life with a vaccine, then you would bias the vaccine toward older Americans.” Thus, determining and agreeing to the overall objective of the prioritization process significantly influences the ordering. Because human lives and hopes are at stake, this determination will be laden and fraught, especially if it’s publicly stated.

The sum total of all people in the four CDC population cohorts that I enumerated above is 170.8 million, 67% of the adult population. This number includes some double-entries, like me who is a 65+ year-old and a diabetic. So it goes...

The CDC’s four cohorts’ prioritizations are already being challenged, as expected. In addition to the “essential workers” (cohort #2), spokespeople are pressing the Committee and the CTeam to prioritize certain categorizes of citizens: those who have been “most affected by health disparities,” participating volunteers who were given placebos in the clinical trials, geographic locations where the virus has been “most active” and military personnel.

Also, a recent news article advocated that obesity be included as a “high-risk medical condition.” Over 70 million people are obese in the US. With every tick of the clock, more backers of specific groups of people will be pressing for higher ranking. Virtually everyone hopes to be at the tippy top of the highest-priority cohort possible. The incentives for expanding the numbers of each population group are strong, except bigger numbers ahead of your group means you’ll be waiting longer for a vaccine. Such are the trade-offs.

Adding additional friction to the question of who’s going to receive the vaccines when is that states – New York and California, so far – have also created committees to review the vaccines’ efficacy and will determine who gets the vaccines. Dr. Fauci said on November 30 that states will be shipped a certain amount of the vaccine and ultimately make final distribution decisions “with strong recommendations from the CDC.” Who knew he was such a strong states-rights advocate?

Ultimately, it’s hard to believe the federal government, that has spent vast sums on their development, will not have a determinative say about the vaccines’ prioritization. Also, the CDC will be providing a “recommendation,” not anything close to an order. The federal government’s formidable say and influence will certainly be reflected in its calculation of the “certain amount of the vaccine” that will be shipped to each state.

How many dosages of will be available? The honest answer to this crucial question is one too often used concerning questions about the coronavirus since it first appeared last December: We Don’t Know Yet. Adm. Brett Giroir, an assistant secretary of HHS, declared “The nation will probably have enough doses for about 20 million people by the end of the year. Given that the two leading vaccines for FDA approval require two doses, that’s 40M dosages by year-end. Other authorities have provided widely-varying dosage guestimates.

Here’s hoping, really hoping that amid the foggy fray the impending coronavirus vaccines can be sufficiently produced, will provide maximum positive effect for all of us and most importantly, can indeed severely wound our current captain of death.

  

LIVING IN EXISTENTIAL AND EXPONENTIAL TIMES

Bananas are great. I believe they are the only known cure for existential dread. ~ Anne Lamott[1]      

Many of us expect better opportunities to emerge beginning in just 63 days. Our great expectations surrounding President Biden’s inauguration are embraced by positives, yet tinged with some trepidation. After all, #45’s bacchanal has 62 days remaining and tetchy Mitch will likely continue to be running the Senate.

Fortunately, Joe Biden already has been operating in many ways as our acting president (without portfolio), while #45 remains in his bunker at 1600 spouting dystopian fantasies and playing mulligan mini-golf. Irony abounds as our nation’s most presidential person is now resides in Delaware. Such is the yin and yang of this post-election’s politics.

The president and his craven sycophants have all too successfully and fraudulently branded Dems as socialists and defunders of police. The Repubs have gained 8 members in the House; giving the Dems the slimmest House majority in 20 years; and have an uphill battle on January 5 to gain a one-person edge in the Senate. Nevertheless, I doggedly remain an optimista.

These times, especially involving the coronavirus’ increasing onslaught, have brought forward several examples of inflation. No, not the economic kind when overall prices rise. We thankfully haven’t seen noteworthy price inflation since 2014.  

The inflation I am referring to is linguistically based and cannot be remedied by any action of the Federal Reserve. Nope, it’s emanating from the fingertips of media writers.

I have noticed an increasing use of two words, “existential” and “exponential” to describe what’s been happening here in the land of the free and home of the brave. These words often explain two inter-related events, the covid-19 pandemic and the November election.

After their common first two letters, the words diverge into very different realms. The rising use of both of these words has been initiated because of their connotative values which refer to emotional or cultural associations that the word carries, in addition to its literal meaning. I’ll first take a tour of existential.

Existential.  Existential can be defined as relating to, or affirming existence; grounded in existence or the experience of existence. Its connotative value often refers to a negative feeling or event, like existential angst, dread, crisis, threat or challenge. The use of existential essentially magnifies the feeling, angst or crisis beyond a simple, every-day ordinary one.

We have been enduring a large number of non-ordinary events and feelings. Thus, it’s not surprising that existential’s use has climbed more than 120%, according to Google.

The ghastly coronavirus crisis and the fraught presidential election each have offered media doyens much opportunity to describe a variety of events as existential. Before and after the election existential has been used to portray crises, political disagreements, terror and issues. A small and totally-unscientific sample of articles where authors have employed existential to describe terror, fights and issues includes this one, as well as this one and this one and lastly, this one that describes an existential crisis that’s wedging professional golf. Who’d have guessed?

Remarkably, existential has its own associated philosophy – existentialism. If you took Philosophy 101 in college you might remember existentialism with a small dose of mental, but not existential, strain. Here’s my strictly amateur synopsis of existentialism.

Existentialism is centered around the personal human exploration of the nature of existence. From its perspective the individual commences his/her inquiry from a point of “existential angst” and attempts to live their life earnestly with authenticity, based on their actions. In the late 19th- and 20th-century Soren Kierkegaard, Fredrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Simone de Beauvoir and Jean Paul Sartre were among the first existentialist movers and shakers.

Generally speaking, they thought that each individual — not religion or culture — is responsible for giving meaning to life and, through individual action, living it authentically. Existentialists are interested in closely examining existence, especially human existence. Sartre said, Man is fully responsible for his nature and his choices; and, Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.

Existentialists, through proper action, hope to triumph over the absurdity of existence. As such, existentialism is the opposite of nihilism. Nihilists are skeptical of everything and claim there is no god, no heaven or hell. Their predisposition leads to conceiving there can be no right or wrong.

My most memorable contact with nihilism came when I first watched one of my all-time great movies, “The Big Lebowski.” In it Jeff Bridges stars as Jeffrey "The Dude" Lebowski, a slacker middle-aged bachelor with a fondness for cannabis and bowling. In a memorable scene, he’s assaulted by the Nihilists: Uli, Dieter, Franz along with their ferret. Uli tells The Dude, “Ve believes in nossing.” The Dude abides.

If you want to dive deeper into existentialism, I suggest reading At the Existentialist Café, which a good friend recommended. In her book author Sarah Bakewell uses the literary conceit of a café to describe existential luminaries and their beliefs. Her literary café is perhaps modeled after a meeting between Sartre and his philosopher buddy Raymond Aron likely at the Café de Flore shown below, where Aron pointed to his glass on the table, telling Sartre perhaps only in half-jest, “You can make a philosophy out of this cocktail.” No mention if his cocktail was a Parisian Absinthe or not.

Café de Flore, Paris

But M. Aron’s was a drink (and food) for thought then, as well as currently. One lesser-known impact of covid-19 has been a strong increase in alcohol sales. In June, alcohol sales at brick and mortar stores nationwide were up 26% year-over-year. Spirits’ sales were up 35%, wine up 29% and beer up 21%. Ah, alcohol and existential challenges go together like a horse and carriage.

Having imbibed in things existential, I now turn to exponentials, which are somewhat less pliable.

Exponential.  Why has the media attached itself to "exponential?" To answer I first define exponential and briefly examine its mathematical basis. Feel free to skip this and the next paragraph if you want to escape the math, no worries. Exponential is succinctly defined as: of or relating to an exponent. Exponentiation is a mathematical operation. As you may recall from algebra, an exponent is a symbol written above and to the right of a mathematical expression to indicate the action of raising to a power. In the following example, the exponent is 2; 3² is 3 to the power of 2, or 3 squared, which equals 9.

An exponential equation in its simplest form is written as Y = bⁿ, involving two independent numbers, the base b and the exponent or power n, “Y = b raised to the power of n." When n is a positive integer, exponentiation corresponds to repeated multiplication of the base. That is, bⁿ is the product of multiplying together n bases:

      Exponential’s key connotative meaning is high, unending increase. The word exponential is being used exponentially by the media when it comes to describing the growth of coronavirus cases and deaths. They are both swelling big-time after an all too brief respite in late-summer between the spring surge and the current one.

It’s not just expansionary growth, it’s seemingly huger exponential growth. All too many healthcare professionals describe their perilous current state as "It keeps rising and rising, and we’re all running on fear. The health care system is going to collapse, no question." No wonder exponential has become more prominently applied, independent of what actual covid growth is.

Exponentials are a bit tricky mathematically speaking. Expressing ever-rising growth in exponential terms requires that the base (b, above) and the exponent (n, above) be positive integers. If n is zero, then Y is always 0 no matter what the base is. If n is 1, then Y is the number itself because any number raised to the power of 1 is the number itself. If the base, b, is less than 1 or n is less than 1 there’s no positive change/growth at all, Y will be negatively sloped. In fact, virtually any growth rate can be characterized as exponential. It all depends on the values of the exponent and the base.

Needless to say, media writers don’t bother with these intricacies. All of their statements implicitly assume a positive exponent more than 1 and a base greater than 1.

Usage of the word exponential has increased 25% according to Google; far less than that of existential. Recent media stories have used exponential in the following ways.

•       “The virus has now entered a stage of exponential growth that will be hard to halt with minor actions.”
•      “With no new curbs, exponential growth could continue for weeks.”
•    “As the pandemic seeps into every area of the country and scientists warn of exponential growth ahead of the holidays.”
•       "We are nearing a phase of exponential growth, if we haven't entered it already."
•       And illustrating that exponential is not limited only to referencing covid growth, here’s “State of the art uses of artificial intelligence (AI) in treating diseases and disorders of the brain have shown exponential growth.”

Exponential and existential have become watchwords for these times, courtesy of the virus and the media.

Our up-coming Thanksgiving holiday will pose its own challenges. As one UCSF doctor mentioned, “I’m massively worried. If you wanted to design something to make [coronavirus] things go worse, you would have designed Thanksgiving exactly when it’s coming.” Here’s hoping your turkey, stuffing, green-bean casserole and cranberry sauce is just tasty, not unhealthy. Take good care.

 

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[1] Anne, in the store you can find these bananas right next to existential bread. 

AND THE WINNER IS…

Punctuality is the virtue of the bored. ~ Evelyn Waugh 

Even though I realize the presidential election final results’ announcement was going to be prolonged, I’m still astonishingly anxious. Sure, this anxiety is because soooo many citizens voted and the results are soooo close. But still I want to know the winner, now.

Then I realized the answer is now readily available to me and other folks. I just wasn’t thinking about victory correctly.

The winner of the 2020 Magic-Board Master election is Steve Kornacki (of the MSNBC party), his compatriot John King comes in a very close second at CNN.

Steve Kornacki

Big Congratulations Steve! You have been giving it your all. You, and John, were presidential in your comportment, authority, knowledge, honesty, self-assuredness and poise. And, I remain amazed at how you have been able to say the same basic thing, ever so repeatedly with aplomb and style. You got talent!

It’s exactly these characteristics that I look for in a successful executive. As the 2020 Election magic-board-master (EMBM), Steve you get all my college’s votes. You’re the very best.

Your impressive exploits come very, very close to several other stellar board masters of the past. I’m thinking of Tony Hawk and Shaun White, shown below in action. Steve, presenting you with the EMBM gold medal was a bit of a challenge, given your worthy challengers, but you won the ever-so-important quadrennial electronic boarding event.  

 

Tony Hawk                                                                                                                   Shaun White

     Let’s fervently hope Joe eventually pulls it off and receives his own gold medal as #46 on January 20, despite the challenges facing him, including a nearly mission impossible. Onward…

 

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.