In Parade’s End, the young suffragist Valentine Wannop and the thirtyish “last Tory in England” Christopher Tietjens are arguing about allowing women to vote (it’s just before WWI).

She says:  “But just get it out, will you? […] — you know the proper, pompous manner: You are not without sympathy with our aims, but you disapprove […] of our methods.”

He says (after some internal monologue): “I don’t.  I approve entirely of your methods [riot, protest, civil disobedience, etc.] , but your aims are idiotic.”

And later he asks her: “What good did a vote ever do anyone?”

With which Trotsky, writing maybe five years after the fictional conversation, might have heartily agreed.

As disenfranchised people have fought, bled, and literally died for their right to vote, Tietjens’s dismissal of democracy, and his tolerance of riot, say, can sound glib from our vantage point–and Valentine comes right back at him (and later they fall insanely in love)–but he has a point nonetheless, and it’s not “it’s rigged, they’re all crooks, don’t bother to vote” but something far more profound, regarding the origins of elections in the Anglo world from which our own systems came, what purposes elections were originally meant to serve, and how we may have failed to understand that extending the franchise may never be a way of revolutionizing systems in a genuinely democratic way. Might be like extending a blade of grass in hopes of one day using it to hit a baseball over the fence.

Not that anyone’s ever come up with a better idea.  Anyway–it’s a good book.

Having grown up in Pennsylvania, I always pay special attention to that state’s politics.  Until recently, the PA primary was held in June and so usually the races were just about decided by the time the campaign focused on PA.

Obviously not so this year.  A few posts ago, I wrote about how I remembered PA’s arcane primary rules working in 1984.  With the PA primary tomorrow, I thought I’d explain how the GOP primary in PA will assign delegates.  But, it’s even more obscure than I thought.  And never mattered in an era when the national conventions were just big t.v. shows.  But, this year, Pennsylvania could be pivotal to deciding if Trump can win on the first ballot.

Pennsylvania has 54 Republican delegates.  Voters cast ballots for candidates whose names appear on the ballot.  The winner of this contest receives 17  state-wide delegates who are bound on the first convention ballot to vote for the winning candidate.  The remaining delegates are apportioned by congressional district.  With each district getting three delegates.  And here’s the kicker, these congressional delegates are not bound to any candidate on the first convention ballot.   They are free agents from the start.  So, while Trump is heavily favored to win tomorrow, he could still come out a loser in the delegate race when the dust settles and the horse-trading is done. A pretty great time to be, say, a county commissioner in Pennsylvania looking for a job in Harrisburg or D.C.

Esquire recently ran a short piece about a Ted Cruz ad depicting an HRC strategy session.  The overall tone of the article is a mild, but real, demonstration of the recently discovered smug tone of liberalism in the US:

Have you ever wondered what Hillary Clinton’s campaign would be like as a script written by a drunk, stoned, blindfolded, and sedated Aaron Sorkin?

The piece is playful and, clearly, smart, because whatever you think of Aaron Sorkin, he’s wicked smart.  But  the message is clear:  Drunk, stoned, blindfolded, sedated == “[four] ways of saying the same thing” == Stupid.

The article warns that the spot is an “agonizing two minutes and thirty seconds” that you will never get back – but you really should watch it.  Stay with it, too – don’t start mocking the first awkward note and miss the rest.

In the meantime, a synopsis:  “HRC’s” bossy Chief of Staff, an ambiguously ethnic hottie in a tight pant suit, directs the meeting:  “What have you got.”  The staff, all men who walk on PC eggshells but still manage to say stupid things that annoy HRC, proclaim that Trump is a gift to the campaign.  Walking through slides (on a slide projector) they detail facts that you would typically see in an anti-Trump spot.  Then they announce that should Trump win, HRC is as good as elected.  Chief of Staff, marching back and forth in the dimly lit room, asks what’s the problem?

Well, it turns out there’s a candidate who could be a threat – he’s tough, honest, seasoned, etc.  It’s Ted Cruz, of course.  (They slide a manila folder to HRC and when she opens it, light comes from the folder, like a shot of opening the bible in Left Behind or other religious themed movies.)

The spot is lacking in subtlety or filmic craft and it does take a lot of easy shots.  I think most political ads are pretty poorly produced these days, so I’m not sure why that’s the thing Esquire jumps on.  (Also, I admit that I’m intrigued and baffled by the slide projector.  Usually, conservative messaging embraces the past by invoking its tropes and design cues.  Conversely, they usually use tech and signs of modernization to make the opposition look distant and menacing – I was surprised that they didn’t have fake HRC looking at her Blackberry, especially since the actress kept that expression on her face throughout the spot.  So, what’s up with the slide projector aside from better lighting, being more ominous of old-time conspiracy and evil-planning?)

The real point is that this spot, as blunt as it is, fits perfectly with post-West Wing portrayals of the Oval Office on TV today and those portrayals may help us understand why we’re seeing certain baffling candidates get votes.

Over the last decade, we’ve seen dramatizations of the Presidency that are absurd.  I’m thinking mostly about 24, Scandal, and House of Cards.  I’ve watched some or all of these shows with varying degrees of attention and enjoyment.  (24 is perfect for the elliptical, Scandal was binge-watching, Sunday cooking heaven, and House of Cards is all about waiting for Spacey and Wright together or alone in a scene.)   In each of these shows, the office of the President is depicted in soap opera style:  a backdrop to melodrama.  In today’s TV world, the oval office has multiple televisions running cable news with POTUS and cabinet members watching, spouses and employees storming in to interrupt important meetings, and advice and consultations are lines out of action films:  “Mr President, we can’t be seen as weak! You must push the button!” “You’re right, I’m the President of the United States, damnit.  Do it.” (My favorite is “The threat is growing exponentially, Madame President!  We must act now.”  Exponential rates of anything help TV writers get things done in the alloted 42 minutes per episode.)

These TV depictions of the Presidency are enjoyed by all brows of people.   (Scandal and House of Cards are critical darlings or guilty pleasures of educated folks who watch HBO and speak in hushed tones about The Wire).  They aren’t completely fanciful, either.  The Stark Report tells us that Presidents do, in fact, have time and inclination to do tawdry things in hallowed places.

So everything that seems silly in the Cruz ad (except for that damn slide projector) fits perfectly into the reality of politics all over our TV landscape – across all education levels.  Sure, it’s slightly less sophisticated than what Shonda Rhimes has given us.  But is it fundamentally different in its portrayal or understanding of how politics work?  Not in the least.

So why blog this?  It helps me answer the riddle of how people can look at Trump and think he has the intelligence, temperament, or skills to be President.  In Michael Lewis’s depiction of the daily life of the (Obama) Presidency or episodes of The West Wing, Trump’s bullying, blustering style and complete unfamiliarity with policy makes no sense at all.  But in the world of 24, Scandal, and House of Cards, Trump would crush it.  Even Ben Carson could credibly navigate that world.

In addition to no longer respecting the office itself, we no longer respect or understand its complexities.

 

 

I realize I just put the words “thrilling”, “civics” and “lesson” in the same headline. I’m sure that’s going to drive a lot of traffic.

But, that’s how I see the last few years in politics.  Anyone over forty grew up in a relatively stable moment in our politics and government.   For a while there in the eighties and early nineties, so few members of the House and Senate lost re-election that a very serious effort to enact term limits for federal legislators had significant support in the country.  We just took for granted that we understood how our government worked.  And that it always would work.   But, recent events remind us just how much of a miracle it is that this thing functions at all.  And that, in some ways, government by the people is a consensual illusion that we all conspire to keep going. Until we don’t.  For example, here’s a list of a few things we thought we knew, but now we know we don’t.

The Speaker of the House is a powerful person:  We remember legendary figures like Sam Rayburn.  Will anyone ever have that much power again in this country? Tip O’Neill.  Even the forgotten ones like Carl Albert exercised great authority.  One of the many, many rewarding parts of Robert Caro’s biography of LBJ is how Caro shows Johnson’s genius for creating political power.  When Johnson became Minority Leader in 1953, the Eisenhower Administration was having difficulty moving its program through a Republican congress.  Johnson, seeing his opportunity,  put together coalitions of Republicans and Democrats that enabled the Eisenhower measures to advance through congress.  He was both daring and subtle, and he moved the ball.  And created political power in a minority leader’s job where it hadn’t existed before.

Imagine if John Boehner had done something similar?  If, realizing that he had no chance to manage the more radical elements of the House GOP, he had forged a working majority with “moderate” House Republicans and Democrats?  It might have cost him his Speakership, but would that have been any worse than his shuffling off to retirement, having accomplished nothing?

The president appoints supreme court justices.  There is of course, no actual definition of what “advise and consent” means.  It’s just always been assumed that the congress will review and approve a nominee unless they have some unique disqualification.  The Garland situation is well discussed.

But, consider this.  If and when Hillary defeats Trump, and assuming the GOP keeps the Senate, what’s to stop McConnell and Grassely from just refusing to consider her nominee to replace Scalia?  What if they just refuse?   What’s she going to do?  Sue them? How many Republican senators would actually lose their seat two years later by refusing to replace Scalia with a liberal justice?  How many Republican senators would face a primary challenge if they allowed a liberal justice to replace Scalia?   Likely, Hillary would just make the appointment, note that the senate has declined to advise or consent, and then have the newly appointed justice show up for work one fine Monday morning.  And, what would John Roberts do in that case?  Start the normal orientation process?  Or ask the security guards to escort Mr. Garland to the parking lot?

I vote for someone and, you know, I kinda thought that I voted for them:  As Mr. Jones noted, we are all learning about the 50 different arcane systems we have for choosing presidential nominees.  As I noted in a comment on Mr. Jones’s post, when I worked for Gary Hart in 1984 in Pennsylvania, I learned that, while PA voters do vote for candidates, those votes are non-binding.  Voters need to vote for individual delegates whose names appear on the ballot under the presidential candidates.  It was an insanely difficult thing to explain to voters when you usually have about 8 seconds of their time to ask them to vote for your candidate.

I know people have come to respect my deeply-researched, impeccably rational analyses of things, but I’m going to just throw a theory out there, with shaky premises and no supporting data.

Predictions have been a mess this election season:  Trump succeeds and longer than anyone expected; Sanders succeeds and longer than anyone expected; and, most alarming, fivethirtyeight got Michigan wrong.

I submit that there are three things that are blowing up political models and predictions:

1. Social Media – not for dumbing down the debate, or for allowing the kind of targeting and outreach that made 2008 the Facebook election.  Social media is redefining how political communities are forming.  Social media is moving people into “filter bubbles”, helping them find niche political communities they couldn’t before, and simply connecting voices in the wilderness that are saying the same things as they are.  People can reject orthodoxy and conventional wisdom in favor of their own platform/communities.
2. 8 years of a black president being (just) a president – I can’t unpack this, but this is such a big data point for people to incorporate into their realities, that it alters mental models in ways we don’t know yet.
3. Erosion of polling and modeling concepts – concepts such as “likely to vote”, “independent”, “strongly supports Democratic”, “moderate”, “strongly support”, “conservative” have significantly less meaning than they did 8 years ago.  I have a friend who labels himself strongly Democratic and likely to vote but who has long arguments about whether to actively support a pro-choice Republican like HRC.

This all points to continuing to know nothing up to the election and even after as we listen to reporters try to summarize a hundred million votes into a single national mood.

That’s all I got.

The following is a re-post of something posted earlier that temporarily fell victim to the heated behind-the-scenes corporate politics prevailing here at In at the End of the World. I repost it now, with a few updates:

This relates to issues raised in What’s a Primary For, Really, and Coronations, below. I hope somebody will jump on here and give us a real history of how the party nominating processes developed. My generalized impression is of a series of ongoing reforms over many decades, intended to bring elements of democracy to a process for nominating presidential candidates that is not inherently democratic at all, given the nature of how the parties themselves developed. Like at first some guys in a room pretty much decided it, with little public input and little press coverage of all the scuzzy dealmaking involved. But if you’re a party, you want to avoid nominating a candidate who can’t win. So some public input is a benefit, and that impulse dovetailed somehow with 19thC. reform movements for making the political process more democratic. So: primary elections in some states, for one thing.

But I can well remember at thirteen, in the hot summer of 1968, asking my parents, with outrage, how my guy Eugene McCarthy could have won primaries and yet Hubert Humphrey, who didn’t compete in primaries, could get the nomination. I’m sure I answered myself: It’s rigged!

Well, yes, rigged indeed, but the rules of the rigging weren’t secret; I just didn’t know them. In those days, conventions were still a matter of peeling off the other guys’ delegates–they were far more loosely “pledged”–with promises and threats and highballs while trying to protect your own. A lot can happen between the NH primary and August; anyway, whole delegations were under direct control of governors and other bosses, and the trick seems to have been to deny a frontrunner outright victory on the first ballot, then try to widen the cracks and find a space for your candidate to rise in succeeding rounds. In the 1940 GOP convention, for example, Wendell Wilkie, after coming in second and third, was nominated on the sixth ballot.

Reforms have ensued. [UPDATE: In a comment now lost, CVFD reminded me that the most modern reforms came from McGovern, after 1968; he was the most knowledgeable about the rules. Made me reflect on how McGovern’s disastrous campaign has been invoked this year, in just this context: do you want things so democratic that a nominee is selected (cough, Sanders, cough) who might only carry one state? The counter to that would be that this year maybe *only* the more democratically supported candidate has a shot in November.] Have we come a long way since the days of brokered conventions? Should we go farther? Trump seems to want a general election–of him–in the primary process. Some Sanders supporters object strenuously to certain party voting rules in certain states as not only insufficiently democratic but outright suppression; then again, many of the same supporters celebrated Sanders’s victories in highly undemocratic caucuses; and others are pretending, at least, that their strategy is to sway the superdelegates at the convention to overcome a popular majority. So what the hell is this process, anyway, and what are the principles involved, if any, and what if anything does the process have to do with our cockamamie ideas about American democracy?  And are we going to see something old-school this summer, at least at the GOP convention?

In the meantime, I found this funny and possibly informative of realpolitik: https://www.yahoo.com/news/party-primaries-are-not-public-decisions-rules-154558765.html

Long-time readers of our blog know that it grew out of a correspondence that Laska, Mr. Jones, and I shared back in February when we were shocked and panicked by Mr.  Trump’s electoral success and appalled at the apparent collapse of the GOP at the presidential level.   Given that, it’s surprising we haven’t posted about Trump yet.  So, I’ll go ahead and break the ice.

I think we were all consumed with terror at the prospect of President Trump back in February and early March. But, no one can maintain that level of emotional anxiety forever. And, then Mr. Trump lost a string of primaries and it looked like he might be a spent force.  And, we are all just tired of him and hoped he would go away.  But, his big win in New York changed all that.  And if he wins PA, CT, Delaware and Rhode Island on Tuesday, he’s more than back in the saddle.

He’s going to win the GOP nomination.  And then he has a 50-50 chance of beating Hillary.  I know, polls show her beating him in places like  Utah and Mississippi.  But, she’s a terrible campaigner, and he’s a showman, and so anything can happen.

If he wins, I think, one of two things are likely.  The first is some type of military coup d’état, with Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Chuck Schumer, and Nancy Pelosi holding a press conference and announcing a Biden-Romney interim government.  Two, respected party elders who can run the government until new elections are held.

The second, more likely, option is that he takes office and immediately provides some pretext for the House to move articles of impeachment. And then the mother and father of all show trials in the senate.

I realize how canned-foods-stacked-in-my-basement crazy these ideas of military coups, interim governments, and show trials sound.  But, ask yourself.  If one year ago, I had said that Donald Trump would be the Republican nominee for President of the United States, would I have sounded any less crazy?

One good reason for Sanders to stay in the campaign is that HRC still needs to practice her answer to the Goldman Sachs speeches.  Before diving into her problems, it’s worth saying I’m sympathetic to HRC on transcripts.  If they even exist, releasing the transcripts can only drag her down.  Here’s how those speeches are structured (with ding!s to indicate passages that Sanders and Republicans can run with forever):

1. Thank you for the invitation.
2. Obligatory reference to how great it is to be Goldman Sachs (ding!)
3. Obligatory praise for being the people at the gas pumps of the economy. (ding!)
4. Obligatory compliments on Goldman Sachs’s unparalleled excellence at something (Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding!)
5. Optional (usually for high-tech or scientific research):  Self-effacing humor about how poorly you understand what they do or how amazed you are at what they do. (ding!)
6. Speech about women entrepreneurs.
7. Calls for unity
8. Thanks.

She could compliment the clean bathrooms at Goldman Sachs and we’d turn it into something about privilege – not accurate, not fair, but anything to highlight the cozy relationship.  Short of going in there and doing a BLM-style protest at Goldman, anything she says will put her in hot water.

But, the real problem is that HRC still doesn’t have a good answer for the contributions.  The best we hear is that nobody can demonstrate a moment where the funding got a specific outcome.  When Sanders failed to come up with a damning quid pro quo during the Brooklyn debate, HRC supporters did a “neener neener, see?  You got nothing!” dance all over the internet.

But that argument doesn’t do much for her.

Political donations are pretty simple:  when you’re a citizen of no name, you give money to people you expect to do things you’d like to see done; BUT when you’re a donor of name and fame,  you give money to … people you expect to do things you’d like to see done.  Trump

I haven’t been able to think of a good answer for her to give to Sanders (fellas?), and I think she’s going to have a much harder time answering Republicans who she will want to blame for the 2008 crisis.

It might be good to practice more answers on Sanders.  Kind of like Rocky learning to box right-handed in Rocky II, giving a clear, decisive, non-defensive answer is going to be a clumsy and unnatural thing for a while longer.  And she’s gonna need something when she’s debating a Republican about the financial crisis.

Following up Laska’s post about Biden and stretch goals and the need to use the presidency for bold things.  It made me think of LBJ’s first speech as president. It was a national address to both houses of congress and occurred only a few days after the Kennedy assassination.  The purpose of the speech was to re-assure the nation about the continuity of government and the peaceful transition of power in the face of a national tragedy.

If ever there was a time for a safe speech, this was it. But, Johnson decided that he was going to put civil rights front and center of the speech.  Apparently, he met with his aides and writers late one night before the speech.  They were worried about the focus on civil rights.  The president only had so much political capital.  They worried about associating “the prestige of the presidency” with the civil rights protestors.  Johnson cut off the conversation by asking, “what else is  the presidency there for? ”

He went on to make the speech in which the new President of the United States adopted the language of the dispossessed and declared, “We shall overcome.”  Johnson knew to go big or go home.

I was reading Caro’s account of this speech a few years ago when Biden made news by breaking from his talking points and declaring that same sex marriage should be legal.  Thereby forcing Obama to do the same.  And now, same sex marriage happens every day and hardly anyone bats an eye.