Brexit tells us. . .

the people are sovereign,

“I cannot praise a fugitive and cloister’d vertue, unexercis’d & unbreath’d, that never sallies out and sees her adversary.”

--John Milton, Aeropagitica (1644)

We don’t, we must not, settle for the status quo.

“Society consists of individuals and a national state, while the mediating institutions — family, community, church, unions, and others — fade and falter.”

--Yuval Levin, The Fractured Republic

The status quo in 2016 are big state -- or the Brussels (EU) superstate -- bureaucracies believing their knowledge entitles them to rule.

“The environment, women’s rights, children’s rights, equality, all of this,”

--Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA)

So San Francisco's Boxer says, “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”

And not, “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

“As the Democrats have locked up most of the software, design, entertainment, media and financial oligarchy, they have [lost] virtually all of Appalachia, and could also [have begun] to weaken . . . even among union members. [There’s] a growing rift between greens, and their oligarchic and public sector allies and traditional construction and industrial unions. . .green San Francisco elites and Hollywood stars enjoy lives of almost absurdly conspicuous consumption, while urging everyone else to cut back their carbon. . .” [emphasis added]

--Joel Kotkin, Orange County Register

It’s still before the fall. Maybe the people are not yet sovereign, but it’s coming.  

those on top don’t get it,

“simplistic idiocies win elections”

--Charles Murray, National Review

“This election. . . has boiled down to a coin toss between a consistent, calculating liar and an inconsistent, compulsive liar.”

--Heather Wilhelm, “RealClearPolitics”

Conservatives Murray and Wilhelm are like Trump. They see this election personalized in an individual, overlooking the angry, Brexit-type seismic wave Trump is riding.

Listen to John Allen Gay, writing in the National Interest:

“conservatism . . . is skeptical that the intellectual’s tool—individual reason—is best suited for answering complex political questions. . . individuals, short of information, limited in experience, prone to prejudice, often err; wisdom manifests in society, which on net has more information and more experience.”

Conservatives trust cultural norms, distrust the intellectual leader.

it’s time to “be humble”.

A message for all commentators, including me.

“Today, our politics reside in an intellectual cul-de-sac. People only want to hear themselves pontificate, or listen to those who confirm, affirm, and validate. Proof? How many Democrats regularly listen to Fox News? How many Republicans frequently tune into MSNBC?”

--Frank Luntz, TIME

“Opinion columnists who spend any time at all interacting with their readers are well aware of how pitifully rarely we manage to change anyone’s mind about anything. I’m not saying that it never happens, because it does. But mostly, folks read us because they agree with us, and they enjoy having us agree with them.”

--Megan McArdle, “Bloomberg”

Didn't Shakespeare teach “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing"?

Islamic threat no joke.

“[Muslims] have fervor and conviction, which in most Western countries are either weak or lacking. They are self-assured of the rightness of their cause, whereas we spend most of our time in self-denigration and self-abasement. They have loyalty and discipline, and perhaps most important of all, they have demography, the combination of natural increase and migration producing major population changes, which could lead within the foreseeable future to significant majorities. . .”

--Bernard Lewis (2007)

Islam is today’s biggest threat to the status quo. Certainly not Russia, China, Brazil or North Korea. But yes to Iran, Pakistan, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, add Shiites in Iraq, in the Gulf States, and even in Saudi Arabia, topped by al Qaeda and ISIS in all their iterations. Islamic extremism is beyond borders in Europe, Asia, and even North America. Islam’s true believers, not Republicans, are the real enemy of secular progressive culture.

Why do liberals ignore Islam’s threat to a decaying West?  

First, because the liberal meme is stuck in the 1960s, when the enemy was privileged white males, and revolution meant (unmarried) women, minorities, and youth -- the backbone of today’s liberal establishment. White males, Republicans, are the enemy progressives fought against then, and rally against now. Muslims, a minority here, seemingly belong inside this wonderful minority coalition. It’s inconvenient -- even un-American -- to take a group that shares the progressives’ anti-privileged white male stance and separate them out simply because some hold extreme religious views.  

Second, because the (privileged white male) enemy in the ‘60s purposefully wasted American lives and resources on an unnecessary war. The lesson of Vietnam. When privileged white males turned 9/11 into another excuse to wage war abroad, progressives responded by as much as possible downplaying the Islamic threat, and by attacking the motives of all who raised an alarm. “No more Vietnams!” progressives fervently proclaimed; avoiding the differences between Vietnamese Communism and Islamic extremism, and between a body-hungry draft and a professional, all-volunteer military.

Progressives are trapped in an outdated world view. Dangerous. No joke.

If 2016 is about race, Trump could win.

Conservative John Podhoretz makes the case that Clinton’s path to victory is much smoother than Trump’s. He’s right. We showed how Trump can win, but added that it importantly depends upon Trump holding every state Romney won, plus Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.

It’s important to understand that, contrary to normal thinking, Trump has a better chance of winning the electoral vote than the popular vote.  That's counterintuitive because Democrats have more big electoral vote states they will likely carry than does Trump.

The size of the unmarried women + minorities + youth coalition, which we first wrote about in 2010 and which keeps expanding with our minorities' population, shows up best in national polls. But the election will be won within individual states, not in a nationwide referendum. 2016 could see Democrats beating Trump by millions, but still losing in the electoral college.

Here’s our map showing in brown the eleven states that will decide America’s next leader (click map to enlarge):

Battleground States (in Brown)

If you live in the other 40 (including the District of Columbia) states, the ones marked blue or red, your vote won’t really matter this November.

To win, Trump must hold the Romney states of Arizona (57% non-Hispanic white, 26% Mexican-American), Georgia and North Carolina (two “New South” states with transplanted liberals and large African-American populations). North Carolina, which voted for Obama in 2008 and barely for Romney last time, is particularly at risk for Trump.

Trump then must add Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania to win. Pennsylvania, the Keystone State, is THE key state, as was Florida to Bush’s win in 2000 and Ohio to Bush’s re-election in 2004. Obama carried all three twice, and Pennsylvania, 79% white and with its western half the anti-Obama Appalachia coal country ripe to turn to Trump, hasn’t voted Republican since 1988.

Right now, Clinton leads Trump in the poll average for all three, though not by large margins. Trump’s anti-Mexican rhetoric is expected to complicate his winning Florida, which is only 57% non-Hispanic white (however, only 3% Mexican-American).

But if Trump loses Florida’s 29 electoral votes, there is one other narrow path to victory. That path accounts for the remaining five battleground states on the map above.

Race will be very important in this election. Forget talk of non-border states Colorado or Nevada being in play. Their relatively heavy Mexican-American populations will help send them to Clinton. (Arizona is different because like Texas, Arizona's long border with Mexico means whites there hold together in the face of the rising Hispanic immigrant tide.)

The race issue cuts two ways. If race is big and noisy, heavily white states may vote more Republican, more anti-Obama/Clinton than they have in the past. New Hampshire (92% white) voted for Bush in 2000, and Iowa (88% white) voted Bush in 2004. The two states are targets for Trump pick-ups.

If Trump loses Florida and wins both Iowa and New Hampshire, victory will depend upon picking up two of three upper Midwest states: Michigan (16 electoral votes), Minnesota (10), and Wisconsin (10). Wisconsin is 83% white, Minnesota 82%, Michigan 76%. All are mining or Rust Belt and variously suffering in the Obama economy.

The go-white election strategy won’t win over white but progressive Maine, Vermont, and Oregon, but every other state more white than Michigan is either in Trump’s column or on our battleground list. A smart Trump would focus his campaign on the 11 states our map colors brown.

Democrats you told us, now listen: It’s the Economy Stupid!

Job growth has nearly stopped. For May, jobs grew by only 38,000, the lowest monthly increase since September 2010. From the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a graph of U.S. job growth sinking to May’s pitiful total (hit to enlarge):

Friday’s report additionally noted that nearly 95 million Americans over 16 are outside the workforce, a record high.

Also on Obama’s watch, the percentage of Americans below the poverty line has grown from 14.3% to 14.8% — up 3.5%. Real median household income sank from $54,925 to $53,657 — down 2.3%. Food Stamp participants soared from 32,889,000 to 45,874,000 — up 39.5%. From Obama’s arrival through the fourth quarter of 2015, the percentage of Americans who own homes sagged from 67.3% to 63.8% — down 5.2%.

And Gallup CEO Jim Clifton tells us:

For the first time in 35 years, American business deaths now outnumber business births. Business startups outpaced business failures by about 100,000 per year until 2008. But in the past six years, that number suddenly reversed, and the net number of US startups versus closures is -70,000.

America’s forgotten poor whites.

Brookings' Carol Graham

"I love the poorly educated."

--Donald Trump

Carol Graham at the liberal Brookings Institution has summarized her research on “Unhappiness in America.” Graham's work contains noteworthy insights:

•  poor and near-poor whites suffer more from unhappiness, stress, and lack of hope than do traditionally-discriminated-against minorities. 

• blacks are the most optimistic about their futures (three times more optimistic than poor whites).  

• Poor whites are 18% more likely to experience stress in the previous day than middle-class whites. 

• While gaps in achievement and proficiency have widened across income groups, they have narrowed between blacks (and Hispanics) and whites. 

• The overall black-white wage gap has also narrowed, from 69% of the median wage for white males in 1970 to 75% by 2013. 

• the life expectancy gap between blacks and whites is down to just 3.4 years -- 75.6 years for blacks and 79 years for whites. 

• poor and middle-class blacks compare themselves to parents who were worse off, while blue-collar whites face far more job competition than did their parents. 

• mortality rates from opioid addiction, suicide and other preventable causes are up among uneducated whites, but not among blacks and Hispanics. 

Up against such a stark and clear picture -- big government is advantaging minorities at the expense of poor whites and the whites know it -- Graham then shoves a deliberate diversion in our faces, writing instead about the gap between rich and all poor.

She ends with her prescription; a progressive litany of big government activism designed in her mind to help whites and other poor:

long-term investments in public health and education. . . new forms of social assistance -- and language -- which encourage hope rather than stigmatize poor recipients . . . reducing the distance between the lives of the rich and the poor, so that attaining success . . . is not something that seems forever out of reach for the poor.

Right. Big government, big government, big government.

“Finally,” Graham says:

tracking well-being as a complement to GDP, as many countries are already doing, would provide an important gauge of the happiness and health of our society in the future.

My oh my oh my. Here we have it. Graham and who knows how many of her colleagues quietly giving up on economic growth and GDP measurement of it.

Growth that progressive government can’t seem to provide. Why not then substitute the “Bhutan is #1 ‘Happiness Index’” for the GDP, especially since blacks seem relatively happy with their current state anyway? Graham’s “many countries” pushing the “Happiness Index” are poorer than the U.S., so let’s forget about job creation, forget making America great again, and instead follow the no-growth path to peace, hope, and less stress.

Intentionally or not, Graham’s article helps us understand why poor whites respond well to Trump’s message.

Trump: Conservative Agonistes

Trump won the Republican nomination. He won in large part because his behavior separates him from polite society. Those in the Republican primary who gave Trump their votes dislike the establishment. They want to send the establishment a message. The more Trump is a bad boy, the more Trump’s army embraces him.

Not surprisingly, the establishment's Republican wing struggles with Trump’s win.  Even Walter Russell Mead has a tough time accepting Trump.  Mead, in my opinion, is one of conservative America’s most astute analysts. Mead several years ago realized the progressive elite has failed our nation. So he has a soft spot for Trump voters and in the end, Mead has sided with the Trump army, if not Trump himself:

Clinton[‘s] praetorian guard—Wall Street, the upper middle class feminists, the African American establishment, the Davoisie, the institutional power of the great foundations and educational bureaucracies, Silicon Valley, Hollywood—have defeated their intellectual and political rivals in their spheres of interest and influence. Supporting her is a massive agglomeration of power, intellect, wealth and talent. Her candidacy is the logical climax of the Baby Boom’s march through the institutions of American life. . . The American Right for all its earnest efforts has been unable to construct a counter establishment that can compete with the contemporary liberal behemoth.

Yet . . . in the eyes of many Americans [the Boomer elite has] not done all that well in the real world. Foreign policy, financial policy, health policy, support of the middle class, race relations, family life, public education, trade policy, city and state government management, wages: what exactly has the Boomer Consensus accomplished in these fields? Many Americans think that the Consensus is a scam and a flop when it comes to actually, well, making things better for the average person. . . This is where Trump comes in. His supporters . . . are united in opposition to the status quo. They believe that the emperor has no clothes . . .

To Mead, Clinton stands for competent management of “an unsustainable status quo,” and “a pair of safe and steady hands on the wheel” of a ship slowly gliding “toward the reefs.” By contrast, the Trump movement has “the social instinct of revolt and rejection” that is “a sign of social health.”

The single most thoughtful conservative voice is probably that of Charles Murray. Murray has documented how America’s cultural wars -- the loss of post-war unity, the decline of religion, and consequent rise of secular progressiveism -- has damaged working and lower classes. You might therefore expect Murray, like Mead, to identify with Trump's working class-based movement.

Yet as a true credentialed elitist, Murray can’t stomach Trump:

Trump makes strategic decisions about what useful untruths he will tell on any given day — it looks as if he just makes up stuff as he goes along. . . That he deals so heedlessly in those misrepresentations makes it impossible for an opponent to conduct an authentic policy debate with him.

It’s one thing when a candidate knowingly deceives the public on a few specific topics. Hillary Clinton has knowingly tried to deceive the public about her flip-flop on gay marriage and her misuse of her e-mail server. That’s bad. It should be condemned. This aspect of her character should affect one’s deliberations about whether to vote for her. It’s another thing entirely when a candidate blithely rejects Pat Moynihan’s (attributed) dictum, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion but not to his own facts.”

To bury Trump, Murray quotes fellow elitist and New York Times anti-Trump commentator David Brooks, who wrote:

Donald Trump is epically unprepared to be president. He has no realistic policies, no advisers, no capacity to learn. His vast narcissism makes him a closed fortress. He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know and he’s uninterested in finding out. He insults the office Abraham Lincoln once occupied by running for it with less preparation than most of us would undertake to buy a sofa. . . . He is a childish man running for a job that requires maturity. He is an insecure boasting little boy whose desires were somehow arrested at age 12.

Murray advises fellow establishment conservatives:

I cannot end without urging you to resist that sin to which people with high IQs (which most of you have) are unusually prone: Using your intellectual powers to convince yourself of something despite the evidence plainly before you. Just watch and listen to the man.

Comment: We wrote earlier about the liberal elite’s “smug style,” a “knowing” meritocracy happily superior to “stupid hicks.” Murray, a Harvard grad and author of books that separate people into classes -- even races -- by IQ, seems to be rejecting Trump because he isn’t smart enough to base policy on facts. Apparently use of facts, book knowledge, is the decisive measure of the man.  Murray's elite snobbery shows in his asking “people with high IQs” not to betray their “intellectual powers” by endorsing Trump.

Here’s what smug liberals and conservative Murray miss: the unwashed masses are unimpressed with “the best and the brightest” running the country, and are perfectly happy to make a mess (Trump), if it will produce real change. “You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs.”

We don’t yet know whether the Trump movement is strong enough to overpower the status quo liberal elite and their “identity politics” allies in the classes below. We do know the fight is underway.

Democrats live and die with identity politics. (III)

As we have said, in the coming election Democrats plan to drown out bad economic news -- the party presides over low growth and declining median income -- by emphasizing identity politics, discussed here (Part I) and here (Part II).

But some conservatives argue identity politics isn’t the game changer progressives hope it will be.  The Wall Street Journal’s Kim Strassel writes:

In 2014, the GOP won in states they were expected to lose not with minority “outreach” but with “inclusion.” A recent GOP report derides “outreach” as “when the old order makes a decision and then calls the community leaders to inform them:”

Compare that with “inclusion,” when “the community is in on the discussion before the decision.” The report explains: In every campaign it studied, “successful Republicans built minority events into their schedules, created advisory groups from leaders in the communities, developed internships for young people,” and generally showed they wanted to be involved in these communities.

Also Fred Barnes, in the conservative Weekly Standard, quotes Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski saying Trump's speeches aren't "designed to speak to one demographic." Trump delivers the same message to everyone.

Barnes adds:

Gingrich's daughter Jackie Gingrich Cushman, a columnist for Creators Syndicate . . . noted that Trump has no interest in leading the Republican party. That's a positive trait. "Trump is interested in leading the nation—for all Americans. He happens to be a Republican, but his goal is to win the presidency—not to manage the party." When Trump says "America First," it means he's putting the country "above party, above other nations, and that's why voters love him."

Comment: Little question Trump has separated himself from the Mitt Romney/Paul Ryan standard conservative agenda of smaller government (he wants more infrastructure spending), tax reductions “across the board” (he would raise taxes on super-rich), entitlement reform (he protects existing social security and Medicare benefits), free trade (renegotiate job-killing deals with China, Mexico), “comprehensive” immigration reform (favors sealed borders and deportation of illegals), an adventurous foreign policy (calls Iraq "big mistake"), and a no-exceptions, pro-life abortion stance (praises Planned Parenthood). Unlike most conservatives (Romney excepted), Trump supports universal health care.

Most of all, Trump slams the crooked elite. Trump has emerged as populist, not conservative. Trump makes it difficult for Democrats to call him a right-wing nut out to strip identity group victims of their security blankets -- big government goodies.

China’s Cultural Revolution and Today’s Cult of Personality

Cult of Personality: Hitler, Stalin, Mao

May 16, 1966: “Bombard the Headquarters!”

Chairman Mao Zedong launched the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution 50 years ago today, telling China his Communist Party was corrupt to the core and must be overthrown.

The Cultural Revolution convulsed China until Mao’s death 10 years later. It was Mao’s often out-of-control response to the humiliation Mao’s party colleagues inflicted on him, following the “Great Helmsman’s” disastrous “Great Leap Forward” (1958-61).

One Mao (1893-1976). One New China (1949), followed by Two Spectacular Failures.

After Mao died, Deng Xiaoping’s pragmatic leadership produced what the Wall Street Journal’s Andrew Browne calls “the greatest economic progress in human history.”

Chairmen Xi & Mao--Wall Street Journal

But technocrat Deng’s success isn’t enough for China’s current leader Xi Jinping. Xi, concerned about the emptiness of China today -- material progress without belief, without faith -- is responding by partially restoring Mao’s Cultural Revolution cult of personality.

Following the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution disasters, the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre became China’s third political earthquake. In that year, Deng’s reform effort came close to bringing democracy as well as capitalism to China. Democracy is a belief system that undergirds capitalism. Faith in democracy is faith in the people’s ability to rule. Democracy parallels capitalism’s faith in people’s ability to create wealth. Both democracy and capitalism need the oxygen freedom provides.

Democracy, however, threatened many Chinese leaders, even though the leading political reformers were themselves Communists. Popular support for democracy spun out of control, recalling the Cultural Revolution’s disorder. The Soviet Union in 1989 was itself pushing political reform and threatening its status quo elements. It was too much for most Chinese leaders. But by suppressing the Tiananmen democracy movement, the Party left China soulless.

So now Xi is falling back on 20th century dictators’ favorite path to mass communication-generated popular support: the cult of personality. Xi doesn’t center the cult on himself, but rather deflects it toward a cleaned-up image of Mao, scrubbed free of Mao’s blemishes.

Given the Cultural Revolution’s continued unpopularity in China, Xi’s effort contains a hint of desperation. Xi has to know that in the end, personality cults didn’t work for Hitler, Stalin, or Mao.

Democrats live and die with identity politics. (II)

(This entry isn’t about transgender bathrooms.)

Identity politics begins with blacks. Identity politics came out of the civil rights era pitting blacks (and liberal whites) against Southern segregationists. Blacks won and today make up roughly 20% of the Democratic vote.

To keep blacks Democratic, and more importantly to keep them voting, Democrats must keep alive a black sense of victimhood focusing on the (white) Republican enemy. Even when victimhood comes at the price of black progress.

Affirmative action helps maintain black consciousness. In a recent Wall Street Journal “Saturday Essay” entitled, “Hard Truths About Race on Campus,” scholars Jonathan Haidt and Lee Jussim digested a series of studies that show race is far less important when individuals share some other prominent social characteristic, like membership on a team. According to Haidt and Jussim, “If you set things up so that race conveys less important information than some other salient factor, then people pay less attention to race.”

Haidt and Jussim found that when different groups face a common threat or challenge, it tends to replace enmity with a “one for all, all for one” mind-set. But when groups compete with each other, people shift toward hostility.

One sees that in universities today. Affirmative action, a key piece of black identity politics:

automatically creates differences in academic readiness and achievement. . . [S]tudies have found that Asian students enter with combined math/verbal SAT scores on the order of 80 points higher than white students and 200 points higher than black students. A similar pattern occurs for high-school grades. These differences are large, and they matter: High-school grades and SAT scores predict later success as measured by college grades and graduation rates.

As a result of these disparate admissions standards, many students spend four years in a social environment where race conveys useful information about the academic capacity of their peers.

In non-academic language, non-blacks tend to see blacks as dumber.

So if black identity politics succeeds in doubling the number of black students, universities will have to reach deeper into the black applicant pool, admitting those with even weaker qualifications. That increases the racial gap, and strengthens the negative stereotypes that blacks find when they arrive on campus.

Haidt and Jussim further report that students tend to befriend those similar in academic achievement. So achievement or its absence contributes to campus racial and ethnic self-segregation. Expanding affirmative action as favored by black identity politics, therefore, will yield more self-segregation, fewer cross-race friendships, and even stronger feelings of alienation among black students.

Another study found that for black (also Asian and Latino) students, “membership in ethnically oriented student organizations actually increased the perception that ethnic groups are locked into zero-sum competition with one another and [it expanded] victimization by virtue of one’s ethnicity.”

Nor does microaggression training, designed to overcome commonplace daily indignities that make people of color feel denigrated or insulted, seem to work. Microaggression “covers everything from asking someone where they are from to questioning the merits of affirmative action during a classroom discussion.” Black consciousness protesters also demand that microaggression training be coupled with anonymous reporting systems and “bias response teams,” which means keeping track of everyone by race.

As suggested, when people of different races mix together and get to know each other, prejudice goes down on all sides. But these benefits depend on having common goals, a sense of cooperation, and equal status. The benefits disappear when microaggression creates anxiety instead.

Maybe black identity politics, which thrives on division, helps Democrats. But it seems to do so at the expense of its black victims.

Haidt and Jussim point to a more positive example of black progress:

the U.S. Army escaped from the racial dysfunction of the 1970s to become a model of integration and near-equality by the time of the 1991 Gulf War [by investing] resources in training and mentoring black soldiers so that they could meet rigorous promotion standards. But, crucially, standards were lowered for no one, so that the race of officers conveyed no information about their abilities. [emphasis added]

Race would become less powerful as a social cue if schools shifted their attention away from the raw numbers of students in each category and focused instead on eliminating the gaps between the races, as the Army did.

But then black identity politics, which thrives on victimhood, would consequently suffer.

Democrats live and die with identity politics. (I)

The American economy, going back to 2000, hasn’t worked well through two adminis- trations, one Republican, one Democrat. But it’s Democrats who face the problem today.

Democrats captured Congress in 2006, controlled everything in 2008-10, held the Senate until 2014, and still run the executive branch and the Federal Reserve.

According to Gallup, the American people consider the economy our top problem (40%), followed by dissatisfaction with government (13%). Voters see America moving in the wrong direction by 67% to 26%. Government is failing to build the economy, to help the middle class, to create jobs, and bring prosperity to American families.

Democrats have historically been an interest group coalition that includes organized labor focused on the economy. But now public sector unions dominate labor, and government workers need Democrats in office -- good economy or no.

Other interest groups dependent upon ruling Democrats sending money their way are crony capitalists, the academy, nonprofits, and trial lawyers. Big media thrives when Democrats are in power -- reporters and Democratic leaders went to the same schools, live in the same neighborhoods, and share progressive values.

This national elite, this educated, meritocratic Democratic superstructure, needs votes to stay in power. Enter identity politics. As long as people see themselves first as women, youth, blacks, Hispanics, and homosexuals -- organized to obtain benefits from a sympathetic Democratic government -- the votes are there to hang on even through bad economic times.

But when the economy underperforms, it’s more challenging to keep disparate groups in line. Identity politics must take over.

For Democrats today, “It’s NOT the economy stupid.” Group identity comes first.

Quinnipiac Poll Shock: Trump Catches Clinton in 3 Crucial States

The New York Times jumped on the news here: Quinnipiac's tracking of the three crucial general election states of Florida (29 electoral votes), Pennsylvania (20), and Ohio (18), shows Trump leading Clinton by 4% in Ohio and trailing her by just 1% in Florida and Pennsylvania.  Obama won all three in 2012.

If these three states flip to Trump and he retains all the states Mitt Romney carried in 2012, the final map will look like this (click to enlarge):
 

 Trump wins.

Of course, Trump isn't likely to carry all Romney's red states.  He is most vulnerable in North Carolina (15 electoral votes), which is 21% black, home to many relocated liberal whites, and where Romney won by just 2%.  Georgia (16) is another "New South" state similar to North Carolina; Romney won there by 8%.

Romney carried Arizona (11 electoral votes) by 9%.  Arizona is 5% Mormon and they mostly voted for fellow Mormon Romney, but Mormons have no comparable affinity for Trump's lifestyle.  Moreover, Arizona is 30% Hispanic, that is, Mexican-American, and Trump will do very poorly among Arizona's Hispanic population.

If Trump loses any one -- any -- of Romney's 2012 states, Clinton wins even if Trump carries Florida, Pennsylvania, and Ohio.

Trump the Underdog

Clinton progressives are delighted with Trump’s nomination. Clear-eyed conservative Ed Rogers, in the Washington Post, sums up why:

Trump’s . . . problem is obvious: He’s wildly unpopular. Specifically, he’s unpopular with two critical voter groups, women and Hispanics. He needs to earn support from these groups, but all the evidence suggests it will be very difficult for him to do so. Trump is the living manifestation of a chauvinistic, belittling attitude that repels many female voters. And, according to Gallup polling, 77% of Hispanics view Trump unfavorably, and it’s not hard to see why.

But . . . will it be as easy as the Democrats think to finish off Trump, and how much will he help through his own performance and behavior?

How much will Trump hurt himself? He’ll like that we’ll all be watching. And Trump is equally delighted with Clinton’s impending nomination.

“Creative Destruction,” the Bloody Sox, and 0.5% Growth

Boston Red Sox Curt Schilling's Bloody Sock (2004)

The 1981 Warren Beatty film “Reds” was a triumph. Beatty won his “Best Director” Oscar, and “Reds” scored nominations for Best Picture, Best Actor (Beatty), and Best Actress -- the Big Four. Based on John Reed’s book Ten Days that Shook the World, the movie successfully captured the exhilaration of “Reds” (Communists) winning the 1917 Russian revolution.

In 1991, ten years after “Reds” appeared, the Russian revolution was over. Communists were out of power after only three generations. Revolution had turned into just hanging onto power, to corruption, decay, and finally defeat.

It was ever thus. Idealism carries new leaders to the top. The next generation begins caring more about hanging on while securing a better life for self and family. Growth slows, the people become restless, the elite counters with bread, circuses, and suppression. Decline and fall.

So it is with America’s meritocratic elite. Rising to power in the name of ending the Vietnam War and equality for blacks and women, promising that America’s best would deliver prosperity for all, our establishment now exists to enrich themselves and their families, preserve the status quo and divert the people from their current economic plight with bread, circuses, and fixation on identity politics.

It also increasingly practices coercion toward its enemies.

The TV sports empire ESPN, owned by the Disney Corporation, is an integral piece (circuses) of our meritocratic elite. ESPN first suspended, then fired, baseball hero Curt Schilling for inappropriate comments on his personal Twitter account, not for anything said on air. So much for “freedom of speech.”

Here’s the Schilling Tweet that got him suspended last year:

Yes, it’s both inaccurate and offensive to compare the Muslim ummah to the 1940 German population. Schilling apologized and pulled down his Tweet, but ESPN nevertheless punished Schilling by suspending him for the rest of 2015.

A few weeks ago, Schilling offended ESPN again. This time, the sports network fired him for Tweeting:

A man is a man no matter what they call themselves. I don’t care what they are, who they sleep with, men’s room was designed for the penis, women’s not so much. Now you need laws telling us differently? Pathetic.

Fired for saying that on his private account? The guy’s a conservative!

But ESPN hasn’t stopped there. Now, in a gesture the conservative New York Post accurately called “Stalinist,” ESPN completely edited Schilling out of its 2010 film on the epic 2004 American League Championship Series between Schilling’s Boston Red Sox and the rival New York Yankees, who had won six of the previous eight such championships. The Sox came back from being down 3 games to 0 in the 2004 series, and down 4-3 in the 9th inning of the 4th game facing ace closer Mariano Rivera, who was set to wrap up yet another Yankees series win.

The Yankees, Rivera pitching, managed to give up a 9th inning run, lose the game, lose the next 3 as well, and become the first baseball team ever to blow a 3-0 advantage in a 7-game series. The Yankees have won only one league championship series since that crushing defeat, while Boston has gone on to win three World Championships.

In the epic 2004 series, Schilling won the 6th game, heroically pitching with a torn tendon sheath in his right ankle, sutured in place in an unprecedented procedure by Red Sox team doctors so that he could play (see bloody sock above). Schilling’s heroics covered 17 minutes of ESPN's original film. ESPN removed all 17 minutes. That makes ESPN like Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin; each time Stalin purged one of his colleagues, he removed all traces of the victim from the state’s photographic record.

Such tactics -- in the end -- didn’t save Communism. They won’t save today’s “politically correct” elite either, no matter how hard the establishment seeks to turn popular attention toward perceived injustices visited on transvestites and other identity groups, and more importantly, away from America’s unsolved economic problems.

In this year’s first quarter, the U.S. GDP grew by only 0.5%. John H. Cochrane, writing in the conservative Wall Street Journal (subscription), documents the pain caused by growth slowing from 3.5% between 1950 to 2000 to only 1.7% since:

By 2008, the average American was more than three times better off than in 1952. Real GDP per person rose from $16,000 to $49,000. And those numbers understate the advances in the quality of goods, health and environment that came with growth. But if U.S. growth between 1950 and 2000 had been the 2% of recent years, instead of 3.5%, income per person in 2000 would have risen to just $23,000, not $50,000. That’s a huge difference.

Over the next 50 years, if income could be doubled relative to 2% growth, the U.S. would be able to pay for Social Security, Medicare, defense, environmental concerns and the debt. Halve that income gain, and none of those spending challenges can be addressed. Doubling income per capita would help the less well off far more than any imaginable transfer scheme.

Given the importance of income growth, Cochrane asks: “Why are growth-oriented policies resisted?” His answer:

Growth comes from productivity, which comes from new technologies and new companies. These displace the profits of old companies, and the healthy pay and settled lives of their managers and workers. Economic regulation is largely designed to protect profits, jobs and wages tied to old ways of doing things. Everyone likes growth, but only in someone else’s backyard.

After all, capitalism IS “creative destruction” (Joseph Schumpeter, from Karl Marx).

So what do we do? People want security and are threatened by change. Tyler Cowen, an economist writing in the liberal New York Times, surprisingly advanced religion as one way out of our current difficulties:

Mormons have done relatively well in economic terms, perhaps. . . because their religious culture encourages behavior consistent with prosperity, such as savings, mutual assistance, family values and no drug and alcohol abuse. . . it seems reasonable to observe that changing social norms, sometimes associated with religion, can help improve living standards. . . Technology, trade and even religion may help restore prosperity to the middle class.

Such emphasis on sound values is consistent with the recommendations of Charles Murray (Coming Apart), whose response to the gap he documents between the meritocracy and America’s lower class includes a working class return to religious values.

Liberals and smugness -- who is right?

Jamelle Bouie: Not Smug?

Emmett Rensin’s “Vox” inside-the-family essay on liberal smugness (covered here) seems to have struck a nerve. Liberal black commentator Jamelle Bouie is chief political correspondent for Slate and a CBS News political analyst.

Bouie seeks to defend liberalism from the “smug” charge by going after what he calls Resin's three “fatal flaws”: 1) the black-led civil rights revolution, not smugness, drove (bigoted) working class whites from the Democratic Party; 2) the smugness Resin sees in media and social media represent only “small portions—fractions—of the Democratic Party”; and 3) “Affluent, college-educated liberals are just part of the Democratic Party.”

Maybe. From my perspective, the academy and the media -- old and new -- represent the party’s brains.

But watch. Defending his position, Bouie offers a “Good Fact” -- the exact way Rensin says is how the smug knowing operate. Writes Bouie:

Rensin doesn’t seem aware, for instance, of the partnerships between black and white Democrats in the South that delivered a measure of investment in public goods through the 1970s, ’80s, and early ’90s—until racial resentment helped kill the white Southern Democrat as a political figure. [emphasis added]

Even if true, that's little progress for 25 years, mostly under Democratic presidents.

Bouie employs his “good fact” to refute Rensin’s assertion that blacks and others, “bereft of the material and social capital required to dominate elite decision making. . . were largely excluded from an agenda driven by the New Democratic core: the educated, the coastal, and the professional.”

Rensin is suggesting that minorities who have stuck with Democrats are losing out along with departed working class whites.  Bouie thinks otherwise, but "good facts" are on Rensin's side.

Conservatives are naturally delighted to witness the fuss stirred up by Rensin's reform-the-liberals effort. But as conservative Wall Street Journal commentator Peggy Noonan reminds us, Republicans have disorder in their own house:

Lately conservative thinkers and journalists had taken to making clear their disdain for the white working class. I had actually not known they looked down on them. I deeply resented it and it pained me. If you’re a writer lucky enough to have thoughts and be paid to express them and there are Americans on the ground struggling, suffering—some of them making mistakes, some unlucky—you don’t owe them your airy, well-put contempt, you owe them your loyalty. They too have given a portion of their love to this great project, and they are in trouble.

How Democrats Lose in 2016

Rensin: Calling Out Smug

Emmett Rensin, 26, an editor at the liberal website “Vox,” has written an amazing critique of what he calls the “smug style” in American liberalism. Rensin maintains smugness, growing for decades,

is a way of conducting politics, predicated on the belief that American life is not divided by moral difference or policy divergence — not really — but by the failure of half the country to know what's good for them.

To liberals, Rensin writes:

stupid hicks [are] getting conned by right-wingers and tent revivalists until they believe all the lies that've made them so wrong. They don't know any better. That's why they're voting against their own self-interest.

Rensin adds:

Over 20 years, an industry arose to cater to the smug style. It began in humor, and culminated for a time in “The Daily Show,” a program that more than any other thing advanced the idea that liberal orthodoxy was a kind of educated savvy and that its opponents were, before anything else, stupid. The smug liberal found relief in ridiculing them. The internet only made it worse.

Rensin takes “real elites,” who recognize one another by their superior knowledge, and contrasts them to his “liberal smug,” who:

recognize one another by their mutual knowing. Knowing, for example, that the Founding Fathers were all secular deists. Knowing that you're actually, like, 30 times more likely to shoot yourself than an intruder. Knowing that those fools out in Kansas are voting against their own self-interest and that the trouble is Kansas doesn't know any better. Knowing all the jokes that signal this knowledge.

Perhaps Rensin best makes his point retelling his “popular story:”

Adlai Stevenson, Democratic candidate for president, is on parade. A band is playing. Onlookers cheer. He waves to the crowd.

A woman shouts: "Gov. Stevenson, you have the vote of every thinking person in this country!"

Stevenson replies: "Thank you, ma'am, but we need a majority."

The smug style says to itself, Yeah. I really am one of the few thinking people in this country, aren't I?

Bringing smugness into the present, Rensin fears:

Trump capturing the nomination will not dispel the smug style; if anything, it will redouble it. Faced with the prospect of an election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, the smug will reach a fever pitch: six straight months of a sure thing, an opportunity to mock and scoff and ask, How could anybody vote for this guy? until a morning in November when they ask, What the fuck happened?

The wages of smug is Trump.

Now we have the full import of Rensin’s message to liberals: your smugness may yield up President Trump. Democrats are alienating the “rubes,” and there are more of them than us Knowing.

Sure, liberals believe in helping the “rubes” below them. But as Rensin says,

It is impossible, in the long run, to cleave the desire to help people from the duty to respect them. . . What kind of political movement is predicated on openly disdaining the very people it is advocating for?

And finally:

So long as liberals cannot find common cause with the larger section of the American working class, they will search for reasons to justify that failure. They will resent them. They will find, over and over, how easy it is to justify abandoning them further.  They will choose the smug style.

Rensin is telling liberals exactly what they need to hear to save their cause. It’s time to rediscover your working class roots.  

Comment: We have long pointed to the basic contradiction between meritocracy and democracy. People who gain power by being “better” will justify a system that inevitably works against the popular majority’s will. Rensin hopes liberals can recall or learn that they are no better than those they think they serve. He’s right that as of now, it’s only a hope.

2016: back home again in Indiana.

Sen. Robert Kennedy Campaigning in Indiana (1968)

In 1968, Robert Kennedy demonstrated his threat to capture the presidency by winning the Indiana primary over Minnesota Sen. Gene McCarthy and Indiana Governor Roger Branigin, who as a stand-in for Vice President Hubert Humphrey campaigned strongly through every county and finished second. The wealthy Kennedy won because he picked up working class white and black votes, a crucial victory that nailed down his base of support.

In 2016, the Indiana primary again looks crucial -- this time for stopping Donald Trump’s reach for white working class votes that will secure his Republican nomination. The Wall Street Journal, concerned about Trump’s strength following his sweeping triumph in New York, but perhaps with hope outpacing reason, editorialized that

Cruz and Kasich . . . need to go into Cleveland with a credible claim on GOP voter support. As for Trump, his . . . insults and bullying have built a loyal base of support but also a firm opposition. Even with his New York triumph, he has won only 38% of the GOP vote. His negative favorability rating—65% in the latest WSJ/NBC poll—is unprecedented for a potential presidential nominee.

The WSJ bluntly adds that Cruz needs to win Indiana:

Cruz would do best now to leave next week’s eastern contests to Kasich and focus on Indiana May 3, Nebraska May 10, and California June 7. With its winner-take-all rules, Indiana is now make-or-break for the Texan—and maybe for Trump too. Indiana Governor Mike Pence, a stalwart conservative running for re-election this year, will have an excruciating decision to make on whether to endorse a candidate or stay neutral. He’ll make some Republicans unhappy either way.

As a measure of just how unhappy the Wall Street Journal truly is about the Republican turn toward Trump, just listen to the paper’s columnist Peggy Noonan:

I literally put my hands to my face and sobbed, silently, for I suppose a minute. Because my country is in trouble. . . Because too much is being lost. Because the great choice in a nation of 320 million may come down to Crazy Man versus Criminal.

“Crazy Man versus Criminal.” Yuck.

Losing the mandate of heaven, American style.

China has the best book on continuous history--strong culture for thirty centuries, dominant world power for over two millennia. Dynasties lose power, or the “Mandate of Heaven,” when they can no longer provide order throughout the land, and the people rebel. It’s then time for a new elite that can keep the culture going.

Mandate loss last happened in America in 1968 with the failed presidency of Lyndon Johnson. The meritocracy that eventually gained White House power -- George H.W. Bush (Yale, 12 years, 4 as president, 8 as veep) with James Baker (Princeton), then Bill Clinton (Georgetown, Yale Law, president 8 years), George W. Bush (Yale, Harvard Business, 8 years), and Barack Obama (Columbia, Harvard Law, 8 years) -- began well enough but is now losing its grip.

One can see today’s loss in the pained writing of conservative, Wall Street Journal Pulitzer-prize winner Daniel Henninger. Progressives control the academic-based, diversity-preaching elite that runs the country, but their junior conservative colleagues enjoy sharing power. Or at least did.

Henninger has now given up, in fact seeing barbarians at the gate:

With no party spokesman for conservatism, an ideological vacuum existed. Freelance operators filled it. They included two hyper-ambitious Senate freshman, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz. They also included a movement to purge and cleanse conservatism, led by groups such as Heritage Action and by talk radio hosts. Together they conjured an internal enemy — the Republican Establishment. . . The Trumpians and Cruzians, who of late have been knifing one another in a blind rage, say this is a rebirth. So was Rosemary’s baby.

Henninger trips mishandling a reference to the past, saying the mainstream media the barbarians so greatly hate "is essentially a Roman phalanx. It stays in formation and protects the progressive castle. The conservative alternatives showed no such discipline.”

Roman Phalanx

Well, castle defense was Medieval not Roman, phalanxes were mostly offensive not defensive, and while Romans did use them, they gained an empire by employing flexible infantrymen who out-maneuvered first Macedonian, then Carthaginian, phalanxes. Henninger’s faux pas unintentionally symbolizes meritocratic slippage.

Walter Russell Mead, writing in the American Interest, more directly maintains it’s the meritocratic elite that from both sides is hurting America. Says Mead:

One could read the New York Times for decades without hearing warnings about how one-party Democratic rule has entrenched patterns of corruption and sloth in major American cities. It’s much more fun to wring our hands about the problems of the poor, and blame everything untoward on Republican racist tightwads.

[But j]ust because deep blue Democrats prefer sentiment over analysis and let their allegiance to vested interests trump their concern for the poor is no excuse for Republicans [who] say “hold the line on taxes and starve the beast”

years of terrible decisions and the absence of serious planning at both state and local levels [mean] the chief victims of this neglect of duty are poor people—those who depend most on government for services.

[that] there is so little creative thinking about these issues is the fault of think tanks, public intellectuals and academics. It is the cognitive elite that has let the country down.

“It is the cognitive elite that has let the country down.”

Yes. However long it manages to hang on, our current meritocracy is losing its mandate, as measured by sustained popular dissatisfaction.

Rising Trump Lifts All Democrats

William Galston is a senior fellow at the liberal Brookings Institution. In the Wall Street Journal, he tells us “The Odds Rise of a Democratic Victory” in November. The favorable “odds” to which Galston points are 1) Obama’s improving popularity and 2) Trump’s likelihood of being the Republican nominee. But that’s merely the same as saying, “1) Trump and 2) Trump.”

Here’s why. Galston is right about Obama’s popularity. Obama was “upside down” in the “RealClearPolitics” average of presidential favorable/unfavorable poll ratings from June 2013 to early last month. Now Obama’s ratings are once again on average positive, just as they were leading into the 2012 election (which Democrats won).

Galston attributes Obama’s ratings going “rightside up” to an improving economy. But that’s not how people living the economy see it. The “RealClearPolitics” average on the country’s “right track-wrong track” course remains strongly “wrong track” by 64% to 27%, with the economy remaining the top concern.

As conservative Ed Rogers said last week in the Washington Post:

if the labor force participation rate today were the same as when Obama took office, the unemployment rate would be more like 9%, instead of the official 4.9% the Obama administration tries to sell. And, oh, by the way, . . .why is it that about 19 million more people are on food stamps today than when Obama took office?

No, it’s not the economy that’s boosting Obama’s ratings. It’s Trump. Trump is driving most Democrats, many independents, and even some Republicans behind the president. Trump makes Obama look better. People frightened by the prospect of a Trump presidency are more willing to ignore the current president’s shortcomings.

Of course, Obama won’t be on November’s ballot, it will be Hillary Clinton. But here, we have further confirmation that the FBI is unlikely to indict Clinton. We earlier pointed to the contradiction between FBI’s James Comey saying he wanted a “prompt” investigation of Clinton’s misdeeds and Attorney General Loretta Lynch asserting any such investigation would be “thorough,” meaning delay until past the election.

Now Comey has lined up behind his boss. Today, he says of the investigation, "The urgency is to do it well and promptly. And 'well' comes first."

So increasingly, Trump = President Clinton.

Shadowlands: America in 2016

It’s important to realize that Hillary Clinton won’t be indicted by Barack Obama’s Justice department before the election. We said so, and now so has Andrew C. McCarthy, former assistant attorney general for New York’s Southern District who has been closely following Clinton’s FBI problems.

If Clinton wins, her lies and corruption will go unpunished, having by then been ignored by the electorate that makes her president. Clinton wouldn’t win in any normal year. 2016 isn’t a normal year.

Kristen Powers is a Democrat but as a contributor to Fox News, well-informed on conservative thinking. Powers takes issue with Republicans who blame Trump’s rise on Obama. She instead scolds inside-the-beltway Republicans for failing to respond to lower and working class American grievances, even as these whites became the party’s natural constituency. While Powers is right about the GOP, Obama’s economic failures certainly helped plain-talking businessman Trump connect with suffering whites.

So what does America do now? If Republicans can’t stop Trump we get Clinton with her long, dark road of unchecked corruption.

Trump v. Clinton: Battle of Liars

Michael Bloomberg won’t run for president. Which means we may be stuck with the worst “leader of the Free World” choice since 1972, when it was either Richard Nixon or George McGovern. Depression.  

1. Trump Lies.

Former Reagan-Bush 41 speechwriter Peggy Noonan teaches us (2/25/16) “the five stages of Trump, based on the Kübler-Ross stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.” Noonan guesses GOP professionals are still in the “depression” stage, not yet at “acceptance.”

I agree with Noonan’s take on why Trump is winning:

There are the protected and the unprotected. The protected make public policy. The unprotected live in it. The unprotected are starting to push back, powerfully.

Noonan adds, “I want to call [the protected] the elite.” But of course, she stops short because she too is elite, and “elite” isn’t where her folks want to be right now.

In truth, the American elite has failed its working class. So Trump is right on the biggest issue of all. For years on this blog, I have been warning the national elite was on its “last legs.” Now Trump is cashing in.

But overthrowing our national elite was never going to be easy, and it especially won’t be easy for the Trump side in 2016.

Conservative Jonah Goldberg tells us why. Trump lies. It’s a fact, though amazingly so far, Trump has gotten away with it.

Goldberg is shocked at “the double standard Trump benefits from.” Writes Goldberg:

Trump knows little to nothing and he lies the way most of us breathe. But that’s him. And, bizarrely, many people like him (and many commentators have been seduced by his popularity). So he’s allowed to be Trump. No one else is allowed to be Trump-like because when we see Trumpism in others, we recognize its ugliness and vacuity for what it is.

So Trump also gets away with lying, because certainly

2. Clinton Lies.

When Michael Mukasey, ex-attorney general, was asked if the Clinton email issue will be resolved before July's Democratic convention, he replied “yes,” because FBI Director Jim Comey, who doesn’t use words casually, said the FBI would be handling Clinton’s case “promptly.” Mukasey guesses Comey won’t waste time on a grand jury. If the FBI has enough to indict Clinton, she will be presented the evidence, and offered a chance to plea--”promptly.”

But earlier, when Fox News Anchor Bret Baier interviewed Attorney General Loretta Lynch about the Clinton case, Lynch used a different word for the ongoing investigation into Clinton’s potential crimes. Lynch’s word for the probe was “thorough.”

Let me suggest that the Obama administration’s investigation of ally Clinton will indeed be “thorough;” thorough enough to prevent anything happening to Clinton before the election. Exhaust lower-level sources. Broaden the search. Above all else, be “thorough.”

And leave our nation to a sordid battle between two epic liars.