Tuesday, November 29, 2016

So, the Election’s Over. Now What?



I was terribly anxious before the election, fearing that Trump might somehow win. I was not expecting that result, but it happened.

First, here’s what I’m NOT going to do: (1) blame Hillary, explaining the defeat through her candidacy; (2) claim that identity politics is at fault because all politics is identity politics; (3) retreat into a cocoon by only engaging with people who share my political views. So, what am I going to do?

First, there are a number of books that I need to read. I have read Hillbilly Elegy, which was helpful, but my list of additional books contains some of those reviewed by Robert Kuttner here. First is John B. Judis’ The Populist Explosion: How the Great Recession Transformed American and European Politics. Second are two books about the people who contributed the most to Trump’s candidacy and victory in the Electoral College: Arlie Russell Hochschild’s Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, and Catherine J. Cramer’s The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness and the Rise of Scott Walker. Third is a book edited by John Sides and Henry Farrell, The Science of Trump

Second, I am going to talk to people who voted for Trump to learn about the issues and policies that drove them to support his candidacy. This is not going to be easy for me; so I’ll start with people with whom I already have a relationship—members of my church family. We share a religious faith, which will make the conversation less confrontational and more likely to yield some substance. If people in my church community aren’t sufficient, I’ll seek additional sources. My purpose is to learn, not to debate, and especially not to judge.

Third, I am going to become more active in advancing those progressive policies that I support. I will do this through the institutions that provide an opportunity to influence and to gain power. My political party and alliances with progressive groups that attempt to influence local politics are my avenues of choice. Hopefully, additional sources for involvement will come from these institutions and my association with people who are a part of those institutions.

Fourth, I am going to stay hopeful and optimistic about the future. There is no doubt in my mind that the Trump presidency will pose a challenge to our political institutions and the democracy that they support. I know that these institutions are resilient, and I will take whatever actions are necessary to preserve them and ensure their continued existence for future generations.

Friday, November 18, 2016

Why Businesspersons with No Political Experience “Suck” as Politicians



What is it that makes people believe that someone’s business experience is transferable to being a political leader in a democracy, such as the United States? I found an interesting article in Governing: The States and Localities magazine, written by Louis Jacobson in 2012. I would suggest reading the entire article, but here are the most important, in my opinion, takeaways:

Strengths in Campaigning:
1.       Being an outsider
2.       Personal wealth
3.       Leadership, charisma and experience at selling a plan
Drawbacks in Campaigning:
1.       Lack of familiarity and finesse with key policy issues
2.       Risk of being plagued by past business problems
3.       Difficulty dealing with the media
Strengths in Governing:
1.       Experience with numbers
2.       A technocratic approach

               Drawbacks in Governing:

1.       Excessive egotism: "Most of the folks who come in have little understanding of how things work, but are arrogant enough to think they can change 200+ years of American governing," said Eric Herzik, a University of Nevada-Reno political scientist. "It is especially ironic to hear this from folks who also argue we need to get back to constitutional principles. 'Separation of powers' and 'checks and balances' are not business concepts."
"Businesses tend to be dictatorships, where the edict of the CEO is carried out by an army of minions," said Block of the University of California Center Sacramento. "Governance is a messy process where coalition-building is required and governors need to be good listeners willing to compromise. Goals also have social implications that business executives often do not consider when making business decisions. And their constituents in the business world -- their stockholders -- tend to be, for the most part, a homogenous group with one common goal: profits. As governor, the constituency is a varied mishmash with a variety of goals."
2.       Personnel issues: Despite two generally successful terms, New Mexico Republican Gov. Gary Johnson had a problem filling key state jobs, a history that one New Mexico political observer traces to his background as a construction executive.
"One disadvantage to being an outsider, particularly a limited-government outsider, is finding a critical mass of cabinet and sub-cabinet level talent that both thinks like you do and has the chops to actually manage big, complex government programs, or knows accounting rules for the government rather than the private sector," the observer said. "It was not uncommon for him to simply leave positions unfilled. Sometimes he had a single political appointee fill two or even three posts."

Do not these strengths and drawbacks not describe perfectly President-elect Trump’s campaign and first few actions as he prepares to take over the executive branch of the U.S. government? In my opinion, the businessperson’s strengths in the campaign are evident in how Trump ran his campaign. He ran as an outsider when the population’s approval of their governing institutions and politicians is low, claimed that his personal wealth made him “beholden” to no one but the people, and sold the people on change that was not detailed (build a wall, drain the swamp, repeal Obamacare). His weaknesses as a candidate were evident in the three presidential debates and the one forum as his knowledge of government policy was limited, and in many cases, just wrong. He also had business practices that were questionable morally, if not legally. His relationship with the media was contentious, making a point to criticize them at his rallies and events.

Now, as he attempts to assemble his staff and cabinet, his problems with personnel are becoming evident. For me, the most severe limitation is his egotism and the inherent and important distinction between leading a business and leading a democratic nation. Businesses are autocratic; there is no need to deal with independent and coequal centers of power and influence. A democratic, constitutional government is different. As Jacobson notes, “Governance is a messy process where coalition-building is required and governors need to be good listeners willing to compromise.” Also, the goals are different and incompatible.

I doubt that Donald Trump possesses the ability to overcome his weaknesses and govern effectively. That’s what many meant when they said that he was “unfit” to be president of the United States.  

Sunday, November 13, 2016

The Character of Donald Trump



I am a big fan of Stanley Renshon and his books on presidential character, especially on Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Consequently, I decided to look for anything that he may have written about Donald J. Trump. I found an article on BuzzFeed by its editor-in-chief, Ben Smith. Here are some excerpts:

Fortunately, Renshon, a practicing psychoanalyst who also has a Ph.D. in political science and teaches at the City University of New York Graduate Center, has thought a lot about Trump. His desktop “Trump” folder has accumulated more than a thousand files. He has read all the interviews. And he thinks he’s isolated Trump’s key characteristics in a couple of telling turns of phrase.
One is Trump’s tic of telling you how much others like him. (emphasis added)
“I think he actually, believe it or not, he has a need to be liked,” says Renshon.
“He’ll use the phrase ‘he likes me’ or ‘they like me.’ When somebody uses that phrase often, you have to give credit to the idea that that’s something important to them, their need to be liked.”
The word “nice” and the phrase “treats me nicely” appear often in the Trump corpus, Renshon notes.
“He wants to be treated nicely, softly, with kid gloves — he wants to be recognized for all the positives he brings to the table, but he’s not so interested in the negatives,” says Renshon.
“He wants to be liked, and it comes with a threat.”
This is the prelude to his other key characteristic:

. . . The other “pillar” of Trump’s makeup is a need for validation. (emphasis added)
“He wants to be known as the person he is, not the person you think he is. He’s not a dumb person; he’s not a clown. My guess is he truly resents those kinds of characterizations; and he wants to be known for his accomplishments in the business world, but also for his political success,” says Renshon.
“My take on him is that he has been pretty surprised, personally, by his political success… I think he’s surprised where he is and he’s found a newfound source of self-respect for being where he is.”
That is to say: The last few months have changed Trump, and he now needs validation not just as a brash brand, but as a political figure. That is to say: Watch out.
Renshon considers the common diagnosis of Trump as a narcissist a “hollow and reductionist” label:

“He appears to be a real American nationalist with an observable, if bombastic, love of his country,” Renshon says. “Obviously a love of country is inconsistent with real narcissism, where there is no room for love of anybody or anything but yourself.”
Renshon had one other glimpse of psychoanalytic insight into Trump, a side note in a much-mocked story about the hardship of having had to repay a million-dollar loan from his father.
“You don’t want to go to Manhattan. That’s not our territory,” Trump recalled his father, a developer in less glamorous parts of New York, telling him.
“He was warning his son against going into the big city to try to make a name for himself in the Big Apple — and Donald didn’t do that,” says Renshon. “He’s got a lot of adventure in him and a lot of ambition in him, and he would like to be recognized for what he has accomplished.”
He doesn’t, Renshon added, have the burning personal ambition he saw driving Bill Clinton, or the sense of mission that motivates Obama.
“He doesn’t have a clue of what he would do were he to get in,” speculates Renshon, who characterizes himself as middle-of-the-road politically, though he shares with Trump a skepticism about immigration.
Finally, he says he thinks Trump is for real: “I think he genuinely feels like the country is going to hell, and I think he genuinely feels he can do something about it.”
And there ends Trump’s session on the couch. There is more, no doubt, to excavate from the strange and combative life of a rich real estate developer’s son with a chip on his shoulder, but Renshon won’t be doing the digging.
“I haven’t gone into his childhood very much,” he says. “I won’t spend much time with it because I don’t think he’s going to become president.”
Obviously, Renshon needs to get to work on his next book. Unfortunately, we didn’t have access to a complete analysis of Trump’s character before the election, or better yet, before the Republican primary elections and caucuses. But ironically, he wasn’t supposed to be president.

Early Vote in Texas in 2016

The early vote in Texas in the 15 counties with the largest number of registered voters (SOS counties) increased dramatically in 2016, both in the number and in the percentage of voters. There is no doubt that early voting is a hit in Texas, but does early voting lead to greater turnout? In 2016 in Texas, the answer is: No. Most studies of the effects of early voting on voter turnout show a limited effect, in the range of a few percent. That's what happened in Texas. In the SOS counties, early voting started with a huge increase on the first day, dropped to a reduced, but steady growth, took its normal Sunday dip on Day 8, and then slowly rose until the last day, when voters rushed to the polls so that they wouldn't have to brave the long lines on Election Day. The charts tell the story:



The story, however, doesn't end here. The SOS counties, as a percentage of the state's total early vote has risen in each election since 2008. In 2016, the percentage increased slightly to 68.53 percent. In 2012, it was 67.87 percent of the total early vote. However, the real shocker was that the early vote, as a percentage of the total votes cast (early vote combined with the Election Day vote), increased by more than 10 percent--62.81 percent in 2012 to 73.50 percent in 2016.

By 2016, nearly three-fourths of Texans have voted before Election Day, decreasing lines at many polling locations on Election Day and requiring campaigns to change the way they schedule their activities. Voter turnout in Texas was 59.13 percent of registered voters, a slight increase over 2012, but not as high as the 58.58 percent of registered voters that voted in 2008 or the 72.9 percent of registered voters that voted in 1992. 

Straight-ticket Voting in Texas: 2016




Texas is one of only ten states that allows straight-ticket voting (Alabama, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, and Utah). Straight-ticket voting has been instrumental in the success of Republican candidates for statewide office in Texas, where no Democrat has been elected since 1994. 

In 2016, in 25 large Texas counties, the straight-ticket vote helped candidates in countywide elections. For example, in Harris County, every Democratic candidate for District Court Judge—24 were elected—won, and in the process, eleven Republican incumbents were defeated. The size of the straight-ticket vote in those 25 counties is depicted in the table below:

County
Total Vote
ST Vote
Rep ST
Dem ST
% ST
% Rep
% Dem
HARRIS
1,304,480
885,903
401,255
471,290
67.91%
45.29%
53.20%
DALLAS
750,649
508,910
182,784
317,100
67.80%
35.92%
62.31%
TARRANT
667,837
447,799
246,814
192,887
67.05%
55.12%
43.07%
BEXAR
593,973
340,609
137,368
195,215
57.34%
40.33%
57.31%
TRAVIS
462,593
251,538
75,605
168,264
54.38%
30.06%
66.89%
COLLIN
362,902
230,674
142,472
84,323
63.56%
61.76%
36.56%
DENTON
293,287
193,196
122,321
67,070
65.87%
63.31%
34.72%
EL PASO
212,431
131,579
28,965
98,910
61.94%
22.01%
75.17%
FORT BEND
261,761
202,682
96,020
103,360
77.43%
47.37%
51.00%
HIDALGO
174,246
119,175
28,673
87,542
68.39%
24.06%
73.46%
MONTGOMERY
205,676
145,753
115,391
28,266
70.87%
79.17%
19.39%
WILLIAMSON
204,258
116,765
66,506
47,249
57.17%
56.96%
40.47%
GALVESTON
122,547
76,738
47,904
27,688
62.62%
62.43%
36.08%
NUECES
103,980
58,440
27,830
29,367
56.20%
47.62%
50.25%
CAMERON
91,804
51,803
36,111
14,264
56.43%
69.71%
27.54%
BRAZORIA
120,911
75,822
47,553
27,125
62.71%
62.72%
35.77%
BELL
95,252
57,203
31,849
24,144
60.05%
55.68%
42.21%
LUBBOCK
98,847
54,882
38,756
15,170
55.52%
70.62%
27.64%
JEFFERSON
87,542
58,785
24,598
33,639
67.15%
41.84%
57.22%
MCLENNAN
79,644
50,217
31,577
17,929
63.05%
62.88%
35.70%
SMITH
84,276
53,514
37,205
15,607
63.50%
69.52%
29.16%
WEBB
57,574
36,879
6,101
29,775
64.05%
16.54%
80.74%
HAYS
71,945
43,645
22,054
20,083
60.66%
50.53%
46.01%
BRAZOS
      67,029      31,402      19,357      11,157 46.85% 61.64% 35.53%
ELLIS
63,903
39,548
28,854
10,168
61.89%
72.96%
25.71%

6,639,554
4,263,611
2,044,030
2,137,634
64.22%
47.94%
50.14%

In the twenty-ffive counties, whose voters cast 74.4 percent of the total votes cast in Texas, the straight-ticket vote constituted 64.2 percent of all votes cast in those counties. That percentage is the highest percentage of straight-tickets cast in a presidential election in Texas. The graphs depict the straight-ticket vote in the most Republican counties and the most Democratic counties, respectively.