Hope, perhaps

On June 17, 2016June 16, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Politics2 Comments

The one problem I’ve encountered so far in setup for IndyPopCon, and it’s a minor one, is that the Special Vendor-Only Discount Rated Lot that I decided to put my car in (because cheap) is cheap because it’s literally two damn miles from the convention center, with an entire football stadium in between. Luckily, there is a free shuttle. Less luckily, the shuttle doesn’t appear to be super fast and has a driver who believes he can get anywhere in two minutes. It won’t be a problem until it’s time to break the booth down on Sunday, when it will ensure that lots and lots of people get into the loading dock before I do and slow me way the hell down.

But my booth is awesome, both in location and the amount of space allotted, so I’ve got precious little to complain about right now. We’ll see how the next few days go.

One thing, though, is worth passing on: as I was waiting for the shuttle, I was sitting with the lot attendant, an off-duty Chicago (!!!) police officer who was chatty enough to fill fifteen minutes of conversation mostly by himself. He terrified me at one point by, out of nowhere, bringing up the Orlando massacre. Despite my demeanor online, I very much dislike talking about politics in person, even with people I agree with, and when a cop starts a conversation about guns I am hardwired to begin immediately trying to find some way to flee as fast and as far as I can to avoid having the conversation. I really don’t want to be confrontational with people, I promise, and I’m not always great at conversing with strangers anyway. A fraught issue like guns? Run.

BUT! Amazingly, the guy– having a conversation basically with himself, because my role was mostly to listen and grunt approvingly from time to time– managed to begin by presenting himself as a staunch “2nd Amendment guy” and then immediately walked himself down a rabbit hole where by the end of his spiel he was admitting that most gun owners in America didn’t have any business owning their guns (“or at least as many guns as they have”) and that after Orlando he was starting to seriously think that confiscation might be the right thing to do.

A cop said this. A white cop.

How it didn’t happen after Sandy Hook, I don’t know. A nation that changes nothing after children are gunned down in cold blood does not seem like a nation that suddenly sees the light after adults are killed, particularly adults in a gay bar. But I feel like something is different this time. Yes, anecdata, I know, but we may finally be getting closer to the beginning of a movement toward a sane gun policy in this country.

Maybe.

Another in a near-endless series of election posts

On May 5, 2016May 5, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Politics6 Comments

So.

Donald Trump is the GOP nominee.

There are a few ways I could go with this. I would describe my mood at the moment as “confident, but terrified.” I think Hillary Clinton’s going to beat this man like a rented mule in November. But there is a nonzero possibility– it’s not a large possibility, but it exists— that she won’t. Shit happens. And patriotism will no longer be remotely possible in a nation that elects Donald Trump president.

The Republicans at this point have proven that they are what the Democrats have been saying they were for the last thirty years. All of their pretensions are blown away. They have nominated an open racist and fascist as their candidate for the most powerful person in the world. And while I’m aware #nevertrump is a thing, I don’t believe it for a second. Republicans– or at least the pundits and political figures who are being the loudest about #nevertrump right now– always choose party over country, always. Their former Speaker of the House just admitted to being a rapist and a pedophile and they defended him anyway. Every single one of the #nevertrump people will come around. All of them.

There’s lots of talk about high primary turnout. Take it with a grain of salt, as primary turnout isn’t predictive of the general at all. Right now, with the best data I can find, the Republicans have had about 25.1 million votes and the Democrats about 21.7 million. That’s a 3.4 million vote deficit with California and New Jersey, both heavily populated blue states, left to vote; I wouldn’t be surprised if California wipes that deficit out all by itself, especially since Republican turnout is probably going to drop a bit now that the race is settled. So it doesn’t mean anything, and it’s basically a tie anyway.

As far as the Democratic race, it’s all over but the shouting, although there’s quite a bit of shouting to get through yet. Just going by the 85% rule, where Sanders wins any state more than 85% white, I would expect Sanders to win West Virginia, North Dakota, Montana, Kentucky, Oregon, and South Dakota, with Clinton winning New Mexico, California, and New Jersey. You will note which column the states with lots of people are in. I would guess the four non-state contests– the Virgin Islands, District of Columbia, Guam and Puerto Rico would all go to Clinton as well, but I don’t know the demographics of the Virgin Islands and Guam might fall under the Hawai’i exception, where there aren’t many whites but also few blacks and Hispanics. Either way there aren’t a lot of delegates there and it doesn’t matter too much which way they go. I’m more certain about Puerto Rico and DC is a virtual lock for Clinton.

Indiana marks the second time the polls have blown the result. I have no hard data, this is just my gut feeling, but: Indiana is famously hard to poll, and I find myself wondering if the combination of that difficulty with Sanders’ biggest supporters being cellphone-only means that his people were harder to find. At any rate, it’s not much of a surprise, because the 85% rule held up. The other blown result was Michigan, of course, which– again, I’m guessing– was partially the result of a big post-debate Sanders swing that the polls didn’t have time to pick up. Or maybe not. Hell if I know.

But back to the general. Here’s the thing you need to remember. You should be paying no attention at all to GE polls right now. Clinton’s ahead, yes, but I would fully expect that with Trump having sewn up the nomination and the Democrats still yelling at each other for a bit, we’re going to see some polls where Trump is ahead, and he should get a bump after the Republican convention. (Should. There is a distinct possibility that the Republican convention will be a tacky horrorshow that will cause the nation to collectively take a step back. It might not help. I’m really glad the Democratic convention is second.) It’s not going to matter. Look at that map up there, and think about the number of states Trump has to flip to win the election, with an electorate that is less white than it was in 2012. And that’s assuming Clinton flips nothing. I’m looking at Utah, believe it or not; Mormons hate this guy. And I still say Indiana could go blue. And there are probably several more. Trump needs to flip 62 EV worth of states. That’s a lot. Where are they? Which ones didn’t go for Romney but will go for Trump?

I’ll wait.

(There will be no third party runs, people. I do wonder if some of the non-pundit, non-politician disaffected Republicans will land Libertarian, which actually have ballot access in most of the country. But there is no time to put together a third-party run. These things have deadlines. They have passed. No one who has not currently declared is running third party. Stop talking about it.)

And this entire paragraph is a late addition: I’m seeing a lot of talk about the Republicans’ deep bench again, and how Trump will be hard to beat because he beat all of those Republicans on that deep bench? That wasn’t a deep bench. That was a worthless collection of halfwits, charlatans and grifters that I wouldn’t trust to jointly run a Denny’s. It was a clown show. Some fucker had to be the last man standing out of all that nonsense, and the fact that the loudest blowhard and bully managed to be that person doesn’t make the bully impressive.

All told: Do not panic. It’s going to be fine.

On disenfranchisement and third parties

On April 21, 2016April 21, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Politics1 Comment

qc8raqzj8nyxef9ehybr

There’s been a politics post percolating for a while now, and at various points it has been a much angrier politics post than I suspect I’m about to write. To be very, very brief, I think the last ten days or so flipped Bernie Sanders from I’ll happily vote for him if he’s the nominee to okay, fuck that guy in the heads of a lot of Clinton supporters. That said, Tuesday basically clinched the nomination for Clinton, and a couple of days later I’m no longer especially interested in shitting on Bernie any more. There’s no money in it. I indulged in retweeting a handful of snarky GIFs on Tuesday night– mostly because I thought they were hilarious and not purely to crow– and I think that’s probably as far as I care to go at this point.

That said, let’s talk about political parties for a minute, and primaries, and disenfranchisement.

I have no doubt whatsoever that in any large election (and running a statewide election, much less a statewide election that contains a city larger than forty of the fifty states certainly counts) there are going to be some people who, for one reason or another, are disqualified from voting who should be able to vote. I had to file a provisional ballot myself in Chicago once; it happens. Is it regrettable? Of course it is. It’s also effectively unavoidable, in that people are people and shit happens.

Supposedly 120,000 people in New York City were “purged” from the voting rolls prior to the election and thus were unable to vote. Sounds bad, doesn’t it? Unfortunately:

Of the 126,000 Democratic voters taken off from the rolls in Brooklyn, Ryan said 12,000 had moved out of borough, while 44,000 more had been placed in an inactive file after mailings to their homes bounced back. An additional 70,000 were already inactive and, having failed to vote in two successive federal elections or respond to cancel notices, were removed.

Are there some people who were removed who shouldn’t have been? Yeah, probably. But maybe, guys, if you’re planning on voting in an upcoming election, you should check to make sure your registration is up to date a couple of months in advance of the election. One way to make sure you don’t get purged is to vote in every election– yes, the ones that aren’t terribly exciting, too– and to change your registration when you move. I don’t actually have any sympathy for the vast majority of these people.

Also, not being able to vote in the Democratic party primary because you aren’t actually a Democrat is not something I’m going to shed tears about. I do feel like the primary voting process needs to be streamlined and standardized, and we can have conversations about that; it seems ridiculous to me that the process can vary so much from state to state, and I don’t like caucuses at all (and, for the record, didn’t like them in 2008 when my guy was winning them, either). There’s room to discuss that. But there’s not a whole lot to talk about when you insist that not being able to participate in the primary election process of a party you don’t belong to is the same as disenfranchisement. Otherwise, you’ll have to explain why Canadians don’t get to vote in our elections.

They’re not American? Oh. Give that some thought, will you?

I get that maybe six months ago you hadn’t decided who to vote for, and I’m sympathetic to the idea that declaring party affiliation six months in advance is a bit on the long side. I didn’t know who I was voting for six months ago. But you didn’t know you were a Democrat six months ago? Get the fuckouttahere. Go ahead, be an independent; more power to you. But don’t expect America’s two-party system to accommodate you.

Slight change of subject here: lots of people are going to see that last sentence and go OOH ARGLE BARGLE TWO PARTY SYSTEM GRR HRAAGH THIRD PARTY.

Shuddup.

You are welcome to be dumb and vote for a third-party candidate. You’re wasting your time and your vote; the real political parties don’t look at that and go ooh, moving to the <direction> will help us get that voter!, they assume you’re more interested in preening than governance and stop thinking about you. There’s not a single thing preventing a third party from taking hold in America other than the fact that historically most third parties are run by dumbasses. How do I know? The Green Party and the Libertarians, in particular, have existed in this country for decades and haven’t figured out to stop running for President yet. I’m pretty sure that if either party wanted to get some seats in Congress they could find some appropriate districts and start building a power base. There’s got to be somewhere where a concerted push by a Green or a Libertarian could end up with a seat. Go find those places! Start running for school boards and for mayors and for state governments! Running for President as a third party does nothing other than massage egos, waste a lot of money, and pull votes from some closer established party that has a chance of getting their agendas enacted. Jill Stein is never going to be President. But I bet she could be a Congressperson if the Green Party took the money they were setting on fire for her to run for President and put it into a more local race. Perhaps start in Vermont? One way or another Bernie’s not going to be their Senator forever.

I don’t give a shit about your conscience, by the way.

If there’s an overarching point to this, here it is: we have to be grown-ups about the process of governing. Part of that means recognizing that we’re not always going to get (we are never going to get) 100% of what we want in a political party or a political candidate. So you vote for the person who has the greatest chance of getting the largest share of what you want enacted. That means sometimes passing up voting for someone who agrees with you more in favor of someone who you don’t align with as closely but has the ability to govern and get some of the things you want done. I can remember talking with some Nader evangelists in 2008 when I was at UIC; they rambled a bit about his positions and had absolutely no answer for me when I asked a simple question: How will he govern? With no allies in Congress and no power base of any kind, how will this man get any part of his agenda enacted?

He won’t, that’s how. You want to start a movement? Fine, start a movement. But you start a movement from the bottom up, by either taking over an existing political party or building one from the grassroots, with local offices, not with a vanity moonshot for the Presidency. And you do it by voting, and by paying attention to the rules where you live and making sure that your shit is correct.

Lecture ends. Go forth. And make sure you’re fuckin’ registered to vote for November, goddammit.

Well that wasn’t so hard

On April 12, 2016April 12, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Politics2 Comments

Sat in a hot, stuffy, way-too-small room within punching distance of a guy with white power tattoos for an hour and fifteen minutes only to be ushered into the courtroom and told that the defendant in the case we were there for, a “high-level felony” that would likely have required a fairly lengthy trial, had just accepted a plea bargain. Thanks for your service! No more jury duty for two years! Go home!

I’ll admit– with my wife out of town, this was literally-no-exaggeration the worst week of the year for me to get called for jury duty, and navigating getting the boy to and from school and getting her picked up (not to mention a prescheduled major appliance delivery tomorrow) and a few other things was a huge pain in the ass that inconvenienced my parents as well as me, but I’m still a bit disappointed. Even with all that going on, though, at least the trial would probably have been interesting. That said, I got out of it the best way possible, without having to stage a rant about the unjust criminal justice system or begging that I just don’t have time to be an American this week or anything like that. So I’ll call it a dodged bullet for the moment, and maybe if I do get called again in the next two years I won’t actually use my get-out-of-jury-duty-free pass. We’ll see.

So. What shall I do with my suddenly free day? Ah, there you are, Dark Souls III, I’ve been looking for you.

Shall we play a game?

On March 4, 2016March 4, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Politics5 Comments

For some reason I’ve been fiddling with this in my head for the last few days: what would the American presidency have looked like if the 22nd Amendment had never passed? (The 22nd amendment was the one limiting presidencies to two terms, passed because FDR decided he was cool enough for four.)

Now, obviously, there’s a lot of butterfly-effect stuff that might have happened with this, and most of that I’ve ignored, although it might be fun to play with later. The main rule I’m working with is that people who were interested in the presidency stay interested in the presidency. So, for example, you can imagine that different Presidents might have altered our Vietnam policy from what it was, and that if our Vietnam policy is different, perhaps John McCain is never shot down and imprisoned for five and a half years, or perhaps whoever is in office intensifies the war and McCain never even makes it out. For the purposes of this conversation, McCain survives the war and is still interested in being President during the years he ran. If you want to play along and go into more detail, feel free, but that’s where I’m coming from.

So. That in mind, here we go:

All elections before 1952 are unchanged, because there was nothing preventing Presidents from running for a third term– and, in fact, both the Roosevelts did— only the tradition that no one should serve longer than Washington did.

1952 election: This actually remains unchanged. Truman was grandfathered in by the 22nd Amendment and could have run again had he wanted to, but he lost the New Hampshire primary to Estes Kefauver and dropped out quickly. Dwight Eisenhower becomes President.

1956 election: Eisenhower demolishes Adlai Stevenson, and is elected to his second term. No change.

1960 election: Still able to run, and not much trusting his Vice-President, Eisenhower runs against a young Senator named John F. Kennedy. In the actual election, Kennedy only barely squeaked by an unsupported Richard Nixon and may only have won by cheating in Chicago. In my alternate universe, Eisenhower easily wins a third term.

1964 election: Real-world Eisenhower started having major health issues in 1965. In my world, after the stresses of a third term, those health problems manifest a bit earlier and Eisenhower declines to run for a fourth term in office. The 1964 election is therefore Nixon vs. Kennedy again, and Kennedy wins.

Note that because Kennedy was not President in 1963, he’s still alive in this scenario. I’m choosing to decide that Oswald would not have shot Eisenhower. Kennedy was in Dallas on a campaign stop, after all; Ike may as well have gone elsewhere.

1968 election: Kennedy easily defeats Barry Goldwater and wins a second term.

1972 election: Running against Richard Nixon again, Kennedy wins a third term in office. In 1973 his Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson passes away from a massive heart attack (NOTE: this actually happened) and Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri, JFK’s original pick for the Vice-Presidency, is named to fill the role.

1976 election: Finally unable to deny his health issues any longer, JFK declines to run for a fourth term. Sitting Vice-President Stuart Symington is unable to defeat former Georgia governor Jimmy Carter in the Democratic primary, but California governor Ronald Reagan wins the election.

1980 election: Reagan defeats Carter again.

1984 election: Reagan makes a thin paste of Walter Mondale and spreads it on his toast for breakfast, winning 49 states and beginning his third term. (NOTE: You could make a good argument that Mondale, having never been Carter’s VP, would not be the nominee in 1984. I would contend that Reagan loses to no one in 1984 so the name of the punching bag is irrelevant.)

1988 election: Reagan becomes the third three-term President in a row to decline to run for a fourth term. We all know his Alzheimer’s was starting to kick in in 1998 anyway, and now he’s at the end of three terms, not just two, so it probably would have been worse. Gerald Ford, his VP, runs against Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis and easily wins election.

(Why Ford? Because George HW Bush’s career becomes mightily murky if Nixon is never President. He had just lost an election for the Senate when Nixon appointed him ambassador to the UN in 1971, and didn’t hold elected office again until being elected Vice-President with Reagan in 1980. Without Nixon in the White House, he never runs for Senate (it was Nixon’s idea) so maybe he’s still in the House or still in the Senate and maybe he would have run; it’s hard to say. This is another place where folk can argue.)

1992 election: Ford, not actually a very good President, is defeated by Bill Clinton, serving the same single term he’d served anyway, just not in the same years.

1996 election: Clinton defeats Bob Dole for a second term.

2000 election: Clinton runs against George W. Bush, the former Governor of Texas. Now, in the real world, Al Gore won the popular vote and lost the electoral college, at least partially because of his incomprehensible choice to run away from Clinton’s accomplishments as President. Clinton himself, a much savvier politician with sky-high approval ratings (68% in 2000) and unlikely to run away from his own record, easily defeats Shrub for a third term.

2004 election: Clinton bucks the tradition set by the previous three three-term presidents and chooses to run for a fourth term, because, really, Clinton would have to be dead to decide not to run for office. However! After 12 years of Clinton scandals, the nation has decided it would rather shoot itself in the face than ever hear the word “Whitewater” again, and a popular maverick politician by the name of John McCain narrowly defeats Clinton in the 2004 election.

(I can hear you: whaaaat? I put it to you that GWBush destroyed John McCain, and McCain was actually a fairly popular politician on a bipartisan level before, specifically, the 2000 South Carolina primary. The shame of having had to endorse the guy who used his own daughter against him in South Carolina broke something in him. I think this is at least arguably possible. And if not, well: fight me! That’s what this is for. 🙂 )

And, at any rate, it doesn’t matter much anyway, because:

2008 election: Barack Obama defeats McCain anyway, stopping him after a single term in office. (And this is fuzzy too, though, right? If Clinton is still in office, does 9/11 happen? Do we go to war in Iraq? Obama used the war as a cudgel against both Clinton and McCain. Absent that war, potentially, what happens? Or does McCain start a different war in between 2004-2008?)

2012 election: Barack Obama wins a second term, defeating Mitt Romney.

2016 election: Barack Obama wins 48 states against any of these yahoos, for the easiest third term since Reagan.

So. What did I get wrong? Let’s argue!