The Day After Tomorrow - Where Will You Be

Republican strategy began over twenty years ago to be a multi-pronged approach to
(1) preach smaller government, meaning minimal Federal government, while
(2) fomenting anger and resentment using right wing media to garner and maintain political support,
(3) avoiding serious consideration of legitimate political issues.
Today, with the logical result being Trumpism, the new strategy becomes trying to contain the caged animal they created, while fostering development of an effectively Confederation form of government within a nominally Federal republic, almost a shadow government.  The Supreme Court will be diminished because no justices will be confirmed while Clinton is president, if the Senate is Republican. Congress will be tied up in meaningless investigations in the House and endless confirmation hearings with no intention to approve SC justices or other Federal judges. No federal laws. No treaties. The weakening of the Presidency and Supreme Court will make the Congress preeminent, with democracy weakened by voter suppression, gerrymandering, and the poisoning of political discourse with constant fact denial. The goal is de facto confederation, just as confederation in the form of the Confederacy was the goal in 1861. The difference being in 1861 the Union was not along for the ride.

Republican officeholders will predictably deny the obstructionist strategy, but the goal could not be clearer from their actions. They will accuse the president of acting illegally and, yes, they will search for excuses to impeach the president in the House. The biggest surprise would be no impeachment of Hillary Clinton.  Most likely the next two years will be consumed by the building of a case against her (actual case yet to be determined), with the goal of impeachment and trial in the lame duck session following the 2018 midterm elections.

In theory, as the NYT editorializes "Senate Democrats would have an obligation to consider and vote on his [Trump's] nominees" sounds proper, but is that realistic? Republicans long ago reduced the functioning of the federal government to an exercise in game theory. McConnell's announcement that the Senate would never consider the president's Supreme Court nominee means in the iterative game, Democrats are expected to cooperate in the interest of preserving democracy, (because that is what dos Dems do) while Republicans continue to refuse to cooperate because that achieves the government they want. Watch for the Republican strategy to escalate as they seek "facts" to support disqualification of nominees - judges, cabinet members, Supreme Court justices, in order to draw out the process indefinitely.

Suppose
(1) Clinton wins and is able to assume the presidency without obstruction January 20, 2017,
(2) the House is controlled by Republicans, and
(3) the Senate is 50-50 or so.

What to expect:
December 9, one month away, is a critical date for Congress to approve a budget to extend funding through the end of the fiscal year, September 30, 2017, or for a shorter period of time. The most likely outcome will be approval of a continuing resolution to fund the government for three months or so. Republicans will then have the opportunity to stall out the federal government early in Clinton's first months in office.

Merrick Garland will not be approved by the Senate in the current 2016 term, even though he is at least as moderate as any likely Clinton appointee and some Senate Republicans favor approving his nomination now because he is older than the typical nominee. However, due to the Republican need to effect policy on contentious social issues and voting strategy in the courts rather than through legislation, the Supreme Court nomination approval process will become more of a scorched earth strategy than ever. Stalling on nominations also ties up the Senate, taking positive energy away from legislating, thus achieving that goal.

Whether or not the House will continue to hold the purely symbolic votes repeal the Affordable Act is difficult to predict. House leaders may hold a small number of such votes, but may try to keep the total spanning multiple Congresses below 100 times (unless it is already over 100).

Ruth Bader Ginsburg will resign from the Supreme Court, but will try to wait for completion of the approval process for the current open seat. If no justice is approved due to obstruction by Republicans in the Senate, she will face a tough choice, but may resign anyway at a critical moment in the approval process, hoping to apply political pressure on the Republicans. So she may resign effective with the end of the term on June 30, 2017. Alternatively, she or another justice may pass away unexpectedly.

The Republican Party will continue to be torn by internal dissension, but Republican leaders will do whatever it takes to hold together their coalition without compromising with Democrats except in the most extreme cases. If Ryan remains as Speaker, he is likely to suffer the same fate as Boehner, but that may take a year or two to play out.

Some analysts predict that House Democrats could reach a consensus with a small group of moderate Republicans to make the House a functioning body and offset the power of the most extreme Republican members. Unfortunately, the House will likely have a smaller, more conservative Republican majority, making accommodation with Democrats less likely.

If Trump loses, as expected, we may see severe resistance to the will of the people. No predictions on where that goes. Simultaneously, several Senate races could be so close that a recount is automatic or requested by the candidate with fewer votes. This scenario could leave the control of the Senate in doubt for weeks after the election.

We will hear concerns about "legitimacy" frequently over the next four years in discussions about the functioning of the presidency and the courts.

No predictions if Trump wins.

Why no predictions if Trump wins?
(1) Trump is so extreme. He might act consisten with the conduct of his campaign, but he may not.
(2) Based on accuracy in the past, we lean toward the Sam Wang forecast model:
As of November 7, 2:07PM EST:Snapshot (221 state polls): Clinton 313, Trump 225 Electoral Votes    Meta-margin: Clinton +2.7%
Clinton Nov. win probability: random drift >99%, Bayesian >99%
Senate snapshot (48 polls): Dem+Ind: 50, GOP: 50, Meta-margin: D +0.7%, Nov. control probability: Dem. 79%
These result do not consider potential impact of voter suppression efforts in states like North Carolina and Arizona. We shall see...

Biased Much?

Yesterday's post The Power to Investigate sets forth the dangers to democracy of endless investigations of political figures. Today, Vox has posted on a related concept Clinton's critics know she's guilty, they're just trying to decide what she's guilty of. In this piece, Matthew Yglesias calls this the Prime Directive driving Clinton bad coverage, worthy of capitalization. Our reference to "double derivative" investigations is given more user-friendly terms by Vox - "The investigation pivots" and "Fishing into the next pond.". As Yglesias states in the final sentence, "What if Clinton has been getting away with it for all these years because she hasn't done anything wrong?"

Yglesias happens to be the author of American Democracy is Doomed from September 2015 which follows similar reasoning to the arguments in this blog, (The perils of presidential democracy, Constitutional hardball, raising the stakes), so his perspective on endless investigations is no surprise.

Two years ago, in the first days following the 60 minutes hit job by Lara Logan, but before the deeply biased flaws in the segment became public, I overheard a water cooler comment by a colleague at the office -- "I don't think we are ever going to know what really happened at Benghazi". My co-worker was in effect saying, "That Hillary Clinton is so evil, so obviously guilty of gross wrongdoing, if only we had the evidence to prove it, but we never will, because she is so slippery!" Biased much? Later that week, almost before you could shout "Lock Her Up!" three times, the incredible bias of the 60 minutes piece and the fraudulence of Logan's primary source were revealed. Now, in a healthy media environment, one might find calmer heads thinking - we better be more careful here, not just 60 minutes, but all investigative news outlets.

In a companion piece, Two experts say Donald Trump should be investigated for criminal tax evasion, Vox lays out reasons that Trump could be indicted for abuse of the rules that govern charities. The big difference between the Clinton and Trump situations is that the Clinton investigations always require a lot more digging and sifting to uncover new information, almost like panning for gold. The Vox article says "Trump should be investigated", but all of the salient facts are known about Trump, except that maybe he did not know what he was doing was illegal if he knew, but not necessarily illegal if he did not. Got that. It was wrong, which is why it was illegal, but white collar crime is difficult to prosecute because so much turns on intention.

The stories about Comey this week make the claim that FBI investigators have been pressuring Comey to prosecute Clinton. In some versions of the story, Comey was afraid the news would leak anyway and so decided to write the letter. We are not hearing about similar moves to prosecute Trump for the abuse of his charitable foundation. Nor have we heard about any investigations under way on Trump's relationship with the Russian leadership, despite his odd denial that the Russian government is behind the hacking of DNC emails.

Unfortunately the obsession with Clinton is only the latest instance of off-base FBI conclusions. The FBI was sure that Richard Jewell was the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bomber, but he was not. The FBI took years to figure out that Robert Hanssen was a mole in their operations. And the FBI was sure that Steven Hatfill committed the anthrax attacks in 2001 -- oh sorry, he was just a "person of interest" who necessitated agents in hazmat suits rifle through his home as news crews filmed. The FBI later settled on Bruce Ivins' guilt in the anthrax case. So in two of the cases, the FBI placed focus on an innocent person who was made to look guilty, and the press cooperated, as they often do. In the case of Hansen, the guilty party was their own guy -- the FBI took years to uncover Hanssen's role following many breaches and security lapses.

Investigations instigated from bias are an enormous problem. The Vox article correctly asks - what if she has done nothing wrong, but the problem goes well beyond the Vox question. If investigations are pursued primarily because they may turn up wrongdoing, or, if not, will result in a different investigation, that may turn up wrongdoing, or, if not will result in...and so on, forever, in an infinite loop,  the result is limited to either (1) wrongdoing uncovered or (2) something that can pass as wrongdoing is found, all without regard to significance or proportionality.  As a society, we need to recognize this is a serious threat to a democratic system of government.

Fixing a Broken System

At WTBP, we see a broken political system in the U.S. and identify key villains - not the worst actors, but those with good intentions (presumably), but lacking in the will to act to effect change. Taking the existing political structure of the U.S. as a given, we find that (1) moderate Republicans who remain faithful to their party caucus in Congress -no matter what happens- and (2) the popular mainstream press who stick to the broken "balanced" model are the two main culprits. Applying pressure to
(1) and(2) to change their ways represents the path of least resistance to meaningful reform.

Making institutional reform happen is difficult because a gridlocked legislature is not likely to reform itself. A minority party that benefits from outsized power and even control of Congress is not likely to seek democratic reforms. These challenges have prompted interest in remedies that do not require monumental laws that may never be passed.

In recent years, interest in electoral reforms has surged. Unfortunately, some creative proposals seem to be driven more by what can be done rather than what needs to be done.

The Center for Election Science (CES) does just that. The CES sees the main problem as the voting method, specifically, voter preference can only be expressed by selecting a single candidate. The CES proposed solution is "approval voting", that is, the voter can pull the lever for all candidates the voter likes. CES invokes year 2000 for their example. The result would be that Nader voters would have exercised two votes in many cases - one for Nader, their "honest favorite" and one for Gore, to register the preference of Gore over Bush. Year 2000 is not a great example of a fix, because Nader had such a small following.Any vote for Nader was clearly a protest vote or a mistake brought about by confusion over the butterfly ballot. People have to get used to the idea that when you vote you do it to affect the outcome of an election. If you are trying to feel good, there are plenty of other avenues.

California has an intriguing Top-Two Primary System for most offices.  The primary field is reduced by vote to two candidates regardless of party. This is worth exploring in other States that do not have it. California also operates an independent redistricting commission to eliminate gerrymandering. The solution to gerrymandering is not simple. The math behind voter preference and drawing legislative districts show us that solving some problems with any system creates others. (re: social choice see Arrow's Impossibility Theorem and Gibbard-Satterthwaite Theorem.)

The neuroscientist Sam Wang has developed a beta tool to statistically test for partisan gerrymandering.

The California efforts and the objective tool to measure extent of partisanship in creating districts show promise. But the CES proposals would require enormous effort to enact, and do not directly or realistically combat the problems with our democratic system.

It's The Asymmetry Stupid!

Keep an eye out for an upcoming post on the importance of the asymmetry debate. If you just can't wait and want a taste, take a look at the revised and updated Beyond the Pale and Both Sides Do It. Then read the Difference Between an Actuary and a Statistician, including the new final paragraph. It's all about the asymmetry as Ornstein and Mann below know so well.

Source:fordschool.umich.edu

Blair Watch Project

Tony Blair had a great on-point opinion piece on Brexit if you can ignore the source and set aside the Iraq war for the moment.

Source: telegraph.co.uk

Blair gets so much right including his main point in the final sentence that "the center must hold". That has been a key argument of this blog - that the center in the U.S. has been failing -  the political center in the form of (1) those moderate Republicans (to the exent they exist) who vote with their party on all issues, thus functioning as conservatives instead of moderates, and (2) those members of the objective press who define objectivity to mean reporting on every issue as if there are always two equal and opposite sides.

NYT opinion:
Tony Blair: Brexit's Stunning Coup

This writer's comment on Blair NYT:
 What's stunning is not the "decision of British voters" to leave the EU but the decision of Cameron to push for this referendum. Voters were given a binary choice with a majority permitted to rule on a decision with incredibly far-reaching consequences. Voters are rarely given the opportunity to express their displeasure so directly. Blair's statement that the center must hold is correct, but misses the point that the center can not hold if threatened by blunders of process. Our system in the U.S requires a 2/3rd majority in both the House and Senate and ratification of 3/4ths of the state legislatures for amendments to the Constitution, for example. Imagine what would happen to the U.S if states could hold plebiscites for withdrawal from the union with the result dependent only upon a majority. Blair's mistake in joining with Bush on the Iraq war will go down as the greater blunder than Cameron's, but they are both whoppers.

Where are We Heading?

If not a four-party system, where are we heading? One guess.