Nebraska Shifts from 2016 to 2020

The state elected the same congressmen and the senators have not changed, both are Republicans. But, county by county, many changes took place. some 90 000 more Democrats showed up to vote than in 2016. Still, the 39% of votes was not enough to beat Trump at 58% and the electors seem to vote their party no matter what. Yet, there are independents, as seen by the shifts. And really, it was city folks in Omaha that made the change this time. The one elector for Biden.

The scale reads from -8% on the left to +12 on the right. The two dark blue counties on the right were the ones that voted the one elector for Biden. The law splitting electors (3 regions) has not been around but since the late 1900s and has been in danger of disappearing on and off. The state legislature has been a Republican majority basically forever. It is totally fair to split votes in this manner, and the statewide winner still gets the other two electors, of the five total.

The counties surrounding Lancaster (the long blue box in the East) may eventually be able to vote another Democratic elector. The congressman there is still not in danger of losing, but 2022 may be different. The district includes much of the Eastern third of the state.

The far left bluish county is around Scot's Bluff, and only shifted towards blue, Trump got 11000 and Biden 4000. That's still a lot of Democrat leaning people in ranch county. They do not care much for the federal government out there.

The two really red counties that increased Trump votes are Sherman and Wheeler. They have populations of 3000 and 800. The shift is not significant, as Nebraska has 1.9 million people. The urban areas of Omaha and Lincoln have the minority population. Lancaster is still 90% white. Liberals live there because of the university and jobs related to it and the government etc. 

Demographics statewide are more difficult to count, as Hispanics are not properly counted. There is a significant number of Hispanic farm workers as well workers in meat processing and other food plants.

Courts and Elections

 

The election we just had ended up with a number of cases brought to state supreme courts and to the US Supreme Court. That court declined them. The state courts were the right place at least. States have the right to look at the election in their state, the certification of electors and so on.

The Supreme Court hinted at some rules they have about elections. They stated that states should not legislate new laws regarding elections in an election year. That may be what they think, but since there is no US law specifying how to run elections, I don't see that they could demand even that.

States have set up elections with the funds they have. Bureaucrats and temps hired to count votes run the election itself. States can give their own official a lot of latitude in situations like a pandemic. The state officials want elections to be done as fast as they can, because the politicians at the state legislature have to be seated and sworn in as well. Whether a mail in vote needs a witness and such details are up to the state.

The US Constitution

The constitution is very short. It says we should have a Supreme Court, and that it should deal with federal law and with matters between states.

The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law and equity, arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties made, or which shall be made, under their authority;--to all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls;--to all cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction;--to controversies to which the United States shall be a party;--to controversies between two or more states;--between a state and citizens of another state;--between citizens of different states;--between citizens of the same state claiming lands under grants of different states, and between a state, or the citizens thereof, and foreign states, citizens or subjects.

 In all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, and those in which a state shall be party, the Supreme Court shall have original jurisdiction. In all the other cases before mentioned, the Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, with such exceptions, and under such regulations as the Congress shall make.

 The trial of all crimes, except in cases of impeachment, shall be by jury; and such trial shall be held in the state where the said crimes shall have been committed; but when not committed within any state, the trial shall be at such place or places as the Congress may by law have directed.

And that is all it says. There is no role given to the Supreme Court dealing with any election. There are amendments to the constitution and various cases that were brought to the court. This catalog of decisions becomes case law. According to case law, for example, the court decided the Second Amendment applies to citizens. It is a single line, and it does indeed say the thing about well organized militias. To me it appears to deal with state militias. The carrying of guns, or the permission to do so, was at the time a state internal matter. people in the 1700s and 1800s did not think it was a federal matter.

Recent rulings on campaign finance had the court allow unlimited spending on advertising for a candidate, based on free speech guaranteed by the First Amendment.

Bush vs Gore

The supreme court interfered here. They decided to stop a recount of certain counties based on "equal protection." They were considering the votes of those whose ballots were not recounted. There was also a time issue. They wanted the Electoral College (not part of the constitution, only electors are mentioned) to meet at the normal time.

If Florida had not got the recount (ordered first by state courts, properly) finished, they had options. The constitution says states decide about electors. The governor and legislature could set up a vote on who won. The majority party would then get to claim the electors for their party. This is an acceptable solution and the Supreme Court should not have been able to stop that.

The Supreme Court clearly did not want the election to go to the house and senate. Who would have won then? Probably Bush. This has happened three times, and would happen every time there are three candidates and a winner is not found. The Electoral College is in place just for such situations. Normally the least hated of the three candidates is picked by the electors by however many rounds of voting it takes.

FBI and The Police

The FBI is a federal agency. It deals with federal crimes. Those do not include voting fraud. The voting machines are property of the states. If a foreign power tried to hack voting machines or elections, the FBI would need state permission to investigate it. If multiple states were involved, it might be easier. 

The police, which some people think are to be defunded or reorganized, belong to the states. The federal government can only deal with the police using funding they direct yearly to law enforcement. What the police do is none of the business of Congress. They can cooperate with the FBI, which takes over in certain cases, such as kidnappings. The federal forces can also deal with guns, as with the ATF. Taking over a National Wildlife Refuge, as happened in Oregon, is also a federal case.

How Much trump are we here? It seems about 55%

The 2020 election and the individual states

In the prairie, and the high plains, the low population states like North Dakota and Wyoming went wildly for Trump:

Then going Eastward, Trump falls to the 50s in Nebraska and Iowa:

Iowa was no more Trump backing than Ohio this time. If you were to look at counties in those states, you would see that the ones that contain medium size cities went for Biden. In fact Omaha gave one electoral point to Biden. I live in a county that went 50/50 for Trump/Hillary, now going slightly Better, 53% Biden. Out here people seem to not care for the federal government. Especially rural people see the state take care of most things. What do we need the feds for? A US highway or Interstate goes nearby. Some of these states send more money in to the government than they get back. Property taxes are not popular either, and there is endless debate on how to raise revenue for the state. It went badly for Oklahoma when they kept lowering the taxation on oil and gas drilling. (See Rachel Maddow's Blowout book). Texas gave 52% to Trump, Oklahoma much more.

So going South, Trump support goes up to that 65%, higher than in Texas. Comparing to a state in between, Kansas is much like Nebraska, but is going in the Democrat direction. It's urban population is growing. Though Democrats did poorly overall, and did not gain any congressmen in the plains states.

Missouri is similar to its neighbor Kansas, clearly still in Republican country. It is only when you have a really big city like Chicago that the Democrats win over Republicans.

Notes on 2020 election in general, support for Democrats and GOP

The election was on Trump in general, but the red states prevailed in keeping the senators and no major changes took place, outside of the Georgia senate races to come in January.

The Trump supporters were a hard core 40%, another 40% strongly hate Trump. Voters who vote Republican only amount to 40% as there is a large block of independents. Therefore Trump disapproval has been steadily over 50%, and it was 55% in July for various reasons. Black Lives Matter and the coronavirus effort have been the main drivers. Yet, turnout did not reflect the 55% to 42% approval to disapproval. The election was decided by 5.3 million voters. This only amounts to a mere 3.5% of the ones that showed up to vote. Many people voted for Trump even if they disapprove of his handling of the presidency. One can take this in many ways. There is a group that actually think government (and the president) should do not much. Even in a pandemic. Capitalism will solve everything.

Turnout is poor, normally, in the younger voters. Many voters past age 50 are conservative. In this election, young people and African Americans did turn up to vote. But the excitement was all on getting rid of Trump, and ten days after the election he is still getting all the attention. The young folks do not seem to have much effect on the party machine, the grip of Republicans on battleground states and any future direction of the country. Democrats lacked a strong message for change. The battle between the middle of the road Biden supporters and the Sanders AOC wing is still ongoing. It seems we are addressing healthcare and social issues in baby steps. And the reform in police that people were expecting can only happen with co-operation at the state level.

To Win Elections, You Have To Be Positive

The interaction between a voter and a candidate, such as Trump, is described by a Guardian journalist as a bond. One such voter had a bond with Obama as well, but to her mind, he did not deliver the change for blacks that he promised.

 I won't post pictures of cheering Trump voters, you know what they look like. They all have that bond, and they bond to each other as well. But they would not be there at those airports cheering if there was not hope. They have a chance, now still quite real. I won't get into the technicalities of vote counting and the legal angles. 

You have to keep an overall positive attitude, even as you say rude things and even lies about your opponent. You are going to give them jobs, whereas your opponent is merely going to raise minimum wage and maybe give the people some handouts.

Trump has been making all kinds of threats about disappearing suburbs, crumbling Democrat cities and so on. It goes on forever. He'll also give you shower heads with plenty of water and toilets that flush your poop in one flush.

The attack ads against Trump, cleverly, come from Republicans, the Lincoln project. Attack ads spoken by the actual opponent generally do not work.

Trump has a problem. We have a Pandemic, and he did nothing much in the first months, when federal rules could have accomplished a lot. We never had proper quarantine for air travel arrivals from China and Europe. All American citizens were brought home and "quarantine if you can."

But here we are in October and Trump is packing rallies with mostly unmasked fans. Is it dangerous? Ask Herman Cain. He died after attending a rally in spring. But those times are forgotten. And we have no contact tracing. The pandemic is still going to be with us for a year or so. Trump has tried to downplay it. He can only ignore it. The only positive we remember now is that Trump was positive for the virus. Biden was "hiding in his basement," as they say. Or at least wearing a mask.

The Trump voter is likely to survive, and not be aware of anyone getting sick at the rally. Voters vote by gut feel. There is no logic applied to any of this by the Trump 40% base. They do not feel Biden could ever represent them, so the fans will stay with Trump till election at least, or till they die of COVID. But they will feel positive about Trump to the end.

The Democrat voter may be quite similar in ignoring Trump, but more aware of COVID risks. There is a lot of appeal to basic values. Trump is dividing the country by various means, but mainly by gathering all the white voters he can. The remainder, whites, liberals, foreigners, minorities are going to vote Biden. There is no new issue that could change the election at this point.

Biden can give us some feel good about even the Pandemic. He is going to fix healthcare. Having had COVID, you already have a pre-existing condition. No Trump plan is going to cover you. Even  a possible vaccine will cost something. More likely Biden will give it to you free or at low cost. Other issues that Biden talks about are equality and democracy. We are inclusive. It's a positive feel for most of us. If Biden wins, we were proven correct in our inclusiveness.

Jobs are a little trickier, and it will take a decade to convince more people to take jobs that appear form green power initiatives and even services related to that. When your Tesla dies on the road, you will need different road service. Putting up wind turbines actually is not that different from laying oil pipe line, or worse yet, tar sands pipeline. Those pipelines bring no jobs to your state, other than the occasional clean up when the pipe bursts. Wind power gives some jobs right in the area for maintenance. 

On the whole, the jobs that will recover fastest are the service jobs as we get over the pandemic.

One last thing about these voters that "bond" to candidates and vote on gut feel mostly. Their world view, whether Democrat or Republican or other, seems to consist of being optimistic about pretty much everything. They cannot have anything negative in their life. Thus there is a tendency to deny things that are obviously going the wrong way. Like climate change. They do not need to worry about these things because God will take care of it.

The simple folk gathering at the last week of campaigning are really caught up on this feeling that Trump will make things better for them, that the pandemic is over and that we don't need to do anything, in fact we should not do anything about the pandemic. The economy has to recover for them to feel better. And the only way it can recover is basically to ignore all problems (or label them long term) and recover quickly. 

I don't think we will be going to football games, concerts and all the rest anytime soon. It is quite amazing that we let these rallies go on, as they can only spread the virus. But the rallies will be over soon.

Trump will want to do rallies after he loses as well, all the way to January. He will start campaigning for the 2024 election. But he will have lost the momentum. People will realize very soon that we have to go with whatever leader we have.

The Belief in Small Government

 I addressed this once before in a column:

Rural Voters and Small Government

On CNN, they allowed a Trump supporter to write an editorial. He is a lawyer, and he actually had some work to do to strip regulation.

On the first day of the Trump administration, I joined 24 other lawyers in the White House, where we were charged with helping fulfill President Donald Trump's promises to the American people.
The President wanted to unleash American ingenuity and stimulate economic growth by rolling back burdensome and, in some cases, crippling regulations that were allowed to run amok during the Obama administration.

Read more here:

https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/24/opinions/trumps-greatest-accomplishment-deregulation-schultz/index.html

He mentions a couple trying to build in Idaho. "Mike and Chantell Sackett, in 2005, purchased two-thirds of an acre on which they planned to build a house. Shortly after they began clearing the land, the EPA issued a compliance order to stop work claiming the parcel was, in fact, a wetland and could not be developed. "

It seems a rididculous situation. However, most land is zoned locally, and the zoning boards are supposed to know how to develop land. it may be that they are corrupt, and they may be paid off by big developers to approve their areas first. That is all local politics. Almost never do you need to go to the federal level.

The federal government is quite different now from the 1770s. It collects taxes, it has complicated structure. The first presidents had no standing army, no currency, a few ships for the navy.

The modern state is complicated. The functions of the government are well explained in the Michael Lewis book:

There are millions of government employees. There is a weather bureau, law enforcement that goes across states, DEA, CDC, nuclear waste, etc. You can get an idea of the book here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifth_Risk

The employees, post office and all, report to cabinet secretaries. Congress has passed laws funding all these departments and defining their tasks. But the cabinet is in fact not even in the constitution. The Founding Fathers did not want a strong cabinet. On the other hand, the constitution does not ban one either. The trouble is that for its continuity, the cabinet department has to have a long term mission. The President in fact does have the power to define these missions or even shut down functions. it makes a big difference who is president. If the president does not know what the weather service does, he can shut it down. "After all, all the TV stations have weather. What do we need the Weather Service for?" Well, find out where the TV stations get their weather data.

There is no Libertarian Solution to a Pandemic

 

I don't have a pandemic photo this time, just your random patriot. These people with the gun rights and so on tend to be libertarian. And a good number of them voted for the Libertarian candidate before but for Trump in 2016.

Now we are nearly four years into the Trump presidency. Those people really did want Trump to put jokers in charge of departments, so that the government does as little as possible.

Mandates and wide testing, quarantines, those are not for libertarians. They will also not take a vaccination. There are no US wide measures they would agree with. Possibly they would agree to keep foreign travelers out, but that is not of any help anymore.

Now we are in a pandemic. The libertarians are in favor of opening everything. Because they can take care of themselves. That is the key word. The libertarian is not really interested in how you do or how well you survive.

The federal troops That trump sent to Seattle, those the libertarian does not care for. They do not want an authoritarian leader. So the Trump experiment went a little wrong there. But a good portion of libertarians do not live in cities, they live in rural and suburban areas where you have some property to guard and all that. So the riots and Trump gorillas are not the worst. They may vote for Trump again.

The flag I have in the picture, that is part of the libertarian mind set. They do love their idea of the country.

Why do we still have a pandemic? 150 000 have died!

We can blame the president, states, various people that had the power to sop travel and arrange proper quarantine (Hong Kong, despite little land, does that).

But jut thinking about regular people, we have some 3 million cases now. The recovered have some immunity. Some people never knew they had it. Let us say there are 10-15 million that were affected. That is not enough for herd immunity. Even with vaccinations, we have 25-30 million flu cases every year. (Another roughly equal number was vaccinated.) That gives us herd immunity, and also, flu is seasonal. Coronavirus is not.

We could look at 10 infected people. In them we have 2 older people. They are very careful and alert. They will go and get tested at the slightest symptom. The old person will likely infect their spouse, as most of them live daily under one roof. They could infect one other person, as there is some chance that one of them had contact with some close by person. They wore the mask, but other people around them did not. It probably takes two masks on TWO people to prevent infection at some 90% level.

Some 5 people of various ages are in the group. They are working people, attempting to go about their jobs. Those 5 infected 10 people before they figured out to stay home. Then there are 3 young people. They are not worried. There are less than 300 people dead in the country in the under 24 group. They did infect some 20 people, but mostly young people. If they contacted friends, they had a chance to stop most of the spread to a third person in line. So some 20 people got sick, recovered from it.

How many total got sick from our 10 people? More than 10. Also those passed it on. Otherwise the pandemic would count fewer and fewer new cases day by day.

Our Failure At Social Distancing

Back in April, most of us understood the rules: stay home, avoid crowds, wear a mask if you have one.

Since a lot of businesses closed for several weeks, people stayed home, did outdoor recreation, watched TV and followed the Internet. With the few choices of activity, that worked very well. We all understood and followed the rules quite well for a month. We all did, Biden and Trump supporters all in the same boat then.

It's now failing, because people are interacting normally. They have started group activities, and this may include a number of groups for you, not just the family or close friends. People also started wearing the masks and then believing they are safe. They are not. If a senior walks into a grocery store, and if there is an infected person inside, you are still at risk. If that person is wearing a mask and you are wearing a mask, and you start talking to them, the mask offers some protection, but you are still at risk. The mask also prevents you from playing with your mouth and nose while you are in the store. BUT, you still want to shop as fast as you can. Don't read product labels, you can read them at home and make a note on that product for later shopping.

I wear a mask outdoors when I expect to run into a few more people. It's not because I feel at risk, it is more due to the fact that I am discouraging strangers from talking to me. I avoid eye contact.

People with teenagers have gotten them out of the house. They are doing a lot of sports and similar activities. The risk is low. We have less than 160 deaths so far among people 15-24 in the USA. The documented cases in that group are about 14 000. However, they will still get sick and bring the disease home to you.

There is not a lot of politics involved, but the Trump supporters that deny science, hate rules etc. are obviously the worst violators of the rules. The Black Lives activities produced some crowds outdoors as well. But even in that group (blacks in cities), you are more likely to get sick at church than outdoors.

Some ethnic groups are more touchy feely. It will be difficult to adjust to not doing all that for a full year.

The masks are of use, but the people are having a hard time incorporating social distancing to their lives. As long as they do this, and the great majority goes to work (work indoors), we are not going to get past this pandemic. My prediction is that is will flatten slightly from the strange July peak, but we will be in the much the  situation a year from now.

New election theme for Trump voters: No masks

Even though it's been shown that masks help stop the spread coronavirus, especially if the infected person wears it, the people are mad. These people will not believe the virus is anything serious, until they themselves are sick.

You can find the video under that name in Youtube, but the school board meeting had to be postponed due to them.

All this is very consistent with Trump voters: deny science, deny global warming, do not get vaccinated. Why? Because the Federal Government is behind it, and somewhere in there is buried a conspiracy, the real purpose being the manipulation of MAGA-hat wearing Americans.

This cannot end well, and my prediction is that large numbers of people in red states, smaller towns and the South will insist on ignoring the pandemic and a good many will survive to vote for Trump. It will be a very divided election, red states going very red, blue states very blue. The other issues in the election will be buried under all this.

With people evicted from rental housing, others losing the exta 600 dollars per month income and those working with the sick making a strong statement (watch MSNBC, CNN) nightly, the fate of battleground states likely will go slightly blue. I predict Trump will not win any rust belt states.

The election will be close, states will have to do recounts, and Trump will not give up. He will only leave kicking and screaming.

Donald Trump

Presidents, as well as other famous people, used to get a small entry in these one volume encyclopedias that used to be popular when we still had books. Here is Nixon:

I've been having some fun with Trump humor books, finally. I'm optimistic about the November election.

So we are now ready to write one of the "encyclopedia entries" for Trump. Mostly factual. Trump himself has almost no sense of humor, but there is a comical twist to the whole affair from 2016 on. Going in, Trump and fellow libertarians wanted to make a point: we don't need your government regulation and all those emergency functions. We can figure it out on our own. Here we are in 2020, and we do need the government in our current mess.

Donald Trump, 1946-2021, 45th President of the United States

Donald Trump was a reality TV-host and billionaire, who also had a line of failing casinos. His real estate business was run by professionals, Trump was rarely involved in anything but meeting leaders of countries and getting his name in big letters on the hotel. He was basically a brand, sold to anyone he cared to be involved with.

Before we launch into Trump, let us note that much of his support was from voters who hated "the government telling me what to do." This applied to farmers, property owners, mines, the oil industry. After we got Trump, he launched immediately into harassing women and liberals with executive orders. Defund Planned Parenthood etc. A different type of government intrusion. A friend reported going to get a hair cut in the summer of 2020. A male customer was not happy having to wear a face mask. "I don't like the government telling me what to do with my body." The hair cutter (woman) responded: You are lucky you don't have a uterus.

Trump took it upon himself to destroy the legacy of Barack Obama, including the healthcare plan still in use by tens of millions who do not have work related insurance. Trump resented a black man using presidential powers and making a fool of Trump at a correspondents' dinner. Trump had to run for president.

So it was that he also landed in the campaign when a lot of white working class folks had lost their factory and mining jobs. Catching just 100 000 of these people in the right states, Trump convinced them that foreigners, Democrats and the Deep State were at fault. It was a bad time for many, so someone had to be at fault! Trump then captured enough votes in the antiquated electoral college to win the election, as it was. Perhaps Russia and an army of internet trolls helped.

Trump proceeded to go directly into his America First program. He fashioned himself an autocrat. We will build a wall with Mexico. Trump did not realize how the federal government works, or even the presidency. He also did not want it to work, as far as government agencies go. They merely slow down enterprise and give money away to...liberals and the poor. But fortunately for us he failed in many ambitious projects, as he did not work well with congress and really did not understand funding. At first, he seemed to operate only with executive orders, blocking visas from foreigners, in a list of countries that seemed to all be Muslim countries. Except of course Saudi Arabia. We all had to witness a strange ritual of Trump and Saudi royalty with a strange glowing globe. It was a lesson to us all in just how wide the powers of a US president are. Obama tried some of the same, with severe criticism from the right.

The foreigners actually continued to come. Some had lived in Europe before. It turns out we do not have enough college educated people from the US in many fields, from Silicon Valley to the health care industry to engineers to doctors.

Congress two years later changed enough to slow him down even more. Through his four years, Trump did learn that the court system was as difficult for him now as it was when he was just a billionaire. Careful manipulation of courts would need to be put in. "Get me someone who can fix this." It did not help any that Trump attempted to make deals with foreign governments with no state department team involved. Some of these deals benefited Trump politically and personally and were seen as illegal by many.

Trump decided foreign countries were bad for America, aside from Russia.  Also, international agencies were bad. He liked to pull out of everything and cancel anything that Obama signed. He pulled out of climate agreements, WHO and would have destroyed NATO in his second term.

The simple-minded folk who voted for him ( see Just How Stupid Are We? by Rick Shenkman) were in the dark for most of the four years of Trump's only term, never realizing they paid for tariffs Trump placed on goods from China that they buy at Wal Mart. Another thing that Trump was very successful at was interpreting science to his "base." They had been trained by Foxnews and Alex Jones to be suspicious of science. Trump was just the man to explain that coronavirus was nothing really bad, it's like the flu. And you don't have to believe in global warming anymore. Because it's still cold in the winter.

Trump is telling the same stories about Democrats (abortion, Biden etc.) for the fifth year in a row. They still pile in to listen to him. Even with coronavirus in the arenas. Just seconds ago he rambled on to talk about Brazil and the virus and going "herd" (herd immunity) after rambling about stock markets. And Obama is still "giving Iran 150 billion dollars." It was the Iranians' own money frozen in bank accounts.

Almost a year of the Trump "presidency" was wasted chasing real or concocted evidence in Ukraine against Joe Biden and his son Hunter. He was impeached by the House for the attempted quid pro quo (holding off aid to Ukraine for weeks).

Trump was briefly shaken by this disloyalty by his own congress, but finally saved by his Senate where red states still hold power. And things that he failed at always nagged him, even after the bluster in his Tweets about "I won." So he would sick his most skillful and also most crooked Attorney General Bill Barr on assorted enemies, firing officials and judges left and right. Barr never acted for the US, he was always just Trump's survival machine. Trump also had many loose ends in his private matters. The story for four years was that a sitting president could not be taken to court.

The stunts that Trump pulled to stay in power are too numerous to list. Other stunts were purely election tricks. Concerned that statues were pulled down and federal buildings were vandalized, Trump sent unspecified federal troops to cities. The number of troops was too small to achieve "law and order" as he stated, but did indeed provoke crowds to more violence and clashes with Trump and Barr provided troops. Trump immediately went to claim that the "far left" was taking over the country. In truth, all cities had plenty of troops to keep order and arrest the worst offenders. Trump had no legal right to send federal troops to do policing. Even the National Guard, when called to disasters, does not arrest people.

Fortunately for the US, the voters drawn to Trump in 2016 and 2018 were not as dominant in 2020 by election time. Black Live Matter protests brought in a lot of black and Democrats voters who somehow forgot to vote in 2016. And the Trump followers did not care for any Republicans after him trying to cash in on this populist movement. They failed to act dumb and regular while speaking, and appeared pretty much like the politicians that they were.

The election was coming up and Trump was faced with both angry voters and a pandemic. Things did not look good, though denial worked for the 40% that never left Trump: It was a Chinese virus. With bad polling, Trump got his Republican support at state level going at a thing they are usually good at: vote suppression and even fraud. Trump had a brilliant idea: The 40% like me, there are 50-60% that hate me (Trump word: Never Trumpers). Let us stop them voting so we can get their block down to 40%.

The above is not far from the truth. Trump supporters have 40 plus percentage of the vote. Trump haters about the same. A large number is now independent, and the Democrats do in fact have more registered voters than the GOP. The trouble is that Democrats are in big cities. It does not gain you anything to get 62% of the vote instead of 52%. You still win that district.

In November we were done with Trump, though he actually caused a lot of trouble for months after. But he was a one time phenomenon, he was not coming back. The people would want him, not some Cruz type of politician made to be like Trump, if 2024 were to happen.

We were all sitting on the edge of our seats in January. I believe the coup that Trump supporters tried when the electoral votes were counted had a purpose. It was not likely to change the count, but since Pence now became a nevertrumper, the president wanted him punished in some manner. Tens of millions of Americans followed the situation daily, hoping that plane would go to Mar a Lago as soon as possible, taking Trump away. It was even more so among people who followed Trump on Twitter, as it was possible to gauge his activity there daily. Then he was banned.

In June of 2021 Trump choked on a chicken nugget at his Mar-a-Lago resort. Secret service failed to dislodge it, when called in to check on him 20 minutes later. He is buried at Mar-a-Lago.

The chicken nugget incident ended the claims by Trump that he won the 2020 election. Vice President Pence also gave up any claim to the presidency at that point.

End Note:

Here we are in 2021. Donald Trump will still be a force in the 2022 election, so he can get revenge on those Republicans and states that did not back him. If trump survives in politics to 2024 and does get onto the primaries, it will be a big mess. Also, two aging men running may results in some health issues for at least one candidate. Trump is obese, so we can only hope that will stop him at some point.

The Great Revolt: Great Fiction

I was at the book store, where I am now only stopping by every two weeks. Not that it has many clients. I was sick of staring at e-books, so I got something on paper.

Well, don't buy that book. I was barely able to get anything new out of it as far as the mind of the Trump voter. And the revolt itself, well, it really did not materialize. There are several chapters theorizing on the Trump revolution, and even a permanent change in politics, between the people profile chapters.

The people are still angry, and they will vote for Trump. But their actions merely resulted in a populist president. Who has not delivered much to their rust belt. The book gives some useful back ground on the rust belt towns and cities. The economy has changed. The union jobs are not there anymore. But you can read all about that in a book that is not politically slanted:

JANESVILLE

The thing about the economy is, the US president does not have the power to stop manufacturing jobs going abroad. In a bad economy, the president can bail out industries to survive another few years and to even succeed in a good economy. Both Bush and Obama dealt with that, Obama the better.

The old people (yes, 70s mostly) interviewed are of the same mold:
1 not interested in politics
2 hard workers
3 watch Foxnews for info
4 mostly working class roots
5 they all voted by gut feel and dislike nearly all politicians
6 a smaller set are NRA people
7 one phrase turned many of them: drain the swamp
8 a good portion were finally converted at a Trump rally

There is plenty of theorizing from the authors about these communities, the role of Democrats and of unions. But there is not one person interviewed in the book who makes a sensible argument to prove that the Democrats were at fault for this. Someone or something caused the downfall of the rust belt. I would look to the 1% as the decision makers there.

Was it regulation then, that closed mines? There has not even been an environmental reason for the downfall of coal. It just is not the thing anymore. There is plenty of coal for electricity generation in Wyoming for instance, and fossil fuels have gone elsewhere with fracking. Just brought this up as a possible topic to cover. But no, it is mainly a discussion of disingenuous Hillary and honest "says what he means" Trump. A few times there is a mention of Hillary's lack of a plan. That is actually true, she had nothing new to add, just continue the Obama route. But Hillary is basically a politician, who bends her views with the times to get her party's support. Her personal beliefs may be very close to what she says. However, her calculated way of speaking comes off as dishonest.

Trump on the other hand, I believe, has no opinion on most matters. He just picks on the "vibes" of whatever group he sees as supporting. It is pure acting, a reality TV show. It is difficult to believe the Trump voters continue to believe him genuine. One election maybe, but three years?

Very few of them really understand how the federal government works, or the presidency. The general idea of a "good president" to them is one who completely disregards foreign leaders. Many still believe Trump was taxing china when Trump raised tariffs.

On page 84, a woman named Hutchins, one of the Rough Rebounders, as the authors call them, recites anti Obama text right out of Foxnews: "Oh my god, the end of this can't come soon enough. He keeps doing damage. He keeps doing irreparable damage to our country, financially. We were just out of control and everybody started expecting everything can be free."

You get the idea. There was nothing wrong with the Obama economy. Now we are in a recession. yes, jobs were going from coal and manufacture to service, But that is what they are still doing under Trump.

I had some sympathy for the Ohio pastor that did not hate Obama, but his wife did. There of course the "liberals had gone too far" and provided gay marriage and included birth control in health care. Really? My immoral behavior prevents your religious liberty?

There are relatively few people in the book that required much from the state, except that well over half of those interviewed are on Medicare. The government they hate so much (and Washington) is in fact taking care of them. Republicans have not ended social security yet.

The people in the book are retired, or running a shop or a service. I can imagine being in one of their shops and relating to them on that level. But I really could not have an intelligent discussion with any of them about politics. Reality will hit them eventually. But because of the delay in effects any president has, they will not understand what part was caused by Trump and what by his follower.

I am relieved, though, that many of these people are not true Republicans (though there is some fiddling here with that, many people claimed in the book to have been former Democrats were in fact always Republicans). Many are disinterested in politics, so once this outsider and "populist" is gone, they will not vote again.

I have only read half the book, so there may be some editing to this post as I struggle to the end. OK, the last three of four chapters were just propaganda, no interviews.

The book does deserve some credit in clearly listing the counties that flipped to Trump. It was in fact a Trump phenomenon. The long term drift to the right in the middle of the country is of course an equally strong factor. These states had been sort of DRIVEN to the right by grassroots activism and gerrymandering, such as the case of Kansas:

What's The Matter With Kansas?

Policy Schmolicy! It's all about Trump

There are issues in the election, and Trump has taken the riots to mean he needs to push for Law and Order. The wall with Mexico was getting old anyway. So there are policy issues going into the election. Black lives do matter, and black turnout will be almost the same as 2008. But still, this is a Trump election.

It should be obvious by now that policy takes a back seat to personality. Trump voters vote by gut feel. They may be racist, they may be sick of Federal Government, but these are not people that analyze politics well. The general principles of Trump are good enough for them. Any details of politics they hear are at the Foxnews level. They are following politics more for the entertainment value. These national politics really do not seem to affect them much. Local politics is closer to their heart. Since they are all white voters, the hard line law and order slogan works for them. And black lives do not matter, nor do people in cities. Rural poverty and oxycontin did matter. Trump has done very little about those either. At least he has not prevented opiate crisis actions.

One of these white males that got Trump in is my dentist. He really hates politicians (even his Republicans, he only tolerates those) and does not see the need for them. There is a group of voters whose only goal is to get as much of our tax money back to state. They see the state senators, who have jobs or are retired, as ideal politicians. They don't cost much!

Trump himself has no real opinions on many matters, but he does seem to be in tune with his voters to pick up on opportunities. He does take some news item like the riots and squeeze the most out of it to get support from the Foxnews type of media. "Socialism" and all that is in the news again. But Trump is doing in fact all he can to get re-elected. He cannot change course. His entire presidency has been a type of game show character. He knows very well if he now strays from this and becomes an accomplished Republican, for example, his fans will no longer identify with him. Whether planned or by gut feel, he has kept true to the created character President Trump.

Black lives matter vs. Trump and his followers

There's just been a lot going on, with our coronavirus social distancing and then an event, a rather small event as far as abuse of blacks and police brutality goes (Rodney King anyone, Watts riots?*). This thing has been going on for decades, and I don't even know what the solution would be. But the reason this blew up so fast was the video, and social media.

It could have been a protest, nationwide, left to mayors to handle. The states also have national guard units.

But Trump could not leave it alone. Using the special situation of Washington DC not being a state and screaming "LAW AND ORDER" in his tweets, he had Bill Barr bring in special troops.

From various federal agencies in uniforms suitable for riots, they had no credentials, no names, no insignia. As Rachel Maddow pointed out, we must be able to identify which law enforcement unit abused us. It is a right that goes beyond local law, but you would sue your city.

On top of this, assorted false actors stepped in to make a bigger mess. The looters and rioters may have been city folk, but outsiders did interfere. But they were not so called "antifa," which in fact does not even exist. People protesting against white supremacists were simply labeled that, but they are not in any way organized.

So how do these things organize then? We have social media, where people can announce their peaceful or other protests ahead of time. Then people appear. I would certainly be mad if I saw George Floyd executed in a phone video clip, and if I were black I probably would have been out there.

As far as social media goes, be critical. Certainly this time the video showed the truth, but in general, things like a guy running a Youtube channel are not reliable. Some of those guys get paid for spreading fake stories.

I have protested Trump, climate change, our rights etc. many times. But it was probably best I did not go out. Even in our small city there was looting, damage and people injured. I did not want to be the 70-year old man that the police in Buffalo knocked over. Our mayor, though aware of the black community and normally in tune with how things are, did not realize she caused a bit more anger and damage by imposing a curfew on a Friday night. Our police were able to handle the situation as far as manpower, so no curfew was going to be needed. And it would not have stopped people being outside.

So, what can be done? Not much, federally. Congress cannot require states to retrain their police, it's a state matter. They can withhold federal funding for other things, until the states reform. Bail is an outdated system, and poor people that might not get any jail time for their more minor crimes may sit in jail until their case comes up. I believe some bigger cities have scrapped this for the duration of our coronavirus pandemic. Jails full of people is not going to help us.

*Watts riots:
(WIKI)
On August 11, 1965, Marquette Frye, an African-American motorist on parole for robbery, was pulled over for reckless driving. A minor roadside argument broke out, which then escalated into a fight with police.[2] Community members reported that the police had hurt a pregnant woman, and six days of civil unrest followed.[3] Nearly 14,000 members of the California Army National Guard [4] helped suppress the disturbance, which resulted in 34 deaths[5] and over $40 million in property damage.[6] It was the city's worst unrest until the Rodney King riots of 1992.

Coronavirus Long Term Guessing and Day To Day Practice

We have a president who wants to meddle in decisions by healthcare professionals, who also completely disregarded our health and even our insurance for 3 years. Now he meddles like an amateur. The only thing I have to note there is that GOVERNMENT, the one he and libertarians want to whittle down to nothing, is the only thing that is helping you at the moment. It could also have been involved in vaccines (yes, we could have had one after SARS already, and this new one would be a variant of it) and quarantine much earlier.

In the case of Trump himself, he gets tested every day, and people he meets are all tested first. So he is fine example of elitism, even when he tells meat packers to go back to work.

But let us put that aside for the moment, as we do have a pandemic to deal with, and we are doing as well as we can at the state level. Yet, there are problems, still. The bump may have been there already for many states, but because of our social distancing, it is going down very slowly because in many states the infected are still only at the 1-2% of the population level.

WHAT IS THE THREAT TO YOU? TO ME?

Suppose you want to go to work, and just get on with it. You might work in a food processing plant and up to half of you there might get it. Then it would be easier from that point on, as some will recover and come back to work and keep the place running. The problem would come if new temporary workers are brought in. They would get sick, as the whole group has  very few, maybe 1%, that already had it without knowing it. They will all get sick now. Say you have 500 people in your plant and you are all 45-65 years of age. Five of you will die. The rest may have complicated recovery, but a year from now 90% of you would still be at your job.

WHAT ABOUT ME?

I may well have those 500 workers or even more living in my city, as we have those plants, at least nearby. Suppose you all have the illness, and there are 2000 of you. You pass it to all family members and there are now 10 000 sick in my city. That seems a lot, but if you know to stay home, there might only be 1000 of you at stores and outdoors, sick but not aware of it yet. Some may recover soon and never see a doctor. That puts another 1000 on our streets and stores. If I meet one of those people, I am in trouble. My age group has 2-3% deaths in those that get the disease. Not a fun thought. But still only maybe 3 times worse than the working age group. If I minimize my shopping to food, car care, essential things, I do not need to have contact with other people. I can cut my hair for a year if I have to. My contact with outsiders can be as little as 1-2 hours a week inside stores. That is my greatest risk. Outdoors, the risk is something much less, maybe ten times less.

RISKS WITH TRAVEL

For you and me, the retiree, travel is a risk. If you can drive a day and stay with friends at the destination, you are OK. Hotels, airports, airplanes, not so good.

WORLDWIDE

Worldwide, a million or more people will die. it will be a big challenge to healthcare, and a cost. They will try to save as many as they can, otherwise several million will die. Each year some 500 000 die of flu. Much of that could have been prevented by vaccine, but there are other issues with old people, such as pneumonia.  One reason is reduced lung capacity, but also the immune system does not work as well with older people.

The medical fields have done a great job with some viruses, but these viruses such as coronavirus and flu, where there is mixing between species, are always going to be a problem. The disease is then called zoonotic. There is a pool of animals out there ready to deliver a virus back to us after the viruses from animals mix parts and get a variety that then jumps back to humans. Other diseases, such as polio, do not have a pool of virus in animals, so it can be controlled in humans better.

MASKS

There is no excuse for the governments not to have started production of n95 masks. They are not that hard to make.

Quarantine

This time I have a simple message: If you are over 50, stay at home if you can. If you get cabin fever, go outdoors. You can even drive somewhere. If you run out of gas, go to the least busy gas station, wipe hands with sanitizer after fill up. Any business you need to do, try a drive through one. Use a credit card.

Now, that was easy. Almost nobody argues against quarantine, not even Trump after a few weeks. Only people like Nunes are acting like idiots. Most governors are reacting.

We are not going to shut down businesses, and people who do not work with services but make or reseach products have to go to work. And they are not even in danger, if they are under 50.

0.4% of Coronavirus deaths in 2020 in the US (and Europe) have been in people under 50. If they died, mostly they had a medical condition.

(There is at least one in their 40s and two in their 50s among the first 60 in US)
However, if you can quarantine yourself, please do! You are doing it for us who are over 50, even more for us who are over 60. I am in a medium size city that has no coronavirus cases. There is a small number in the state, but they are in the county that has the major airport. I am not likely to meet any infectious person in the next few weeks, if I do not travel by air. We took a trip by car for 6 hours and spent a weekend in a big city. I think it had less than 5 cases then. We took a risk. Many others would not take that risk. It's been 10 days, so it is unlikely I caught even the flu there.

MISIFORMATION: There is a lot of misinformation out there regarding the virus. There is even bad infromation from "experts" on practices to avoid the virus. The recommendations are not awful, but THEY MAY GIVE YOU A FALSE SENSE OF SECURITY, if you practice them.

Stay home, move outdoors, try to get a new routine during our pandemic weeks and months. I will probably vote in the primary, but as I will eventually vote for our party, it is not essential to go. (Turns out we can have a mail in primary).

Federal Rights and State Rights and our two parties

Our states have been labeled red and blue by the last election.

There are common ideas that unite both parties, but the future trends in the Republican party are difficult to predict. On the whole, they have favored state rights, as then the Republicans can gerrymander and rule all they will, passing abortion related laws that try to go around the spirit of the law, banning the clinics on various technical grounds.

The Republican party has been known to hang on to power by whatever means. They are losing people as the country becomes more a group of more multicultural, tolerant people. So we do not know where their judges will take us as far as state and federal rules go. They will resist forever approving marijuana on a nation wide scale. But you have to go case by case,

Suppose the courts overrule Roe vs Wade. By the constitution that would then fall to states to decide. We would have abortion states and non-abortion states. States would try to block travel for abortion. But they could then come back and pass a new law. "In this case" the federal government can decide what to do. They will pass laws to ban abortion at say 3 weeks initially, then all abortions.

The politicians and judges will then have a track record of backing states on some issues, controlling them on others.

Draining The Swamp

Draining the swamp has been used in politics since 1900. Victor L. Berger, a social democrat, used it in the US in the progerssive era.

It can basically mean anything corrupt or, in the era of Trump, excessive government oversight.

Trump came with that message and has not done anything about corruption, lobbyists, gifts to giant corporations etc. He has cut down on government meddling in land use and such. He has the power to do that, as most of the departments of government report to him, not congress. If congress has ear marked funds for certain departments and causes, say firefighting in the forests of the West, Trump cannot cancel that. The Pentagon is largely independent, but Trump has manipulated that too. But the message was strong in 2016, and especially libertarians started to listen to Trump. It helped him get the outsider and reformer (LOL!) label.

Moving on from Trump, we have Sanders and Warren to look into. The swamp was a different thing for them, mainly the corruption brought in by lobbyists. Sanders and Trump both campaigned as outsiders. It works for Sanders, who certainly has been far left compared to Biden and Obama. Obama had to bail out the auto industry and the home loans industry. Yet he did not put in place any controls of Wall Street. He got us healthcare and "no pre-existing conditons" but really, the controls on the health insurance industry were minimal. Obamacare definitely included the industry in talks, even if Republicans did not participate.

Elizabeth Warren has focused on family and therefore healthcare and bankruptcy. She wants consumer protections in banking. Her policy there is not even new. It was in place from 1930s up to Reagan.  Reagan started the "freedom" movement and the labeling of government as merely a hindrance. Now we have what we have. A good portion of us are slaves to huge corporations as workers and as consumers.

There is another aspect to swamps: Corporations have repurposed government as a source of income. First you use politics to explain that the government does some thing badly and has poor managers. You then have to contract everything to businesses that do know this stuff. Including war (Blackwawter et al) for war. See

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_military_company

The whole scope of private corporations taking over public works is covered in a recent book. I will let you look up details on that yourself.

Trump Impeachment

In 1949 the German Republic got its current constitution. It was redone partly in 1990 to add East Germany. Our Constitution is from the 1700s. It has some useful amendments, but amendments have not been passed for years. It is now creaking at the seams. Thanks Mr Trump for bringing this matter to focus and our attention.

Trump is being impeached, and the separation of powers is failing. With one party in control, it will be impossible to impeach from now on. It was before, and Nixon for sure would have been impeached if he had not resigned.

We are now going through a week long show trial. The republicans are bored. It was clear from the first vote that no evidence will be presented. The kind that would have legal standing in regular court. No witnesses for sure.

The defense of the Trump legal team has been lame. None of that matters. We know the final vote: 53/47 to not remove Trump. It is going to be a small majority, but anything else would actually have an effect on Trump. Who is easily annoyed, but never in such a major way. I guess I am still pleased at all the grief it has brought him.

The other part of the current stagnation in politics has to do with the Electoral College, obviously. We may see some other parties come along, and factions pushing the Democrats in all kinds of directions. But the Republican party is losing. It is going to hang on to the Senate, possibly for a decade or more, but still just barely. The trend, whether to the left or not, is away from the Republicans. They only represent white people and a few odd groups, such as Indians, whom Trump has managed to romance for one or two elections. In any case, the Republican party was taken to where they are now by the Tea party and a final push by Trump into this racist corner. They will have a hard time coming out of there.

Democrats will veer a bit to the center, and become more business friendly. Global warming will be put aside, but things like abortion and other liberal issues with minorities will go more and more "liberal," whatever that still means.

Old Habits Not Easily Given Up

This is going to be the Greta Thunberg thing again, if you want to know where this is going. But let's start with a more local thing. We bought a car, a Toyota, for two retirees to drive.

It runs on gas. There might be some hybrid cars or plug ins that are in our price range. But we actually drive 8 hour drives at times. The plug in would not work. We need the rack on top and a trailer hitch in the back for a bike rack. And I have to be able to sit in the driver's seat. This one is just barely my size. But I have no other needs than getting to nearby state parks and nature areas. So this is what we bought. It was a down size from a bigger SUV we had for 13 years.

So we didn't change very much, though we will waste a little less gas with this. Moving on to houses:

That is not our house, but is similar. We have more lawn and trees. We live in a single family home with a heat pump. I always prefer gas heat, as it is made from propane and other gases that have less of a carbon footprint than plain old coal. We are now essentially heating with coal, as the electricity is made with that.

If we lived in a row house condo, heating costs would go down. We would give up a little privacy and would decide on common things such as roof work at condo association meetings. If we lived in an apartment condo, the carbon footprint would be even less. Underground garages give plenty of warmth for cars and any hobbies with tools you need to do.

We have a couple of million people here in a state in the prairie. I have seen the other extreme, in a developed county, South Korea. Tens of millions live in a rather small country. It still had a lot of land left for some farming, and the cities are rather crowded. Public transportation is there, but many use taxis, as they are cheap, probably subsidized. Buildings in Cheonan, a city of 500 000 just South of Seoul on the fast train line, are from three to 20 stories tall. A typical hotel was 10 stories.

Now we get to the GIVING UP part. People are reluctant to give up things. The majority of my Democrat friends have the same cars and homes that the Republicans of the same income class do. A few single people have chosen to live in apartments near the university where they work. But they would be a rather small part of the Democrats. Some more extreme green party types are around. Some live with family in run down old houses. Despite claiming all kinds of green ideas they support (veganism, various other conservation issues, wind power) they still end up paying the same for heating the house as the average republican in the middle class. We have those, about half the city are Republicans, and many are not rich.

The November Election is Coming Up

I have people close to me getting involved with candidates and primaries. I'm looking past the primaries when we have a democratic candidate. I have a simple message:

If you are a farmer, and you make a living working hard, the Democrats will give you the exact same crop insurance, flood insurance, subsidy. You are voting the wrong candidate. In a decade or so all healthcare beyond the one doctor in town and the chiropractor will have gone to the nearest city with 50 000 people.

I realize that a blog that very few read has very little effect on people voting. But you can use my arguments on your favorite Trump voting relative. If he wins and does another four years (though the whole Trump operation is likely to collapse soon after the second term starts) you can also use it as an I told you so argument. In addition, I can use the picture above on message boards, I just give the url link to it and it appears there.

The Cult of Trump

The voters, some 40% of them being his base, voted for Trump for one reason: He is standing for white working class folks (as ironic as it is for a billionaire). He represents the white conservatives clinging to power for the last time. They can hang on to power as long as there is a GOP senate, and act on it the few times they still get a president. So that much is true, and all of them will vote for him again, regardless of his achievements. Additional voters came in with their particular conservative issues (abortion, less regulation, less stuff for poor folks in cities).

The achievements are not really provable. The jobs are there, low paying jobs. 20 plus an hour manufacture jobs are long gone for most. The stock market is hanging in there. The government itself is hanging in there, sponsored by borrowing. From China. Trump's economic enemy.

There is really nothing to do at this point. Not one of them is to be converted at this point based on science (global warming) or economics (it's all hype and borrowing).

We have only to wait to November. If  trump gets re-elected, two things will happen in four years:

1 Trump presidency collapses (he will do something even more stupid)
2 a recession