The Federal Government

The government is seen as a bunch of people out there...in DC...trying to run our lives. The Democrats are seen as elites. The Republicans also were seen as largely controlled by corporations.

This all changed with Trump. He pointed mostly to regulations. But also to the behaviors that changed on the part of MAGA supporters. The rules of the game. Now it is perfectly OK to point to foreigners as someone to reject, throw out. Even women are to return to a lesser role. MAGA voters are finally able to say just exactly what they think. All topics that they label woke and connect to the federal government. In practice it was mostly fairness in hiring that the feds carried out.

The hatred of federal government has always been there, but MAGA folk can now say they want to reduce it to basically nothing. Government is nothing but waste. Too much regulation!

To achieve this, they voted for Trump. Many showed up to vote for one line of the ballot: president. The down ballot stuff is just....polticians, issues, regular poltics. They do not care so much about that. Let my local people vote in whoever and run things in my states. Let's keep the feds out of it.

I posted a little thing at one of our congressmen's Facebook page. He is in a purple district.

I said: 

Would you like to have the "elected back 2026" award? You will need to stop Trump from repealing the ACA and Elon from cutting my SS by 30%. You and 10 others in blue districts.

Trumpster said:

hahaha your a moron

That is as eloquent as Trumpsters get.

There was some thought in the post below that:

Quit patting yourself on the back. It's time to clean up our Government and cut it down. You've had no problem spending money we didn't have. Now its time to clean house .

The congressman has a hard time. He needs to see when Trumpism is waning. At that time he can talk regular issues. He can look like supporting some benefits. But also look like a frugal Republican, the old time Republican from our state.


As far as the MAGA folk go, they will actually not learn much from the next 2 or 4 years. The government does a lot of invisible stuff for citizens. The benefits are not obvious. Think of it as the oxygen mask in the airplane. It's up there, probably. I have never seen one come down. But it will save your life if the air plane undergoes a number of dangerous events. And it can still fly you to the nearest airport.

Or you can compare the government to ecology. If you remove a species from a habitat, the effects will be seen a few steps up or down the food chain. We can't kill all mosquitos for example. The effects of the animals also relate to the vegetation. So the governmnet is like that. A complex invisible hand. Just like Capitalism is, on the "free" side.

WHAT WILL WE SEE IN 2025?

Pretty much the same as in 2016, but much worse. Michael Lewis went through the important cabinet postitions in this book in 2018. The guy that owns AccuWeather got to run the Weather Bureau. The dpartment of energy is not just about drilling. It covers nuclear reactors and nuclear waste and so on. I'm re-reading it now.

Welcome to Trump World

 

Decisions Decisions

I came to this college town and state capitol to retire. It is a good size city for culture. Compared to my native Finland, it is the size of Tampere. In the warm half of the year we can do a lot of our daily activities by bike. The city had a lot to offer.

I had been here a year, then Trump happened. Really the worst thing to happen to our state for decades. Largely an agricultural state, it has tended to be conservative, but mostly in the penny pinching sense on public spending. Abortion was an issue and the voters just fixed it to 12 weeks, forever.

I know the city has a lot of Democrats and will resist some. But as we have a GOP governor, I am not in a state that will put up much resistance to Trump acts. The states are the major tool we have to resist him.

What I am now thinking is that the state overall has gone too far into Trumpism. The voters. On one hand I am appalled at my neighbors voting for a candidate who is pretty much all about himself. What were they thinking? They cannot really like him, I tell myself. Must be that he scared them. On the other hand I realize that many of them are like Trump themselves. They have now rejected diversity. Perhaps the choice was just Trump vs Harris, but they also failed to see Trump would employ only evil people to run his four years. Musk was on stage with Trump. Musk now calls me, a retiree with 40 years contibuted to my field in America, a parasite.

In practical matters they can use a lot of low wage workers in agriculture and food industry. But that was not on their mind when they voted Trump in by 60%. In 2020 there seemed to be some hesitancy. They went 58% Trump and 39% Biden. My county went about 50/50. It was the same in 2016, 58% Trump. Harris and Biden got the same 39% in our state. Not even after the pandemic disaster did they think Democrats would have a better solution in matters where the federal government is needed and can act swiflty.

Even if my state had gone for Nikki Haley, things would have gone normally. Trump tariffs will actually ruin our soybean markets. Farming will in general require subsidies to survive.

The 2016 election can maybe be excused. They have always voted republican. Now we have Project 2025. The idea of getting rid of the administrative state is clearly there. I am guessing half of the 60% Trump supporters would know of it and approve it. That is the subject of another column. The voters do not know what the goverment does. Some of it is invisible but essential. Like FEMA.

The pandemic did nothing, people continued working in meat packing plants and dying of covid. Our governor tried to block statitics reaching the public from the counties with meat packing plants. That was not enough mismanagement to change elections, for example to 50% Trump and 50% Biden in the next election. They ignored it. "Too much regulation, masks were awful."

Rural people seem to isolate themselves and disregard a good part of poltics. Hospitals and healthcare is a state level issue. The state has failed to provide rural healthcare. They did not expect any federal aid in that. So they vote mostly on cultural values.

The Democrats have always backed the farm bill, they must know that.

Religion does come into politics strongly. I won't discuss details here.

Overall, it seems I have a very condescending view of my state's voters. It is. Not only that, Trump was the con man and they were the mark. The idea of the foreigners invading the USA is easy to convince. Just use the right video clips on Fox News. But beyond that, convincing 60% of my state that cutting taxes for billionaires will produce a good economy is quite a stretch. That takes some skill. If the election is just a casual event in their lives, that is just as bad. It should take a little more effort than making your weekly shopping list. Young males were apparently easily fooled by Trump and the likes of Joe Rogan. Here the comaprison is that they put as much thought into voting as in buying a new TV. Politics is just not part of their life. Other than watching the occasional Joe Rogan.

Just a very brief note to Democrats: if the election is with someone like Trump running, the policies are nothing. There were issues, sure, abortion and Trump's foreigners. But the Democrat needs to test out their speaking manner and approach to low information voters next time. Those voters are hard to get interested in politcs at all. But now they felt they had a complaint. Many were young enough to never have had a major inflation to deal with. Test focus groups next time. When we have a whole year to run a campaign. Now we had some 100 days.

The voting in my state is mostly based on rurals watching Fox News. Let's take a quick off topic view of the national picture:

Masses of people…young men, Latinos, wannabe libertarians, incels, Joe Rogan fans…are not interested in politics. The president is just a guy that seems to lead the country but what he does is not all that clear. Something vaguely like West Wing. So these people have to make some bond with the presidential candidate on some weak evidence. Trump dancing to YMCA, Kamala with "understand the assignment," AOC and her cheerful leading of progressive ideas. Left, right…not a big deal. They relate to the candidate the same as to an entertainer.

I have good relations with people I interact with, and I did not get the idea that I am poisoning their blood. But I really can't tolerate the fact they think newcomers would do that.

I have lived in eight states. Jobs dictated three of them. This time I have options. I relly can't afford to live on the coasts, but other options are open.

Where will we go? Medical care will be a primary factor. Our state is small. The penny pinching philosophy does not add any state level health coverage. For the poor, our governor tried to block Medicaid expansion. We forced him with a referendum (our state is not totally hopeless!). They are all national plans and the Obamacare choise is one company, if you are 60-65. I am on Medicare, which will weaken for two years at least. I would be looking at the state healthcare rules and in general the safety net they have put up. Nearby there are states with bigger populations that have better safety nets to survive the Trump II term. It will not be Missouri for sure, already tried that. 

We rather carefully chose a city we were familiar with and where we can function with one car. We have even gone to a football game several times on bikes. It will be difficult to match the plus sides of the city with another one. It should not be more "republican" than the 50%. Basically there is just one. The one where my wife and I both went to grad school. it is quite possible that our present city will return to the pre-Trump state in four years. But will the country?

America itself has offered me opportunities, and I made some major decisions right after the Carter era. I could have gone elsewhere at the latest in 1982. After that I was stuck here. The large wage disparity and divisive politics of this decade were somewhat visible. Not so clearly going to the extremes that they have. But Reagan led the way.

2024 Election

I have not got much support for my idea, but here goes. In this Internet age, we have completely lost patience. Many voters grew up with internet in most of their life. The result will be that we will have a string of presidents seving ONE TERM. Not two consecutive terms.

The media are definitely reaching voters. They knew of all the polling. States with a Democratic majority in most elections had low turnout as they knew Harris would win. California is still counting. It may be that both candidates get about 72 million votes in the end.

There were groups that seemed to react merely by gut feeling. Young black or Latino males in Michigan voted for the alpha male. Similar voters were able to vote for Biden 2020. It's easier to be the alpha male....if you are a male. And the abortion issue that should have won the election for Harris appears to have done nothing. Trump actually gained women voters. Threre the pro-life movement appears to be still quite stong.

But from those groups, abortion made little difference to white women (Guardian) :

The excitement to defeat Trump was definitely there in 2020. Looking at Pennsylvania.

Then in 2024 it was Trump that got almost the same number as Biden got in 2020. It cannot be the same 3.4 million that voted for Biden and now Trump, it just looks comical. The shift was some 100 000 voters. So even though Michigan was maybe doable for Harris (if she had had a whole year to campaign) this PA group of shifting voters was again decisive. NBC profiled Latino voters. They seemed to just want to blindly believe in a Trump economy to come. The black voters cannot be blamed, but it is odd that Biden had the huge turnout. He even won Georgia with a large percentage of black voters.

It may be noted that Harris was not just a woman but a vice president. Typically they do not do well, having sometimes spent almost eight years almost invisible to the general public.

Prediction for 2028: they will run a male governor.

From a blog, found a claim that there is a belief that Democrats do nothing...ever...for rural people:

People in big cities who can’t understand countryside anger don’t remember this experience, because this only happened in the countryside. Most people now laughing at Trump supporters for “voting against their interests” have not felt abandoned by all sides of their government yet. That must be nice.

That is largely an impression they get. Partly it is true because the very visible benefits of federal support are in cities. Not in small towns.

LOOKING FORWARD

It's one thing to think about us (Mike Johnson is out to wipe out all that remains of the New Deal, let alone Biden deals), but we also have to consider Ukraine. This may get resolved. And Putin may get some property without losing face. Trump and Vance claim the Nobel Peace Prize.

Then what? We have to fight to preserve what we have left of democracy. Then we need to think of 2028. Morning Joe was trashing the Democratic Party this morning. We have to abandon all wokism, presumably climate issues etc. Because we can't talk to the working man anymore. Well, that is all nonsense. We can keep all the policies, trans gender and all. We are a coalition. It has cat ladies and many single issue groups. No, we need a GUY. And I mentioned governors. We have one. Tim Walz will do it, he will joke and make fun of the failures of Trumpism and the frail old man that Trump will be. Or Vance running Trumpism. No wokism needs to be dumped. No need to talk about those issues so much. There are economy issues and a little more of the inclusiveness we have tried. And Walz can repeat one of Kamala's messages: Trump's party is one of hatred. We need to end that.

 Bring farmers on board. We help them as much as the GOP ever did. And..if Walz is not what the primaries want, then bring an actual Democratic Farmer on board. John Tester.

From my social media I am getting a lot of fear. Trump will do a lot of damage in two years. But as he is not in terribly good health, we will see him decline by year two. There is really nobody to take over him that has long term support. Yes, I am disappointed at the GOP since January 6th. But there is still hope. A lot of the worst will hit us this January. We will see what can be done.

It's time

 

We are going to win this. About 273-275 for Harris. Any way we can. It could even go this way.

Nov 6th:
Well, it did not go that way. PA was supposed to end up with small edge for one or the other and a recount. It did not go that way. The upper Midwest should all have gone about this way. Harris had the disadvantages of 1. being a woman 2. being a part of the Biden administration, which blue collar workers had grown to hate.

Finally, some satire from my firend Kari:

How can Trump do those things that all the Democrat presidents could not?

 As we get closer to the election more and more of the low information voters are coming out. These Elon fan boys are now Trump voters. They seem to have no idea how government works. And do not care.

Others are coming out and saying "it's not going to be so bad." After all, how can Trump do those things that all the Democrat presidents could not?

It's simple. None of the departments and none of the so called administrative state are required by the Constitution. It might be a little difficult to dismantle the Treasury. But for the most part the departments are strictly there so the president does not have to run every government function. If the DOE is not needed, then scrap it. If the EPA is bad...not even a cabinet level department...scrap it. All these things require is a presidential order. There is no budget required to eliminate a department. A building left to be auctioned off.

There are in fact laws that set up departments like the DEA. They do get funding, normally. But it is entirely up to the Trump appointed head of the EPA (could be an oil executive under Trump) whether to enforce the laws. One of the objections to environmental matters is that to enforce the rules and to sue polluters, you still have to go to court. Both sides paying the lawyers. A link to EPA laws:

https://www.epa.gov/laws-regulations/laws-and-executive-orders

If an authority over some matter comes up, the Supreme Court will rule that the federal government has no authority over this matter. It could could be the US Fish and Wildlife Service or some similar agency.

No Democrat ever proposed to scrap the federal governmnet and run a bare bones operation. Make money and run a military would be all that is required. Trump can round up the immigrants with his army if that is his plan. Use army funds to house the camps. Pull out military bases from the entire world.

The lines are getting blurry. The President can also cut funding. He cannot fund new things, but there is a way to cut spending:

“We can simply choke off the money,” Trump said in a 2023 campaign video. “For 200 years under our system of government, it was undisputed that the president had the constitutional power to stop unnecessary spending.”

His plan, known as “impoundment,” threatens to provoke a major clash over the limits of the president’s control over the budget. The Constitution gives Congress the sole authority to appropriate the federal budget, while the role of the executive branch is to dole out the money effectively. But Trump and his advisers are asserting that a president can unilaterally ignore Congress’ spending decisions and “impound” funds if he opposes them or deems them wasteful.

(From Propublica, by Molly Redden )

Voting guide

For your undecided friends and relatives. The man is not well. He is not fit to be president of any country. If he quits, you get Vance. Who is not quite human.

 

It may take some effort for them to see who Trump is. Mostly a fake.

If they are still "I just don't know about Kamala..." remind them of their duty to the country:

Finally, a word on polls from Jeff:

It seems that FOREIGNERS are indeed Trump's trump card

 He does not seem to be winning in other areas, so it makes sense to repeat the claim, from Ohio to Colorado to California.

I took a few wild guessed in the 538 polling game.

I took the view that the ones that agree to answer at all are angry about 1 migrants or 2 abortion.

You can do your own guessing here:

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/donald-trump-poll-quiz-2024/

Information overload

Why is it people are confused about issues and are often labeled low information voters? It is, I claim, because there is just too much stuff out there coming to you via the Internet.  Most of it is not factual. Compare this to the everyman on the train or even the union worker in 1900. Or compare news today to to the TV news of the 70s with Walter Cronkite. The worker read his newspaper daily cover to cover. Especially election years. He read the comics too, it took 5 minutes. 

The TV watcher got the general idea of Vietnam from Cronkite. The war was going badly.Now compare to today's Internet news consumer. There is too much. They lose interest. They are more likely to click around with sports, entertainement and everything that is not news.

Chris Hayes has a book coming out February that touches on this overload of infromation and entertainment coming to us. The people that just are not interested in elections are not going to get much further information on the two candidates. They will actually dismiss most of the news on Trump or Harris. The only decision that they will take some time with is whether to vote or not.

White Males and others...the Trump Coalition

 It was a populist movement, a cult. It lasted a good 9-10 years. Trump has almos run out of steam, though there is some bluster still left to Trump at a rally. I think Trum is going to lose. But that does not solve our problem. These voters are still there in 2028. It will be hard to pass any major reform, such as rules for the Supreme Court and any plans to take the lifetime appointment away. As well as border plans. Some plan will emerge, but the Trump folks want zero immigrant admitted. 

He captured white males. Polls list men without a college degree. This Brookings chart lists just the so called working class. Overall, the Trump support is white males, but in the working class also a good portion of women. In the middle class voters it is not that way.

There is at times a lack of interst in an election from this group regarding the issues and a candidate. You can see it for McCain, but not especially for Romney. He was as far as possible from the working class!

A website has listed the types of Trump voters we had in the 2016 election:

https://www.voterstudygroup.org/publication/the-five-types-trump-voters

I've abbreviated the groups:

1. Staunch Conservatives (not recent, the always Republicans)

2. Free Marketers (tech boys, Musk)

3. American Preservationists. The people who think there is some idea of "America" that is under attack

4. Anti-Elites (I would include some libertrians, they just hate all of the federal gov't)

5. The Disengaged. People who literally don't care about politics. (there for the show, many of them racists this time around. They showed up at Trump rallies).

In the same way that you can trust that nearly 100% of Harley Davidson owners are Trumpers, you can get the feel for certain groups gravitating toward Trump.

The big strawman that Trump created for these people to focus on is illegal aliens. They are monsters, according to Trump. Groups 1-5 are not going to argue against that.