So it’s 1-2-3, what are we VOTING FOR?
And yes, you MAY not remember how EASY it is to FORGET why you're going to the polls.
[PLEASE NOTE: You can assume that a bold emphasis within a blockquote is probably mine.]
SO IS THIS WHAT YOU’RE TRYING TO REPLACE? ... No, no, no! It’s not just the voting we want control of, it’s even more the deciding-who-wins part! We’re just trying to make the election more efficient by eliminating the chance of the wrong people accidentally winning! (The painter, by the way, created this because he was someone very committed to the integrity of American voting.) (George Caleb Bingham, about 1846, via Wikipedia / Public Domain)
“THE ECONOMY AND INFLATION ARE FAR AND AWAY THE TOP ISSUE FOR LIKELY VOTERS IN THIS FINAL STRETCH, WITH ABOUT HALF OF ALL LIKELY VOTERS (51%) SAYING THOSE WILL BE THE KEY ISSUE DETERMINING THEIR VOTE FOR CONGRESS THIS YEAR. ABORTION, THE SECOND-RANKING ISSUE, LANDS AS THE TOP CONCERN FOR 15% OF LIKELY VOTERS.”
I grabbed this from a story on CNN.com last Wednesday, which was reporting on the release that day of its own (and SSRS’s) poll on the upcoming election, the voting for which concludes this coming Tuesday. CNN continued:
Other issues tested were chosen by fewer than 10% of likely voters each, including voting rights and election integrity (9%), gun policy (7%), immigration (6%), climate change (4%) and crime (3%).
SOME QUICK NOTES CONCERNING MY MESSING AROUND WITH THE SCHEDULE AND FORMAT IN THIS ISSUE:
First off, as I mentioned last week, I generally aim for Wednesdays to publish, but this week, I’m releasing it a few days early, hoping to help those who, unlike myself, did not vote early, hopefully so they will see it before they go to the polls on Tuesday.
And that brings me to my second point, which is that, while I usually try to keep my opinionated advice to myself until the end of the column, this week, I’m cutting straight to the chase to MAKE THE CASE FOR YOU TO CONSIDER VOTING FOR DEMOCRATS — assuming you weren’t already intending to.
This is not to say I’m sure I’ll be able to talk you into it, but I do hope at least you’ll hear me out.
TO START, I ASKED GOOGLE WHAT REASONS REGISTERED VOTERS WERE GIVING FOR VOTING THIS-WAY-OR-THAT IN 2022, AND WHAT CAME UP WAS THIS NOVEMBER 3RD RELEASE FROM PEW RESEARCH:
(Wow! A rare insight into the brains of American voters!)
I have a hard time believing that the “Economy” (which I assume includes “Inflation”) is the top concern of 92% of the Republican supporters, while only 65% of Democratic supporters.
But the “economy”? Isn’t the economy doing okay? It sounds in pretty good shape, according to Deloitte Insights’ Global Weekly Economic Update:
Week of October 31, 2022
If all this is news to you, you’ve been hanging with the wrong crowd.
My own surprise is because the economy, which seems to be chugging along fairly well, is a mostly transient issue, rather than necessarily long term -- and the same goes for inflation.
If you’re having problems with this economy, you need to know that Joe Biden and the Democrats did not create whatever you think ails this economy!
It took a hit from corona, and it’s still trying to recover from that, as well as from a certain previous president who seemed to take personal offense when mask-wearing citizens took pandemic deaths more seriously than they did the economy.
But here’s another mystery, illustrated by responses in a recent New York Times / Sienna College Poll published in the October 17 New York Times, which starts with a photo showing a woman sitting on a park bench, over this caption:
“I’m shifting more towards Republican because I feel like they’re more geared towards business,” said Robin Ackerman, a 37-year-old Democrat and mortgage loan officer.
But is she right? Here’s economist Paul Krugman back in 2012, referencing then-GOP-candidate Mitt Romney:
A businessman can slash his workforce in half, produce about the same as before, and be considered a big success; an economy that does the same plunges into depression, and ends up not being able to sell its goods.
Nothing in business experience prepares one for the paradox of thrift, or even the inflationary impact of increases in the money supply ...
And I haven’t even mentioned the fact that presidents need to work with Congress, and face far more limits on their authority than CEOs.
The idea that what America needs now is an executive type is just foolish.
And if reading that makes you, as it has many others, ask, “But if economists are so smart, why ain’t they rich?” Check out this from Peter Coy:
Economists aren’t trying to be rich. ... Nobody asks Trappist monks why they aren’t rich, because it’s understood that getting rich is not their aspiration. Economics likewise offers rewards beyond money.
That reminds me of that old joke about a businessman who asks an economist that same question and gets the reply, “Okay, well, if you’re so rich, why ain’t you smart?”
Of course, both those questions are unfair, in that knowing about how economies function and knowing how people make money are two different, and conflicting, kinds of smartness.
Still, I’ve always thought that the suggestion that “we need more elected officials who know how to run a government like a business” similarly misses the point, in that, in a way, governments already are run like businesses — except not-for-profit businesses, in which the goal is not to make a lot of money for the owners — in fact, they try to not make too much profit -- that is, what NFPs call a surplus — but to spend its money wisely on behalf of the charity or group — or, in our case, the government.
So if you want to elect someone to run your “not-for-profit government”, you probably shouldn’t elect someone with experience in earning big profits for himself and his pals.
BUT LET’S GO BACK TO THE EARLIER POLL IN THE NEW YORK TIMES:
Voters who were focused on the economy and inflation favored Republicans over Democrats 64 percent to 30 percent. Democrats held a 20-percentage-point advantage among voters who cared the most about any other issue.
As a Democrat, I am, of course, pleased by that last sentence, but still slightly puzzled about the first. You need to go see this from Wikipedia’s article on “U.S. economic performance under Democratic and Republican presidents”:
Historically, the United States economy has performed better on average under the administration of Democratic presidents than Republican presidents since World War II.
The reasons for this are debated, and the observation applies to economic variables including job creation, GDP growth, stock market returns, personal income growth and corporate profits.
The unemployment rate has fallen on average under Democratic presidents, while it has risen on average under Republican presidents. Budget deficits relative to the size of the economy were lower on average for Democratic presidents.
Ten of the eleven U.S. recessions between 1953 and 2020 began under Republican presidents.
Nobody seems able to explain why this happens — is it because of the raising or lowering of taxes, or executing certain policy decisions? In one section of that Wikipedia article, the conclusion seemed to point to dumb luck, but in another, there was this:
Journalist David Leonhardt wrote in the NYT that economists he interviewed were not certain of the cause. One possibility for the consistent outperformance by Democratic presidents was:
"Democrats have been more willing to heed economic and historical lessons about what policies actually strengthen the economy, while Republicans have often clung to theories that they want to believe — like the supposedly magical power of tax cuts and deregulation. Democrats, in short, have been more pragmatic."
He wrote that Democratic presidents championing the ideas of John Maynard Keynes have taken stronger fiscal action to address crises.
But what do we even mean by “the economy”? Here’s something from CNBC on Oct 31st on the “growing cost of living”:
Workers have seen huge wage gains over the last year, with hourly earnings up 5% in September from the previous year. Still, that’s not enough to keep up with inflation.
To me, that’s almost like saying, “All my life, no matter how hard I tried, I could never seem to catch up with my older brother. He consistently stayed a good two years older than I.”
Inflation, of course, happens when prices go up all over the place, but that prompts employers to try to retain their workforce by raising salaries, which, in turn, increases production costs, making it necessary to raise the prices of the products.
In other words, the reason salaries can’t catch up with inflation is that inflation is, at the same time, trying to catch up with salaries.
And I don’t say this to make fun of struggling workers, it’s just to urge them not to make inflation the basis for voting against elected officials who don’t have that much control over inflation.
But yes, as you may have noticed lately, there is such a thing as hyperinflation:
Most economists agree that high levels of inflation as well as hyperinflation—which have severely disruptive effects on the real economy—are caused by persistent excessive growth in the money supply.
And yes, money supply is increased by central banks — such as the Fed, for example, when they “print” (although not literally!) new money — but how about by an increase in government spending?
Apparently, according to Forbes, not always:
In particular, one study by the St. Louis Federal Reserve found that government spending has little to no impact on inflation. In fact, a 10% increase in government spending may lead to a 0.08% decline in inflation.
Others have found that government spending around the world may have minimal impacts on inflation, often in the tenths of a percentage point.
But what about Covid spending?
On the other hand, modern studies have found that the current link between government spending and inflation may be stronger.
In particular, the 2022 inflation spike followed two major federal spending programs under two administrations. The first, the CARES Act, passed in March 2020, while the American Rescue Plan [was] passed in March 2021.
Collectively, these initiatives aimed to minimize the economic devastation of Covid-19 by distributing three stimulus checks, expanding unemployment benefits and providing extra funds to state and local governments.
While experts have credited these Acts with possibly preventing a recession, economists have also found that their passage correlates with an unusual spike in inflation.
By providing extra capital to American households, economists note, consumers were able to go out and spend money they wouldn’t have had otherwise. In turn, this increased consumer demand, pulling up prices.
However, a recent analysis from the San Francisco Federal Reserve found that government spending only contributed to about three percentage points of today’s inflation. These findings corroborate an October 2021 paper that suggested stimulus checks made inflation slightly worse – but not to the extent we’re seeing now.
A full half of today’s inflation, they discovered, stems from ongoing supply chain issues as producers struggle to push out enough goods to meet demand.
The war in Ukraine and resulting energy shortage, alongside a turbulent housing market, have also contributed to inflation, pushing up prices from several directions at once.
And this inflation is not just about us! Inflation is happening all over the world! Here’s something on the world-wide inflation that’s happening now:
A worldwide increase in inflation began in mid-2021, with many countries seeing their highest inflation rates in decades.
It has been attributed to various causes, including pandemic-related economic dislocation; the fiscal and monetary stimulus provided by governments and central banks in response to the pandemic in 2020 and 2021; supply shortages (including chip shortages and energy shortages) amid increasing consumer demand; the Russian invasion of Ukraine's effect on global oil prices, natural gas, fertilizer, and food prices; and possible price gouging. Higher gasoline prices were a major contributor to inflation as oil producers saw record profits.
So while our suddenly emerging from a pandemic, ready to spend the money in our pockets, but with whatever products to buy not yet ready to be bought, might be cause enough on its own to make prices go up, we also then had a war that curtailed the world supply of gasoline and grain, along with the clogging of the pathways those products travel to get to buyers.
I’m surprised we haven’t heard more from Republicans about Biden’s War in Ukraine turning inflation into a global problem,
... but that might be because they’re afraid poking the wasp nest, just to test how invested Americans might be in defending some democracy who’s being attacked by a bully, and after noticing “The future of democracy” being in second place on Pew’s list, (above), I think GOP caution in this could be justified.
Still, that war has to be a major cause of it, and I suppose abandoning Ukraine to the rage of a Russian dictator happens to be one of the few things the administration could do to help alleviate our economic pain, but I, for one, am not willing to surrender the planet to the ravages of the greed of tyrants.
WHILE WE’RE ON THE SUBJECT OF DEMOCRACY, I’LL JUST MENTION I’M PLEASED TO SEE IT’S SECOND PLACE ON PEW’S LIST.
But until this list, I had always wondered which party was more energized by this issue and in what way — knowing that, as Republican democracy-enthusiasts might be thinking about protecting the vote from the “voter fraud” of Democrats, Democrats would be at least as interested in protecting it from the Republicans looking to only accept the results of elections that they themselves win.
So it’s reassuring to see that, even if only by a few (80%-to-70%), more Democrats are energized by the survival of democracy than are all those Republicans who claim that there was huge (albeit, invisible to the naked eye) funny-business that kept Trump from victory in 2020.
Not that I was surprised, as the GOP’s lukewarm enthusiasm to protecting the integrity of democracy seems to indicate something I’d suspected all along — that they’re actually not all that fond of democracy because it so rarely seems to serve them well.
EDUCATION!! NOW, TO ME, THAT WAS A SURPRISE!!
Even if just by a tiny bit, that we Dems are more concerned than Republicans at all (66%-to-60%) with the shape of American education seems to cast some shade on the Republican and conservative obsession with all that “Trans” and “CRT” stuff, such as forcing kids to become aware of parts of our nation’s history that allegedly makes the little dears feel “uncomfortable” (and you can probably guess where that idea came from!)
I must admit I’m not sure what the Democrats’ main concern is with Education, but I suspect it has nothing to do with fear that too many little boys are finding sneaky ways to use the little girls’ room.
HEALTH CARE? NOT A SHOCK.
Back when the GOP was hot to repeal Obamacare, people would ask them what their plan was, and at first, they were too embarrassed to admit that they had no plan, until at some point, they put their brain cells together and came up “repeal and replace!”
Why didn’t they have a plan? Simple! Because their objection to the Democratic plan was that it was a “plan”!
The Republicans aren’t big believers in government plans, especially plans that entail their money being used to help very poor people who, they believe, should be taught to help themselves.
Democrats do believe in government plans for at least these three reasons:
Some people, but not ALL people, were born into money and suffer from the delusion that they earned it themselves.
If you’re born poor and don’t attend a nice school and can’t afford health care, you’re at a disadvantage when it comes to working your way up to a level where you can contribute to the wellbeing of yourself, your family, and to your country.
We Democrats, at least some of us, have noticed that countries that don’t do what they can to make sure all citizens, rich and poor and in between, have a chance to contribute (think, “banana republic”) are neither as healthy nor as wealthy as those that do.
HOW ABOUT CRIME ... ESPECIALLY VIOLENT CRIME?
Republicans beat Democrats on that one, 64%-to-59%, although you’d think anybody who really worried about violent crime would be more keen on looking around the world for solutions, such as making it much harder for everybody in sight to buy those instruments of death.
In fact, though, we Democrats beat the Republicans in the “Gun policy” popularity contest, 62%-to-56%, which is a hopeful sign for the possible survival of our so-called civilization.
AND YET, I SUSPECT NOT EVERYTHING OF CONCERN TO MOST PEOPLE EVEN MADE IT INTO THAT SURVEY — FOR EXAMPLE:
Voting Republican on Tuesday? So tell us what it IS about Social Security and Medicare you don’t like? (And if you do, you need to realize you’re drastically out-of-step with your fellow Americans.)
Let’s go with this Jim Tankersley piece, “Republicans, Eyeing Majority, Float Changes to Social Security and Medicare”, from the New York Times last week:
Congressional Republicans, eyeing a midterm election victory that could hand them control of the House and the Senate, have embraced plans to reduce federal spending on Social Security and Medicare, including cutting benefits for some retirees and raising the retirement age for both safety net programs. ...
Yet several influential Republicans have signaled a new willingness to push for Medicare and Social Security spending cuts as part of future budget negotiations with President Biden.
Okay, wait! Despite what Americans overwhelmingly say we want, they’re reluctant to spend contributions on you that you put in on the promise that it would come back to you? Are these people daft?
And you’re still planning to vote for these people?
Paul Krugman tells us more about the safety net, which is something that, on the one hand, helps you and your family if you need it, but at least is good for the country, even if not you in particular:
Political scientists have found several areas in which the wealthy want to see spending cut, while most voters want to see it increased.
The biggest gap in views is on Social Security, where the rich, by a large margin, want to see benefits reduced while the general public, by an even larger margin, wants to see them increased.
And Republicans are taking the side of the rich.
Get ready for the debt-ceiling scam!
And so who are these Republicans who are fixing to blackmail us into not allowing America to pay for what our elected representatives voted for on our behalf — in favor, instead, of using the threat of not raising the debt-limit -- to support an agenda favored by the one percent?
(Sorry, but are you still planning on putting Republicans in charge? Just checking.)
Here, according to Bloomberg, are a few names, all up for election on Tuesday, in case you’re looking for someone to not vote for:
Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.)
Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-Texas)
Rep. Buddy Carter (R-Ga.)
Rep. Lloyd Smucker (R-Pa.)
Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.)
But yeah, that seems to be the plan they want to sneak by you, your resistance to which they can always attribute to your unhealthy preoccupation with the health and well-being of America.
WHY ARE REPUBLICANS SO CONCERNED ABOUT THESE GOVERNMENT PROGRAMS? GOOD QUESTION. IF YOU FIGURE IT OUT, PLEASE LET ME KNOW.
For one thing, I’m guessing that a lot of extremely rich people might own companies that, by law, are required to match the payroll taxes of their employees, and that’s just one more tax they don’t want to pay, because after a while, it adds up, and paying taxes makes them ever-so-slightly poorer.
True? The truth is, I don’t really know. Maybe the reason is something else.
But what conservatives really don’t seem to like are government programs that take away their money to help those who might not be able, on their own, to keep from dropping down into poverty.
And I’m only guessing here, but I think that’s why there’s so much conservative talk about “privatizing” Social Security, like this one (click that link) from the CATO institute.
A confession: I couldn’t finish reading the whole thing because my time is limited and it was taking them too long to answer this question of mine:
Suppose I own a horse, and you come along and offer to TRADE your TWO-LEGGED horse for my FOUR-LEGGED one, claiming your horse is superior because, having only two legs, it can’t stand at the trough to eat, so therefore, it doesn’t eat as much, and that will save you money!
So then I ask you, why would I take this stupid deal?
And you answer is, “Hey, one horse is as good as any other horse, but this one’s better because it’s cheaper to own!”
If people want to trade a government guarantee of a little money to help them survive, but instead decide they’d prefer to privately invest it and take a chance by trading a guarantee for a chance to earn big returns, they could do that already!
It sounds like they’re trying to take away your “horse” and leave you with a “half-horse” — which, on the one hand, you can’t ride, but on the other, is cheaper to own.
And it seems to me that whenever a conservative uses the word “privatize”, what he really means to say is “abolish”.
BUT CIRCLING BACK TO DEMOCRACY: ARE WE PUSHING TOO HARD ON A BROKEN BUTTON HERE?
This story was on CNN.com a week ago about plans for a last-ditch attempt by some Democrats to pitch voters on an issue that’s been going nowhere:
They’re hoping a late rush of targeted ads and direct door-to-door outreach focused on January 6, 2021, and the threat to democracy can anger and scare enough of their own base and peel off still undecided voters to counter the momentum they sense moving toward the GOP.
A dozen panicked top Democratic strategists and party leaders acknowledged to CNN that the party has largely failed to get voters to think of GOP candidates’ election denialism as disqualifying or to convince Americans to prioritize democracy when they cast their ballots. What Democrats haven’t done, these strategists said, is connect that argument to voters’ more immediate concerns about the economy and rising costs.
I’m thinking the likely reason for that is that the two, actually, are NOT connected, at least not that I can see, and no amount of slight-of-hand will make it so.
THIS MESSAGE FROM BENJAMIN FRANKLIN IN 1754 ... urged the colonies to join in and fight in the French and Indian War. (Wikipedia / Public Domain)
BUT HERE’S THE THING ...
I share the frustration of those people in the realization that the top concerns of voters this time around are problems that, first of all, aren’t nearly as major as they seem to appear, and second, are problems that mostly only time and waiting patiently can solve,
... instead of an actual looming threat of a more existential nature, already in motion, that threat being to the continued existence of a self-governing America.
But I think I may have figured it out. They probably think we’re exaggerating.
They may think there is no such threat to democracy, and that all our talk about all that is just partisan posturing.
It all goes back to that “Don’t Look Up” movie, in which all of humankind says, “Hey, it’s apparently been confirmed that some comet is about to destroy all life on earth in a few minutes!! So what say we go over to Tony’s Tavern and discuss it over a coupla beers! If you buy this one, I’ll pick up next time!”
People think we Democrats are being melodramatic about January 6th, that it wasn’t actual “insurrection”, that there was no intention to overthrow the country, that at most, it was a crowd of “overzealous MAGA patriots” who got out of hand and ran around raising a ruckus, and that the “Democrat” party is just making a big thing out of a little thing, simply because they are the party of “no ideas”!
The week before January 6th, I realized that I had a doctor appointment coming up on that day, and — although I didn’t end up doing it — I was considering cancelling my appointment because I didn’t want to miss seeing Trump’s upcoming “It’ll-be-wild” riot on TV,
... which was going to be the get-together of all his right-wing followers that everyone knew he was summoning on the day of the electoral count, in order to force Congress to NOT count those votes.
His invitation was widely known to have been discussed on all those alt-right websites!
If I knew it was happening, and why it was happening, why did everyone else seem so surprised when it happened?
For those of you who still think the attack of the Capitol building was nothing but a bunch of harmless tourists, staying within rope lines, listen up:
YES, YES, IT WAS AN INSURRECTION!! YES, IT WAS AN ATTEMPT TO OVERTURN BIDEN’S ELECTION, AND BY FINDING A WAY TO STOP BIDEN’S INAUGURATION FROM HAPPENING, THAT WOULD MEAN TRUMP WOULD REMAIN PRESIDENT!!
AND YES, THAT WOULD BE CONSIDERED A HOSTILE OVERTHROW OF THE COUNTRY!!
And it’s still going on, with 425 voter suppression laws reportedly introduced in 49 states so far, along with other laws that would give state legislatures the authority to overrule the decision of the electorate.
And furthermore, if you can just find a way to get all your friends in the state capitals to change elections to your liking, which is what Trumpers are now arranging to happen in 2024, you will be doing away with self-government in America — that is, in which Americans pick their own leaders and representatives — and replacing it with having some gang of anti-American loser-thugs picking your winners for you, no matter who you voted for!
Donald Trump is not some harmless goof-off, sent by God to save us from some imaginary “left-wing socialist Hollywood child-traffickers”, he is a self-centered nasty sociopath with scrambled eggs for brains who has a lot less regard for your country than he has for himself, sent not by God but by Satan for the purpose of destroying the world, so please do America and the world a favor and don’t vote for any of his minions.
SO IF THERE ARE MORE VOTERS ON TUESDAY THAT VOTE REPUBLICAN BECAUSE THEY THINK THE HIGH COST OF GROCERIES IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN LETTING SOME ANTI-DEMOCRACY GANG DESTROY AMERICA,
... then those of our Founding Fathers, maybe Ben Franklin, who would probably be surprised to learn that the nation they worked so hard at creating and improving upon over the years could last this long, can look down from wherever they are today and say to nobody in particular,
“Aha!!! I KNEW it!! Didn’t I tell you way back then that they wouldn’t be able to keep it?”
And whoever he was standing next to would then say, “Yeah, yeah, Ben, we always knew you were a freakin’ genius, but what say we stroll over to St. Anthony’s Tavern so you can spot me to a hot-buttered rum?”
(I’m sorry, I forget. What were we talking about?)
(OKAY, ONE MORE THING: Even though it’s not all that relevant to all this, you can click here to hear that song. It’s Country Joe and the Fish, made famous in the movie “Woodstock” — but don’t go there if you’re really sensitive about the “F” word.)
