Closest presidential elections in American history, Part 1

What would happen if you were to take the states which voted for the winner with under 51% of the vote and flip those states to the loser in all historical Presidential elections since Andrew Jackson?

Here’s the answer:

In 2020 Joe Biden won 306 electoral college votes. Arizona, Wisconsin, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Michigan voted for him with less than 51% of the vote. Those six states are worth 79 electoral college votes, which means he would have only won 227 electoral college votes, and Trump would have been reelected.

In 2016 Donald Trump won 304 electoral college votes. Utah, Nebraska’s 2nd, Wisconsin, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Florida, North Carolina, and Georgia would have flipped, worth 124 electoral college votes, which would have given him 180 in total, and Hillary Clinton would have been President.

In 2012 Barack Obama won 332 electoral college votes. He only won Florida and Ohio with under 51% of the vote, worth 47 electoral college votes, which would have given him 285 electoral college votes, meaning he won in a landslide.

In 2008 Barack Obama won 365 electoral college votes. He won North Carolina, Indiana, and Nebraska’s 2nd with under 51% of the vote, worth 27 electoral college votes. He would have gotten 338 electoral college votes, and still would have won in a landslide.

In 2004 George W. Bush won 286 electoral college votes. He won New Mexico, Iowa, Nevada, and Ohio with less than 51% of the vote, which would have been 37 more votes for Kerry. Bush would have won 249 electoral college votes and John Kerry would have been President.

In 2000 George W. Bush won 271 electoral college votes. He won New Hampshire, Florida, Nevada, Ohio, Missouri, and Colorado with under 51% of the vote, worth 73 electoral college votes, meaning he would have only won 198 votes and Al Gore would have been President.

In 1996 Bill Clinton won 379 electoral college votes. He won Nevada, Kentucky, Arizona, Oregon, Ohio, Missouri, Tennessee, Florida, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, New Hampshire, Washington, and Iowa with under 51% of the vote. These add up to 156 electoral college votes, putting him at 223 electoral college votes, and Bob Dole would have been President.

In 1992 Bill Clinton won 370 electoral college votes. He won Nevada, Montana, Maine’s 2nd, Maine, New Hampshire, Maine’s 1st, Colorado, Ohio, Wisconsin, Connecticut, Oregon, New Jersey, Iowa, Washington, Georgia, Minnesota, Delaware, Michigan, Missouri, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, New Mexico, California, Vermont, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Massachusetts, Hawaii, West Virginia, Illinois, New York, and Maryland with under 51% of the vote. He only won 9 votes with over 51% of the vote in 1992. That election was way too close, mostly because of Ross Perot.

In 1988 George H.W. Bush won 426 electoral college votes. He won only Illinois and Pennsylvania with under 51% of the vote, worth 49 electoral votes which would have given him 377 votes. He won in a landslide.

In 1984 Ronald Reagan won 525 electoral college votes, and got over 51% of the vote in every state he won.

In 1980 Ronald Reagan won 489 electoral college votes. He won with under 51% in Massachusetts, Vermont, Maine, Maine’s 1st, New York, Maine’s 2nd, Delaware, Wisconsin, Arkansas, Connecticut, Oregon, Tennessee, Alabama, Michigan, Kentucky, North Carolina, Mississippi, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, his birth state of Illinois, and Washington. These states add up to 226 electoral college votes, which would have given Reagan only 263 and given Carter a second term.

In 1976 James Carter won 297 electoral college votes. He won with under 51% of the vote in Hawaii, Pennsylvania, Mississippi, Wisconsin, and Ohio, worth 74 electoral college votes. If those states had flipped, Ford would have won reelection.

In 1972 Richard Nixon won 520 electoral college votes, and won every state with over 51% of the vote. Too bad he was a rat bastard.

In 1968 Richard Nixon won 301 electoral college votes. He won fewer than 51% of the vote in Tennessee, South Carolina, North Carolina, Florida, Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, Delaware, Ohio, Alaska, New Jersey, Illinois, Nevada, Oklahoma, California, Wisconsin, Oregon, Indiana, Colorado, and Montana. These states add up to 245 electoral college votes, giving Nixon only 66 electoral college votes if those states had flipped. Wallace really disrupted the election, but if Wallace hadn’t run, they would have voted for Nixon anyways, so Nixon won with a spoiler which took votes from himself. 1968 is a very consequential and complicated year, and the fact that Nixon won while there was a spoiler stealing votes from him is telling of how chaotic that year was. Too bad he was a rat bastard.

In 1964 Lyndon Johnson won 486 electoral college votes, and won only Idaho with under 51% of the vote. He would have won 482 electoral college votes and still won the election. This was the first year Republicans won the South as a bloc since Reconstruction.

In 1960 John F. Kennedy won 303 electoral college votes. He won New Jersey, Illinois, Hawaii, New Mexico, Arkansas, Missouri, Louisiana, Texas, Minnesota, Delaware, and Michigan with under 51% of the vote. These states add up to 139 electoral college votes, which would have given him only 164 electoral college votes and given Nixon the election. Good thing Kennedy squeaked out a win here, because Nixon was a rat bastard.

I really, really hate Richard Nixon, if you can’t tell.

In 1956 Dwight Eisenhower won with 457 electoral college votes. He won only Tennessee with under 51% of the vote, meaning if he lost Tennessee he would have had 446 electoral college votes and still won the Presidency. This was the last year where Republicans won most of the North and Democrats won the Solid South.

In 1952 Dwight Eisenhower won with 442 electoral college votes. He won Tennessee, Missouri, and Rhode Island with under 51% of the vote, worth 31 electoral college votes, meaning if he had lost those he would have won 409 electoral college votes and still won the Presidency.

In 1948 Harry Truman won with 303 electoral college votes. He won California, Virginia, Florida, Tennessee, Ohio, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Nevada, and Wisconsin with under 51% of the vote, worth a combined 137 electoral college votes, which mean if he lost those state he would have only won 166 electoral college votes and Dewey would have been President.

In 1944 Franklin Roosevelt won 432 electoral college votes. He only won Michigan and New Jersey with under 51% of the vote, worth a combined 35 electoral college votes. If those states flipped President Roosevelt would have still won 398 electoral college votes and the Presidency.

In 1940 Franklin Roosevelt won 449 electoral college votes. He only won Wisconsin and Illinois with under 51% of the vote, worth a combined 41 electoral college votes. He would have still won 408 electoral college votes, and the Presidency.

In 1936 Franklin Roosevelt won 523 electoral college votes. He only won New Hampshire by under 51%, which means that if New Hampshire flipped he would have won 519 electoral college votes and the Presidency.

In 1932 Franklin Roosevelt won 472 electoral college votes. He only won New Jersey, Ohio, and Massachusetts with under 51% of the vote, worth 59 electoral college votes, which means if those three states flipped he would have won 413 votes, and still won handily.

In 1928 Herbert Hoover won 444 electoral college votes. He only won New York with under 51% of the vote, worth 45 electoral college votes, meaning if New York had flipped he would have won 399 electoral college votes and still won the election.

In 1924 Calvin Coolidge won 382 electoral college votes. He won less than 51% of the vote in Arizona, Nevada, Montana, Maryland, Nebraska, Idaho, North Dakota, New Mexico, Kentucky, Utah, West Virginia, Missouri, and South Dakota worth 86 electoral college votes. If those state flipped he would have won 296 electoral votes and still won the Presidency.

In 1920 Warren Harding won 404 electoral college votes. He only won Oklahoma with less than 51% of the vote, which means if Oklahoma had flipped he would have still won the Presidency with 394 electoral college votes.

In 1916 Woodrow Wilson won 277 electoral college votes. He won California, North Dakota, Washington, New Hampshire, Kansas, New Mexico, Missouri, and Oklahoma with under 51% of the vote, worth 70 electoral college votes. If those states had flipped Charles Evans Hughes would have been elected.

1912 was a weird election, to say the least, because it was the last time where a former President ran as a third party candidate. It was also the last time where a third party came in second place for both electoral college votes and the popular vote. It is also the last time a socialist candidate got over 5% of the vote. If we had used ranked voting, it is reasonable to assume that Theodore Roosevelt would have won a third term. I’m going to leave this election out because its complicated and deserves its own post.

In 1908 William Howard Taft won 321 electoral college votes. Taft won fewer than 51% of the vote in Montana, Indiana, Missouri, and Maryland, worth a combined 38 electoral college votes. If those 4 states had flipped he would have won 283 electoral college votes and still won the election.

In 1904 Theodore Roosevelt won 336 electoral college votes. He won less than 50% of the vote in Missouri, worth 18 electoral college votes, which would have given him 318 electoral college votes and he still would have won the election. I’m ignoring the 7 faithless electors in Maryland.

In 1900 William McKinley won 292 electoral college votes. He won under 51% of the vote in Nebraska, Utah, and Indiana. These states were worth 26 votes, which would have given him 266 electoral college votes. 224 electoral college votes were needed, and he still would have won the election.

In 1896 William McKinley won 271 electoral college votes. He won under 51% of the vote in Kentucky, California, Oregon, and Indiana. These states were worth 39 electoral college votes. If those 4 states flipped he would have won 232 electoral college votes, more than the 224 electoral college votes needed in order to win, so he still would have won.

In 1892 Grover Cleveland won 277 electoral college votes. He won under 51% of the vote in New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware, Missouri, West Virginia, New York, Illinois, Michigan 10, Michigan 5, Wisconsin, Michigan 2, Indiana, North Carolina, Michigan 7, and California. These states were worth a combined 152 electoral college votes, he would have won 125 electoral college votes, and Benjamin Harrison would have won his reelection.

In 1888 Benjamin Harrison won 233 electoral college votes. He won under 51% of the vote in Indiana, New York, Ohio, Illinois, California, Michigan, Wisconsin, and New Hampshire, worth a combined 132 electoral college votes. If those states had flipped he would have won 99 electoral college votes and Grover Cleveland would have won his reelection.

In 1884 Grover Cleveland won 219 electoral college votes. He won under 51% of the vote in New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Indiana, and West Virginia, worth a combined 72 electoral college votes. If those states had flipped James Blaine would have won.

In 1880 James Garfield won 214 electoral college votes, he needed 185 in order to win. He won Indiana, New York, Oregon, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania with under 51% of the vote. Those states were worth 88 electoral college votes. If those states had flipped Winfield Hancock would have become President.

In 1876 Rutherford Hayes won with 185 electoral college votes, the minimum he needed in order to win. 1876 was the closest election in American history in terms of electoral college votes. He won under 51% of the vote in Illinois, Ohio, South Carolina, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, California, Oregon, and Florida. If any of those states had flipped Samuel Tilden would have become President.

1872 was a very unusual election because Horace Greeley died on November 29, 1872, before the Electoral College met. Grant would have likely won no matter what.

In 1868 Ulysses S. Grant won 214 electoral votes, he needed 148. He only won California with under 51% of the vote, and California was only worth 5 electoral college votes that year, so he won in a landslide.

In 1864 Abraham Lincoln won 212 electoral college votes, he needed 118. He only won New York with under 51% of the vote, worth 33 electoral college votes. He won in a landslide.

In 1860 Abraham Lincoln won 180 electoral college votes, he needed 152 in order to win. He won with under 51% of the vote in California, Oregon, New Jersey, and Illinois, worth a combined 22 electoral college votes. If those 4 states had flipped Lincoln would have won 158 electoral college votes and still won the election. 1860 is unusual in how President Lincoln won under 50% of the popular vote, yet would have still won the electoral college in our scenario.

In 1856 James Buchanan won 174 electoral college votes, he needed 149 in order to win. He won under 51% of the vote in Illinois, New Jersey, California, Pennsylvania, and Indiana, worth 62 electoral college votes. If Illinois, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Indiana had voted for John C. Fremont and California had voted for Millard Fillmore, (the runner ups in those states) Buchanan would have had 108 electoral college votes, Fremont would have had 172 electoral college votes, and Millard Fillmore would have had 12 electoral college votes, giving Fremont the Presidency.

In 1852 Franklin Pierce won 254 electoral college votes, he needed 149 in order to win. He won less than 51% of the vote in Ohio, Connecticut, Delaware, New York, Iowa, North Carolina, Michigan, and Maine. Those states were worth 95 electoral college votes. If those states had flipped Franklin Pierce would have won 159 electoral college votes and still won.

In 1848 Zachary Taylor won 163 electoral college votes, he needed 146 in order to win. He won with less than 51% of the vote in Massachusetts, New York, Vermont, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania, worth a combined 86 electoral college votes. If those states had flipped to their runner up, 44 votes would have gone to Martin Van Buren, and 6 votes would have gone to Lewis Cass. Taylor would have had 77 electoral college votes, Cass would have had 133 electoral college votes, and Martin Van Buren would have had 44 electoral college votes. No candidate would have had a majority in the electoral college and the election would have been determined by Congress following the rules in the 12th amendment.

In 1844 James K. Polk won 170 electoral college votes, he needed 138 in order to win. He won with less than 51% of the vote in New York, Michigan, Indiana, and Pennsylvania, worth 79 electoral college votes. If those states had flipped Henry Clay would have been President.

In 1840 William Henry Harrison won 234 electoral college votes, he needed 148 in order to win. He won with under 51% of the vote in Pennsylvania and Maine which were worth 40 electoral college votes, and if those states had flipped he still would have won.

In 1836 Martin Van Buren won 170 electoral college votes, he needed 148 in order to win. He won with under 51% of the vote in Connecticut, worth 8 electoral college votes. He would have won if Connecticut had flipped.

In 1832 Andrew Jackson won 219 electoral college votes, he needed 145 in order to win. He won under 51% of the vote in New Jersey, worth 8 votes, so he would have won no matter what.

In 1828 Andrew Jackson won over 51% of the vote in every state he won, so he won in a solid landslide.

I’m not going to look at elections before 1828 for two reasons.

  • 1824 was a batshit crazy election (technically)
  • Very few states had a popular vote before 1828.

The years which would have flipped if the states which voted for the President elect with under 51% of the votes had flipped to the major opponent were:

  • 2020
  • 2016
  • 2004
  • 2000
  • 1996
  • 1992
  • 1980
  • 1976
  • 1968
  • 1960
  • 1948
  • 1916
  • 1892
  • 1888
  • 1884
  • 1880
  • 1876
  • 1856
  • 1848 (no one would have won over 50% of the Electoral College)
  • 1844

The only Presidents which would have still won the election if their opponent picked up all states he won less than 51% of the vote in, won their party’s nomination after being President (if possible, if they run), and won every election he ran as the Presidential candidate in the general election, for are:

  • Barack Hussein Obama Jr.
  • Lyndon Baines Johnson
  • Dwight David Eisenhower
  • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
  • Calvin Coolidge
  • William McKinley
  • Ulysses S. Grant
  • Abraham Lincoln
  • Andrew Jackson

 

Damn, that’s a lot of data and a long story. What do I take away from this story?

  • Both parties can win elections.
  • Incumbency advantages are very real.
  • Most elections in recent history have been close.
  • The only President to win with enough support that if he lost 1% support in every state he still would have won in the last 30 years was President Obama.
  • While we often paint the election as relying on one or two states, this is usually not the case.
  • Only 4 Presidents have won with enough support in enough states to win with only states they won with over 51% of t he vote in over the last century. Most Presidents have had technically close elections.

The end of legal abortion, how we got here

The year was 1972, and the Supreme Court decided 7-2 with a bipartisan majority that abortion was legal. Since this point in time, the majority of Americans have continued to support abortion rights up to the present day. when asked whether we are pro-life or pro-choice, Americans are split, but when asked whether people believe abortion should be banned in all circumstances, almost no one actually believes that. The percentage of Americans who oppose abortions in all circumstances remains extremely low to this day.

While abortion has strong support as long as you don’t ask the question in politically charged language, there is a loud vocal minority of around 30% of Americans who have used the Republican Party to accomplish their goals of making abortion illegal. Over the last 50 years the Supreme Court has had a consistent Conservative majority, but there have been times where it almost got a Liberal majority, particularly in 2016 where if President Obama had been able to appoint the successor to Antonin Scalia, it would have been the first time we had a liberal majority on the Supreme Court since the Civil Rights era.

That future of course didn’t occur, and Trump got 3 appointees to the Supreme Court. with 3 justices appointed by Trump, 2 justices appointed by George W Bush and 1 appointee by George H W Bush there are 6 Republican appointees. If our current Supreme Court Justices vote in the same way they voted in Whole Woman’s Health v. Heller, here is what we will likely see:

Voted In Favor of abortion rights: Breyer, Sotomayor, Kagan
Voted against abortion rights: Thomas, Alito, Roberts

There are then 3 justices who were appointed by Donald Trump, 2 of them need to vote to uphold the new law in Texas and Roe v Wade will be repealed. There are no signs that any of Trump’s appointees are going vote in favor of abortion rights, based on previous cases. (NPR)

If Clinton had been elected, we would have either had a 3-3 split at the Supreme Court, or if we had managed to take the Senate in 2018 in that timeline, we would now have a 6-3 Democratic majority in the Supreme Court.

However, this is not the case. We got here because people saw the wife of the man who appointed Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg as too moderate, and because of this, and only this, we are likely going to see abortion be made illegal again in the next few weeks.

This is really simple stuff.

References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_the_United_States#Public_opinion
https://www.npr.org/2021/10/22/1047619075/the-supreme-court-keeps-texas-abortion-law-in-place-but-agrees-to-review-it

Tax carbon, finance transit

So as I was sitting down tonight I was thinking about why I generally support taxing carbon versus spending our way out of climate change, while at the same time I favor financing transit over making it expensive to drive in cities.

Now the first argument is fairly easy. Taxes and subsidies are essentially the same thing at their fundamental basics, and if your goal is to reduce the consumption of a bad (eg oil) then a tax is a very direct policy which will reduce the negative impact which you are trying to fight. If you try to subsidize and alternative when your real goal is to reduce something which is bad, then you could potentially end up having the substitution effect reduce consumption of something else. I’ve written about this before, and the classic example is how when Germany cut nuclear power, coal power increased. A carbon tax wouldn’t have such a perverse outcome.

While a subsidy for renewables will almost certainly reduce some of the demand for fossil fuels in our current economy, it will never reduce the demand for fossil fuels as much as a carbon tax. I don’t even necessarily support spending a carbon tax to finance a renewable energy subsidy unless if that renewable energy subsidy’s cost per metric ton of carbon reduction is greater than that of increasing the carbon tax by the same amount.

For this reason, it is almost always wiser to spend the carbon tax on other problems facing our society because the substitution effect can never be fully controlled, and if subsidizing solar means we get less wind power being built, then that marginal cost is a waste of money which would have been better spent somewhere else.

When it comes to increasing transit use however, couldn’t we just tax the living hell out of driving? Let’s look at various taxes we could do:

  1. If you use a carbon tax or a gas tax, people will switch to electric cars. While this is a net benefit for the environment, it didn’t do the main goal of moving people towards transit use.
  2. You can put in tolls. The issue here is that you are not going to toll every road, which means wherever is not tolled is going to still have a lot of private traffic. Toll avoidance is also a very real thing. I-90 is tolled in Chicago, so many people who can go around I-90 will instead take  I-294 which is not tolled. The only way to reduce total car usage through tolls is zone-based pricing, where an entire region becomes tolled to enter or drive within a transit area. Some of these people however might be making trips at all, which costs local businesses customers, and will inevitably reduce tax revenue to local governments from those transactions.
  3. If you simply put in a tax without expanding transit, you are simply raising revenue. The private sector is not going to provide bus service and taxis are not as efficient as buses. The fares for private sector transit will have to be less than the cost of an electric vehicle over the long term in order to cut transit.
  4. Most people in most places are not going to give up their cars completely. This means you are working within the margin, and you need to think about the margin. Fixed costs such as purchasing a vehicle, and insurance are not going to impact people’s decisions on whether they use transit or drive their car day to day. People are intrinsically comparing the marginal costs (time and money) of driving vs the marginal costs of using public transit for that single trip, and that margin is all you have to work with. Unless if you have a policy which acts on the margin of a person’s decision, that policy is going to fail. This means that each trip has a very small amount of room to work with, and you need to make sure that the overall cost of a transit trip in time and money is less than the cost of driving.
  5. Increasing the cost of driving without increasing transit funding will inevitably lead to fewer overall trips, which hurts the local economy. Increasing transit funding can help expanding service or lowering fares, both of which help increase overall transit use. People who are in a different neighborhood are more likely to eat at a restaurant, where they will pay sales taxes, and increase corporate taxes owed, which benefits the government. For these reasons, it is in the best interest of governments when reducing congestion to focus not just on reducing car use, but also to increase transit use in order to help the local economy.

One should only increase the cost of driving if reducing car usage is your main intention.

The main difference between climate change and expanding use of transit is that one is trying to end one very clear problem. If you are trying to end something bad, a tax is your obvious policy.

Expanding the number of people who use transit is the opposite problem, so it requires the opposite solution, which is a subsidy.

It’s just that simple.

That being said, if the goal is to both reduce car usage and increase transit usage, the government could choose to both tax car use through parking fees, tolls, and other mechanisms which will reduce driving in conjunction with reducing fares or improving service which will increase transit use without harming local jobs. This joint policy has the benefit that it guarantees car usage will decline and transit use will increase, and is a good idea.

But if I had to choose between only one policy to increase transit use, the subsidy will always be more efficient.

References:

Pricing Strategies and Their Effect on Public Transportation – US DOT

2020 election primary, reanalyzed

In most election maps of the 2020 election it shows the candidate who received the most votes in the election, but the problem with these maps is they don’t show who got a plurality vs a majority. Because we live in a society which for some reason still uses the primitive first past the post election system we can often end up with situations where no candidate wins the most votes because of a spoiler effect. Elections which had this effect include the 2000 General Presidential election, the 2016 Republican Presidential Primary, the 2016 General Presidential election, and the 2020 Democratic Presidential Primary. The 2020 primary often shows a map which makes it look like Joe Biden won an overwhelming majority across the country, regardless of region, in almost every state. The map on Wikipedia looks like this:

2020 primary, plurality winner
Blue is Biden, Green is Sanders

The problem with this map is that Elizabeth Warren a significant share of the vote in the primary before she dropped out after super Tuesday. (Bernie stayed in… but dropped after he under performed in Wisconsin compared to 2016 in which was effectively a two man race. Wisconsin was significant for the Sanders campaign because he won Wisconsin in 2016, and if he was unable to win Wisconsin in a two horse race there was no realistic way for him to be elected after that loss). Because the Progressive Wing agrees on a lot but has major disagreements about strategy. Some of us believe that is really important that we rebuild our institutions in ways which strengthen our democracy, starting with the abolition of the filibuster, while others keep calling for a revolution and often will oppose actions like abolition of the filibuster which are critical to passing the progressive agenda which most Americans agree on. Besides that, we agree on most issues regarding the ends, universal health care is necessary, we want high quality transit, and college should be affordable to everyone who is willing and able to go, with no financial barriers. These are the three main issues which I believe separate traditional progressive Democrats from centrist New Democrats in today’s political sphere. We truly are aligned, and many of us would naturally put another progressive as our second choice if we had the freedom to do so in our elections.

dark blue is progressive
light blue is Biden
Before Warren dropped out

Before Warren dropped out in 2020, the above map is what the map actually looked like. Most states hadn’t voted, including critical swing states such as Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. The only state which Biden won which he would carry in the general election against Bernie+Warren was Virginia. Progressives even beat Biden in 4 states which would vote for Trump, which were Iowa, Oklahoma, Texas, and Utah.

We see here that the actual results of the 2020 primary are very different from how voters in most states actually voted. The consequence of this Byzantine primary system is that even with an epidemic raging through the country, Democrats only picked up 50 seats in the Senate, and we could have done much better than that. I personally believe that Biden ran a fairly uninspiring campaign where the theme was bipartisanship, and this severely harmed down ballot Democrats.

The Presidential Primary System in the United States forces voters to vote strategically. If popular YouTube channels and cable news convince enough voters that a candidate doesn’t have the votes to win, even if their platform is the most in line with what most voters believe, they can convince enough voters to vote for one of their less preferred candidates that they can sink the candidacy of an entire campaign.

This is just a fact about how First Past the Post works. If voters had been able to vote their conscience by using a ranked voting system, I expect we would have seen significantly different returns than we saw in 2020.

A really clear example of this is that Fairvote ran two polls, one before the Iowa election, and one before Super Tuesday.

In the first election, which was run before Iowa, Elizabeth Warren won.

In the second poll, which was run before Super Tuesday, Bernie Sanders won.

While these are only two polls, and they average about 1000 people per poll, I believe the reason that voters changed their minds is that they had enough information after the election began that people who would have voted for Warren changed their minds and voted for Bernie Sanders. I wish better data existed with 10,000 people per poll and one poll per month which would produce better data of the preferences of the American people. I understand polls are expensive, which is why we don’t have that data, but a political scientist can dream!

Poll 1: https://www.fairvote.org/democratic_primary_2020_poll#spread_of_democratic_frontrunner_rankings

Poll 2: https://www.fairvote.org/democratic_primary_2020_poll_feb_28#/

These polls strongly hint to me that our current election system does not accurately represent the values of the American people.

There are so many different reasons why we should change from our ridiculous 50 step primary/electoral college disaster system to a single ranked voting election for the President in November where all ballots are due on the same day nationwide. Some reasons why we should switch include:

  1. All voters will have the same information.
  2. Voters won’t be swayed by how candidates already performed in the primary.
  3. There won’t be split ballots if one caucus has two strong candidates but the other only has one.
  4. Voters can vote their conscience, and they won’t have to worry nearly as much about how their neighbors voted except in extremely rare circumstances (for my fellow political math nerds out there, we can talk about the Condorcet criterion, but ultimately, we have a system which is neither Condorcet compliant nor majoritarian, plus I don’t care about the majority criterion, but all systems I support follow the mutual majority criterion)
  5. It guarantees the candidate will represent the majority of Americans as closely as possible.
  6. The American people deserve to have politicians who represent them.

In my analysis of the 2020 primary it is obvious to me that we need to move to a national ranked voting election for the President of the United States to ensure that every American can vote their conscience and be fairly represented.

This is not about rehashing the 2020 primary, this is about preparing for future Presidential elections so we can hopefully someday have a system which represents the majority of Americans.

We need to abolish the primary system and ensure that every American has the same information as everyone else.

Conspiracies without regard for reality

Interesting twitter feed today after I made a little comment correcting a mistake about the historical record, read it here:

It’s pretty ludicrous. If you follow the rest of the thread, you will find how people simply don’t understand the history of what happened. Long story short, I was incorrect that Pelosi removed the public option, it passed the Senate in November 2009, was removed from the Senate version which passed in December 2010, and then the House signed onto the bill on March 21, 2010, which was signed by President Obama two days later on March 23rd. Joe Lieberman demanded the bill should not include a public option, his demand was met, and then the bill was sent back to the House. At that point,

After the Senate passed the bill the House knew the bill would probably die if it went back to the Senate, and all progress would be lost. The best option at that point was to pass the bill as is, since filibuster abolition was off the radar before Elizabeth Warren entered the national spotlight.

This Twitter thread is rife with misunderstandings of what is actually happening in our congress, and these lies are frequently spread by far left leading to accusations that the ACA is actually a tool which was pushed for the insurance industry. Now this is obviously not true, the insurance industry actively continues to fund opposition candidates to every candidate who wants to introduce health care reform, and the Heritage Foundation actively opposes expanding Medicare, and want to see the Affordable Care Act repealed. The right wing pro-corruption wing of American politics did everything they could to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and if John McCain hadn’t been in the hospital days before the final vote they would have succeeded.

This is where we end up where a lot of people who call themselves “socialist” and want Medicare for All (which actually isn’t socialist because it doesn’t turn the entire health care sector into a publicly run entity, but what do I know, I’ve already probably read more Marx and Lenin than these people will read in their entire lives, and I plan on reading more because its important) will make up these elaborate conspiracy theories about how Obama was in the hands of the pharmaceutical and insurance companies (FEC records beg to disagree) and there is an elaborate secret agreement between Democrats and Republicans to keep health insurance companies afloat (which must be why the AHCA which would have been a massive cash grab for insurance companies failed and didn’t get a single Democratic vote in 2018) despite all of the evidence to the contrary! If Democrats really were in the grips of the insurance industry, it would have taken just one Senator to change their vote, perhaps Joe Manchin of West Virginia, and the ACA would have been repealed. If Democrats were indeed that corrupt then it would have been very easy to have Manchin vote in favor of the AHCA and the bill would have become law. But not one of them did. I might be incredibly annoyed at how New Democrats effectively oppose filibuster abolition, college affordability, the public option, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, and other necessary laws… but I must give them credit where credit is due… not one of them broke party line to vote against the ACA in 2018.

These people who believe these complex conspiracy theories about Obama is worse than his actions appear tend in my experience to be the same people who believe Bernie Sanders is the one who will save America from corruption!

Give me a fucking break. After reviewing the history and checking my facts, it is very obvious to anyone who has lobbied a single day in their lives and has actually studied how the Senate works that If it wasn’t for the filibuster, the public option would have passed the Senate in 2010 rendering the maneuver to label a bill as budgetary bill totally pointless. In 2013 there was a very important vote to reduce the power of the filibuster, and that was one of the few times where Sanders and Warren split on a vote. Sanders voted to keep the filibuster, despite the fact that the filibuster is the reason the public option failed despite 58 Senators being in support of it.

In his defense of the filibuster, Sanders and friends rendered the biggest gift to private insurance insurance industry they could possibly ask for, because as long as the filibuster exists there is almost no way to pass significant health care reform, or many other bills such as voting rights.

This is a very weird scenario where a group of people will make up elaborate schemes where Obama is an evil corrupt man with a black heart who is out to get the common man based on elaborate backroom deals which there is absolutely no evidence in favor and loads of clear evidence to the contrary, and Bernie Sanders is a perfect politician who is out there for a common man, despite the fact that until very recently he openly supported the one and only very bizarre parliamentary maneuver which prevented most progressive legislation from passing Congress over the last 50 years, consistently voting in favor of the one parliamentary procedure which enables minority rule to this very day.

DSA is a very strange organization.

Joe Lieberman is a total complete piece of shit.

Not everything is a backroom deal. Sometimes the evidence is staring at you in plain daylight on the public roll call.

This is one of those times.

Abolish the Filibuster…

 

Save America.

https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hlthaff.2010.0363

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

https://newrepublic.com/article/73683/the-public-option-still-dead

Why the Taliban is letting us evacuate

The only reason the Taliban isn’t fighting us is because they aren’t organized enough yet. If they start attacking Americans we will kick their asses. Give it 5 years, once they have total domination over Afghanistan, the story will be very different.
They give Biden credit that the Taliban kicked our ass and they are being strategic
Not just total domination, but continued support from the Saudi government and Pakistan. They dont need to develop Afghanistan, they have the infinite money mod.
People don’t understand this basic fact
Thats all I see on my Twitter feed this morning. All these PR majors who don’t know shit about politics.

You cannot contain fascism in a single country. We tried that in the 30s. It doesn’t work.

Its really not that complicated.

India and today

Rule number one: Don’t trust terrorists.

Fact: Pakistan harbored bin Laden and has a history of arming terrorist groups.

Fact: Pakistan and India have terrible relations

Fact: India has been a target for terrorist attacks before.

Fact: Afghanistan is about to become a major training center for terrorists.

Fact: there have been many attacks by Islamist militants against India for decades, the last one was in April https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in_India

With all of these easily verifiable facts.

It’s pretty obvious that a Taliban takeover in Afghanistan is the worst possible news for India. It will worsen Indo-Pakistani relations, and I pray it won’t erupt into a blown out war between both countries because that will be a disaster.

The Taliban has already started executing civilians and banning education for girls and women.

It’s also not a question of IF the Taliban will harbor terrorists who attack other countries.

It’s a question of WHEN.

How we got here, Afghanistan edition

Fuck the New Democrats.

Fuck the Republicans.

Fuck Jimmy Carter.

Reagan was the devil.

May both Bushes rot in hell.

Obama did a better job than any other president over the last half century, but he still could have done far far more.

Trump is a good for nothing bastard, who doesn’t give a fuck about anyone but himself, and it shows.

Biden is a loser.

That being said…

This is meant  to  be a quick and dirty about how Afghanistan fell to the terrorists. Read the Wikipedia articles for more details.

The year was 1973. The Emir of Afghanistan stepped down as Emir and founded the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. The government was stable for 5 years until the Soviet Union launched a coup against the government and the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan was formed. In response to this, President Jimmy Carter started to send money and arms to the Mujaheddin.  The United States, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan were directly involved in financing the Mujaheddin until the Soviet Union was crumbling. This support continued until 1989 when the US government cut support to the Mujahideen. The Mujahideen formed the Islamic State of Afghanistan in 1996, after 4 years of brutal warfare. At this point they started a brutal regime which is famous. The Mujahideen had all the resources provided to them by the Americans, Saudis, and Pakistanis in the 1990s. Afghanistan has a literacy rate of only 31%. The Afghans didn’t stand a chance. No one cared.

In 2001 they were harboring Osama bin Laden, and he attacked the United States. We attacked Afghanistan to take out the Taliban (supposedly) and never completed the offensive. There were never enough troops. Too much attention was diverted to Iraq by the Bush administration. There was almost no effort to divert funding away from the Taliban and bring their financiers to justice. Not enough resources were focused on educating Afghans so their government could have a mature responsible civil service. In a country where women had not had access to education, they were in a fundamentally different situation. Under Bush, Obama, and Trump, the focus was on military means, and not enough attention was put into developing a mature civil service after 20 years of war (when we invaded).

Trump signed an agreement with the Taliban which essentially assumed they would take over last year. And guess what? They did.

Jimmy Carter started the conflict.

Reagan exacerbated it.

Bush, Obama, and Trump failed to provide the logistics so the Afghan government could be a high quality government.

Now the country suffers.

It’s America’s fault.

It’s Jimmy Carter’s fault.

Both parties are to blame.

It’s our largest failure in the last century.

It’s fucking disgusting.

Short treatise on climate change

Quick reference sheet for climate change and solutions

  1. Global warming is real.
  2. The largest contributor to climate change is carbon dioxide emissions.
  3. Carbon dioxide emissions come from a wide variety of sources, primarily from electricity generation, transportation, and agriculture.
  4. The ratio of which source is the most important differs by region.
  5. The 2 most important sources of carbon dioxide emissions in the United States and most developed countries are from electricity and transportation.
  6. The main thing we need to do in order to reverse climate change is to reduce carbon dioxide emissions as quickly as possible.
  7. If governments want to increase an activity, let’s say the number of people going to college, the most straight forward, efficient, and fair policy to increase education is to subsidize it. We do this because there education generates positive externalities for society.
  8. If governments want policies to reduce consumption of a good which is causing negative externalities, then we should do the opposite of a subsidy which is a tax. This will encourage people to move from the activity which is bad for society to an activity which doesn’t negatively impact people around them.
  9. Governments have little to no control over how the substitution effect will work. While subsidies for one form of renewable energy or another will make some impact, its almost impossible to control how much of the substitution effect will just switch investment from one renewable source to another. One example is how anti-nuclear protests which have successfully shut down nuclear plants often end up with that electricity coming from dirty energy. While there will probably be some impact on global warming from subsidies, this is governed solely by regional market forces.
  10. The ratios of which sources are the largest contributors in one area vs another varies widely by region. Around 20% of electricity in Washington state comes from dirty energy, roughly 70% of electricity in Texas comes from dirty energy. A one size fits all subsidy approach will simply not work in a country as large as the United States which has such different sources of electricity by region.
  11. Transportation became the largest source of carbon dioxide emissions in the 2010s, and mostly from individual cars. We need a policy which reduces emissions in cars substantially as fast as possible, while also cutting emissions from electricity.
  12. While climate change is obviously important, we also have many other issues which need attention, such as education, health care, and other important programs. It is important to be efficient in how we use our resources. Even if we just print all the money we need, we will never have infinite people to administer programs. This is why it is important to be direct in policies to maximize efficiency.
  13. If the goal is to reduce CO2 significantly than we need a federal policy which will work in all states and not be susceptible to the substitution effect simply switching from one renewable source to another. We need one which is also agnostic when it comes to which activity is generating the CO2. Given how power lines do not respect state boundaries, while state by state policies are better than nothing, we will eventually need an aggressive federal policy.
  14. There is one policy which targets CO2 directly, regardless of source, regardless of activity, and will not simply substitute wind for solar. That policy is called an exemption free carbon tax.

References:

EPA US sources

EPA global sources

EIA Texas Overview

EIA Washington Overview

Substitution effect in action regarding closing nuclear plants

Voting Laws and Tipping Points

We are in a really bad situation when it comes to where politics are heading right now. Besides from the COVID recovery, which is currently failing, the current administration has no accomplishments yet beyond the stimulus which passed earlier this year, and no realistic chance of any on the horizon.

A week from tomorrow, the Census Bureau will release final counts for redistricting, that is the end point where the most important sections of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act will have no impact until 2032.

At that point, don’t expect the Republicans to make anyone fail to see that they don’t give a damn about bipartisanship or the well being of Americans. The defeat of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act in a week is a major victory for them. Failure to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act before redistricting is complete is by any account a massive failure on the part of the Democratic Party and all of its leadership.

Key swing states like Arizona and Georgia have already passed significant restrictive laws regarding the right to vote.  Senators Kelly and Warnock are both up next year, and they only won by 51% percent of the vote each. The 5 swing states in 2022 are Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Arizona and Georgia have passed voter disenfranchisement laws already, but all 5 have no excuse absentee voting. If we lose Arizona and Georgia, we would need to pick up the other three to have 51 votes, which is still not enough to overturn Manchin and Leahy’s support of the filibuster. If President Biden is to be a notable president with more than a brief mention in future history books, we need to keep all 5 seats, otherwise he will be the next Calvin Coolidge.

The failure to pass HR1 will guarantee extreme gerrymandering in almost every state, and if the Republicans pick up only 5 more seats, they will have control of the House of Representatives. If Democrats lose in any one of those 5 swing states, Republicans will have at least 51 seats in the Senate, which gives them near complete control of government.

The delay to pass HR1 and the obvious lack of balls in the current administration and DNC leadership to hold Democratic Senators accountable when they say they oppose HR1 will cost us the Federal government, and many battles in State governments across the country.

For the 2024 presidential election, only three states matter. Republicans need to pick up Arizona and Georgia (which if Democrats don’t give people a reason to stand in line, they probably will ) and one of either Michigan, Wisconsin, or Pennsylvania. Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin all voted for Biden with a margin of under 1% in 2020.

This is why I am going to  be watching the Senate races in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania next year. It will not bode well for Biden if Democrats fail to pick up either Senate seat in those two states next year, and if we cannot win those Senate seats, it is unlikely that Biden will retain those states in 2024.

In 2018, Governor Tony Evers won the Governorship of Wisconsin by only 1% of the vote. If Democrats lose the Governorship next year, and cannot pick up the Senate seat in Wisconsin, than that is very good news for the Republican Party, and doomsday level news for President Biden. This will allow the GOP to pass voter discrimination laws in 2023 which will reduce turnout in 2024, and there will be no way for the President to stop them in a world without the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. That will cost Biden the Presidency.

The best thing to do is for President Biden to make sure that over the next year he does everything he can to give voters a reason to turnout to vote in 2022, otherwise I doubt he will get any significant legislation passed. This basically requires him to either make significant executive orders or use the bully pulpit to force Manchin, Sinema, and Leahy to join the Democrats in the abolition of the Filibuster.

If we don’t get significant executive orders and no significant laws beyond the stimulus bills in March out of this administration, and we lose either the Governorship or Senate seat in Wisconsin,  given the voter disenfranchisement laws being passed in key states which matter, we need to be very worried about 2024.