Something Is Happening Here But You Don't Know What It Is--Do You, Mr. Trump?

The news from the Rustbelt continues to be very poor for the GOP--yet this is the region that sent Donald Trump to the White House. What's going on?

Here's a snippet from Thomas Edsall's Times' column on the Rustbelt:

"Nate Silver, the founder of the political website 538, tweeted:

'By far the Democrats’ strongest region in Senate + Gov + House polling has been the Midwest, and I don’t think you’d really gather that from the tonality of the reporting, which tends to fixate on demographic change and therefore finds races in the South & the West a lot sexier.'

According to both Democratic and Republican operatives, Republican difficulties in the region stem in part from the trend among many Obama 2012-to-Trump-2016 voters to switch back to the Democrats.

Nick Gourevitch, whose Democratic firm, Global Strategy Group, is polling in the Midwest, wrote in an email: “In general, we are seeing Obama-Trump districts returning to the fold as competitive seats.” He went on:

"Our postelection research on Obama-Trump voters showed that many of them were conflicted voters who had mixed feelings about supporting the president and that not all of them were the die-hard Trump supporters some in the media like to report them to be."

Huh. So maybe all those Obama-Trump voters aren't hopeless racists the Democrats are better off ignoring.

Martin Longman adds on the Washington Monthly blog:

"Trump’s victory came about because he surprisingly won Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin which were all considered part of an impenetrable blue wall for the Democrats, but the Democrats look extremely strong in both the senate and governor’s races in all three of those states.

This can’t be explained by demographic change and it isn’t based solely on turnout models and assumptions. A lot of Democrats who voted for Trump in the industrial Midwest just have no intention of voting for a Republican in the upcoming midterms.....

It’s the formerly blue element that distinguishes the Midwest from other Trump strongholds. Many midwestern lifelong Democrats were attracted to Trump precisely because he was taking a battle-ax to the Republican establishment and so it’s unsurprising that these voters won’t transfer their loyalty from Trump to down-ticket conservatives. Because of union membership and socioeconomic status and tradition, these voters having been voting against Republicans all their lives. They made an exception for Trump and many still support him. Some will even vote for candidates that promise to help the president or that Trump has explicitly endorsed. But the snapback comes from the fact that most longtime Democrats supported Trump but not the party he leads."

And a new Politico/AARP poll of Pennsylvania finds:

"Pennsylvania was the linchpin of Donald Trump’s 2016 victory, but it could be ground zero of Democrats’ 2018 comeback. Not only are the incumbent Democratic senator and governor prohibitive favorites to win reelection, but Democrats could also pick up as many as a half-dozen congressional seats — roughly a quarter of the seats the party needs nationwide to win back the House.

Fewer than two years after Trump became the first Republican presidential candidate to carry Pennsylvania since 1988, a new POLITICO/AARP poll shows both Sen. Bob Casey and Gov. Tom Wolf with double-digit leads over their GOP challengers. And Democrats have a slight edge on the generic congressional ballot — which, combined with a new, court-imposed congressional-district map unwinding GOP gerrymandering, portends major gains in next month‘s elections."

This is a trend to keep an eye on. Not only will it be key to Democrats' results in 2018 but sustaining it will be central to defeating Trump in 2020. In fact, you could reasonably say if the Democrats can sustain this momentum in the Midwest/Rustbelt through 2020 their chances of defeating Trump will be very good indeed. Of course, Trump will pull out all the stops to reach voters in this area of the country in the next two years and he will by no means be easy to defeat. But developments this year could make for a very promising beginning for Project Trump One Term President.

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POLITICO.COM

Poll: Democrats Surging in Pennsylvania

Health care is powering a blue comeback.

In Defense of Optimism II

Sheri Berman has an excellent article up on the Social Europe website (a very useful site incidentally for coverage of trends and debates within European left politics). In the article she explains how important optimism has been--and should be--to the left.

"The rise of right-wing populism is probably the most pressing problem facing Europe today. Many analysts, including myself, have linked the rise of populism to the decline of the social democratic or centre left. Many traditional social democratic voters now vote populist; social democracy’s embrace of a “kinder, gentler” neoliberalism opened a policy “space” populists filled with welfare-state chauvinism; and social democracy’s fading electoral fortunes have rendered majority left government and, in many European countries, any stable majority government impossible, making it more difficult to solve problems, increasing dissatisfaction with democracy and support for populism further.

But beyond these connections lies a more fundamental one: the loss of a sense of the possible social democracy injected into post-war liberal democracy.

Social democracy was the most idealistic, optimistic ideology of the modern era. In contrast to liberals who believed “rule by the masses” would lead to the end of private property, tyranny of the majority and other horrors and thus favored limiting the reach of democratic politics, and communists who argued a better world could only emerge with the destruction of capitalism and “bourgeois” democracy, social democrats insisted on democracy’s immense transformative and progressive power: it could maximize capitalism’s upsides, minimize its downsides and create more prosperous and just societies....

Populism peddles a politics of fear—of crime, terrorism, unemployment, economic decline, the loss of national values and tradition—and asserts that other parties are leading their countries to disaster. Surveys make clear that populist voters are extremely pessimistic: they believe the past was better than the present and are extremely anxious about the future. But pessimism has infected Western societies more generally. A recent Pew survey for example revealed that even though growing percentages of European citizens view their country’s economic situation as dramatically better than a decade ago, this has not translated into greater optimism about the future. Indeed, in many European countries the “experience-expectation” differential has grown: in the Netherlands, Sweden and Germany, for example, approximately 80 percent or more say the economy is doing well, but less than 40 percent believe the next generation will be better off than their parents. These views reflect a troubling reality: particularly in times of change and uncertainty, people’s views are shaped more by emotions than rationality. Recognizing this, Roosevelt, the SAP [Swedish social democratic party] and earlier social democrats understood that for the center-left and democracy more generally to thrive, what was needed was not merely practical solutions to contemporary problems, but also an optimistic vision to counter the dystopian one offered by populists.

During the postwar decades social democracy provided just this. Against communism and liberalism they argued that people working together could use the democratic state to make the world a better place. The problems of the 21st century are different in form, but they are not different in kind. What is needed is a combination of pragmatic policies that can address challenges like economic inequality, slow growth and disconcerting social and cultural change as well as an ability to convince citizens that liberal democracy provides the most promising path to a better future. The rise of politicians as different as Trump, Corbyn and Macron makes clear how desperate many citizens are for leaders who insist that politics matters—that change is possible if the will is there."

In other words, Berman is saying that an optimistic vision isn't just an option for the left--it's a necessity if the left is to thrive. I could not agree more strongly. In fact, I wrote a whole book based on this idea: The Optimistic Leftist. Please consult it if want to see this argument developed at greater length.

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SOCIALEUROPE.EU

Politics, Pessimism and Populism • Social Europe

The rise of right-wing populism is probably the most pressing problem facing Europe today.

Yet More Forecasts!

CNN has a new one up (which they modestly refer to as "The Forecast"), coordinated by Harry Enten, formerly of 538. This new forecast predicts a gain in the House for the Democrats of 34 seats, putting the Democrats comfortably over the line for taking the House (though their forecast does not attach a specific probability to that event as 538 and others do). They also have a Senate forecast, and there they predict the Democrats will lose a seat on net.

This forecast is very, very similar to what we're seeing from 538 and other forecasts. That should inspire confidence but I'm sure some Democrats, remembering 2016, will just get even more nervous. Can't say I blame 'em. It ain't over 'til it's over!

About this website

CNN.COM

The latest election prediction for the House | The Forecast with Harry Enten

Get the House and Senate forecast for every district from CNN’s Harry Enten.

In Defense of Optimism

Interestingly, the IPCC dropped its latest global warming analysis around the same time as this year's Nobel prizes in economics were awarded. One of the Nobel honorees was Paul Romer, who strikes a note of optimism about our ability to combat global warming. The IPCC report, of course, sounded a warning of fairly serious consequences if we fail to keep global warming to 1.5 degrees (previous analyses have focused on a 2 degree target).

It's not really a surprise that a 2 degree rise would have more serious consequences than a 1.5 degree rise. And if you were already pessimistic that we could hit the 2 degree target, presumably focusing on a 1.5 degree target just makes you more pessimistic. Paul Romer is not so sure this is a useful approach.

In a very interesting post on his blog, Romer, who is famous for his theory of endogenous technological progress (look it up!), has this to say:

"[T]here are two very different types of optimism. Complacent optimism is the feeling of a child waiting for presents. Conditional optimism is the feeling of a child who is thinking about building a treehouse. “If I get some wood and nails and persuade some other kids to help do the work, we can end up with something really cool.”

What the theory of endogenous technological progress supports is conditional optimism, not complacent optimism. Instead of suggesting that we can relax because policy choices don’t matter, it suggests to the contrary that policy choices are even more important than traditional theory suggests....

By emitting carbon dioxide when we burn carbon-based fuel (and by emitting other greenhouse gases too), humans are changing our natural environment in ways that could be very harmful. Faced with such risks, I also agree that complacency is dangerous. But there is no logical connection between optimism and complacency.

The conclusion from endogenous growth theory is that progress is not free. We make progress because of things that people do. This is what it means for technological progress to be endogenous. The models and evidence suggest that the benefits we get when people do the things that produce progress are so large, and the resources that it takes to produce the progress we’ve enjoyed are so small, that the progress seems to be free. This means that we should encourage people to do a lot more of whatever it is that they are doing to generate progress. Instead of encouraging us to be complacent, the theory encourages us to be even more active....

The textbook analysis of externalities and pollution suggests that the solution is to get a once-and-done increase in the price of fossil fuel by imposing a steep tax. [But] the main reason to put a tax on greenhouse gases is not the one from the textbook. This is a tax that we want to people to avoid. We want innovators to discover all kinds of clever new ways to let people have the things that they want without paying this tax.

This changes how we think about the timing of the tax. We want innovators to know that the tax is coming and to take steps now to make sure that when it bites, it will be little more than a nuisance. Eventually, we want the tax to be so high that no one ever pays it, yet no one cares because it is irrelevant.

One way to achieve this would be to start with a very low tax on greenhouse gases right away and commit that the tax (in dollars per unit of greenhouse gas emitted) will increase gradually but inexorably. Innovators will start investing now in ways to for people to get what they want without paying the tax. They will stop investing in ways to extract more fossil fuels that will be subject to the tax.

After all the fear and hand-wringing, once we commit to this kind of tax, progress will continue but in a slightly different and much better direction. It will still seem to be free.

Our intuition tells us that solving this problem cannot be so easy. But intuition has also been telling us for two centuries that the price of natural resources has to climb as the rate of resource extraction increases. So what are you going to believe? Your intuition or the logic and the evidence?...

The lesson from resource prices (and from almost every other domain where we’ve looked carefully) is that small incentives can generate lots of innovation. This means that small changes in incentives will encourage more discoveries that are truly beneficial, such as ones that give people what they want without emitting greenhouse gases. These small changes will also discourage the socially harmful discoveries that keep the price of fossil fuels too low. So, there is no basis for complacent optimism and tolerance of bad status quo policies and lots of logical and empirical justification for conditional optimism."

Romer concludes by discussing environmental advocates' historic tendency to embrace:

"...an implicit model of political action in which optimism encourages complacency and pessimism spurs action. There is a grain of truth to this model; optimistic complacency can take root all too easily. But if we had emphasized the conditional optimism that is consistent with the scientific results....we would probably have found that it is a better way to encourage...policy action.

Pessimism is more likely to foster denial, procrastination, apathy, anger, and recrimination. It is conditional optimism that brings out the best in us."

This was a big point I was trying to get over in my book, The Optimistic Leftist. Unfortunately, all many people heard was what Romer refers to as "complacent optimism". But. with Romer, what I always believed--and still believe--is that conditional optimism is what we need.

PAULROMER.NET

Conditional Optimism about Progress and Climate – Paul Romer

Conditional Optimism about Progress and Climate Last Friday at the NBER Summer Institute, Martin Stuermer presented a thought provoking paper (written jointly with Gregor Schwerhoff.) It takes an important and puzzling fact seriously, then uses some credible theory to work out the implications of th...

Senate Forecast Check-In: The Outlook Is Poor

From the heady heights of a 1 in 3 chance of taking the Senate, the odds, as calculated by 538's forecast model, are now down to about 1 in 5 (David Byler's model over at The Weekly Standard has the Democrats' chances at comparatively bullish 1 in 4).

What happened? As cogently summarized by Nate Silver in his recent piece:

"In general, Democrats’ position has gotten worse in red states but has been steady-to-improving in purple and blue states. There are a couple of exceptions to this pattern (Joe Manchin has continued to poll well in West Virginia) but not many.

On top of that, Democrats have had particular problems in North Dakota, where Heitkamp has seen her numbers go especially south."

The Heitkamp collapse is vividly illustrated by the graphic below from Silver's article.

Meanwhile, in House-land things continue to look good. Nathaniel Rakich notes, also on 538:

"The situation is...dire for the GOP in the House, where Democrats have a 7 in 9 chance (78 percent) of taking control. They are so dire in some GOP-held districts, in fact, that national Republicans have begun pulling their resources or never invested them in the first place — effectively ceding those seats to Democrats, presumably so that the GOP can bolster more winnable districts."

The probability of a split outcome between House and Senate appears to be getting higher and higher.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/…/whats-behind-democrats-shrin…/

https://fivethirtyeight.com/…/six-districts-the-gop-appear…/

How Far Left Is the Democratic Party Moving?

I address this question in a new article for the British site, Unherd. I argue that the Democratic party is indeed moving left but not in the fashion envisioned by self-conscious radicals like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

"The Left in America is on the rise...But how far Left is this surge? And what does it stand for? Can it really be compared with the hard Left radicalism seen elsewhere across the globe?

Rhetorically, this new Leftism rejects ‘business as usual’ and involves a sweeping indictment of the economic and political system for generating inequality and doing little to help ordinary people in the wake of the great financial crisis. Substantively, Democrats today – in particular aspirants for the 2020 Democratic Presidential nomination – are far more willing to entertain and endorse ‘big ideas’, such as going beyond the ACA, aka Obamacare (which is now vigorously defended) to ‘Medicare for all’, free college education, universal pre-kindergarten provision, vastly expanded infrastructure spending and even a guaranteed jobs programme. Taxing the rich is ‘in’ and worrying about the deficit is ‘out’.

Democrats are also highly unified on core social issues such as opposing racism, defending immigrants, promoting LGBT and gender equality and criminal justice reform. In short, the centre of gravity of the Democratic party has decisively shifted from trying to assure voters of fiscal and social moderation, to forthrightly promising active government in a wide range of areas.

But this hardly means the Democrats are in any danger of becoming a radical party. Far from it. As Leftism goes, the current Democratic iteration is of a fairly modest variety, approaching, at most, mild European social democracy. Those who call themselves ‘socialist’ (as Ocasio-Cortez does) are few and far between.

Nor is it the case that incumbents and moderates are being thrown out wholesale and replaced with candidates much farther to their Left. Across the country, only two Democratic incumbents in the House lost primaries, and none in the Senate did. A Brookings study found that self-described “progressive Democrats” did well in primaries this election season but establishment Democrats actually did somewhat better. Thus, the change in the party is less a Leftward surge featuring new politicians (though this is happening to some extent) and more a steady party-wide movement to the Left."

That's my take. Read the whole article for more detail.

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UNHERD.COM

Could America's Democrats be 'Corbynised'? - UnHerd

The Left in America is on the rise. There’s no question of it. Signs of the tilt within the Democratic party can be seen in the resolutely progressive Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – a Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) member – who ousted Joe Crowley, a longtime member of the Democratic leader...

Is the Generic House Ballot Going Back Up?

Some of us thought that once Kavanaugh was confirmed, the Democrats might start actually doing better on the House level, as Democratic anger crystallized and Republican hyper-engagement subsided. Recent results suggest that may be happening--emphasis on the "may" because it's still too early to know for sure. But Ipsos' new release reports a +12 Democratic lead on the generic and CNN's has a +13 Democratic lead; these new releases have sent the Democrats' lead in the 538 rolling aggregate back over 8 points.

Nathaniel Rakich points out on 538 that it actually could be pretty important if the Democrats' does further widen over 8 points. He notes:

"[F]rom R+1 to D+8, Democrats’ gains in House seats [in our model] were fairly linear: They gain between one and four more seats with every point they pick up nationally. (That’s less than 1 percent of House seats for each 1 percentage point of the vote.) But when you go from a D+8 scenario to a D+9 scenario, Democrats pick up 10 additional seats, or more than 2 percent of House seats. Then, they gain an average of 7.1 seats (1.6 percent of the House) for every additional percentage point they pick up in the popular vote total (up until D+17); in other words, seat gain outstrips popular-vote gain."

If you feel like reading the entire article, there's an interesting explanation for D+8 as a cut point which makes good intuitive sense. Food for thought as we continue to track and ups and downs of the generic ballot.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/…/a-big-blue-wave-could-overwh…/