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Election Thoughts 2020

These are my initial thoughts the day after the 2020 election. You’ll notice most of them are about my understanding of what is going on, rather than what I wish happened and how it compares to those wishes. My wishes for an election aren’t remotely within the realm of possibility and I don’t treat them as such. I generally treat elections as data points to calibrate my understanding of the world around me.

After the 2016 election, I believed that Trump beat Clinton because Clinton was an especially unpopular candidate. I no longer believe that. In the popular vote, Trump kept his margin about the same and improved in percentage. Based on the 2020 results, I believe Trump’s appeal is more popular than I have realized.

Most striking is how far off the results appear from the polls. I think there are two explanations (both could be true): A significant segment of Trump voters lie to pollsters; pollsters have a hard time reaching all segments of Trump voters. A recent Gallup poll found 56% of registered voters said they are better off now than they were four years ago. This was hard to square with poor poll numbers for Trump. There are a few percentage points of people who support the job Trump is doing but won’t admit to voting for him.

The polling gap troubles me. I do not believe the claim that polls are presented as propaganda to make leftist positions and politicians seem artificially popular. There are certainly pollsters who do this. On the whole, pollsters were so embarrassed by 2016 they sought to remedy their errors. Clearly, this is still a problem. If we can’t get roughly accurate responses on how the country weighs in on politicians and policies, I think we are in for trouble. In a country of over 300 million citizens, no individual can get an accurate read on public opinion through personal experience. If we can’t count of polls to give us better guidance, we’re fumbling in the dark.

Looking at crosstabs, you have to notice Trump’s improvement with minorities. According to the New York Times, Trump did 11.5 points better in majority Hispanic districts in FL, GA, and NC compared to 2016. This wasn’t a total shock to me, I expected Trump to improve with Hispanics about 10 points, but this goes against the common narrative. I think we need to be cautious with saying this definitively right now. Exit polls are extra messy this year due to heavy early voting. There will be months and years of debating why this shift occurred. I don’t have a particular narrative myself, but I’m not sure how to square the anti-BLM protests narrative with a Biden win in Minnesota.

If you are curious, I did not vote for Trump, Biden, or Jo Jorgensen. In fact I did not vote for a single person on my ballot. I did vote, yes on proposal 1 and no on proposal 2. I voted for Gary Johnson in 2016 and I felt I could honestly tell people I voted for the candidate who I thought would make the best President. I was not sure I could say that about Jorgensen. Aside from my policy disagreements with him, I fear Trump’s abuses of power and disregard for the constitution. Aside from my policy disagreements with him, I fear Biden will not be held accountable for any of his abuses of power as shown by the media’s refusal to cover Hunter Biden’s business dealings in China. Ultimately, the one outcome I feared was one party holding the Presidency, House and Senate. I don’t think we will see that.

I placed two bets on PredictIt and one prediction on Twitter. In March I bet Trump would win the Presidency and back in September 2019 I bet the House would be Democratic but the Senate would be Republican. A few days ago I posted these predictions about how the Presidential race would play out. As I write this early Wednesday evening, this looks largely correct with a few mistakes, some of which may be contested in the days to come.

Trump has announced he will request a recount in Wisconsin. I predict he will do the same in Michigan and Pennsylvania. I would not be surprised to see lawsuits in these states as well. There has been a lot of talk about voter fraud today, particularly from Republicans. This is not surprising. Early voting was heavily Democratic, day-of voting was heavily Republican. This meant that while some states reported early voting first and some reported day-of first, most critical states had some kind of significant shift. My take on voter fraud is if you are an election observer and you tell me there is fraud, I will listen to you. If you’re a random person on Twitter reporting anything other than evidence from an election observer, I am likely to ignore you. There are many people with huge incentives to identify and fight any voter fraud against their interests. I will sit back and see what major cases are brought before the courts. And for the record, unless you are an election observer, I don’t think you can saw you definitively know there was no fraud in that locality. Blind dismissals of the notion of fraud is just as lazy as blind allegations that a heavily-Democratic big city must be hiding fraudulent votes.

I think Democrats may regret not only fighting for expanded mail voting but promoting it. Republicans have been criticized for not taking action in legislatures they control to allow quick counting, as is the place in Florida.  I don’t know enough about this area to confidently agree but this seems plausible to me. When Trump tweets out statements like this, I can’t disagree with the notion that Republicans seek to sow doubt on as many mail votes as they can. Even if there is no voter fraud, because of the strong partisan split in early vs day-of voting, you were going to see strong shifts of this manner.

If Trump loses, I think he will be the Republican nominee in 2024. He outperformed everyone’s expectations even if he loses the Presidency. As a party Republicans did better than expected even in the House. I think there will be a strong belief that Trump has electoral magic no other Republican can match, and any concerns about his 2020 performance will be chalked up to covid-19 being a wild card out of his control.

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Response to “The White House didn’t like my agency’s research. So it sent us to Missouri.”

I was sent “The White House didn’t like my agency’s research. So it sent us to Missouri.” an op-ed in the Washington Post, by someone I respect. Here were my thoughts in reply:

I think this is good (the actions of the Trump administration).

Above all else, this piece reeked of arrogance. If only we could all be so intelligent, so valuable, so noble as the kindly author.

I started working on machine learning tool that could ingest large amounts of data and use it to predict when and what farmers plant. Eventually, it could be the beginnings of a larger framework for integrating farmer behavior and economics into climate change research.

The last thing I want my tax dollars going towards is some data scientist working towards central planning of farming for his climate change agenda. As the CEO of Better Data, my official stance is that anyone who trys to wow you with the term “machine learning” is bullshitting you when what he really means is “overfitting my data set”.

I mean, is this comedy?

Because the publishing staff all left, dozens of reports on subjects from veterans’ diets to organic foods are delayed.

Oh, no! Won’t someone think of the…veterans’ diets studies?! And how can we live without the government studying organic food for us. Especially given their great track record. Can someone remind me if eggs are currently on the government’s “good” or “bad” list this year? How about red meat? It’s so hard to keep up.

I really resent this “oh I’m just a lowly public servant” shtick.

Contrary to the common talking points about cushy government jobs, we all knew that we could have gotten higher salaries in the private sector, faster advancement elsewhere in the government or more perks in academia.

Notice how he writes this. Private sector has higher salaries, but less job security; faster advancement elsewhere in government but less fulfilling work; more perks in academia, but have to deal with committees and grading. These are all trade-offs. The author and his colleagues have chosen to work at ERS instead of other opportunities, presumably because it was the best option available for each of them. You’re not acting out of charity, guy, this is your job. And one of the downsides of government work of course is your big boss can change every 4 years. And sometimes they’re brought into the job on a mandate to drain the swamp.

I laughed at the contrast of these two

Perdue insinuated that our research was politically motivated, telling reporters that the department needed to avoid past mistakes, in which it made decisions “based on political science rather than on sound science.”

My colleagues and I organized letter-writing campaigns, contacted our congressional representatives and voted to unionize.

How dare Perdue accuse us of being politically motivated! The author is going going to prove him wrong by…politically organizing. Oh.

Of course Perdue is politically motivated. But so is the author. All of us are. Personally, I’d be pleased if the ERS was shut down. If it’s going to exist, I think it and many other agencies should be relocated outside of DC. The DMV has the highest median income in the country. So long as that is the case, you’re going to have populists running on “drain the swamp / hang the elites” rhetoric. Whether or not those populist candidates like Trump are full of shit, the message is going to sell.

This article doesn’t change my mind on it at all. The author spends the whole article complaining about how he’ll have to relocate, and when he quits he gets a new job…in Philly, not DC.

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I Don’t Work In Politics

When I go home to Michigan or Chicago, I get some common questions from family and friends. The most frequent is: How do you like working in politics? 

In the words of Lucille Bluth, “I don’t understand the question and I won’t respond to it.”

I had one job in politics as a legislative assistant for a Michigan state representative. It was a pretty good job, a great one at the time (I was in college). I mostly answered emails from constituents and helped my boss draft legislation. 

When you work for a politician, you help them campaign. You also help them campaign for members of the same party. I had no interest in that. 

Politics is war. Now I don’t mind fighting, but there aren’t many battles worth fighting. As a general rule, politicians are amorphous blobs willing to do whatever it takes to ensure one thing: re-election.

We can talk about the separation of powers, how to interpret the constitution, the proper role of government, but at the end of the day politics is about gaining and wielding power. Nobody exemplifies this better than Donald Trump. Oh, and you’re kidding yourself if you think the Democrats are innocent of this. The weakest political criticisms are those of hypocrisy. People are hypocritical in politics all the time and there is no punishment for it. Political actors do not care about rules and ensuring those rules are followed. They care about promoting those of their political tribe. That matters more than procedural concerns.

I don’t work in politics. So what is it I do?

I have mostly worked at places that deal with ideas. I worked at a think tank, a student leadership network, and am now at an academic institute. The exact vision and strategy of each organization has been distinct. They all share the goal of fighting the battle of ideas and shifting the intellectual conversation which, in turn, would change the behavior of politicians.

If you have asked me this question and I have responded angrily, I apologize. I know you mean well. And I understand for most people, there is no difference between politicians debating policy and eggheads at think tanks doing the same thing.

Politicians have a seat at the decision-making table. Their power to create change is, in theory, vast. But they are so constrained by interest groups, public opinion, and political alliances their votes are often predetermined for them. 

Us eggheads admittedly don’t have that seat at the decision-making table. But it’s overrated.

Ideas matter. And breathtaking ideas, like those of Adam Smith or Ayn Rand, have amazing staying power. 

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What is next for the Supreme Court?

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid changed the requirement from 60 to 51 votes for federal judgeships in 2013.

In 2016 Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell extended that requirement to Supreme Court nominations and then refused to hold a vote on Merrick Garland, who was nominated for the Supreme Court by President Barack Obama.

Now in 2018, an allegation (well, now there are multiple allegations) that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh committed sexual assault was not put forward until the last possible moment by Senator Dianne Feinstein. Even granting the allegation is truthful, it was announced on the basis of political expediency. Bringing forward a charge of misconduct as a minor is certainly novel, although the charged offense is quite serious.

While everyone following politics is focused on whether or not Kavanaugh will be confirmed, I’m wondering what is next? What will be the next change to the Supreme Court nomination process? I have two guesses:

  1. Court Packing. A number of left-wing voices have advocated for this strategy if they regain federal power. 
  2. Impeachment proceedings against Kavanaugh. If he is confirmed, many will maintain he lied under oath by denying the sexual assault allegations.
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Our discourse is broken. Signaling ate it.

Our discourse is broken. We can’t talk to one another anymore. Tribalism reigns supreme. How many times have you heard a variation of this?

For the record, I think this is exaggerated. I’m perfectly able to communicate with family, friends, colleagues, neighbors, strangers. This is largely about politics, one domain of life that doesn’t matter for most people on a daily basis.

But there is truth to it. What’s driving this trend is that somehow, a noble lie has been spoiled. Everything is signaling.

Signaling is an economics concept that explains how parties credibly communicate information to one another. I learned about this concept because the signaling theory of education has gained attention recently. Put simply, a college degree is not necessarily valuable because one acquires knowledge during college. It is valuable because it is a signal to employers (possibly a signal of intelligence, but likely also of work ethic, social IQ, willingness to follow direction, and other attributes).

Imagine you have been in college for three and a half years, only to drop out before your final semester. Are you only semester less employable than a comparable person with a college degree? Are you seven semesters more employable than someone who didn’t enroll in college?

If you agree with me that a college dropout will be judged more closely to someone who didn’t enroll in college than someone who finished college, you hopefully see the plausibility of the signaling theory of education. The value of the degree does not come from the knowledge gained in class. It comes from acquiring the signal.

Back to politics. Discourse is broken because the point of talking is not to talk. It is to signal.

Take the latest example, the sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. In economic terms, to any random individual the costs of determining the validity of the accusation are relatively costly (time and effort to wade through the evidence, which you don’t have direct access to) and the benefits are relatively low (most people can’t affect the proceedings in a meaningful way). Meanwhile, the benefits of signaling your tribal allegiance are relatively high (being alone in politics is meaningless, power comes in numbers) and the costs are relatively low (all it takes is a tweet).

There are (a small number of) people who are seriously attempting to assess the validity of the allegations and determine how they should affect Kavanaugh’s nomination. For a vast majority of folks, it is an opportunity to signal which political tribe you support. Without knowing their previous stances on similar allegations of sexual assault, you can accurately guess their stance on Kavanaugh if you know how they vote. It’s amazing!

It seems to me that subconsciously, more and more people are clued in to the fact that the point of political discourse is to signal which tribe you support. This is even more maddening as politics creeps and eats into more and more realms of life.

I think this is pretty clear. I’m not so confident on how we got here and if there’s a way out. That would be my personal preference, but I also am curious what the costs and benefits of such a culture of discourse.

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Political Inertia

I used to believe that people don’t change their political beliefs after 30. Well, I didn’t believe that statement completely. But I did believe that people don’t change their primary worldview or core political ideology, and rarely changed their views on particular stances. My mind on this has changed a bit (hey, I’m under 30!)

I still think worldviews are pretty stuck at 30. I can’t remember the last time I saw a radical change in the beliefs of someone I knew over 30, especially compared to how common it is for young adults. And I have seen a number of young adults who have a handful of radical changes before they hit their settling point.

But policy views are more flexible. While this will be good news to some people, my initial reading of is a bit depressing. My observation here fits with Jonathan Haidt’s book The Righteous Mind. Basically, beliefs work like this: people organize into groups based on their foundational beliefs (which, it seems, are at least partially driven by neurology). These foundational beliefs lead to intuitions towards particular issues, around which people form justifications to defend their beliefs. This is in contrast to the more standard understanding: people use evidence and logic to create arguments.

Basically, we decide our view on a specific issue, and create a rationalization to back it up.

I think this is pretty evident if you look at American politics today. You have Democrats praising the FBI while Republicans condemn it. I’m struck by the similar shift on free trade. I’m skeptical these were the result of sober, thoughtful reflection. The existing tribes, which have already organized around foundational beliefs, have seen their allies shift. Now they are changing up their policy stances to defend their allies.

This isn’t all bad news. If you are like me and want to see political and social change in the world, this means there is hope for activism and change. People over 30 can change their views. But presenting sound logical arguments may not be a very effective method. The question is, what is?

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Politics Is Rarely About Policy

Theresa May gambled and lost. When Brexit was unexpectedly passed by voters, May saw a political opportunity and rode to power as Prime Minister by shifting from opposition to support of Brexit. It appeared as though she would benefit from this populist wave in the UK for years to come.

This was just the first of some surprise populist electoral victories in recent years. We of course saw Donald Trump elected President. In France, voters discarded the major right-wing and major left-wing parties forcing a general election between center-left Macron and the populist ethno-nationalist right candidate Le Pen. I even think the surprising rise of Socialist Corbyn taking away May’s majority in the UK fits the trend.

What is the trend that explains the rise of both right-wing Donald Trump and left-wing Jeremy Corbyn? I think it’s the middle finger. Seriously! People are angry. Trust in government is low. What we are seeing is an era in which voters are more willing than ever to reject whoever is currently in office. Step into the ballot box, raise your middle finger, rinse and repeat. That’s how you end up with Theresa May possibly being the shortest-serving Prime Minister in history (we shall see).

I constantly encounter the assumption that populism is synonymous with a set of policy changes, particularly opposition to free trade or immigration along with support for nationalism. This exaggerates the importance of policy within politics. Voters are rationally ignorant. Political stances are often attempts to signal and boost one’s status. Because most people have so little ability to actually change the outcome, politics is closer to a professional sports game than it is to an actual conversation on governance.

This populist wave isn’t about bringing coal jobs back to West Virginia or a “hard Brexit” over a “soft Brexit.” It’s about using one’s vote to say “I’m angry” (to the small degree that voting allows you to make a statement). If you are surprised that Donald Trump’s base continues to support him even though he hasn’t delivered on his campaign promises like a border wall, repealing Obamacare, and tax reform, look elsewhere. He has delivered, just outside of policy. He makes left-wingers mad and he has damaged the media’s reputation. These are the non-policy desires of angry voters.

This trend is good news and bad news for libertarians. We are living in an era of Big Government (in the US I’d argue since FDR) and if voters want a change, libertarianism could be that change. But keep in mind my main point here, politics is rarely about policy. A libertarian campaign likely won’t be about libertarian policy, which is uncomfortable for most libertarians. On the other hand, there is evidence suggesting that low trust in the government is dangerously harmful for society. The erosion of institutional trust can lead to authoritarian populism.

As a footnote, I have seen many pundits take away from May’s recent failure that British voters support a soft Brexit over a hard Brexit. Maybe they do, maybe the don’t. Regardless, I don’t think a policy distinction should be your first assumption about the motivating factor. Look elsewhere.

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The Libertarian Party’s Shallow Bench

Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party nominee for President, had his second major gaffe recently. Johnson did not have an answer when asked to name a foreign leader he admires. Josh Barro wants to know, “who are these people who lost to Gary Johnson?”

Barro has a point. While Johnson has some great qualifications, including serving as Governor of New Mexico and successfully starting a construction company, he has not done a great job with the opportunities granted to him such as town hall specials on CNN. How was Johnson picked for this?

Johnson has been the clear choice for the Libertarian Party since he dropped out of the Republican Party for the Libertarians in the 2012 election. I wonder if this decision is similar to what happened to the Democratic Party, who have protected Hillary Clinton as the clear choice candidate for years leading up to this election. Even just 18 months ago, it would have been hard to predict the opportunity for a libertarian candidate to get so much attention thanks to the deep unpopularity of the Republican and Democratic nominees.

A mentor of mine likes to talk about keeping a strong bench. The analogy here is to a sports team. Even if you currently have a strong lineup, you want to make sure you have strong backups to call upon if something happens to your stars or if you need additional assets.

The Libertarian Party has a shallow bench. Well the Libertarian Party has lots of problems, including that our political system is designed to keep out third parties. But I think it’s clear there was little thought or time spent on growing the potential pool of people to make the most of the opportunity put before the Libertarian Party this cycle.

One of the most exciting aspects of my job at Students For Liberty is that we are growing that bench. I think it is only a matter of time before a nominee for President is a Students For Liberty alumni. But as someone deeply skeptical of politics and the potential for any one person, even the American President, to create lasting change for liberty, I am even more excited about how we are growing other benches. We at Students For Liberty are seeking to support new superstars and grow benches in academia, business, civil society, and many other arenas.

By the way, even with his embarrassing moments I think Johnson is clearly a superior choice to Clinton and Trump. I’m excited to vote for Johnson this November. But, I can’t help but wonder if there are other people out there who could have done a better job this cycle than Johnson…

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Trump Troubled By Police Misconduct?

Donald Trump has said he is “very troubled” by a recent incident in which an unarmed black man (with his hands up) was shot by Oklahoma police. Some may find this surprising given Trump’s previous choices to condemn Black Lives Matter and strongly support American police forces.

It seems to me that, at least on this issue, Trump has nailed the median voter’s position. Make a point of unconditionally supporting the police, and when forced with evidence so heinous you can’t deny, admit there’s a problem. And the solution? The police “will just have to get better and better and better”. 

This sure sounds like the median voters I have encountered discussing this issue.

I’m not opposed to a societal expectation of respecting the police. If I had to guess it’s probably essential to an orderly and peaceful society*. But if “respecting the police” is used as a way to stop the conversation then it’s a problem. There are really important policy changes we need to prevent bad cops and to help good cops do a better job.

Some of these changes are best described by Radley Balko in his book Rise of the Warrior Cop. They include:

  1. Rolling back or ending the War on Drugs
  2. Transparency, such as the filming of police conduct and records of police officers engaged in violent encounters 
  3. Community policing (“taking cops out of patrol cars to walk beats and become a part of the communities they serve”, p. 325)
  4. Accountability. As like most public sector unions, police unions have been very successful at shielding officers from being held accountable for their misconduct by passing “law enforcement bill of rights” which restrict their liability on the job. 
  5. Last but not least, changing police culture. This is of course a tall order, but it is just as essential as any policy change. 

If implemented, I think these policy changes can reduce violence, improve societal respect for the police, and reduce grievances of activist groups.

*Of course, so is an expectation that police officers follow the rule of law

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Brexit and the Overton Window

Current British immigration policies are unpopular. These policies would likely not be in place under purely British national politics because of the current Overton Window on immigration in Britain. Britons are very opposed to immigration. Nonetheless, the United Kingdom must comply with European Union common immigration policies. Immigration polls as the top issue relevant to voting on EU membership. It seems to me that many people approached the Brexit vote as an opportunity to implement their desired immigration policies. 
I predict voters will push other countries to leave the EU if the nation is not aligned with their Overton Window on their top issue due to EU rules. This is a mild claim but it’s a more useful test for the EU’s longevity than pure popularity of the EU. It is possible “belonging to a supranational political body” will be a top issue with “no” holding the majority position. But we don’t tend to think that abstractly. This will play out vis a vis more concrete policy issues.