First off, a nod to Jonathan Swift for providing the inspiration for this post's title. Now, on with the show.
Alright, look. It's obvious that America's current system of choosing a president isn't working. 320 million people, and one of the final two candidates we could come up with - the one who went on to win* - was Donald Trump? That was the best we could do? Really, America?!?
You'll notice I didn't mention Hillary Clinton in the above paragraph. That was intentional. I didn't want to lump her in with Trump. Sure, Hillary Clinton had a fair amount of political baggage. Some of it was deserved and of her own doing, but the overwhelming majority of it turned out to be baseless accusations peddled by the right-wing smear machine. But she was also the most qualified candidate, by far, and she was certainly miles ahead of the walking, breathing dumpster fire currently occupying the White House.
Whoops, I got distracted and went off on a tangent there.
Back to my main point, which is that the current process for electing a president is in desperate need of reform. I don't want to get too into the weeds talking about how the institutional mechanisms in place need to be modified, although I will say that the Electoral College needs to be revamped, the Voting Rights Act needs to be restored, and alternative ideas like ranked-choice voting and holding primaries on weekends (when more people can participate) need to be at least looked at.
No, the change I propose is more tonal than structural. Here's my idea. Instead of the current handful of campaign debates, which are nearly worthless spectacles, we have each party's candidate (it would have to be after the primaries, because in the past couple presidential elections there would be too many candidates for this to work) undergo some kind of exam by a select panel of experts in various relevant areas.
For example, say we want to evaluate a candidate's knowledge on foreign policy. We gather a team of experts in all the areas foreign policy could be expected to cover: economics & trade, science, military strategy, and so on. Then these experts ask the candidates a bunch of questions, to gauge their knowledge. Now, the questions could take any kind of format - I'm not too choosy. It could be an in-person panel, like a job interview; or it could be like a college-level exam.
The point - and this is the important part - is that the results of the Q & A are made public, to see just how much a certain candidate knows (or doesn't know.) If it's a panel interview, record it and play it on all the news networks later. If it's a written test, publish it in a special insert in every major newspaper, and post it online. Also, just like any other test (which is essentially what this is), the candidate's performance is scored. 1 - 100, just like most tests. Any candidate who scores too low is disqualified from running.
And that's it. We wouldn't change anything else about how votes are cast or counted, we'd just replace debates with a process that (hopefully) prevented the country from electing a complete idiot.
I don't expect this to be adopted, of course. It's pretty much got a snowball's chance in hell. But I don't think anyone will dispute that elections have become way too much like a popularity contest - a certain level of that is always expected, but it's getting ridiculous.
Anyway, I was just throwing this idea out there.
* Russia helped Trump win
Showing posts with label 2016 election. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2016 election. Show all posts
Thursday, August 2, 2018
Tuesday, July 17, 2018
Trump's Helsinki Fiasco
Since Donald Trump became president, I've often reacted to news stories with disgust, anger, frustration, fear, or a combination of the four; but I've only been distressed over current events to the point of losing sleep twice. November 9, 2016 - the night Trump won the election - was one. Last night was another. I have a Chicken Little-type tendency to assume the worst and engage in panicked hyperbole at the earliest sign of bad news, and it's a reflex that I have to work hard to keep in check. However, in light of recent events, I don't think it's a big stretch to say that the United States is in a bad spot.
On July 16th, in a joint press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin, President Trump rejected the United States intelligence community's conclusion that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, instead choosing to take Russian President Putin at his word. Trump's refusal to acknowledge this conclusion is significant for two reasons. First, it wasn't one or two intelligence agencies making that claim, it was the entire intelligence community's unanimous assessment. Second, on June 13, Special Counsel Mueller had indicted a dozen GRU agents for hacking into the DNC's computer networks (among other targets) to acquire information it intended to use to interfere with the 2016 elections. That second reason is particularly significant because any case that's going to be made in court requires hard, tangible evidence. This case, especially. Mueller is accusing foreign nationals of committing a cyber-crime against US government-affiliated institutions. Even though the best-case scenario is that the dozen GRU agents will be tried in absentia - if there's a trial at all - Mueller's case needs to be as close to airtight as possible, because of the stakes involved.
Taken together, the intelligence community's assessment and Mueller's indictments mean that the conclusion is pretty conclusive: Russia interfered in the 2016 election. Yet the President of the United States chose to disregard his own intelligence apparatus' conclusion.
Why did he do that? Or, to ask the question another way, why is Trump so quick to believe Putin? Well, there are a couple of different possibilities. One is that Trump's ego is driving all of this. If he had to acknowledge that Russia's interference contributed to his victory, it takes some of the glow off of his win. That would be a crushing blow to his pride. Another possibility is Trump's well-documented affinity for dictators and strongmen. Putin isn't the only authoritarian who Trump has fawned over, but he does seem to hold the place of honor in Trump's hall of heroes. Yet another possibility is that Trump has a relationship with the Russian government that goes back decades. Jonathan Chait's recent piece about this has been making the rounds, but Sarah Kendzior has a one-year lead on him. I'd stop short of calling Trump a Russian "asset" (that word has certain HUMINT connotations), but I think "useful idiot" is more fitting. I think the Russian government saw Trump as an easy-to-manipulate pawn, and they played him like a fiddle.
And if the Helsinki presser is any indication, Russia is still playing him. That is about as terrifying as it gets. It tells all of America's allies that the President of the United States can't be trusted. It tells hostile nations that the United States won't push back if another cyber-attack happens. It tells the world that Trump won't do anything to protect America's national security. And it tells Russia it has unlimited license to do what it wants. Trump's performance in Helsinki also adds credibility to long-running suspicions that his loyalty is to Russia.
And while Trump has been enabling Russia, the GOP has been running interference for him. A handful of its key leaders had a reasonable suspicion in mid-2016 that Trump had an allegiance to Russia, but they kept it a secret. Its Senate majority leader knew that Russia hacked the DNC, but he refused to publicly confirm that information. The GOP has tried to undermine Robert Mueller's investigation at every turn - by holding dog-and-pony shows like the Strzok hearings; by spreading falsehoods in the news and on social media; and by refusing to act in response to a growing mountain of evidence that Russia tampered with the 2016 election results, and that the Trump campaign was involved in that effort.
So why is the GOP so committed to helping Trump?
Because the party's future has been tied to Trump since 2015, and it will continue to need him for the next few years. He helped the GOP win it the presidency and both houses of Congress in 2016, establishing a fast-track for the GOP's legislative agenda. (Although there have been a handful of self-inflicted injuries.) He appointed ideologically sympathetic judges to several courts, including two (pending Kavanaugh's confirmation) Supreme Court Justices, allowing conservatives to interpret the law for a generation. And possibly most important of all, he brought a political party that looked like it was dying back to life, by hitting all the right notes that resonate with the conservative base: a tough stance on immigration; a strong, fearsome military; law and order with a draconian flavor; pro-business; anti-regulation - all the things they want to hear. The fact that his actual track record is pretty dismal is irrelevant. Trump has hit upon a winning political formula that will keep the GOP in the game for several more election cycles. And all they have to do is turn a blind eye to someone who never bothered to hide his disdain for American and democratic institutions and ideals.
Which is something they will gladly do, if current events are any indication. That makes them complicit in Trump's war on American security and well-being. Putting party over country in normal circumstances is, well, politics. Putting party over country in the wake of a cyber-attack that most likely influenced the outcome of a presidential election is dereliction of duty. Trump's conduct in Helsinki shows that he represents a danger to the United States, and he has far exceeded the threshold for being removed from office. And his enablers in Congress - McConnell, Ryan, Nunes, all of them - I don't know if what they did is considered a crime, but if it is, they should all be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
It won't be enough to simply vote them out of office. Simply voting them out means they become the objects of scorn for a few years, and that's pretty much it. That can't be allowed to happen. They need to be made into examples, to discourage future of politicians from doing the same thing. Trials need to be held. Prison sentences need to be handed down. Safeguards need to be put into place to keep it from happening again.
Because none of this will simply revert back to normal the day after Trump leaves office. The damage being done - to our relationships with our allies, to our global reputation, to our citizens' faith in government - will take years to be repaired. And the longer it goes on, the worse the damage will be.
On July 16th, in a joint press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin, President Trump rejected the United States intelligence community's conclusion that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, instead choosing to take Russian President Putin at his word. Trump's refusal to acknowledge this conclusion is significant for two reasons. First, it wasn't one or two intelligence agencies making that claim, it was the entire intelligence community's unanimous assessment. Second, on June 13, Special Counsel Mueller had indicted a dozen GRU agents for hacking into the DNC's computer networks (among other targets) to acquire information it intended to use to interfere with the 2016 elections. That second reason is particularly significant because any case that's going to be made in court requires hard, tangible evidence. This case, especially. Mueller is accusing foreign nationals of committing a cyber-crime against US government-affiliated institutions. Even though the best-case scenario is that the dozen GRU agents will be tried in absentia - if there's a trial at all - Mueller's case needs to be as close to airtight as possible, because of the stakes involved.
Taken together, the intelligence community's assessment and Mueller's indictments mean that the conclusion is pretty conclusive: Russia interfered in the 2016 election. Yet the President of the United States chose to disregard his own intelligence apparatus' conclusion.
Why did he do that? Or, to ask the question another way, why is Trump so quick to believe Putin? Well, there are a couple of different possibilities. One is that Trump's ego is driving all of this. If he had to acknowledge that Russia's interference contributed to his victory, it takes some of the glow off of his win. That would be a crushing blow to his pride. Another possibility is Trump's well-documented affinity for dictators and strongmen. Putin isn't the only authoritarian who Trump has fawned over, but he does seem to hold the place of honor in Trump's hall of heroes. Yet another possibility is that Trump has a relationship with the Russian government that goes back decades. Jonathan Chait's recent piece about this has been making the rounds, but Sarah Kendzior has a one-year lead on him. I'd stop short of calling Trump a Russian "asset" (that word has certain HUMINT connotations), but I think "useful idiot" is more fitting. I think the Russian government saw Trump as an easy-to-manipulate pawn, and they played him like a fiddle.
And if the Helsinki presser is any indication, Russia is still playing him. That is about as terrifying as it gets. It tells all of America's allies that the President of the United States can't be trusted. It tells hostile nations that the United States won't push back if another cyber-attack happens. It tells the world that Trump won't do anything to protect America's national security. And it tells Russia it has unlimited license to do what it wants. Trump's performance in Helsinki also adds credibility to long-running suspicions that his loyalty is to Russia.
And while Trump has been enabling Russia, the GOP has been running interference for him. A handful of its key leaders had a reasonable suspicion in mid-2016 that Trump had an allegiance to Russia, but they kept it a secret. Its Senate majority leader knew that Russia hacked the DNC, but he refused to publicly confirm that information. The GOP has tried to undermine Robert Mueller's investigation at every turn - by holding dog-and-pony shows like the Strzok hearings; by spreading falsehoods in the news and on social media; and by refusing to act in response to a growing mountain of evidence that Russia tampered with the 2016 election results, and that the Trump campaign was involved in that effort.
So why is the GOP so committed to helping Trump?
Because the party's future has been tied to Trump since 2015, and it will continue to need him for the next few years. He helped the GOP win it the presidency and both houses of Congress in 2016, establishing a fast-track for the GOP's legislative agenda. (Although there have been a handful of self-inflicted injuries.) He appointed ideologically sympathetic judges to several courts, including two (pending Kavanaugh's confirmation) Supreme Court Justices, allowing conservatives to interpret the law for a generation. And possibly most important of all, he brought a political party that looked like it was dying back to life, by hitting all the right notes that resonate with the conservative base: a tough stance on immigration; a strong, fearsome military; law and order with a draconian flavor; pro-business; anti-regulation - all the things they want to hear. The fact that his actual track record is pretty dismal is irrelevant. Trump has hit upon a winning political formula that will keep the GOP in the game for several more election cycles. And all they have to do is turn a blind eye to someone who never bothered to hide his disdain for American and democratic institutions and ideals.
Which is something they will gladly do, if current events are any indication. That makes them complicit in Trump's war on American security and well-being. Putting party over country in normal circumstances is, well, politics. Putting party over country in the wake of a cyber-attack that most likely influenced the outcome of a presidential election is dereliction of duty. Trump's conduct in Helsinki shows that he represents a danger to the United States, and he has far exceeded the threshold for being removed from office. And his enablers in Congress - McConnell, Ryan, Nunes, all of them - I don't know if what they did is considered a crime, but if it is, they should all be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
It won't be enough to simply vote them out of office. Simply voting them out means they become the objects of scorn for a few years, and that's pretty much it. That can't be allowed to happen. They need to be made into examples, to discourage future of politicians from doing the same thing. Trials need to be held. Prison sentences need to be handed down. Safeguards need to be put into place to keep it from happening again.
Because none of this will simply revert back to normal the day after Trump leaves office. The damage being done - to our relationships with our allies, to our global reputation, to our citizens' faith in government - will take years to be repaired. And the longer it goes on, the worse the damage will be.
Sunday, June 10, 2018
No Corporation is an Island
"You know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork, and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime, and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it." - George Carlin
You might have seen this in the news lately: Seattle has announced a plan to tax corporations that make over $20 million per year $275 per employee, in order to raise revenue for affordable housing and programs that help the homeless. Reportedly, Seattle's new tax is gaining traction with a handful of Silicon Valley cities, but it's also drawing a fair amount of criticism. Can you guess why? You got it - Amazon will likely respond by simply moving its offices somewhere else. In fact, Amazon has hinted that it's considering such a move. Man, what a bunch of fools those city officials are! Their plan is going to cost the city both jobs and revenue.
Except that Seattle (kinda) has the right idea. I don't agree with Seattle's new tax - how much control does the city council think Amazon and the other corporations really have over the local housing market? But I would get behind a similar concept, like steep monetary penalties for wealthy companies that can, but choose not to, pay their workers a living wage. (Looking at you, Walmart. Along with just about every fast food franchise.) Those companies' workers have to make a tough choice to cope with shortfalls, given their salaries: go without, work a second job (if possible), or rely on government assistance. It shouldn't be that way. They deserve wages that will let them cover basic necessities: food, clothing, a decent place to live, the means to afford the inevitable medical emergency. I don't think that's too much to ask. Let's penalize the companies that hoard the revenue and make their employees subsist on scraps.
By this point, I can practically see people objecting. (That's right, I can see you out there, saying "What is this bullshit?" to yourself. Hang on, I'm getting to you.) I've been hearing the same objections, more or less, for years, so let me write a few words to address them.
First, people often say that low wage jobs don't deserve higher wages because they don't require a lot of skill. Well, go work one of those jobs some time. There's a lot more work involved than most people realize. Take a fast food worker. The act of grilling a burger, deep-frying some chicken wings, or preparing whatever fast food an establishment serves, isn't terribly difficult. Try doing it nonstop for an entire shift, though, including when you're under pressure because a huge crowd of people showed up at the same time. Don't forget that you'll be performing some other task like cleaning or stocking during the slow times. So yeah, fast food employees work their asses off all day. They absolutely deserve a living wage.
Second, opponents argue that it will negatively affect businesses. I can kinda/sorta see that, if it's a mom-and-pop operation we're talking about. Small businesses have thinker profit margins, so requiring them to pay higher wages will probably cause a lot of them to go out of business. But we're not talking about mom & pop businesses. Walmart (I like to single it out because it's the king of asshole companies) raked in $482 billion in FY 2016, so it could easily spare some of that to give its employees a boost. Here's a Fortune article that crunched the numbers, so I don't have to. Point is, just about any retail/restaurant/fast-food franchise could provide pay & benefits without suffering much lost revenue. If it really wanted to.
Of course, this won't happen, because companies are obsessed with their balance sheets. Businesses that can will just move to a place where they don't have to pay employees as much - just like Amazon is hinting it might do. Hmm, that sounds familiar, like something that happened before. . .wait, it's on the tip of my brain. . .oh, I know! Outsourcing! That happened mostly in the 1990s so I think it's been long enough for us to gauge the impact. How'd that work out for everyone involved?
Not so well, right? Sure, it was great for the companies: they got a ready supply of inexpensive labor, and saved money by paying pennies on the dollar, with no perks like insurance or a pension. But for everyone else, not so much. A lot of companies moved to America's immediate neighbor to the south, but later packed up and moved again when they found a better bargain elsewhere. Think about that: the companies thought Mexico was too expensive. In other words, the competition for those manufacturing jobs basically became a race to the bottom. Remember that piece of info, because you will see it again. And the American economy took some hits too. Several million American factory workers (sources vary from 5MM to 14MM) were unceremoniously dumped back into the job search, with a predictable effect on wages, per the law of supply and demand. Here's a graph that helps explain it, courtesy of the University of Toronto (and some modifications by yours truly.) You'll notice that when you increase the labor supply (shown here by the dashed line labeled S2), wages go down.
And it's not just outsourcing or technological gains. The "gig" economy, self-driving vehicles, retail kiosks (okay, I guess those last two are technological gains), the "retail apocalypse". . .they're all combining to make jobs, especially stable, well-paying jobs, harder to find. Add in factors like rising costs for housing and health care, and the result is that it is becoming harder for people to get by.
And people realize it. They instinctively "get it," even if they're not expert economists armed with reams of data to back up their arguments. They've understood things haven't been getting better for years now, and they've been making their frustrations known. The Tea Party. Occupy Wall Street. The 2016 Presidential election. These have all been expressions of the population's discontent over the status quo. They know the economy isn't working for them, and they're pissed about it. Amazingly, Washington and Wall Street still haven't gotten the message - if the recent tax reform bill is any indication.
Seattle kind of gets it. Its tax proposal, despite a few severe flaws, is a step in the right direction. And also why Amazon's CEO is an asshole for threatening to relocate unless the city of Seattle gives into its demands; it knows (or should know) the lessons from recent history about how a company's race to the bottom is detrimental to the overall economy (I told you that would come up again.) An economy is like an ecosystem, and when one part of it breaks down, it creates a ripple effect throughout the entire system. Right now, a decent-sized portion of the workforce is at risk. People need money to buy all the products our economy churns out, and they need good jobs to get that money.
But maybe I'm wrong. It's hard to know how events turn out while you're in the middle of them. Maybe this will all turn out okay, more or less. Things turned out more or less okay after industrialization and mechanization in the mid-1800s, right? Maybe we'll be okay this time too.
But what if we're not?
"There are only nine meals between mankind and anarchy." - Alfred Henry Lewis
You might have seen this in the news lately: Seattle has announced a plan to tax corporations that make over $20 million per year $275 per employee, in order to raise revenue for affordable housing and programs that help the homeless. Reportedly, Seattle's new tax is gaining traction with a handful of Silicon Valley cities, but it's also drawing a fair amount of criticism. Can you guess why? You got it - Amazon will likely respond by simply moving its offices somewhere else. In fact, Amazon has hinted that it's considering such a move. Man, what a bunch of fools those city officials are! Their plan is going to cost the city both jobs and revenue.
Except that Seattle (kinda) has the right idea. I don't agree with Seattle's new tax - how much control does the city council think Amazon and the other corporations really have over the local housing market? But I would get behind a similar concept, like steep monetary penalties for wealthy companies that can, but choose not to, pay their workers a living wage. (Looking at you, Walmart. Along with just about every fast food franchise.) Those companies' workers have to make a tough choice to cope with shortfalls, given their salaries: go without, work a second job (if possible), or rely on government assistance. It shouldn't be that way. They deserve wages that will let them cover basic necessities: food, clothing, a decent place to live, the means to afford the inevitable medical emergency. I don't think that's too much to ask. Let's penalize the companies that hoard the revenue and make their employees subsist on scraps.
By this point, I can practically see people objecting. (That's right, I can see you out there, saying "What is this bullshit?" to yourself. Hang on, I'm getting to you.) I've been hearing the same objections, more or less, for years, so let me write a few words to address them.
First, people often say that low wage jobs don't deserve higher wages because they don't require a lot of skill. Well, go work one of those jobs some time. There's a lot more work involved than most people realize. Take a fast food worker. The act of grilling a burger, deep-frying some chicken wings, or preparing whatever fast food an establishment serves, isn't terribly difficult. Try doing it nonstop for an entire shift, though, including when you're under pressure because a huge crowd of people showed up at the same time. Don't forget that you'll be performing some other task like cleaning or stocking during the slow times. So yeah, fast food employees work their asses off all day. They absolutely deserve a living wage.
Second, opponents argue that it will negatively affect businesses. I can kinda/sorta see that, if it's a mom-and-pop operation we're talking about. Small businesses have thinker profit margins, so requiring them to pay higher wages will probably cause a lot of them to go out of business. But we're not talking about mom & pop businesses. Walmart (I like to single it out because it's the king of asshole companies) raked in $482 billion in FY 2016, so it could easily spare some of that to give its employees a boost. Here's a Fortune article that crunched the numbers, so I don't have to. Point is, just about any retail/restaurant/fast-food franchise could provide pay & benefits without suffering much lost revenue. If it really wanted to.
Of course, this won't happen, because companies are obsessed with their balance sheets. Businesses that can will just move to a place where they don't have to pay employees as much - just like Amazon is hinting it might do. Hmm, that sounds familiar, like something that happened before. . .wait, it's on the tip of my brain. . .oh, I know! Outsourcing! That happened mostly in the 1990s so I think it's been long enough for us to gauge the impact. How'd that work out for everyone involved?
Not so well, right? Sure, it was great for the companies: they got a ready supply of inexpensive labor, and saved money by paying pennies on the dollar, with no perks like insurance or a pension. But for everyone else, not so much. A lot of companies moved to America's immediate neighbor to the south, but later packed up and moved again when they found a better bargain elsewhere. Think about that: the companies thought Mexico was too expensive. In other words, the competition for those manufacturing jobs basically became a race to the bottom. Remember that piece of info, because you will see it again. And the American economy took some hits too. Several million American factory workers (sources vary from 5MM to 14MM) were unceremoniously dumped back into the job search, with a predictable effect on wages, per the law of supply and demand. Here's a graph that helps explain it, courtesy of the University of Toronto (and some modifications by yours truly.) You'll notice that when you increase the labor supply (shown here by the dashed line labeled S2), wages go down.
Could outsourcing (and also technological advancements, to be fair) be responsible for the wage stagnation that's been happening for the last four decades? The number of jobs lost to technology and outsourcing ranges from 5 to 14 million, which represents about 3.9% - 10.9% of the total US workforce (these percentages are based on the April 2018 workforce of 127.2 million workers.) Those percentages are pretty big chunks of the workforce, so outsourcing & technology almost certainly played some part in wages flattening.
And it's not just outsourcing or technological gains. The "gig" economy, self-driving vehicles, retail kiosks (okay, I guess those last two are technological gains), the "retail apocalypse". . .they're all combining to make jobs, especially stable, well-paying jobs, harder to find. Add in factors like rising costs for housing and health care, and the result is that it is becoming harder for people to get by.
And people realize it. They instinctively "get it," even if they're not expert economists armed with reams of data to back up their arguments. They've understood things haven't been getting better for years now, and they've been making their frustrations known. The Tea Party. Occupy Wall Street. The 2016 Presidential election. These have all been expressions of the population's discontent over the status quo. They know the economy isn't working for them, and they're pissed about it. Amazingly, Washington and Wall Street still haven't gotten the message - if the recent tax reform bill is any indication.
Seattle kind of gets it. Its tax proposal, despite a few severe flaws, is a step in the right direction. And also why Amazon's CEO is an asshole for threatening to relocate unless the city of Seattle gives into its demands; it knows (or should know) the lessons from recent history about how a company's race to the bottom is detrimental to the overall economy (I told you that would come up again.) An economy is like an ecosystem, and when one part of it breaks down, it creates a ripple effect throughout the entire system. Right now, a decent-sized portion of the workforce is at risk. People need money to buy all the products our economy churns out, and they need good jobs to get that money.
But maybe I'm wrong. It's hard to know how events turn out while you're in the middle of them. Maybe this will all turn out okay, more or less. Things turned out more or less okay after industrialization and mechanization in the mid-1800s, right? Maybe we'll be okay this time too.
But what if we're not?
"There are only nine meals between mankind and anarchy." - Alfred Henry Lewis
Monday, February 19, 2018
Cold War 2.0?
So a lot of Americans are pissed off at the Russian government right now. It's now clear that Putin and his cronies played a non-insignificant part in shaping the outcome of the 2016 Presidential election. Which means that Russia is at least partly responsible for saddling us with an indisputably terrible president. What's worse, they took away Americans' trust in the electoral process. Not only is the 2016 election tainted with perceptions of illegitimacy, but there will be a cloud of suspicion hanging over future elections - especially since the government doesn't appear to be doing enough to safeguard the integrity of the voting process. On top of all that, Russia did more than interfere in the electoral process. It also stirred up a lot of ill will and worsened the country's polarization. Look around, listen to what people are saying and read the comments they're leaving on social media: Americans are deeply divided, usually over Trump's policies and conduct. The fact is, Russia hit us pretty hard, and Americans are right to be furious.
However, there are a few things to keep in mind.
First, the US Government has done its own share of meddling in other countries' elections. I don't say that to defend what the Russian government did, but instead to point out the hypocrisy involved. Our government doesn't have the moral high ground here, not even by claiming it was done for "very good reasons." It's also hard to promote democracy in other countries while helping to undermine it in those same places. Now that we're getting a taste of our own medicine, we're realizing how much it sucks.
Second, whether unintentionally or deliberately, our government has antagonized Russia several times since the end of the Cold War. Military alliances and campaigns such as the bombing campaign against Serbia (a staunch Russian ally) and the ongoing military presence in the Balkans, the NATO expansion, and attacks against Russia's former allies, including Iraq, have all been perceived as insults at best and provocations at worse. To get some perspective, imagine how we would feel if the Russian military had done the following: formed a military alliance with Canada, Mexico, and several Latin American nations; bombed and occupied Great Britain; and attacked Israel twice in thirteen years. I think we'd feel more than a little threatened.
Third, and probably most important, Russia didn't create this mess out of thin air. It recognized that America was already pretty divided on many issues, and it poured gasoline on a low-grade fire. There were still healthy feelings of Islamophobia, homophobia, and racial tensions; media outlets willing to publish divisive "news" for ratings and revenue; a decades-long feeling of economic anxiety due to stagnant salaries or poverty wages, growing economic inequality, outsourcing, rising expenses, and ballooning government deficits; civil liberties being chipped away; and the perception of an indifferent political class. 2016 was the "anti-establishment" election; and Hillary Clinton was perceived by some parts of the country as being a significant part of the problem. Russia simply observed the American political and cultural landscape, and saw its opening.
Russia isn't the only one who sees an opening, though. The Russian electoral meddling has given a lot of anti-Russian hawks the pretext they've been waiting for to resume the Cold War, people like John "I never met a war I didn't like" Bolton. You remember him, right? He was George W. Bush's Ambassador to the UN, he was super-hawkish, and he helped sell the flimsy Iraqi WMD intelligence. Why anyone still listens to him at all is a mystery, yet The Hill recently allowed him to write an op-ed, in which he wrote, "The White House can and should now pivot to the real task ahead, which is dealing strategically and comprehensively with Russia's global efforts to enhance its influence." There are other semi-influential people like Bolton in the Beltway, and they're drooling over the possibility of a confrontation with Russia. Judging by her policy ideas, Hillary Clinton was one of them - which was one reason I didn't vote for her. Readopting a belligerent posture toward Russia also gives the anti-Russian crowd to downplay or distract people from domestic problems, and considering how many problems this country has, a useful distraction would probably be welcomed by some people.
America has already been through one Cold War, and it wasn't very fun for most people: the threat of nuclear annihilation, anti-Communist witch hunts and infringements on civil liberties, an multi-decade arms race, money diverted away from schools/hospitals/infrastructure/etc, and so on. Plus, America has a lot of problems at home to solve, and the last thing we need is to focus our attention and resources on an adversary thousands of miles away. So, let's not do that again, okay?
However, there are a few things to keep in mind.
First, the US Government has done its own share of meddling in other countries' elections. I don't say that to defend what the Russian government did, but instead to point out the hypocrisy involved. Our government doesn't have the moral high ground here, not even by claiming it was done for "very good reasons." It's also hard to promote democracy in other countries while helping to undermine it in those same places. Now that we're getting a taste of our own medicine, we're realizing how much it sucks.
Second, whether unintentionally or deliberately, our government has antagonized Russia several times since the end of the Cold War. Military alliances and campaigns such as the bombing campaign against Serbia (a staunch Russian ally) and the ongoing military presence in the Balkans, the NATO expansion, and attacks against Russia's former allies, including Iraq, have all been perceived as insults at best and provocations at worse. To get some perspective, imagine how we would feel if the Russian military had done the following: formed a military alliance with Canada, Mexico, and several Latin American nations; bombed and occupied Great Britain; and attacked Israel twice in thirteen years. I think we'd feel more than a little threatened.
Third, and probably most important, Russia didn't create this mess out of thin air. It recognized that America was already pretty divided on many issues, and it poured gasoline on a low-grade fire. There were still healthy feelings of Islamophobia, homophobia, and racial tensions; media outlets willing to publish divisive "news" for ratings and revenue; a decades-long feeling of economic anxiety due to stagnant salaries or poverty wages, growing economic inequality, outsourcing, rising expenses, and ballooning government deficits; civil liberties being chipped away; and the perception of an indifferent political class. 2016 was the "anti-establishment" election; and Hillary Clinton was perceived by some parts of the country as being a significant part of the problem. Russia simply observed the American political and cultural landscape, and saw its opening.
Russia isn't the only one who sees an opening, though. The Russian electoral meddling has given a lot of anti-Russian hawks the pretext they've been waiting for to resume the Cold War, people like John "I never met a war I didn't like" Bolton. You remember him, right? He was George W. Bush's Ambassador to the UN, he was super-hawkish, and he helped sell the flimsy Iraqi WMD intelligence. Why anyone still listens to him at all is a mystery, yet The Hill recently allowed him to write an op-ed, in which he wrote, "The White House can and should now pivot to the real task ahead, which is dealing strategically and comprehensively with Russia's global efforts to enhance its influence." There are other semi-influential people like Bolton in the Beltway, and they're drooling over the possibility of a confrontation with Russia. Judging by her policy ideas, Hillary Clinton was one of them - which was one reason I didn't vote for her. Readopting a belligerent posture toward Russia also gives the anti-Russian crowd to downplay or distract people from domestic problems, and considering how many problems this country has, a useful distraction would probably be welcomed by some people.
America has already been through one Cold War, and it wasn't very fun for most people: the threat of nuclear annihilation, anti-Communist witch hunts and infringements on civil liberties, an multi-decade arms race, money diverted away from schools/hospitals/infrastructure/etc, and so on. Plus, America has a lot of problems at home to solve, and the last thing we need is to focus our attention and resources on an adversary thousands of miles away. So, let's not do that again, okay?
Monday, September 18, 2017
The Push to Abolish the Electoral College, Part 2: Possible Solutions
I wanted to include all this at the end of yesterday's post, but that piece took a lot longer to write than I expected. I'm chalking it up to a healthy dose of writer's block plus lots of writing something, striking it out, writing something new, then going back to what I originally wrote. Repeat until insane. That post was an absolute grind to write. Plus, I got distracted by Atlanta's beat-down of the Packers.
Anyway, here are a handful of off-the-cuff suggestions I have for improving the Electoral College.
First, eliminate "winner take all" districts. There's something deeply wrong with a rule that lets my vote contribute to Candidate A's electoral vote tally even if I voted for Candidate B. Unfortunately, forty-eight states play by "winner take all" rules. This practice is truly undemocratic, because it invalidates the votes of everyone but the people who picked the winning candidate. I propose that all of the states adopt a proportional allocation system: the number of electoral votes a candidate gets is based on the percentage of the popular vote they received. I didn't come up with this idea, but I think it makes a lot more sense than the "winner take all" rule.
Second, redraw the outrageously gerrymandered districts to make them more reflective of their inhabitants. Gerrymandering has been a problem for a long time, and has been derisively described as "politicians getting to choose their voters." The Supreme Court is hearing a case about partisan gerrymandering right now, and I'm glad to see the practice is being challenged in court. I just hope SCOTUS rules against gerrymandering.
Third, let's take a look at mandatory voting as a stop-gap solution while we figure out why so few people are voting. (Hey now! Whoa! I said we should just consider it. Stop yelling at me.) I was going to suggest implementing mandatory voting and leaving it at that (so maybe that yelling is justified), because it would solve the problem of low voter turnout, therefore making election results more reflective of the overall population. Unfortunately, this is like a kid shoving all their toys, stray clothes, etc into the closet instead of actually cleaning their room. It gives the appearance of everything being fine while ignoring the issue. Something is wrong when 41% of eligible voters didn't vote in the 2016 election. Maybe those people don't feel represented, and that's a symptom of bigger issues. I was going to write about those bigger issues, at least as I saw them; but I realized pretty quickly that those issues were a lot more than I was prepared to tackle right now. I haven't done enough research or thinking to write about them, and besides they're outside the scope of this post, so I'm tabling them for another day.
Those are a few quick and simple solutions I came up with off the top of my head. They probably have flaws, but I wanted to offer up some ideas, even imperfect ones. I don't think the Electoral College is perfect, but I think these changes could improve it a lot. But even with its flaws, I think the Electoral College is a better system than a direct popular vote. Let's not throw the baby out with the bath water.
Anyway, here are a handful of off-the-cuff suggestions I have for improving the Electoral College.
First, eliminate "winner take all" districts. There's something deeply wrong with a rule that lets my vote contribute to Candidate A's electoral vote tally even if I voted for Candidate B. Unfortunately, forty-eight states play by "winner take all" rules. This practice is truly undemocratic, because it invalidates the votes of everyone but the people who picked the winning candidate. I propose that all of the states adopt a proportional allocation system: the number of electoral votes a candidate gets is based on the percentage of the popular vote they received. I didn't come up with this idea, but I think it makes a lot more sense than the "winner take all" rule.
Second, redraw the outrageously gerrymandered districts to make them more reflective of their inhabitants. Gerrymandering has been a problem for a long time, and has been derisively described as "politicians getting to choose their voters." The Supreme Court is hearing a case about partisan gerrymandering right now, and I'm glad to see the practice is being challenged in court. I just hope SCOTUS rules against gerrymandering.
Third, let's take a look at mandatory voting as a stop-gap solution while we figure out why so few people are voting. (Hey now! Whoa! I said we should just consider it. Stop yelling at me.) I was going to suggest implementing mandatory voting and leaving it at that (so maybe that yelling is justified), because it would solve the problem of low voter turnout, therefore making election results more reflective of the overall population. Unfortunately, this is like a kid shoving all their toys, stray clothes, etc into the closet instead of actually cleaning their room. It gives the appearance of everything being fine while ignoring the issue. Something is wrong when 41% of eligible voters didn't vote in the 2016 election. Maybe those people don't feel represented, and that's a symptom of bigger issues. I was going to write about those bigger issues, at least as I saw them; but I realized pretty quickly that those issues were a lot more than I was prepared to tackle right now. I haven't done enough research or thinking to write about them, and besides they're outside the scope of this post, so I'm tabling them for another day.
Those are a few quick and simple solutions I came up with off the top of my head. They probably have flaws, but I wanted to offer up some ideas, even imperfect ones. I don't think the Electoral College is perfect, but I think these changes could improve it a lot. But even with its flaws, I think the Electoral College is a better system than a direct popular vote. Let's not throw the baby out with the bath water.
Sunday, September 17, 2017
The Push to Abolish the Electoral College
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to eat for lunch." - Marvin Simkin
Ever since Hillary Clinton signaled her support for abolition of the Electoral College, the number of people echoing that sentiment has grown and gotten louder. Posts like this one have popped up on Twitter:
It's easy to understand why. A lot of Americans are furious with Donald Trump, and not in a "He's implementing policies I don't like" way. It's more of a "He's a complete disaster" way, and with good reason. Trump will likely be remembered as one of the worst presidents in history. Maybe the worst president. The push to abolish the Electoral College is built on an urge to prevent this from happening in the future, because if the Electoral College had been eliminated before 2016, Clinton would be president and we'd all be spared the ongoing Trump fiasco. It's a justifiable and well-meaning movement, but I'm going to make the case for keeping it.
Let's start with an easy one. First, there are about 320 million people in America. Not all of them are eligible to vote, but if you crunch the numbers, only 59% of the eligible population voted (for any candidate). This is just my opinion, but it doesn't make sense to switch to a popular vote system when 2/5 of the population stays home on election day (a greater number of people than either Clinton's or Trump's voters).
Second, people are generally pretty decent, but they're vulnerable to a lot of tricks: things like tribalism, their own cognitive biases, emotion-based choices, misleading information, and so on. They also vote based on superficial reasons. A common piece of conventional wisdom is that people vote for candidates based on their likeability rather than any of the candidate's policies - that a vote comes down to which candidate a voter identifies with, or would like to have a beer with. Then there are the people with "out there" beliefs: anti-vaxxers, racists, conspiracy theorists. Would you want an any of them to have a direct say in electing the president? To have that person's vote be equal to yours? People, even rational ones, don't always make wise decisions at the ballot box. A large population can diminish a fringe idea's reach, but it can just as easily amplify it; and historically, people with radical ideas have had this pesky habit of gravitating toward each other to form influential movements. Does the Electoral College prevent this from happening? No. But a popular vote system increases the chances of this happening. This isn't some idle concern, either; here's what James Madison wrote in Federalist #10:
Third, let's look at a popular vote system as a whole. I'm going to provide some reasons for why it's a bad idea. Let's start with a hypothetical. Imagine that at the start of every NFL season, the entire country voted on which team they wanted to watch. One team all season long, for the entire country. Now look at this map.
I'm guesstimating here, but it looks like Denver occupies the biggest swath of land on that map. (Woo-hoo! Go Broncos!) That's great if you're a Broncos fan, but not so much for fans of the other thirty-one teams; and if you're a fan of the Texans, Jaguars, or Bucs, for example, you'll probably never get to watch a game in this fictional scenario.
So how does this relate to the 2016 presidential election? Here are a few other images to look at. The top one is a breakdown of the election based on the counties each candidate won, and the bottom one is the same county-by-county map adjusted to account for population.
Ever since Hillary Clinton signaled her support for abolition of the Electoral College, the number of people echoing that sentiment has grown and gotten louder. Posts like this one have popped up on Twitter:
Let's start with an easy one. First, there are about 320 million people in America. Not all of them are eligible to vote, but if you crunch the numbers, only 59% of the eligible population voted (for any candidate). This is just my opinion, but it doesn't make sense to switch to a popular vote system when 2/5 of the population stays home on election day (a greater number of people than either Clinton's or Trump's voters).
Second, people are generally pretty decent, but they're vulnerable to a lot of tricks: things like tribalism, their own cognitive biases, emotion-based choices, misleading information, and so on. They also vote based on superficial reasons. A common piece of conventional wisdom is that people vote for candidates based on their likeability rather than any of the candidate's policies - that a vote comes down to which candidate a voter identifies with, or would like to have a beer with. Then there are the people with "out there" beliefs: anti-vaxxers, racists, conspiracy theorists. Would you want an any of them to have a direct say in electing the president? To have that person's vote be equal to yours? People, even rational ones, don't always make wise decisions at the ballot box. A large population can diminish a fringe idea's reach, but it can just as easily amplify it; and historically, people with radical ideas have had this pesky habit of gravitating toward each other to form influential movements. Does the Electoral College prevent this from happening? No. But a popular vote system increases the chances of this happening. This isn't some idle concern, either; here's what James Madison wrote in Federalist #10:
"The two great points of difference between a democracy and a republic are: first, the delegation of the government, in the latter, to a small number of citizens elected by the rest; secondly, the greater number of citizens, and greater sphere of country, over which the latter may be extended. The effect of the first difference is, on the one hand, to refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations. Under such a regulation, it may well happen that the public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more consonant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves, convened for the purpose."
Third, let's look at a popular vote system as a whole. I'm going to provide some reasons for why it's a bad idea. Let's start with a hypothetical. Imagine that at the start of every NFL season, the entire country voted on which team they wanted to watch. One team all season long, for the entire country. Now look at this map.
I'm guesstimating here, but it looks like Denver occupies the biggest swath of land on that map. (Woo-hoo! Go Broncos!) That's great if you're a Broncos fan, but not so much for fans of the other thirty-one teams; and if you're a fan of the Texans, Jaguars, or Bucs, for example, you'll probably never get to watch a game in this fictional scenario.
So how does this relate to the 2016 presidential election? Here are a few other images to look at. The top one is a breakdown of the election based on the counties each candidate won, and the bottom one is the same county-by-county map adjusted to account for population.
Do you notice anything peculiar? There are a lot more solid red squares than blue ones on that top map - 2,623 to 489 - but the red and blue areas appear to be about equal in the bottom map. Which they are, approximately. The popular vote results confirm that. Here's another way of looking at it. As of 2013, California's population was over 38 million while seven states had populations of less than a million. That popular vote proposal looks a lot less fair now, doesn't it? It pretty much guarantees that the 5-10 most populated states will get all the attention (remember how lopsided Trump's tallies were until they called California), and the least populated states will be virtually ignored. This problem has gone mostly unnoticed, but a popular vote system will only make it worse, because candidates focus on areas that get them the most votes. So, if you live in a major city that has a higher population than an entire state, you're probably in good shape. But if you don't, a popular vote system will make your vote worth less. I'll say that again: your vote will count for less in a popular vote system.
A president is supposed to govern for the entire country. A popular vote system makes that less likely.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)