Category: Demographics

Covid’s Junior Year Better Not Suck as Much as Its Sophomore Year

The Daily Escape:

Mt. Baker, viewed from Bellingham, WA after 66” of new snow – December 2021 photo by Randy Small photography

Wrongo tested positive for Covid on Christmas Day, despite being vaxxed and boosted. When he asked if it was Omicron or Delta, the hospital didn’t know, saying that the test might be selected randomly for further genetic testing. That means it’s highly doubtful any facility in Connecticut can separate Delta and Omicron patients. In fact, most places wouldn’t have the resources to do that, even if they wanted to.

So, while recovering here at the Mansion of Wrong, we’ve tried to take the required precautions, including cancelling family events, informing those who we had spent time with earlier that week, and masking indoors. One family friend who was with us last week, just texted to say that his 3.5 year old grandson whom he babysat for after seeing us, just tested positive. It’s rampant.

We are entering year three of Covid, and the pandemic isn’t over, even though most of us believed it would be over by now. Instead, for its junior year, Covid is looking like it may shift from a pandemic to an endemic disease, one we will have to live with, possibly forever.

We have effective vaccines, but a political effort is stoking anti-Vaxx feelings in order to keep the pandemic going. Republican leaders are opposing vaccinations, wearing masks, and social distancing (even though they know these things are very effective). And their followers are well — following, by refusing vaccinations, masks, and social distancing.

Despite Covid having a roughly 2% mortality rate, they seem to be more threatened by a vaccine that has a 0.0022% mortality rate. We can ask why GOP politicians are doing this. Most of them are vaccinated. They know that refusing these measures will make people sick and will likely kill quite a few of the unvaccinated, but they don’t seem to care.

They understand that a continuing pandemic could make Biden a one-term president. A continuing pandemic may help Republicans retake the House and Senate in 2022. Nobody likes a loser, and they think the majority of voters will blame Biden for the continuing pandemic.

The numbers are against Biden. America’s now at 821,000 dead. Unless we get very lucky, in another 100 days, we’ll be somewhere between 920,000 and 1,000,000, because since August, we have averaged more than 1,500 deaths/day. Unless the daily deaths change, we’re headed to a million dead by spring.

Republicans are going to use this fact to attack Biden, saying that he’s handled Covid worse than Trump did, because there are more deaths on his watch.

Republicans have done everything possible to prolong Covid and to slow or prevent the implementation of measures that would have lowered the death toll. It’s like an arsonist complaining about the fire department not putting out fires fast enough. The idea that Covid vaccinations should be treated as a matter of individual consumer preference is absolutely brain-dead Republican nihilism.

The NYT reports that where people are dying of Covid also has changed since vaccines became widely available: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Death rates fell in most counties across the country, and in about one in five counties, the death rate fell by more than half. But in about one in 10 counties, death rates have more than doubled.”

Now, ten percent of counties doesn’t equal ten percent of the population. Here’s the map provided by the Times:

Note the concentration in Kentucky and West Virginia. The latest data from the CDC, based on data from 25 states and cities, shows that the death rate for unvaccinated people is 14 times higher than that for vaccinated people. The article also includes a map where Covid deaths have decreased. You can view it here. In most ways, it fills in the blank areas on the map above with green cones instead of these red cones.

We’ve been at this for two long years. Now starting year three, maddeningly, the issues remain the same: The health care system is running out of resources. People can’t get tested. Some people refuse to help themselves and their neighbors. New variants can emerge in the wild faster than we can develop remedies, particularly when people won’t avail themselves of the remedies we already have.

There will be end of year reports on the good things that happened in 2021. There will be reports on both the good and bad things to come in 2022. One thing that doesn’t seem likely to be in any of those reports is a changed reaction to Covid by Americans.

Time to put 2021 in the dumpster.

Happy New Year! Thanks for riding with Wrongo for another year. Raise a glass, knowing that we will try our damnedest to make sense of it all again in 2022. Let’s close with “Auld Lang Syne” performed by The Choral Scholars of University College Dublin: (hat tip to Monty)

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Rehabilitating Our Democracy

The Daily Escape:

Christmas lights, New Milford Green, New Milford CT – December 2021 photo by Tom Allen. New Milford was founded in 1709.

James Fallows writes a column called “Breaking the News”. His most recent article looks at the growing mismatch between the formal structure of the US government (two Senators per state and the House ceiling of 435 members), and the astonishing population growth in the US since the Constitution was ratified in 1788.

Fallows says the main problem is that modern America is running on antique rules that are too hard to change and too easy to abuse. He sees a Constitutional shift from protecting minority rights, to enabling minority rule, which ultimately means a denial of democracy. A system that is not steered by its majority will not survive as a democracy.

Fallows outlines the changing nature of big vs. small in America. When the Constitution was being negotiated, two issues were big states vs. small states, and slaveholding states vs. non-slave states. At the time, the three most populous original states had around 10 times as many people as the three smallest. That was behind the agreement to the two-Senators-per-state deal. But today, the three most populous states—California, Texas, and Florida—have about 45 times the population of the three least populous, Wyoming, Vermont, and Alaska.

Second, the ceiling on the size of the House of Representatives must change. Fallows observes that when the country was founded, there were 65 members of the House. For the next century-plus, the size of the House increased after the Census, following changes in the US population. Just before World War I, the number was capped at its current level of 435. Today, the US population is about 90 times larger than it was in 1788, but the House is just 7 times as large.

Today there’s a bias against the needs of urban and suburban populations. There’s also a distinct small-state bias in the Electoral College. Each state’s representation in the Electoral College votes equals it’s number of Senate and House representatives. As House membership expanded through the 1800s from 65 to 435, House seats became relatively more important in Electoral College totals, and Senate seats relatively less so. From Fallows:

“To spell it out, in the first presidential election, Electoral Votes based on Senate seats made up nearly 30% of the Electoral College total. By 1912, the first election after House size was frozen, they made up only 18%.”

If the House were expanded, then the Electoral College outcome would more closely track the national popular vote.

Jill Lepore writing in the New Yorker, says that the US Constitution was the first national constitution that provided for its own revision. Article V is the amendment clause. The founders knew that the Constitution was imperfect; Article V left a Constitutional means for making it “more perfect.” Without an amendment provision, the only way to change the rules is to overthrow the government.

But it’s extremely difficult to amend our Constitution. Lepore says:

“The US Constitution has been rewritten three times: in 1791, with the ratification of the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments; after the Civil War, with the ratification of the Reconstruction Amendments; and during the Progressive Era, with the ratification of the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, Eighteenth, and Nineteenth Amendments.”

She points out that by contrast:

“…American state constitutions have been amended over 7,500 times, amounting on average to 150 amendments per state.”

While state governments freely change, the US Constitution doesn’t. America’s older, but not necessarily wiser.

We could approve the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. It would guarantee the presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes. The Electoral College has 535 votes, with 270 needed to win the presidency. In 2020, had 21,461 Biden voters actually switched to Trump, Trump would have won the Electoral College with 270 votes, despite Biden winning nationally by 7 million votes. Each of those 21,461 Biden votes (5,229 in Arizona, 5,890 in Georgia, and 10,342 in Wisconsin) were 329 times more important than the other 7 million votes.

The Compact would end the “winner-take-all” laws in the 48 of 50 states. If passed, the Compact would award their electoral votes in proportion to the votes the candidate receives. Article II gives the states exclusive control over the choice of method of awarding their electoral votes, so they can reform the system if they choose. The Compact would go into effect when enacted by states comprising at least 270 electoral votes.

Time to wake up America! Our current ineffective federal government must change. Otherwise, democracy is doomed.

To help you wake up, watch “Peace Train”, the 1971 anthem of hope and unity written by Yusuf/Cat Stevens, performed here by Playing for Change. This version features Keb’ Mo’ playing in CA, along with Yusuf playing in Istanbul, Rhiannon Giddens in Ireland, along with musicians from 12 countries:

This song is more relevant than ever.

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Young Americans Are Suffering

The Daily Escape:

View from Franconia Notch, NH – November 29, 2021 photo by Mel Elam. Looks cold.

There’s plenty of Covid news. We’re concerned about the new Omicron variant while we’re also seeing another surge of the Delta variant around the country. It’s important to remember that half of what you’re reading about Omicron now, and for the next several weeks, is going to be wrong or mistaken.

The problem is that we can’t be sure which half is wrong.

It’s troubling how prevalent Long Covid has become. The NIH reported on an Italian study that found 87% of people recovered and discharged from hospitals showed at least one symptom even 60 days after release. The commonly reported problems were fatigue (53.1%), worsened quality of life (44.1%), shortness of breath (43.4%), joint pain, (27.3%) and chest pain (21.7%).

One symptom of Long Covid that wasn’t reported is emotional distress. This is particularly evident in younger Americans. The just-released Fall 2021 Harvard Youth Poll, surveyed 2,109 Americans aged 18-29, between October 26 and November 8. In addition to their usual questions about politics, they also asked these young Americans about their mental health and Covid. They found that half of them say they’re a different person because of Covid. Here are the results:

Overall, 51% of 18-29-year-olds say that Covid has changed them. What’s particularly striking is that 61% of young women say they’re different now than they were before Covid. Contrast that with men in the survey, just 40% of whom said that they have changed.

While the survey can’t tell us exactly how they’ve changed, there’s some insight because 51% also say that Covid had a negative impact on their life. And there wasn’t a partisan divide: 51% of Democrats, 51% of Republicans, and 52% of independents said that Covid impacted them negatively.

There’s something worse going on though. These kids are a mess mentally. More than half (51%) report  that several times in the last two weeks they felt down, depressed, and hopeless, while 25% have had thoughts of self-harm.

In addition to the majority of youth who express depressive symptoms, and the 25% who express thoughts of self-harm, the study also found that a significant number show traits associated with generalized anxiety disorder:

  • 38% of young Americans report feeling nervous, anxious, or on edge in the last two weeks
  • 36% have been worrying too much about different things
  • 32% have been easily annoyed or irritable
  • 30% have had trouble relaxing
  • 22% report feeling afraid, as if something awful might happen
  • 20% have not been able to stop or control worrying
  • 16% have been so restless that it is hard to sit still

The causes of these emotional problems are diverse. The respondents listed the following as their top five reasons for worry: School or work (34%), personal relationships (29%), self-image (27%), economic concerns (25%), and Covid (24%).

But Covid can easily be seen as the primary driver behind all of these issues. The pandemic brought fear of losing one’s own life or that of an older loved one. The lockdowns impacted school and work, with people having to use technology as a work around for face to face interaction. People were cut off from friends and family. Dating died. Retail businesses that primarily hire the young closed, or sharply reduced their staffing, causing historic job losses and reduced paychecks.

The CDC reported in 2020, that from 2007 to 2018, the suicide rate among persons aged 10–24 had increased 57.4%. Let’s hope that isn’t what will happen to this cohort going forward.

Wrongo and Ms. Right have 12 grandchildren. Ten are between 18-29. A few graduated from high school, college, and grad school during the pandemic. And some of those graduates seem stuck in bad grooves, unable to land the jobs they wanted, or in some cases, a job at all.

They seem to swing between two poles, either feeling unqualified for the job they want, or being unwilling to settle for the jobs they are offered. A few grandchildren with college degrees say they are unqualified for even entry-level positions in their field of study.

These kids broadly represent what the kids in the Harvard study say about changes in their lives during Covid. Young Americans must really hate what we’ve done to them.

Their sense of despair is a common theme in other polling of American adults. But the deep unhappiness and pessimism displayed in the Harvard poll was a startling turn in an age group that might be expected to have more optimism, given that they are at such an early stage of their adult lives.

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Expanding The Dem’s Voter Base

The Daily Escape:

Artist’s Point, Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park, AZ-UT – October photo by Alan Seltzer

Ruy Teixeira explains the political (and messaging) dilemma facing Democrats in 2021:

“A recent Gallup release confirmed that Democrats now have about as many liberals in the party as moderates or conservatives. That liberalism has been mostly driven by increasing liberalism among white Democrats which has spiked upward 20 points since the early 2000s. White Democrats are now a solidly liberal constituency. Not so black and Hispanic Democrats who are overwhelmingly moderate or conservative.”

The contrast is particularly striking among Whites who are college graduates and working class (non-college) nonwhites. The Gallup data show that two-thirds of White college grads are liberal while 70% of Black working class and two-thirds of Hispanic working class Democrats are moderate or conservative.

This takes on additional relevance because in 2020, 63% of voters did not have college degrees, and 74% of voters came from households making less than $100,000 a year. This should make it painfully obvious that, if issues and rhetoric that appeal mostly to college-educated White liberals are promoted, Democrats could see serious attrition among Democrat working class nonwhites who dislike those issues and rhetoric.

It’s hard to build a majority if you’re focused on a minority of the electorate. The internal conflict between Democrats, displayed by the Gallup poll mentioned above by Teixeira, pits the Party’s progressives against its moderates, its college-educated against its working class.

Like the modern Democrats, the Whigs cobbled together their party in the late 1830s out of an assortment of constituencies, many of whom had little in common. The Whig Party was formed to counter President Andrew Jackson and the Jacksonian Democrats. They were one of the two major political parties in the US from the late 1830s through the early 1850s and managed to elect two presidents: William Henry Harrison and Zachary Taylor.

By the mid-1850s, the Whigs were divided by the issue of slavery, particularly as the country had to decide whether new states would be admitted as slave or non-slave states. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 overturned the Missouri Compromise and allowed each territory to decide for itself whether it would be a slave or free state. Anti-slavery Whigs then spun off to found the Republican Party in 1854.

Is the modern Democratic Party on the precipice of becoming the new Whigs? The Whigs were a coalition of bankers, lawyers, and the Eastern mercantile class. In the South, Whigs worked to put a moral face on slavery. This allowed the Whigs to cultivate political distance from what was becoming a party of southern Democrats happy to extend slavery in new states, and a northern base of what we call “blue collar” (white) workers.

The Whigs couldn’t continue bridging the ideological distance between the Northern industrial states section of the party and the Southern agribusiness/slavery Whigs. Faced with this dilemma, the party broke apart.

If the Democrats are to remain one Party, a new poll by Jacobin, YouGov, and the Center for Working-Class Politics offers a perspective on how to win among working-class voters. They found that:

  • Candidates who prioritized bread-and-butter issues (jobs, health care, the economy), and presented them in plainspoken, universalist rhetoric, performed significantly better than those who had other priorities or used other language. That preference was even more pronounced in rural and small-town areas, where Democrats have struggled in recent years.
  • Candidates who named elites as a major cause of America’s problems, invoked anger at the status quo, and celebrated the working class were well received among working-class voters.
  • Potential Democratic working-class voters did not shy away from candidates who strongly opposed racism. But candidates who framed that opposition in identity-focused language fared significantly worse than candidates who embraced either populist or mainstream language.

The survey proposed multiple sound bites spoken by potential candidates to survey respondents to rank. The most popular sound bite was the “progressive populist” one:

“This country belongs to all of us, not just the super-rich. But for years, politicians in Washington have turned their backs on people who work for a living. We need tough leaders who won’t give in to the millionaires and the lobbyists, but will fight for good jobs, good wages, and guaranteed health care for every single American.”

This has implications for the 2022 mid-terms. Keep Trump off the table unless, by some miracle, the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attempted coup refers charges to the DOJ and the DOJ acts on it. Another key finding was that those surveyed felt Democrats run too far left on certain priorities:

This is also key for building Democrats’ messaging in 2022. You can read the full report here.

Democrats need to think about what it will take to do two things simultaneously: How to stay together as a Party, and how to retain majorities in the House and Senate.

It won’t be simple, but everything depends on it.

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Monday Wake Up Call – August 30, 2021

The Daily Escape:

Abandoned house, eastern plains of Colorado photo by Daniel Forster

On Sunday, Wrongo talked in passing about how religion may bring some people together, but that it divides many more. And that the lessons about being a good person are too often pushed aside in the service of doctrine.

A fine example of this comes from the Religion News Service, who reported that Daniel Darling, SVP of communications for the National Religious Broadcasters, was fired after making pro-vaccine statements on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”.

Darling told Joe Scarborough:

“I believe in this vaccine because I don’t want to see anyone else die of COVID. Our family has lost too many close friends and relatives to COVID, including an uncle, a beloved church member and our piano teacher…”

Sounds innocuous, but them’s firing words to the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB). According to its website, the NRB “works to protect the free speech rights of our members by advocating those rights in governmental, corporate, and media sectors.” Of course they do.

Darling shared his personal experience at a time when White evangelical Christians and Hispanic Protestants are among the faith groups most likely to be hesitant or refuse to get the COVID-19 vaccines, according to a recent survey from the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI). Although the study found vaccine hesitancy has dropped recently, 1 in 4 White evangelicals said they refuse to get a vaccine, while an additional 1 in 5 was hesitant.

So, here’s an Evangelical Christian trying to do the right thing. Urging others to get vaccinated is something that will help them and our society. But his religious organization, one apparently dedicated to “free speech”, fires him for expressing an opinion, something that’s an obvious good for humanity,  that is contrary to their policy.

Darling’s statement is clearly free speech. And his viewpoint doesn’t infringe on the rights of either those who are promoting the vaccine, or those who have decided not to get the vaccine. Wrongo has no stake in whether this is wrongful termination. That is a legalistic construction which has nothing to do with what our individual duty is to each other and to society.

Sadly, this is another example that some Christians haven’t developed a code of ethics to guide their lives. Instead, they rely on learned doctrine to justify their behavior, even when their actions fly in the face of good humanity.

Let’s also spend a minute thinking about the impact of Hurricane Ida on Louisiana. As Wrongo writes this, the eye is 10 miles in diameter, the storm is over land, and severe damage reports are starting to come in.

Remember that this is also the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s landfall in 2005 as a Category 3. Of course, back then, Pastor John Hagee said that Katrina was God’s vengeance on the gays. We’ll probably be hearing others offering similar revealed truths soon.

Remember too that Louisiana hospitals are just starting to reduce their census of Delta patients after a record surge of Covid infections. Now New Orleans is evacuating because of the Hurricane Ida storm surge, but hospitals have nowhere to send patients.

We should also remember that Ida went from a tropical storm to a Category 4 Hurricane in 48 hours. There are no rental cars, the highways are clogged. The airport in New Orleans is shut down.

Wake up America! Our 21st century horrors rare rarely subtle. And 2021’s horrors range from what we’re seeing in Afghanistan to Louisiana. Maybe that makes firing an Evangelical for speaking his mind about Covid a lesser problem, except for doctrine taking precedence over a good act.

To help you wake up today, let’s listen to “This is All I Want” by Corey Ledet, from his 2021 album, “Zydeco”. Ledet has incorporated Kouri-Vini, a regional Cajun dialect spoken by family members, into songs on his album. It’s a lot of fun and you should listen to it:

 

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Census Data Shows Big Changes Coming

The Daily Escape:

Big Balanced Rock, Chiricahua National Monument, AZ – photo by Arnaud BarrĂ©

From the WaPo:

“For the first time in the history of the country’s census-taking, the number of White people in the United States is widely expected to show a decline when the first racial breakdowns from the 2020 Census are reported this week.”

The headline news includes these facts: For the first time, the portion of White people could dip below 60%, and the under-18 population is likely to be majority non-White. In 26 states, the number of Whites has declined. Up to six states and DC could have majorities of people of color.

In case anyone was wondering what was motivating all the Republican voting restrictions, this is it.

The actual data will be released later today. So there’s at least some chance that the WaPo and Wrongo are well, wrong about the census results. That’s unlikely, since the numbers have been moving in this direction for years. More from the WaPo:

“Estimates from 2016 to 2020 show that all of the country’s population growth during that period came from increases in people of color. The largest and most steady gains were among Hispanics, who have doubled their population share over the past three decades to almost 20% and who are believed to account for half of the nation’s growth since 2010. They are expected to drive about half the growth in more than a dozen states, including Texas, Florida, Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada.”

The WaPo quotes William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution: (brackets by Wrongo)

“The trend is projected to continue, with Whites falling below 50% nationally around 2045…[and] at that point, there will be no racial majority in the country. Between 2015 and 2060, the Hispanic and Asian populations are expected to approximately double in size, and the multiracial population could triple due to both immigration and births.”

America is heading into uncharted territory. Our older generations will be much Whiter than younger ones. Racial minorities will drive the growth in the US labor force as White Boomers retire. Frey calls what’s about to happen a “cultural generation gap”.

This could mean that both groups may compete for resources. For example, public spending on services for seniors versus spending on schools or job training.

The new data are also expected to reflect continuing ethnic diversification of the suburbs. Now, more minorities live in suburbs than live in cities. Frey says that the vast majority of the nation’s more than 3,000 counties and its more than 350 metropolitan areas became less White in the past decade.

All of this has tremendous implications for social cohesion. Cities and states that want to sustain economic growth will need strategies to attract minorities. That’s already happened in places such as Kansas, the Philadelphia metro area, Miami-Dade County, and Prince George’s County, MD.

How predominantly White boards of directors manage predominantly diverse management teams and workers could be a big challenge.

The data release comes amid concerns over its accuracy. The 2020 count had huge problems, including the Trump administration’s attempts to add a citizenship question and block undocumented immigrants from being counted. On top of that, the pandemic caused major delays for the survey.

This release also provides the first look at whether last year’s count missed significant numbers of minorities. Arizona, along with Texas and Florida, each fell short of expectations with smaller gains in Congressional seats than projected.

The big event is that release of the Census data kicks off this decade’s Congressional seat redistricting. The clock is now ticking for states to draw new Congressional maps. The fact that the data are already late creates a scramble among most states to finish their maps before primaries begin next year.

In addition to questions about data accuracy, get ready for a new round of “white replacement” tirades from the Right. Expect to see a revival of the debate over whether the undocumented should be counted in the Census. Expect a fresh wave of Right-Wing anger directed against America’s minority populations.

Our ugly politics will probably get uglier, at least for a while.

It’s ironic that Republicans are both completely resistant to more support for families, although they complain loudly about the declining share of the White population.

It isn’t only people of color who need better policies – like more parental leave; control of healthcare costs; housing affordability; and better and cheaper childcare. It’s also those Millennials and GenZ’ers who are of child-bearing age who can’t afford kids.

Protecting voting for all Americans is the most important priority for Congress. Particularly now, as it seems clear that Republicans are trying to bail on democracy.

Why? Because it’s hard to promote White supremacy to non-white people.

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Monday Wake Up Call – July 26, 2021

The Daily Escape:

Can Democrats move their agenda forward? Will we ever see an infrastructure bill, or a voting rights bill signed by Biden? How should Democrats deal with the voting restrictions that several states are putting in place to make it more difficult to win elections, and possibly cause the Dems to lose both Houses of Congress in 2022?

Even though most of the Party’s voters say that their representatives in DC should be willing to do whatever it takes to eliminate the filibuster, Democrats in Congress seem hamstrung by what some in Congress say is a need for bipartisanship on fundamental legislation, like the filibuster and voting rights.

This hamstringing is occurring throughout America. Consider New Jersey: Their Congressional redistricting process is technically bipartisan; but like in prior decades, it’s in a completely partisan place.

New Jersey has a bipartisan redistricting commission. Leaders from each Party appoint six members to the 13-member commission. Those 12 members then pick a 13th member who serves as a tiebreaker, and a safety valve to prevent partisanship. That sounds well, bipartisan. This is the fourth redistricting cycle where this process has been used for NJ’s Congressional redistricting.

The commission members picked an academic as the tiebreaker in 1991 and 2001, and a former state attorney general in 2011. Last time, the tiebreaking member sided with Republicans. Despite that, the resulting district maps worked out well for Democrats, as they currently hold a 10-2 edge in the NJ Congressional delegation.

New Jersey is a great example of how the Congressional map can change over a decade. The tiebreaker initially helped Republicans 10 years ago, but the demographics in those districts have changed, And Democrats now over-perform in their local Congressional races.

This time around, the 12 members of the commission were unable to agree on the 13th member of the commission. Both sides proposed a retired judge from their respective Parties. So now, according to law, it’s the state Supreme Court’s job to pick one or the other. The court has until Aug. 10 to decide on the tiebreaker.

From the New Jersey Globe:

“The State Constitution puts the burden of settling a tie-vote on the tiebreaker on the Supreme Court, who must now choose between the two candidates advanced by the commission: former Supreme Court Justice John E. Wallace, Jr., a Democrat, and former Superior Court Judge Marina Corodemus, a Republican….Make no mistake: this is an election. There are as many as seven voters.  The winner will either be a Democrat or a Republican. Election Day is August 10.”

All Supreme Court decisions are elections, elections with consequences. And some decisions are more consequential than others.

In NJ, Democrats and Republicans have never agreed on a map without employing a “bipartisan” tiebreaker. But since this the first time the two Parties couldn’t agree on a 13th member for Congressional redistricting, it’s the first time the Supreme Court option will be used.

If this isn’t unusual enough, the NJ Supreme Court will vote on the Congressional tiebreaker before the US Census Bureau transmits the census numbers to the state. This year, it’s delayed. It won’t happen until September 30, so the process of redistricting can’t begin until then.

Even though three of the Jersey Justices are Republicans and four were nominated by GOP governors, it’s unclear if the Supreme Court will vote in line with their Party’s choice. When state Republicans went to the Supreme Court to fight a Covid-related borrowing plan, the Court unanimously backed up a plan approved by Democratic Governor Murphy and the Democratic-controlled legislature.

This standoff is a reminder that even in states that don’t have an outwardly partisan redistricting process, bipartisan disputes are hard to avoid.

Time to wake up America! In these times when there is little to no trust between the Parties, there is no such thing as bipartisanship.

To help you (and President Biden, along with Sens. Manchin and Sinema) wake up, here is a band from Russia and Ukraine, Leonid & Friends, featuring the Rox Bros, doing a cover of Steely Dan’s “My Old School” from SD’s 1973 album “Countdown to Ecstasy”.

The song’s lyrics tell the story of a drug bust at Bard College (named “Annandale” in the lyrics) while both Donald Fagen and Walter Becker were students there, and how a female acquaintance had inadvertently betrayed them to “Daddy Gee” (G. Gordon Liddy, then a local prosecutor):

Steely Dan tunes demand absolute precision and attention to detail, and these guys nail it!

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The Coming Wealth Transfer

The Daily Escape:

Storm at North Clear Creek Falls, CO – April 2021 photo by mattbnet

Our current economic worries tend to overlook that Baby Boomers are retiring in increasing numbers, and quite a few are beginning to die. They’re leaving a giant pile of money to their heirs, what the media have called “the greatest wealth transfer” in modern history. OTOH, we should remember that it will probably cost $500,000 to pay the projected private college tuition in 20 years.

From the WSJ: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Baby boomers and older Americans have spent decades accumulating an enormous stockpile of money. At the end of this year’s first quarter, Americans aged 70 and above had a net worth of nearly $35 trillion….That amounts to 27% of all US wealth, up from 20% three decades ago. Their wealth is equal to 157% of US gross domestic product, more than double the proportion 30 years ago…”

It gets better: In a 2019 report,  Cerulli Associates projected that older generations would hand down some $70 trillion between 2018 and 2042. Roughly $61 trillion will go to their Millennial and Gen X heirs, with the balance going to philanthropy.

Millennials, (at least, some Millennials) are one day soon going to be a lot richer than they are today. A key question is whether this new-found wealth will change them. Looking at Millennials’ voting patterns, they gave Biden about 60% of their ballots in 2020, while voters over 45 gave him 48%. In Blue America, it was even more striking. Voters under 40 voted overwhelmingly for Bernie Sanders in both of his Democratic nomination bids.

Turning to wealth, Millennials’ have relatively meager financial assets. The St. Louis Fed calculated that in 2016:

“…the typical older Millennial family was 34% poorer than we would have expected”

Millennials’ home ownership rate trails their predecessors at the same point in their life cycles, with roughly half of millennials still paying rent. Such statistics have led a few headline writers to declare Millennials “one of the poorest generations ever.”

Many in politics think that the Millennials will remain political lefties and that they will soon be the most politically influential generation. But if Millennials do retain their leftist leanings, it won’t be because of their lack of wealth. When the Boomers finish their wealth transfer, Millennials will go from the poorest to “the richest generation in human history.”

Will this change their politics to be more like those of their Boomer parents? Will the family “trickle down” of wealth redraw the lines in American politics? That’s doubtful. The impending wealth transfer will be regressive: A Federal Reserve study of intergenerational transfers in the US found that Americans in the top 10% of the income distribution were twice as likely to receive an inheritance as those in the bottom 50%.

But even though the wealth transfer is concentrated at the top of the pyramid, some of it will reach a broader base. Capitol One estimates that more than half of the estates that will transfer over the next 30 years will go to low or middle-income households.

That means a substantial group of lower income Millennials are going to get some money from their parents.

About 48% of Millennials own their homes. Those who secured homeownership early have generally seen their net worth rise: Between 2015 and 2020, the median sales price for a US house increased by 14.5%. And of course, one Millennial’s rising home equity is another’s rising rent.

College-educated Millennials are much closer to matching the Boomers’ rate of saving than non-college-educated Millennials. And the racial divide in Millennial wealth is huge. White Millennials lag White Boomers in wealth accumulation by just 5%. Black Millennials, meanwhile, own 52% less wealth than previous generations of Black Americans had accrued by their age. Worse, Black Millennials have been losing ground on their predecessors in recent years.

The “great wealth transfer” will exacerbate all these inequities. Wealthy, White Millennials will claim a massively disproportionate share of the impending inheritances and gifts. And as familial wealth is transferred, the Millennial rich and upper-middle class will be the wealthiest generation that America has ever known. While working-class Millennials, meanwhile, are poised to enjoy less economic security than their parents, as their wages fail to keep pace with the rising costs of housing and health care.

Wrongo’s and Ms. Right’s kids stand to inherit a significant chunk of change if we were to die today. The missing piece of this analysis is that we don’t know how long we will live, and what long term care will cost to keep us going. That may eat up a significant amount of the money we’ve saved in our lifetime.

But let’s hope that whether it’s a little money or a lot, it won’t stop them from fighting for universal health care and an expanded right to vote.

Let’s also hope that they won’t suddenly start voting for a death cult peopled by morons and Ted Cruz.

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How Voting Shifted from 2016 to 2020

The Daily Escape:

The Palouse from Steptoe Butte, Whitman County, WA – 2019 photo by Kristen Wilkinson Photography

Pew Research Center just published a new analysis of validated 2020 voters that’s worth your time. Pew surveyed adults it could identify as definitely having voted last November, based on voting records, a methodology considered more accurate than exit polls.

Suburban voters were a major factor helping Biden win. While Trump won the suburbs by 2 points in 2016, Biden won them by 11 points in 2020, a 13-point swing. Considering that the suburbs accounted for just over half of all voters, that was a big win for Biden.

  • Biden improved on Clinton’s share of suburban voters: 45% supported Clinton in 2016 vs. 54% for Biden in 2020. Trump’s share of the rural vote grew: In 2016, he won 59% of rural voters, but tallied 65% in 2020.

Trump gained in both rural and urban areas. He won 65% of rural voters, a 6-point increase from 2016. And while cities remained majority-Democratic, Trump’s support there jumped by 9 points, to 33%.

According to Pew, Biden made larger gains among married men than with any other demographic group. That’s an even larger gain for Biden than Trump made among Latino voters.

  • Trump won married men only by a 54% to 44% margin, a 20-point decline from his 62% to 32% victory in 2016. He won veteran households by a 55% to 43% margin, down by 14 points from 2016.

Biden’s winning electoral coalition looked like Hillary Clinton’s losing one: Black, Hispanic, and Asian voters and those of other races cast about 40% of all Biden votes. Black voters remained overwhelmingly loyal to the Democratic Party, voting 92%-8% for Biden.

  • The gender gap in 2020 was narrower than in 2016, both because of gains that Biden made among men, and because of gains Trump made among women.
  • In 2020, men were almost evenly divided between Trump and Biden, unlike in 2016 when Trump won men by 11 points.
  • Trump won a significantly larger share of women’s votes in 2020 than in 2016 (44% vs. 39%), while Biden’s share among women was nearly identical to Clinton’s (55% vs. 54%).
  • Trump won a majority of White women: 53% of White women chose Trump, up by 6 points from 2016.

Biden improved among White non-college voters:

  • White voters without a college degree were critical to Trump’s victory in 2016, when he won the group by 64% to 28% over Clinton. In 2018, Democrats won 36% of the White, non-college vote, and in 2020, Biden maintained the Democrats’ 2018 share with the group, improving upon Clinton’s 2016 performance by 5 percentage points, to 33%.

Even though voter turnout rose by 7 percentage points over 2016, the turnout battle wasn’t decisive. Democrats thought they would overwhelm Trump with a surge in turnout among young and nonwhite voters, but Pew shows that neither candidate held a decisive advantage in the highest turnout election since 1900.

Instead, Trump turned out his base, while Biden lost ground among nearly every Democratic base constituency. The data show that Trump turned out 5% more of his base (73%)  than Biden turned out of his (68%).

This was an improvement for Trump, who had a 2% turnout margin over Clinton in 2016. Bottom line, there was a far deeper support and enthusiasm for Trump than Democrats had imagined: 13 million more people voted for Trump in 2020 than did in 2016.

It was Biden’s gains among more moderate voting groups that carried him over the goal line.

From a demographic perspective, for the first time, the silent and boomer generations were a minority of voters. Gen X, Millennials, and Generation Z accounted for a majority. Generation Z (18 to 23 in 2020) and the Millennial generation (24 to 39 in 2020) favored Biden over Trump by a margin of 20 percentage points, though Trump gained 8 points among Millennials compared with his 2016 performance.

This is the clearest view we’re gotten on how different groups voted in 2020, and crucially, how those votes had shifted since 2016. It shows that Biden failed to improve his margins among virtually every voting group that Clinton won in 2016, whether it was young voters, women, Black voters, unmarried voters or voters in urban areas.

What about 2022? Hispanic voters, along with suburban Whites, will remain major focuses for both Parties. Both will be trying to cement their gains while working to improve in the other areas. The 2018 mid-terms were a referendum on Trump. The GOP will be making the 2022 mid-terms a referendum on the Democratic Party.  As Wrongo said here, Democrats need to stop focusing solely on the issues, when the opponent is focusing on killing democracy.

The headline is that we should brace for more years of grueling trench warfare between the two Parties. And to top it off? The Parties seem to be evenly matched.

Turnout will be even more crucial in 2022.

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Political Implications of the New Census Data

The Daily Escape:

Nathan’s Batteries, a converted Esso station, Wilkesboro NC. –  February 2021 photo by Greg Kiser Photography

The Census announced the Congressional reapportionments from the 2020 census: Texas picked up two seats, while Colorado, Florida, Montana, North Carolina, and Oregon each picked up one seat.

California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia all lost one seat.

Here are a few quick observations regarding how the Electoral College has shifted since 1959, when Hawaii became the 50th state: (h/t Paul Campos)

  • California, Florida, and Texas have collectively picked up 58 electoral votes (This census is the first time California has lost a congressional seat since it became a state).
  • New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania have together lost 38 electoral votes.
  • West Virginia has suffered the biggest proportional decline, losing half its electoral votes.
  • Florida and Arizona have enjoyed the largest proportional gains, tripling (FL), and nearly tripling (AZ) their representation in the Electoral College respectively.

And counting mattered. A couple of the shifts were by razor-thin margins, with New York losing a seat by just 89 people and Minnesota holding on to one by just 26 people. The news is generally good for Republicans. They control the redistricting process for five of the seven new seats.

The Cook Political Report estimates the shifts are worth about 3.5 seats to Republicans, which if no other seat shifted in the coming midterms, would put the House near-even (either 218-217 or 219-216 in Democrats’ favor, versus the current 222-213).

But the most perilous statistic is that Republicans control 61 of the 99 state legislative chambers and almost 55% of the state legislative seats, giving them control of redistricting and ultimately, a good shot at preserving the possibility of controlling one or both Houses of Congress.

In August, the Census Bureau is expected to release detailed information showing down to the block, where nearly every person lives. New legislative maps will be redrawn in each state to ensure equal representation. Right now, the GOP controls more statehouses overall and has an edge in growing states. Republicans will only need to net a handful of seats to control the House.

This is made worse if we remember that in June, 2019, in Rucho v. Common Cause, the Supreme Court essentially gave partisan gerrymandering its constitutional blessing by ruling that local political decisions are non-justiciable.

From Charlie Pierce: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“You have to have some appreciation for what a perfectly complete whole the conservative project is. By pressing every advantage…they have gained sufficient control of the process to defuse most progressive initiatives, to defang most governors if the state happens to…elect a Democrat, and to arrange for the various judicial branches to be their ultimate backup.”

Overall, the US population grew to 331 million, a 7.4% growth rate since 2010. This is the second slowest rate of population growth the census has ever recorded, just behind the 7.3% growth in the 1930s. That decade’s slowed growth was rooted in the Great Depression. From the WaPo:

“Unlike the slowdown of the Great Depression, which was a blip followed by a boom, the slowdown this time is part of a longer-term trend, tied to the aging of the country’s White population, decreased fertility rates and lagging immigration.”

This decade’s sluggish growth started in the Great Recession. Its weak recovery saw many young adults struggling to find jobs, while delaying marriage and starting a family. That blow to the nation’s birthrate was exacerbated by the Covid pandemic.

West Virginia and Maine saw deaths exceed births over the decade.

Most demographers forecast even slower population growth in the coming decades. For the first time, we have more people over the age of 80 than under age 2. The median age in the US is 38, up one year since 2010. Going forward, the number of people over age 65, will grow faster than younger cohorts.

What about counting Latinos? Texas, Florida, and Arizona had been predicted to gain more seats but didn’t. It’s possible that Latinos weren’t properly counted. They make up a large segment of the population in the three states that didn’t gain expected seats. Some point to Trump who tried to intimidate immigrants or people in the country illegally from participating in the Census. Additionally, the pandemic made it difficult to reach certain populations.

Now it will be a bare-knuckle fight between the Parties in most states to win the gerrymander war.

That will be watched closely by candidates across the country who need to decide how redistricting affects their chances of winning an election.

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