Has anyone else noticed that since his impeachment, Trump has lost a step? He no longer speaks about fighting the system, or his accomplishments. Itâs all about how heâs been ganged up on, and mistreated. Maybe impeaching him wasnât a complete failure after all.
Weâll see in two days if the blame game was a winning strategy:
It may be hopeful news or maybe just a deep fake, but several outlets are reporting that Trump has canceled his election night party. The party was to be held at the Trump International Hotel in Washington DC, but instead, heâll party at the White House.
But hereâs a good reason to be nervous. Forbes reports that the Post Office is failing to deliver on time in key places:
âBattleground states in the presidential election are suffering from some of the worst ballot delivery delays in the country….and with state laws or court rulings requiring mail-in ballots to be received by Election Day, several states face a particularly high risk of voters having their ballots arrive too late to count, potentially impacting close races.â
Every Vote should be counted! Shouldnât the Supreme Court support that?
Mohawk Trail, just off Route 2, near Williamstown, MA – October 2020 photo by Alahomora
Three days to go.
Happy Halloween, although at the Mansion of Wrong, All Hallows Eve is just another day. Weâve never had a human come to the door looking for treats. Letâs hope that tonightâs not the night.
The reality show that is 2020 really sucks. On Monday in NYC, a man fell about 15 feet into a pit of rats when a sidewalk sinkhole opened under him. He was injured and while he will recover, nobody will ever want his nightmares.
And early on Sunday morning, we turn the clocks back one hour when daylight saving time ends in most of the US. This year, more than 30 states considered legislation to make daylight saving time permanent, something that Wrongo endorses.
Roll Call has this about Trumpâs closing argument:
âBy arguing that the country is ârounding the cornerâ on COVID-19 in the face of irrefutable data that the coronavirus is surging, Donald Trump risks appearing more and more out of touch with reality.â
âAs of Friday morning, more than 9,024,100 people in the United States have been infected with the coronavirus and at least 228,700 have died…â
Thatâs roughly a 2.5% death rate since the virus came to our shores. It seems serious that cases are rising in most states, while deaths are rising in 24. The NYT reports that the top ten states with the highest death rates are: (in order) North Dakota, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Montana, Wyoming, Alaska, Nebraska, Idaho, Iowa and Utah.
Most of these states have significant populations that refuse to wear masks or practice physical distancing. Now, there clearly are people in America who wonât work for the common good, because their backs have never really been against the wall. Weâve become a soft, cartoonish version of what our parents and grandparents had to be in order to survive.
Americans play at being tough. Some of us strap on side arms or long guns to go to the supermarket. We complain when the internet is down because we canât play Netflix or our favorite video game. We melt down on Facebook when someone objects to our little thoughts.
What this moment should have given all of us was a sense of common purpose that united us against an invisible enemy. Instead, itâs simply too hard for us to delay even a momentâs gratification in the face of the second wave of the pandemic.
Notice too that of those ten states, only one (Wisconsin) is a good bet to vote Blue next week. Thatâs not necessarily a problem, since the path to 270 for Biden looks like this:
If you look at voters in generational terms, Trump has turned into an electoral cul-de-sac. Heâs simultaneously losing younger voters by a 2-to-1 margin, while also losing seniors by nearly 10 percent.
If youâre voting Blue this year regardless of your Party affiliation, you are indeed serving a common purpose, one that you will remember forever: When our democracy was on the brink of collapse, when our fellow Americans needed us, we came together to fire Donald Trump.
There are still a few days left to obsess about the election, but its Saturday, and we need our weekly break from the monster that sucks all of the happiness out of our lives. Itâs time for our Saturday Soother.
We had snow on the fields of Wrong on Friday, and the weekend is bringing overnight temperatures in the 20âs, so few outdoor plants will survive that hard frost. Weâve still got a tree to plant that is supposed to arrive today, but Wrongo will wait for next weekâs warmer weather to get it in the ground.
No coffee today, but a very relaxing video. The music is by Franz Schubert, his No. 4 Standchen from Schwanengesang, which means “swan song” in German. Itâs from a collection of songs written by Schubert at the very end of his life. The Schwanengesangs were composed in 1828, and published in 1829, just a few months after the composer’s death. Franz Liszt later transcribed them for solo piano.
So a hopeful swan song for Trump, and a relaxing moment for all of us who listen today. Here the solo piano is played by Vadim Chaimovich.
The video combines Schubert with images of a Van Gogh painting. Pretty relaxing:
America is already at war with itself. And that was before the thermonuclear bomb of Justice Ginsburgâs death. We need to avoid getting distracted by the shenanigans of Republicans around a Ginsburg replacement, and instead, use it to take back the White House and the Senate.
Wrongo believes that the efforts by Republicans over the next 42 days to ram through another conservative justice may be successful at shaping the direction of the Supreme Court. But successful or not, it will increase the number of likely anti-Trump voters.
One thing that points to better Democrat engagement is that the Democratâs fund raising site, ActBlue, has raised more than $100 million since RBGâs death. This suggests that the looming court vote is energizing Democrats in a way that Biden hasnât.
And itâs fantasy to ask Republicans to throw away the chance to get a third Supreme Court justice. Theyâve spent the last four years losing their dignity defending Trump. And theyâre not throwing it away now, particularly if they think Biden wins in November. So stop showing old sound bites or op-eds by Republicans saying they wouldnât support a lame duck appointment of a Supreme Court justice. The President and Senate control the nomination process. Nothing in the US Constitution prevents them from filling a vacancy, whenever it occurs, assuming they have the votes.
Sure, it’s a violation of tradition. Not like we haven’t seen plenty of that since 2016.
But if Trumpâs nominee makes it through the Senate, Trump may be making himself redundant to conservatives. The fear that a Democratic president will appoint justices who will swing the Court far to the left will be gone.
But thereâs a wildcard that could upset the Senate vote count for a nominee to replace Ginsburg, if it happens after the election. The NYT reports:
âThe winner of the Arizona Senate race could be seated in time for a vote on a Supreme Court pick…â
Should Mark Kelly, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Arizona, beat sitting Sen Martha McSally, he could be sworn in as early as Nov. 30, since Sally is filling an expiring term. Hypothetically, a Kelly win would narrow the Republicansâ majority to 52-48. This could make it difficult for McConnell to round up enough votes, since Sens Collins and Murkowski have said they think the nomination should come after the inauguration on January 20, 2021.
If you are fired up to prevent Trump from placing a third conservative justice on the Supreme Court, send money to Mark Kelly at markkelly.com.
The tyranny of the minority is something that Wrongo has written about before. Our Constitution gives an unfair advantage to underpopulated states. By 2040, according to a University of Virginia analysis of census projections, half of Americaâs population will live in eight states. About 70% of people will live in 16 states, meaning that 30% of the population will control 68% of the Senate.
âBoth of the last two Republican presidentsâBush and Trump– have lost the popular vote, and yet each nominated two Supreme Court justices, who have been confirmed by the votes of senators who represent a minority of the American people. The confirmation of a fifth justice in this way will create a solid majority on the court, which can then unwind the legal framework that a majority of Americans still supports.â
When Scalia died in 2016, Republicans had a 54-46 majority in the Senate, despite the fact that Democratic senators represented about 20 million more people than Republicans in 2016. Two years ago, Neil Gorsuch became the first member of the Supreme Court in American history to be nominated by a president who lost the popular vote and who was confirmed by a bloc of senators who represent less than half of the country. The second was Brett Kavanaugh.
It also impacts the selection of Presidents. The tyranny of the minority has allowed five men who lost the popular vote to become president: Trump, George W. Bush, Benjamin Harrison, Rutherford B. Hayes, and John Quincy Adams. A scary thought is that some analysts think Biden needs to win the 2020 popular vote by at least 6% to carry the Electoral College.
Itâs time to remember that Trump has confirmed 53 Republican Appellate court justices in four years, compared to 55 in 8 years for Obama.
Devil’s Punchbowl, OR â 2020 photo by indieaz. There are many places in the US called the âDevilâs Punchbowlâ.
Where did the summer go? Weâve all been tied down by the pandemic, so we probably focused more on politics than we wanted to. Pretty sure that made time pass more slowly, though. So Wrongoâs still not sure where the summer went.
Last week, Wrongo and Ms. Right had lunch with old friends, and the subject of what older Boomers and Silents can do to influence the election was a big discussion topic. Depending on your means, there are many things that could be done, like picking key states and congressional districts that are in play, and donating bigly to candidates who have a real chance to flip the seat theyâre seeking.
But perhaps the most important impact would be to help register voters in those same states and districts this fall. For many, that would mean traveling to another state, braving the risk of COVID, while dueling with anti-maskers. When you consider the alternative of four more years of divided government with Trump in power, it may well be worth doing.
Itâs important to remember that 2020 is a census year, and Democrats had a huge loss in the Senate, House and in state legislatures in 2010, the last census year. That enabled Republicans to gerrymander many states, making Democrats uncompetitive in those states for a decade.
We canât risk another huge loss year like 2010.
Paul Rosenburg reports on using a âmoneyballâ type of approach, based on the famous book of the same name by Michael Lewis. Lewis wrote about baseball teams using the âmoneyballâ approach to get the best team on the field using the least amount of their limited budgets. The idea of applying it to voting comes from the Princeton Gerrymandering Project.
Like baseball teams, each citizen has a fixed amount of time and resources to invest in politics. The idea is to focus on political races with a high potential either for flipping the US Senate or selected down-ballot races.
You could also focus on Congressional seats, or on state legislatures. In the case of legislatures, the goal is to split or change control of legislatures that will be drawing new districts in 2021. Since only 10 states have independent redistricting commissions (list is here), we should focus on the Republican states among the other 40 to minimize the chance of seeing more unfairly gerrymandered districts like the Republicanâs REDMAP project delivered in 2011.
Turing to the Senate, hereâs a chart that shows races by current margin, and by what the political moneyball group calls âvoter powerâ:
The red names are Republicans, blue are Democrats. By convention, the race where resources go the farthest is set to a voter power of 100, with the other races calibrated against it. The Montana race has immense voter power, since the state has so few residents. Money or time spent trying to get Steve Bullock elected can go 50 times farther there than against John Cornyn in TX, who has a big lead in a big state. If Bullock wins, that’s likely to mean Democrats will win control of the Senate.
Wrongoâs friends want to see Mitch McConnell defeated in KY, but Wrongo advised not to donate to Amy McGrath, the Dem running against him. Itâs a difficult race to win. Instead, they should focus their time and money into races with lower profiles but better chance to win. Like Sarah Gideon running against Susan Collins in ME.
âFind…tabs for âMoneyballâ states where âa few hundred voters mobilized in the right districts could bring a state bipartisan control of redistricting, leading to fairer districts for a decade.â These include TX, MN, KS, FL, CT, and NC. Voters in those states should examine where their money and effort could do the most good.â
Time to wake up Voters! It is surely the right time to build your list of candidates to support to flip the Senate, and to pick down ballot-candidates to create a firewall against gerrymandering.
To help you wake up, a special treat. Hereâs an accomplished guitarist Wrongo had never hear of, Justin Johnson. Johnson is playing an original composition, âRooster Bluesâ, live on a four-string cigar-box guitar. Sounds fantastic:
Watch it. You wonât be disappointed!
And if you liked that video, you might like him playing âWhile My Guitar Gently Weepsâ on a vintage oil can guitar here.
Breckinridge, CO â July 2020 photo by doughboyme
(The Wrongologist is taking a summer vacation starting today. We will return on August 9th. Wrongo urges all readers to also take a break. Got to get ready for the silly season that starts soon.)
Time to talk 2020 census. The Census Bureauâs follow-up visits to non-responding households were originally scheduled to begin in early May, but they were delayed by a freeze on census field operations due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In April, the Trump administration asked Congress to extend the deadlines for the Census Bureau to turn in their head count data. The Census Bureau independently postponed finishing field operations for the census from the end of July to the end of October.
The House agreed to the extensions, but the Senate hasnât. Senate Republicans on Monday instead proposed additional funding as part of their HEAL bill to help conclude the census on time, without extending the deadline.
The Census Bureau is required to turn over numbers for apportioning Congressional seats by Dec. 31, and the numbers to be used for redrawing state and local legislative districts by March 30. The requested deadline extensions would push back the apportionment deadline to April 30 for Congress, and to July 31 for state and local districts.
The politics of these decisions are clear. Trump no longer wants a deadline extension, and he doesnât want undocumented residents counted at all.
The timing of Trumpâs memorandum excluding the undocumented and his abandonment of the request to push back the reporting deadlines suggests that the White House wants to ensure that the numbers are undercounted. Also, that Trump receives the apportionment numbers while heâs still in office so they can be fixed if necessary.
House Democrats are wary of what they see as Trumpâs attempts to politicize the 2020 census, and want the Senate Republicans to approve the request for deadline extensions. That would mean thereâs a chance the final months of the data-crunching would take place under a Biden administration, assuming Biden defeats Trump in November.
Staying on the usual deadline probably means that many people, documented or not, wonât be counted. Only about 63% of Americans have been counted so far. That means about 55 million households havenât responded, and will require visits by census takers.
âAmong those who say they have not participated in the census, 40% say they would not be willing to talk to a census worker who came to the door…â
The 40% breaks down into 16% who say theyâre unwilling to talk to the Census people at all, and 24% say they are not very willing to speak with them.
So, what does it all mean for apportioning Congressional seats?
The job is to use the census data to equitably assign the Houseâs 435 seats to the 50 states. The first 50 seats are automatically assigned, one per state. A series of formulas called the method of Equal Proportions is used to divide up the remaining 385 seats among the states on the basis of their populations. The method of Equal Proportions was first used to apportion House seats in 1940 and has been used ever since.
The apportionment population of a state is defined as all persons residing in the state as of April 1, plus all American military and civilian personnel of the federal government and their dependents from that state who were residing abroad.
At the last census in 2010, the states receiving the largest number of seats were California with 53; Texas with 36 seats, and then Florida and New York with 27 apiece. Alaska, Delaware, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming each received only one seat, the one they are granted automatically.
Sabatoâs Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia did a preliminary estimate of how the House seats will be distributed once the 2020 census is in. It obviously is a projection, but the results are shown on this map:
Of the 10 states projected to lose one House seat each in 2020, only two are red states. Of the seven states projected to gain House seats in 2020, six are red states.
If the 2020 apportionment followed Trumpâs plan to exclude undocumented immigrants, this would be the outcome:
Eight states will lose nine seats with California leading the way. Seven of the eight seats lost would be in blue states.
Seven states would gain nine seats: Texas and Florida would gain two each. Six of the gains would be in red states.
Remember that a state’s votes in the Electoral College are equal to its seats in Congress. It’s not hard to see why Trump wants an undercount that favors Texas and Florida.
