Political Power of Women – Page 8

It’s Always About Turnout

The Daily Escape:

Verbena in bloom, Anza-Borrego Desert, CA – November 2022 photo by Frank Sengpiel

The midterms are over and some interesting analysis is now available. Kyle Kondik at Sabato’s Crystal Ball has an analysis of how Republicans took the majority in the House by winning more districts that Biden carried than Democrats won districts carried by Trump. From Kondik:

“There are currently slated to be 18 Republicans in Biden seats and just 5 Democrats in Trump seats.”

Kondik reports that the overall number of “crossover” districts — seats that vote for one party for House but the other party for president — has been generally on a downward trajectory. Back in 2008, Democrats held nearly 50 districts that Republican presidential nominee John McCain carried. But many of those districts went red in 2010 and, aside from 2018, Democrats have won relatively few districts won by the other side’s presidential candidate.

And Republicans have now won more of these seats in 6 of the last 7 elections, as the overall number of crossover districts has generally declined. Kondik says:

“Overall, Republicans won 5 double-digit Biden districts…while Democrats won just 1 double-digit Trump district. If those districts had voted in line with their presidential partisanship, the Republican House edge would be just 218-217.”

Immediately post-election, many Dems focused on New York where six House seats flipped to the GOP in districts that Biden had won in 2020. Democrats may think that a weak campaign by Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) hurt them. But the Albany Times Union recently reported that Republican turnout in New York far outpaced Democratic turnout, with GOP turnout reaching 2020 presidential levels on Long Island:

“Republican turnout was substantially higher than for Democrats, 63 to 47 percent, according to an analysis of unofficial election results obtained by the Times Union from the state Board of Elections.”

This was a problem for Democrats all across the US. Tom Bonier, CEO of TargetSmart, an industry leader in using political data, tweeted about another way to look at the poor turnout by Democrats:

The possibly flippable districts Bonier is talking about are: IA3, NY17, MI10, CA13, CO3. Add to those the other five NY districts won by Biden that flipped, and you could have had a decent Democratic majority in the House.

But instead, we’ll be listening to the presumed House Speaker Kevin McCarthy say things like he did on Wednesday. He sent a letter to the January 6th Committee demanding that it preserve “all documents and transcripts” gathered by the Committee.

You should know that his demand is pointless. The Committee had already announced it will publish all documents and transcripts to ensure that Republicans do not destroy evidence when they take over the Committee.

As you may have already concluded about this election cycle, Pew Research says that in-person voting increased compared with 2020. A clear majority of Americans who voted in this year’s Congressional elections say they cast their ballots in person. Nearly two-thirds of voters (65%) submitted ballots in person, including 44% who say they voted on Election Day and 21% who voted in person before Election Day.

In the 2020 presidential election that took place during the Coronavirus, a smaller majority (54%) submitted ballots in person, including just 27% who cast ballots on Election Day.

Absentee and mail-in voting declined from 46% of voters in 2020 to 35% this year. Republicans (52%) are more likely to say they voted in person on Election Day than Democrats (35%), but the share of Democrats voting on Election Day 2022 doubled compared with 2020 (17%).

There were large differences in how voters cast ballots by age and racial or ethnic groups. Nearly two-thirds of voters ages 65 and older say they either voted in person before Election Day or voted by mail or absentee.

That compares with narrower majorities of voters in younger age groups, who were more likely to vote in person on Election Day. In addition, White voters were more likely to report voting in person on Election Day (46%) than Black (40%), Hispanic (32%) or Asian voters (21%).

Overall, the big takeaway for Democrats, both for the Warnock vote on December 6 and for the 2024 Presidential and Congressional elections, is that TURNOUT wins close elections.

And we must expect that all future Congressional and Presidential elections will be decided by razor-thin numbers in many places.

Give your money to groups that are committed to growing turnout.

Monday Wake Up Call – November 28, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Thanksgiving Day, Brewster, MA – November 2022 photo by Anne Marie

There was plenty of news over Thanksgiving that Wrongo was itching to talk about, but instead, he decided to take a complete break. Here’s something that’s been on his mind.

Despite all of the self-congratulating by Democrats, the Cook Political Report shows that Republicans received some 3.5 million more votes than Democrats in the midterms. Republicans received 54.13 million votes compared to the Democrats’ 50.79 million votes. Republicans did better in 2022 than they did in the 2018 midterms by 3 million votes, while Democrats got 10.3 million fewer votes than 2018, when they won control of the House by 235–199. Much of this is turnout.

Despite this context, the narrative is that America rejected the far Right by defeating election denier candidates. And most Trumpist candidates were defeated by significant margins. Democrats shouldn’t rest on their laurels or assume “the Trump fever has broken”. It hasn’t. America comes out of the midterms with voters evenly divided between the Parties.

Now, there are only four swing states left: Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and Wisconsin. These four only account for 43 Electoral Votes. Stanley Greenberg, a Democratic pollster points to the striking “continuity among the elections” since Trump emerged as a national political figure:

“We’ve now gone through 2016, ’18, ‘20 and ‘22 – and all looked pretty much alike….And it has locked in the coalitions.”

So we’re not only evenly divided, but we’re also deeply divided politically.

Looking at the Electoral College, the midterms offered some optimism to Democrats when 2024 comes around. The five states that decided the last presidential race did so by flipping from Trump in 2016 to Biden in 2020. Those five (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) moved more toward the Democrats in 2022.

The Dems won six of the eight Senate and governor races across these states, and Dems could notch a seventh victory if Sen. Raphael Warnock defeats Herschel Walker in a Georgia run-off next month.

But Republicans made Ohio, Iowa, and Florida Redder. Each now appears securely in the GOP’s column for 2024 (and most likely beyond). And the Dem’s perennial hope of turning Texas Blue still looks like it’s another 10 years away after Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s double-digit victory against Beto O’Rourke. Republicans again won all of Texas’ statewide offices, continuing a Dem shutout that stretches back to the 1990s.

It appears that the offsetting and hardening partisan strengths of each Party could again give the power to decide the presidency to a few hundred thousand voters, in a very few close counties in a few very balanced states.

CNN’s Ron Brownstein says that a 2024 presidential race with just Wisconsin, Nevada, Georgia, and Arizona as true battlegrounds would probably begin with Democrats favored in states holding 260 Electoral College votes (including Washington, DC) and Republicans in states with 235. That means Democrats would need to win just one of Arizona (11 votes), Georgia (16), or Wisconsin (10) to reach an Electoral College majority. But that’s far from a certainty.

This division will make for tons of political stress over the next two years. Each Party understands that our nation’s future is now controlled by the choices of a tiny minority of people living in a few contested political districts: White-collar suburbs of Atlanta and Phoenix, working-class Latino neighborhoods in and around Las Vegas, and the mid-sized communities in Wisconsin’s so-called BOW counties (Brown County, Outagamie County and Winnebago County).

No GOP presidential candidate will concede Michigan or Pennsylvania just because of the midterm results. But the magnitude of those 2022 Democratic wins show how difficult it will be for a Republican nominee to take them in 2024 – particularly if the GOP candidate supports further restrictions on abortion.

It’s likely that Democrats will target North Carolina to expand their roster, while Republicans will target Minnesota and New Hampshire. But flipping any state will be difficult, depending upon candidate quality.

This shrinking list of competitive presidential states could increase political tensions for the next two years. Time to wake up America! Think about how your indifference to politics and to voting in our elections has put the country on a knife edge. The threat posed to America by the MAGA extremists remains very real.

It’s going to take tremendous effort in every single election until this dynamic shifts. And that could take a full generation. To help you wake up, watch “People Get Ready”, a Curtis Mayfield tune that foretold the turning tide in the battle for racial equality. It hit the top of the R&B charts after its original 1965 release by The Impressions.

It’s been covered by scores of artists, including Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and here in 2009 by Rod Stewart and Jeff Beck at the El Rey Theater in Los Angeles. Beck’s reaction when Stewart comes on stage is priceless. Stewart served as vocalist for the Jeff Beck Group back in 1969:

Sample Lyrics:

People get ready
There’s a train a-coming
You don’t need no baggage
You just get on board
All you need is faith
To hear the diesels humming
Don’t need no ticket
You just thank the Lord

More Midterm Hot Takes

The Daily Escape:

Sands of Remembrance” sand sculpture, Normandy, FR – made for D-Day, 2004 via

On Veterans Day, Wrongo salutes all who have served! Wrongo’s own service occurred during the Vietnam War. His father was a WWII veteran. His grandfather, a WWI vet. Did you notice that neither Party mentioned anything about caring for our veterans in their midterm campaigns?

Wrongo’s not a political analyst, just a retired CEO with a laptop, but he feels like he has more to say about the now almost-completed midterm elections.

Some overnight updates: In the House, Democrats continue to overperform, including Wrongo’s own district where Democratic Rep. Jahana Hayes won a third term by a razor-thin margin. Dems still need to sweep the remaining toss-up House races in order to have a shot at a House majority.

Encouraging news from Nevada where Dem Sen. Cortez-Masto trails Adam Laxalt by about 16k votes. Jon Ralston the dean of Nevada political analysts tweeted this:

If Cortez-Masto pulls it out and Mark Kelly hangs on in Arizona, which seems probable, the Georgia Senate runoff won’t be for control of the Senate, but would deliver a 51^st Dem seat in the Senate. With less at stake, it might mean a significant number of Georgia’s Right wingers will decide to stay home rather than waddle to the polls to vote for Walker.

But today let’s take a look at some decision making by the Democratic Party’s powers-that-be. Take Florida: Dem donors (and the Party) gave candidate Val Demings $72 million. She went on to lose to Republican Sen. Marco Rubio by 15 points. It was plausible early on to think that Demings had a chance, but it’s been clear for months that she would lose.

In Wisconsin, Mandela Barnes lost to the execrable Ron Johnson by ONE point. The Dem brain trust allowed Barnes to get swamped in the media in September and October due to lack of funding. Would Barnes have won if he had more money? Think about it: Biden carried the state in 2020 and Tony Evers, the current incumbent Dem governor just won again in 2022. Evers got 1,336.9 million votes while Barnes got 1,310,4 million. Could more money have picked up the 26.5k votes between Sen. Johnson and Barnes? Sure!

Shouldn’t Barnes have been a higher priority than Demmings’ longshot in Florida, a state with terribly expensive media markets? Wrongo understands that people want to give emotionally, and obvious villains like Rubio make good targets.

Compare the amount of attention Florida got vs. Wisconsin. Very few individual donors sit down and systematically dig through all the races to decide where their money will give the most bang for the buck. Theoretically this is something the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) ought to do, and then everyone could just give them money. But why when their decision making seems flawed?

You can say that Wrongo shouldn’t complain, if we expand the Senate to 51 seats, but did we leave seats on the table in North Carolina and Wisconsin?

The money flowed inefficiently to Florida instead of to North Carolina and Wisconsin. North Carolina made much more sense as a “reach” target for the Democrats. It has a Democratic governor; a vacant Senate seat and Dems have won statewide before. Beasley lost in NC by 136k votes (3%).

The Party and individual donors need to be actively pursuing the best actual strategy. And going forward, donors should forget giving money to any entity except directly to the candidate’s campaign. Many Dem organizations are fundraising using a given candidate’s name, and then are splitting the money with the candidate and other races.

For example Wrongo has already received email and text requests for Warnock donations that included sharing the funds with Adam Schiff, with the Dem governors association and with the DSCC.

Warnock needs all of our money and it’s a travesty that other Democrats are raising money using his name.

Two final political thoughts: First, several states had ballot questions concerning whether slavery should be abolished in their state constitutions. SLAVERY! Tennessee and Vermont voted 90% for abolition, while in Oregon, 45% voted in favor of slavery. In Louisiana the vote was 61% to keep slavery in their constitution.

Second, back to veterans, it’s always been Democrats who have made the biggest effort to support the VA. Even though it is probable that the majority of enlisted and commissioned armed forces veterans remain Republicans.

It’s a paradox: when the Republican Party is in control, it makes a poor effort to support veterans; but they’re typically the ones sending our troops off to war.

Let’s close with a moving song that can honor veterans. Watch “Bring Him Home” from the play, Les Misérables. While not about veterans, the song packs a wallop. Here, its performed by Alfie Boe and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir:

Sample Lyric:

He is young
He’s afraid
Let him rest
Heaven blessed.
Bring him home
Bring him home
Bring him home

Monday Wake Up Call – Get Your Ass Out and Vote Edition, November 7, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Perkins Cove, Ogunquit, ME – November 2022 photo by Eric Storm Photography

We’re not going down without a fight. Both the Dem candidates and media outlets of all stripes are saying that the polls show fading hope for Democrats in the US House and Senate. But many of the polls, particularly those which present an average of other polls, have trouble accounting for a recent slew of Republican-aligned polls.

From The Economist: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“…what if polls are underestimating support for the Democrats? Many surveys published in the closing weeks of this midterm campaign have come from firms that are either explicitly affiliated with Republican clients or simply publish numbers that are favorable to the party—what pollsters call a “house effect”. According to our poll-of-polls in New Hampshire’s senate race, for example, all seven polls released since October 1st were conducted by firms that we think are publishing numbers that are overly favorable to Republicans.”

The Economist looks at the history of the polling entities. They mention one in particular:

“One example is Emerson College, a prominent firm that releases surveys of races all around the country. In elections from 2000 through 2020, our model finds Emerson College’s polls overestimated support for Republican candidates for office by one percentage point…”

Steve Shepard of Politico sees the same thing:

“How much of an influence are the Republican polls having? In New Hampshire, four of the last seven polls in the FiveThirtyEight average are from Republican firms. In Pennsylvania, it’s the three most recent polls, and six of the last nine. In Georgia, five of the last seven.”

Dan Pfeiffer says:

“…the math is clear – absent the partisan polls, the polling average looks a little better for Dems.”

The Media’s Obsession With Inflation

The Daily Escape:

Dixie National Forest, UT – October 2022 photo by Garrett Cottam

As the countdown to the midterms rolls on, the mainstream media are obsessed with two things: The latest polls and inflation. Let’s start with inflation. From the Editorial Board of The WaPo:

“Congress and Biden have to help the Fed fight inflation“

They’ve made inflation a bogeyman, and they’re saying this two weeks before the midterms. Moreover, they can’t write the word “inflation” without putting “Biden” or “Democrats” in the sentence. They’re implying that both are failing in America’s inflation fight. The WaPo and the rest pair the i-word with adjectives designed to scare us: “runaway,” “record-breaking,” or “crippling.”

In their editorial, the WaPo Board admits that the Biden administration has done a reasonable job on the economy, that they’ve played a bad hand fairly well. And that they can’t be faulted for the current spasm of inflation. They note that Republicans are “not offering much in the way of a concrete anti-inflation plan” — that’s an understatement, since they’re not offering anything at all.

Still, the WaPo is calling on Biden to use fiscal policy to “help the Fed.” Coherent fiscal policy will take more than the next two weeks to put in place. Let’s review the difference between monetary and fiscal policy.

Monetary policy is about the actions the Federal Reserve can take. The Fed can tinker with the money supply, or they can raise or lower interest rates. This allows the economy to adjust to changing conditions, like inflation. It is necessary, but not sufficient since adjustments to interest rates are hard to control. Even minor rate adjustments can sometimes have major consequences.

Raising rates too quickly or too high might slow inflation but also trigger a recession where many jobs are lost.

Fiscal policy is what the Congress can do. It’s using legislative action to heat up or cool down the economy. When there’s a slump, Congress can approve new public spending, like infrastructure, to inject money into the hands of businesses and consumers. When there’s a deficit, new tax legislation can dampen the effects of overspending.

The trouble with fiscal policy is that it presupposes a willingness by Congress to legislate. But today’s partisanship prevents any discussion of fiscal policy. The WaPo article makes a case for Congress engaging in fiscal policy legislation:

“Until inflation is defeated, fiscal policy should push in the same direction as the Fed, with no new major spending that isn’t fully or mostly paid for with higher taxes or reduced spending elsewhere in the budget.”

Get Wrongo whatever the WaPo is having! Higher taxes? What are they smoking?

Inflation isn’t the only story. It’s just the only story Republicans want to tell. They’re telling it dishonestly, and the mainstream media are helping them tell it. If democracy happens to die, sorry, that’s just collateral damage.

Let’s turn to reporting on the latest opinion polls. It’s tough to take the breathless polling coverage by the TV anchors. There’s still plenty of evidence to support either Party exceeding expectations in the upcoming midterms. But what has Wrongo worried is the general trend in reporting on the polling. Some polls are showing late movement, in large chunks, away from the Democrats. One such poll is by the WSJ:

“White suburban women, a key group of midterm voters, have significantly shifted their support from Democrats to Republicans in the closing days of midterm campaigning because of rising concerns over the economy and inflation…”

The WSJ found that they favor Republicans in Congressional races by 15 percentage points.

OTOH, that poll was of only 297 white women. And since it’s from the WSJ, it might be biased against the Dems. Nonetheless the PBS Newshour reported about it without mentioning how small the sample size was.

Polls that focus on likely voters seem to be consistently looking better for Republicans than the polls focused on registered voters. Likely voters are a proxy for voter enthusiasm, or which Party’s faithful are more likely to vote.

Also troubling, issue polling consistently shows that inflation is the biggest issue driving Party preference. More than abortion, democracy, or any other factor particularly among independents.

While control of both Houses of Congress might change next Tuesday, the recent polling seems so one-sided that it looks wrong to Wrongo. The meme that “just about everything is breaking in Republicans’ favor” doesn’t seem in context with what’s happening.

Regardless, most of the crucial Senate races look very tight, which means we could be seeing some late calls, some recounts and maybe a week or so before we know the final outcome.

As national issues go, inflation isn’t on a par with the deliberate demolition of democratic institutions, or the trashing of women’s reproductive rights, or the growing violence against politicians.

And yet, the so-called credible mainstream journalists feign an urgency about inflation, just to keep us all glued to their reporting on the political horse race.

The Midterms Need Your Support

The Daily Escape:

Fort Hill, Eastham, Cape Cod, MA – October 2022 photo by Wrongo

Anyone else getting nervous about the midterms? As Wrongo has said, the avalanche of frantic email solicitations from Democrats can worry you even if you are by nature, an optimistic person.

Wrongo has recommended three Senate candidates as worthy of donations: Fetterman in PA, Kelly in AZ, and Warnock in GA. But there are other paths to retaining the Senate for Democrats.

Wrongo wants to add Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH) to that list. He’s currently in a virtual tie with the execrable JD Vance to succeed the retiring Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH). But Trump won Ohio by 8 points in 2020. One issue for Ryan is that the Democratic campaign funding arms have not been very supportive of Ryan in his bid to help them retain the Senate. NBC has reported that the decision by Democrats to put money elsewhere reflected a judgment about which races they believed they were most likely to win.

But Ryan’s surprising showing thus far in Ohio indicates that those judgments may not have been correct. While Vance has raised about $46 million, principally from Mitch McConnell ($30 million and from authoritarian entrepreneur Peter Theil ($15 million), Ryan has relied on small donors to fund his campaign. Still, with four weeks to go, Ryan has a decent chance of pulling off an upset (assuming the polling is accurate). If Ryan wins, it almost certainly ensures that Democrats maintain their majority in the Senate.

ICYMI, on Monday, Ryan debated Vance. The consensus is that Ryan easily beat him. From Jennifer Rubin in the WaPo:

“Ryan’s performance should be mandatory viewing for Democratic contenders. They should pay attention to Ryan’s tone and demeanor. He repeatedly took down his opponent without appearing nasty. His tone was more incredulous (Can you believe this guy?) than angry. Ryan looks like a regular guy. He appeared totally at ease, often standing with one hand in his pocket.”

From Ryan in the debate: (parenthesis by Wrongo)

“We need leaders who have courage to take on their own party, and I’ve proven that, and he (Vance) was called an ass-kisser by the former president. Ohio needs an ass-kicker, not an ass-kisser.”

Ryan also challenged Vance’s support for police by reminding voters that Vance had contributed money to a defense fund for a Jan. 6th rioter.

Ryan’s being one point ahead with a month to go, and his shellacking of Vance in the debate should give Democrats some hope that he has a decent chance to pick up a Senate seat for Democrats in Ohio. So send him some dough at his direct site: https://timforoh.com/. Going direct means he won’t have to share a portion of your money with other candidates, which is what happens when you give to Vote Blue.

Wrongo stumbled across another idea (hat tip, Robert Hubbell) that you might consider using in an effort to get out the vote for the midterms. It’s called relational organizing, by which you reach out to your friends directly. Studies show texts from friends are 29 times more effective at bringing positive results than texts from strangers. And SwipeBlue is an app that helps you find all of the Democrats in your contact list by matching your phone contacts to the public voter files. It is secure, and since it doesn’t save the data, it also protects your privacy.

The app helps you divide your contacts into Blue and Red. The contacts that aren’t in either bucket can be coded Green. You can then text your Democratic friends with a call to vote by swiping the blue - like Tinder for voting. The app then helps you to send them a customizable get out the vote text.

It can also help with registering them to vote, or to vote absentee.

This is critical since at least one current poll from the Morning Consult, shows that Democrats are flagging in voter enthusiasm. The chart below compares voter enthusiasm in 2018 with 2022. Democrats are lagging by 6 points over 2018:

Republicans are only one point lower than they were in 2022. While Independents are 6 points higher, there’s no reason to think that all of that increase will break toward the Dems. So texting your friends an encouraging message may be important.

This message while relaxing on Cape Cod is that we can’t relax. So open your wallets in races that are close and try texting a few friends.

Both could make a big difference.

Can We Become A Representative Democracy Again?

The Daily Escape:

Toroweap Point, North Rim, Grand Canyon NP, AZ – August 2022 photo by Andrei Stoica

Our democracy is teetering. Minority states representing a fraction of the whole population of the country, have an outsized representation in the Electoral College and in the Senate. This has helped ignite an acute threat to American democracy that’s based in Red State America. The NYT’s David Leonhardt quotes Harvard’s Steven Levitsky:

“We are far and away the most countermajoritarian democracy in the world,”

One reason is that the more populous states over the past century have grown much larger than the small states. That means the bigger state residents now hold (relatively) less political power in the Senate and the Electoral College than they did in the 1900s.

This was something that the founders understood and agreed on. At the time, there was an alternative discussion about maintaining proportional representation in the House. In the first US Congress, (1789-1791), James Madison had proposed 12 potential Constitutional amendments. We all know that ten amendments were quickly ratified as the Bill of Rights. Another amendment was ratified in 1992 as the 27^th Amendment which prohibits salary increases for House and Senate members to take effect before the next election.

The only one of the 12 amendments passed by Congress that wasn’t ratified is the Congressional Apportionment Amendment (CAA). The CAA was designed to let the number of seats in the House grow to meet future population growth.

A majority of the (then) states ratified the CAA. But by the end of 1791, it was one state short of adoption. No other state has ratified this potential amendment since 1792. Here’s the text of the proposed CAA:

“After the first enumeration required by the first article of the Constitution, there shall be one Representative for every thirty thousand, until the number shall amount to one hundred, after which the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress, that there shall be not less than one hundred Representatives, nor less than one Representative for every forty thousand persons, until the number of Representatives shall amount to two hundred, after which the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress, that there shall not be less than two hundred Representatives, nor more than one Representative for every fifty thousand persons.”

The CAA lays out a mathematical formula for determining the number of seats in the House of Representatives. Initially, it would have required one representative for every 30,000 constituents, with that number eventually climbing to one representative for every 50,000 constituents.

But the amendment wasn’t added to the Constitution. Today, Congress controls the size of the House of Representatives. They had regularly increased the size of the House to account for population growth until 1911, when it fixed the number of voting House members at 435. Today, that’s about 761,000 Americans per House seat. Miles away from 50,000.

Delaware leads in the malapportionment with 990,000 people per representative, about 250,000 more than the average state. Rhode Island has the most democratic apportionment with 548,000 people per representative. Both are small, Blue states.

The small Red state Wyoming has 578k/representative. All of the big states are higher than the average: NY has 777k, and CA has 761k, while Florida has 770k and Texas has 768k.

This also impacts the distribution of Electoral College votes, which equal the apportionment of House seats. As a result, the Electoral College is also becoming less representative. David Leonhardt points out:

“Before 2000, only three candidates won the presidency while losing the popular vote (John Quincy Adams, Rutherford Hayes, and Benjamin Harrison), and each served only a single term.”

But two of the past four presidents (Trump and GW Bush in his first term) have become president despite losing the popular vote. Small states represent a fraction of the whole population of the country yet, absent something like the CAA, have an outsized representation in both the Senate and the Electoral College.

This was on purpose. But when the filibuster was added in the Senate’s rules, it changed everything. The filibuster has been part of the Senate in many forms, but in 1975, the Senate revised its cloture rule so that three-fifths of Senators (60 votes out of 100) could limit debate.

With the Senate roughly equally divided, each Party has about 50 votes it can count on, but it needs 60 to pass most legislation. This means that the small states have more power in the Senate than they had before.

Using the 2010 US Census as an example, the US population was 308.7 million. If the CAA was in effect, the number of representatives in the House would be more than 6,000. That’s surely unwieldy, but is there a number of House seats between 435 and 6000 that would be more representative?

Our form of proportional representation needs an overhaul. Some changes to consider:

Better proportional representation in the House (via the CAA?) to help make the Electoral College more representative than currently
A version of ranked choice voting for all state-wide races
Overturning Citizens United
Ending gerrymandering by using independent commissions to establish district lines

Since only a few hundred people currently control the democratic direction of our country, can these ever be addressed?

Corporate Money Is Flowing To Senate Republicans

The Daily Escape:

Sunset, Housatonic River, New Milford CT – 2022 photo by Tony Vengrove

There are just 55 days left until the 2022 midterm elections, and Wrongo’s crystal ball remains cloudy. For example, take the US Senate race in Pennsylvania. Democrat John Fetterman leads Republican Mehmet Oz by 48.5% to 40.4% in the 535 average of polls as of September 8. Sounds like a big lead, no?

But the US Chamber of Commerce told Axios on Sept. 11 that it was donating $3 million to support Oz’s campaign. Who is the US Chamber? They are an industry group that represents virtually every major American corporation. From Judd Legum:

“Corporations — whether individually or through a trade organization like the Chamber — are prohibited from donating $3 million directly to Oz’s campaign. (Corporate PAC donations are capped at $5,000 per election.) So instead, the Chamber is routing the money through the Senate Leadership Fund, a Super PAC set up by Republican Leader Mitch McConnell….The Senate Leadership Fund can raise unlimited funds from any source and spend them to boost Oz and other Republican candidates.”

In a statement, Chamber EVP Neil Bradley described Oz as “a pro-business champion” and said Fetterman “subscribes to a far-left, government-knows-best approach.”

So, America’s big corporations are against Fetterman. Sounds like a reason to be for him.

Legum takes a deep dive into where the US Chamber gets the millions it is donating to promote Oz’s candidacy: It comes from dues paid by member corporations. And which corporations are members? The Chamber keeps its membership list secret. More from Legum:

“We know, however, that virtually every major American corporation is a member of the Chamber. The Chamber’s board of directors includes representatives from FedEx, Bristol Myers Squibb, Facebook, AT&T, United Airlines, Abbott, 3M, Microsoft, Deloitte, Fidelity, Chevron, Intuit, Xerox, Pfizer, Dow, AllState, Delta, and many others.”

And most member companies don’t have a board seat. Their donations are secret as well, but CVS disclosed that it paid $500,000 to the Chamber in 2021 and $325,000 to a related organization, the US Chamber Institute for Legal Reform. And CVS isn’t a board member! Imagine how much the really big guns paid.

A few major corporations aren’t members. Apple, for example, resigned its membership in 2009 in protest of the Chamber’s policy on climate change.

Sadly, corporations are not accountable (or even visible) in their support of the extreme policies of the GOP when they donate through vehicles like the US Chamber. We have to hope that as the Republican message gets ever more extreme, corporations will have a harder time continuing their support for this type of Citizens United chicanery.

This shows just how scummy our politics have become with the help of the Roberts Court and the Federalist Society. If it’s illegal to donate a certain amount directly to this person or organization, we simply create a PAC or a Super-PAC, and then donate huge sums directly to them.

If creating a PAC achieves this result, how is the individual limitation protecting democracy?

There’s an old joke about how if you know a little about politics, your issues are guns, abortion and taxes. If you know a lot about politics, your issue is campaign finance reform.

Pennsylvania is one of a handful of states that could determine which Party holds the majority in the Senate. While Fetterman has a lead, Pennsylvania is still a competitive state, with money pouring into its governor’s race as well. This $3 million from the Chamber could have a real impact on the outcome.

It’s important to understand that more than 40% of the Pennsylvania electorate seems to want what Oz is offering. That’s scary, and it speaks to something that many in the media don’t want to address. They’re actually scared to address what the Republican Party has become. It isn’t surprising because the media are both a large part of the problem and not a part of the solution.

And when Biden accurately calls out what the Republican Party has become, when he says that Republican behavior and beliefs are inimical to what America is supposed to be, the media says he’s being divisive.

Oz is an example of what happens when one Party creates an existential situation out of whole cloth. When it’s backed by their 30 years of increasing extremism, the existential threat to democracy is now real.

No, America’s corporations aren’t going to save you. Giving money and time to Democratic Senate candidates like Fetterman, or Georgia’s Warnock (up by 2%), or Arizona’s Kelly (up by 2%), or New Hampshire’s Hassan (up by 4%), or Ohio’s Ryan (up by 1%), or North Carolina’s Beasley (up by 1%) MIGHT save you.

Do what you can.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – September 11, 2022

It’s 21 years since the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. As Michael de Adder says:

Twenty one years on, America is more at war with itself than with any foreign terrorists, despite having troops deployed in 80 countries. Our society and our democracy are threatened from within in a way that Osama bin Laden could never have managed. And where are we today? Cartoonist Mike Luckovich has a thought:

If ever so briefly after that fateful day. Today we face threats that might end our democracy:

We’ve nearly lost our social cohesion
We aren’t dealing with income inequality
We’re seeing racism grow
We see clear threats to the right to vote, or whether our votes will even count if we cast them

In these 21 years, Republicans have moved from being the Party of national security to the Party of grievance and anger. As Elliot Ackerman wrote last year in Foreign Affairs:

“From Caesar’s Rome to Napoleon’s France, history shows that when a republic couples a large standing military with dysfunctional domestic politics, democracy doesn’t last long. The US today meets both conditions.”

MAGA asks the wrong question:

When you have no policies, this is what you get:

Let’s close today with a song by Mary Chapin Carpenter that she wrote back on the first anniversary of 9/11. Carpenter was inspired by an interview with Jim Horch, an ironworker who was among the early responders at the WTC site. Here’s part of what Horch said:

“My responsibility at the site was to try to remove big pieces of steel. The building fell so hard there wasn’t even concrete. It was dust….I started to feel the presence of spirits…not very long after I was there. The energy that was there was absolutely incredible and…it was more than just the people that I was working with…it was energy left behind….One day when I was working, I felt this energy and it felt lost and it wanted to go home but it didn’t know how to go home and it came to me to go to Grand Central Station. When I got off the subway, I walked into the Great Room. Into where the constellation is in the ceiling. And I walked around the perimeter and…out of the building. I didn’t feel the energy anymore. I could feel it leave.”

And here’s Carpenter’s “Grand Central Station”:

Saturday Soother, QE II Edition ̶- September 10, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Wrongo isn’t a monarchist. Despite having lived in the UK in the 1970s, most of what he knows about the British royal family comes from watching “The Crown”. Wrongo remembers watching Queen Elizabeth’s 1953 coronation in his parents’ living room on a 10” black & white Dumont TV, one of the first in our neighborhood. We were all impressed with the pomp and circumstance but truly had little frame of reference for the event.

Royalty hasn’t ever been an American tradition. But here in the most exceptional USA, we maintain a love of nepotism and low taxes, so our American betters are easily able to perpetuate their wealth and power, just like the royals.

As we should have expected, in the hours following the death of Queen Elizabeth II, a tsunami of little known royal factoids emerged. Some of them rank as too much information. Wrongo’s favorite so far is that the Queen hired an Orthodox Jewish mohel to circumcise baby Prince Charles. Apparently, the mohel was Rabbi Jacob Snowman (1871-1959). [hat tip to blog reader Monty B.]

Looking forward, Wrongo isn’t a fan of the new UK prime minister Liz Truss. But she’s getting more than she bargained for, since the first two months of her prime ministership will be dominated by the Queen’s funeral and the media’s interest in parsing the new King’s every word and deed.

Truss now has the added challenge of being the prime minister who ushers out the second Elizabethan era and begins a new Caroline era (so named after Charles I). She will be doing it in the midst of an economic recession, a major energy crisis, and galloping inflation.

According to a poll taken by YouGov, only 12% of UK respondents think she will make a “good” or a “great” prime minister. And 34% of respondents think she will be worse than Theresa May.

Fortunately for Truss, the nation will be focusing instead on Charles III, the man who has been preparing to be King for all of his life. According to YouGov, Charles has a 42% popularity rating with his subjects, while his son William is more popular at 66%.

For years, many believed that Charles would actually predecease his mother. That led some wag on twitter to come up with the gag headline: “Queen Elizabeth Beats Prince Charles To Death.”

Charles’ wife Camilla is now what’s called the Queen Consort. The title Queen Consort means she’s a non-sovereign queen. It’s the title then-prince Charles agreed Camilla would not receive when Elizabeth II gave them permission to marry. But he eventually received her agreement to it a few years ago.

All along, Wrongo thought that a Queen Consort is where you go to hear: Bohemian Rhapsody, We will rock you, Another one bites the dust, We are the champions, Fat bottomed girls, etc.

But if they have Moet & Chandon in a pretty cabinet? Count me in!

That’s enough royal gazing. It’s time for our Saturday Soother, where we try to escape from the news and gather ourselves for the week to come. Here on the Fields of Wrong, we had a much-needed heavy rainstorm to help our plants and grass survive the current drought. Unfortunately with the weather, we lost a very large limb from a Bradford Pear tree. Nothing would do but to chainsaw it into manageable pieces and take them into the deep woods to rest.

This morning, let’s remember that Queen Elizabeth II created the UK’s modern national myth of a beloved monarch, helped by her longevity and dedication to service. She died in a remote corner of Scotland, a place she loved.

So, grab a mug of hot Bengal Spice tea and your wireless ear buds. Now take a seat in the sun and listen to “The Banks of Green Willow” by the little-known George Butterworth. It is a fine example of the English pastoral idiom, appropriate for a Queen who loved the English countryside.

Butterworth and Ralph Vaughan Williams were close friends, and you may hear similarities in their music. Butterworth was killed in 1916 in WWI during the Battle of the Somme; he was just 31.

Here it is played by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Grant Llewellyn. It’s the second time we’ve featured this piece. This is music that leads to private thoughts, something we all need right now:

And the pastoral images are nice!

The Wrongologist

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Category: Political Power of Women

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