The Wrongologist

I was trying to daydream, but my mind kept wandering – Steven Wright

Ahh Spring! The air is getting warm, green has returned to the landscape. Aside from the longer days, which are like a present from Mother Nature, and the return of greenery, days
in the 60+ degree range after such a cold winter make you feel like things are going
to be all right, for a while anyway.

It’s the
difference between thinking about problems while sitting at your desk and
thinking about them at happy hour.

Nevertheless,
there are still things in the world of domestic and global politics, and
political economy that are wrong. And here are a few cartoons to put an
exclamation point on what was wrong this week. 

Equal
pay is all about politics for Republicans:

Steven Colbert inspires right-wing concerns:

Nothing will stop a bad kid with a knife except a good kid with a knife:

Who says doctors won’t take Medicare?

Hillary ducks shoe thrown her way:

Jeb and Hillary plot in same old game:

What’s
Wrong Today:

“Institutions will try to preserve the
problem to which they are the solution.” – Clay
Shirky

Today
we return to a question that dominated this blog in 2012: What kind of country
do you want? The quote above by Clay Shirky, a writer on the
social and economic effects of Internet technologies, is a great place to start.
In a sense, we are defined by the problems we are solving. The Shirky Principle,
describes a co-dependency, in which the entity tends to prolong the problem it
is solving.

This
describes the politics of deadlock
that drives our country today. But, progress demands that we must let go of
the current political process. 

This is
the most fascinating issue of our current time: The fact that electoral strategies have little to do with creating
consensus around ideas. Getting elected and staying elected isn’t just a part of the equation, it IS the equation: These
guys are trying to eke out a living by getting elected, and then by becoming millionaires, if they are not one when they arrive in DC.

Self-perpetuating
polarization is a feature of democracy, designed create and then solve political differences. If there were no differences, resolution wouldn’t be necessary. It
requires opposing candidates for us to choose between, and then our elected
representatives will occasionally vote on contested
legislation.

We need to
develop an entirely new understanding of politicians, parties, and elections,
because what we tell ourselves about our democracy does not mirror reality. Maybe
there’s no politics left and it’s all business.

The Shirky
Principle explains why neither party is interested in attempting to vanquish
the other. This is America, after all — you can barely swing a cat without
hitting someone whose self-interest can be bought for six figures.

In order
to compete with the Republicans financially, the Democrats have to raise equal
amounts of money. There is no way out for the Dems because they need the money to
compete. There is no way out for the Republicans because they need the extremist
voters that push them further away from the mainstream.

Both
parties must keep moving the solutions just beyond their reach to stay in power, and Americans are screwed as a result.

Lawrence
Lessig has an interesting column at the Atlantic
about campaign finance post the Supreme Court’s latest outrage, McCutcheon v. FEC, which struck down
aggregate limits on campaign contributions. He asks; What can we do to take control of
our government back from entrenched interests? Are Americans even interested in
doing so? Lessig quotes a July 2012 survey by the Clarus Research Group that asked this question:

80% of
people surveyed said they thought that reforms were only self-serving, designed
only to “help current members of Congress get re-elected.”

We are
resigned to the current system precisely because
we view the very process by which we would effect change as corrupt. This
causes us to steer away from the politics of reform, and focus our (dwindling
level of) political attention on other issues instead. The ordinary way we do
politics in America—Democrats yelling at Republicans, Republicans yelling at
Democrats—won’t move this issue, because neither side wants to change the
system under discussion. From Lessig: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

We’ll only get campaign finance reform if the people in Congress or our presidential
candidates ask for it. There are
proposals for fundamental electoral reform, and at least a few (e.g., the Government by the
People Act, or the American Anti-Corruption
Act) that could genuinely change the system, if enacted.

We won’t
get extensive reform though; we’ll get some sort of reform that preserves the
influence of money in politics while reducing the amount of time they have to spend
raising it.

What we
need is to enact legislation that places a hard,
absolute cap on the amount of money that can be spent for/by each candidate.
This would vitiate Citizen’s United
and McCutcheon and create a level
playing field in each race. The cap could vary by level of office sought, from
town councils to governors, to congress, the senate and the presidency.

Passing
legislation based on this idea requires a narrative that Americans will rally behind. The Wrongologist wrote here
about the importance of building a narrative that will convince voters that they
can actually create change:

Most people
in this world are focused on the things directly in front of them, finding the
resources to house, clothe and feed their families, to find jobs and just
survive. But the right narrative can unblock both practical and motivational issues, and can lead to real change.

So, let’s
work on changing how political influence happens.

Let’s
start with a hard cap on all campaign spending by candidate.

What’s
Wrong Today:

The
economy added 192,000 jobs in March. Various pundits made a big deal of the fact that with last
month’s gains, the level of private sector employment was finally back to its
pre-recession peak. But all that means is that we’ve finally climbed out of the hole
that the recession dug in the nation’s payrolls; it’s certainly not enough jobs
to employ the growth in the working-age population over all that time.

And
it took more than six years just to repair the damage, compared with 2-4 years
in the previous three recoveries.

One
of the real tragedies of the recession and our weak jobs recovery is the
enormous number of people who work part-time
for economic reasons. The Bureau of Labor Statistics
(BLS) defines people in this category as:  

A little history: Before the 2001
recession, there were slightly more than 3 million workers in this category. By
September 2003, as the economy recovered, there were 4.84 million. Gradually, most
part-timers got full-time work, and the part-time number headed back down. In
April 2006, the number dropped below 4 million, but edged up again. Since
then, it has not returned to what “normal” meant before the 2001 recession:

When
layoffs soared during
the 2008 financial crisis, some people who kept their jobs were cut to part-time hours.
Then, during the recovery, many of the unemployed found part-time, rather than full-time
jobs. So the number of involuntary part-timers just exploded.

People in the “part-time
for economic reason” category peaked at 9.2 million in March 2010. The number
of part-timers had nearly tripled from the year 2000 and more than doubled from
before the financial crisis.

Since then, it has
been slowly declining, as more part-timers find full-time work. In March, it was at 7.4 million. The headline is that nearly five
years after the end of the recession, there
are still 80% more involuntary part-time workers than there were in 2007, and
130% more than in 2000.

There is clearly a business
logic at work. Companies use economic downturns to prune inefficiencies.
They are also making their workforces more flexible, bringing people in to work
only when absolutely needed. Some part-timers work irregular schedules, and are
kept on stand-by the rest of the time. This keeps the company from having to
include them in health care coverage or from accruing paid vacation time.

Many companies have
outsourced a portion of their staff to staffing agencies who recruit and pay their
workers. It can be a powerful tool to bring payroll expenses down, but it can
wreak havoc on the lives and incomes of workers.

Oh, and it is
terrible for the overall economy.

Back in September
2003, as hiring started to grow after
the previous recession, there were 2.26 million temporary workers out of 130.3 million total nonfarm employees. By June 2006, the number of
temps had jumped 17.8% to 2.66 million. Remember, the number of Part-Time workers today is about 7.4 million.

The chart below shows total non-farm employment and temporary
help employment, indexed to 100 in 2003:  

The chart shows that
temporary jobs dropped earlier, and faster than did total jobs. They
bottomed out at 1.75 million jobs when total employment bottomed out at 129.7
million.  

Since then, Temp jobs
have grown 62.4% from their post-recession low, while total non-farm employment
grew at 6.4% from its low, reaching 137.9 million.

Temp jobs have boomed
for structural reasons, including workforce flexibility and the big savings that accrue to companies on payroll expense and
employee benefits. Some of it is due to the way in which executives are
rewarded. It also explains some of the growth in earnings and share prices for
American firms.

The
other side of earnings growth is steady and relentless wage suppression.
Everyone knows that part timers aren’t worth what permanent workers are
worth. Thus, they have little to no bargaining power. We have seen this in the efforts of fast food workers to organize in the past few months.

There is little hope that this
trend will turn around. Temporary workers will not become full-time
employees in large numbers over the next few years, or indeed, possibly not before the next recession. Given population growth, it is possible that the
number of part-timers will never return to the levels we experienced in 2000.

 

What’s
Wrong Today:

A
few quick notes regarding yesterday’s column about exporting
natural gas. Blog reader and commenter extraordinaire, Terry McKenna said:

Bloomberg
echoed Terry’s worry when Russia invaded Crimea:

So here
comes the manufactured threat by speculators that attempts to boost prices. We’ve been
warned.

As Terry indicates, gas has been a cheap source of energy for us. But,
given the situation in Europe and the push by Republicans to export it, how
much longer will it be cheap?

According
to the CME
Group an energy consultancy, not for long: (emphasis, brackets and
parenthesis by the Wrongologist)

And
wouldn’t that be just grand for the energy industry?

As Terry commented, natural
gas is what is called a stranded asset.
That means it doesn’t travel well or cheaply. Until recently, pipelines were
the only transport method, so exporting was impossible. That changed about 30
years ago, as LNG became more available, and the energy industry began to build
infrastructure for it.

But
the cost of liquefying natural gas is very high. And the entire supply chain
for exporting LNG is expensive to build and maintain. You need to liquefy it,
pipe it into a special, pressurized tanker to transport it to Europe. You need a specialized
facility at the European port to take it off of the tanker and store it, and a
facility to de-liquefy (called re-gasification) the LNG, and distribute in
Europe’s existing pipeline infrastructure.

It
makes the “landed” cost of LNG in Europe very high. That will attract gas
supply to Europe, and thus cause gas prices domestically to increase, as demand
for our available supply will go to overseas buyers who will pay the most. Winter heating costs will go up for those Americans who heat with natural gas.

Now,
liquefying natural gas (LNG) for export sort of works, if there is a cheap
supply (as in Qatar) that doesn’t have to travel very far. But the farther
natural gas goes, the more of it burns off along the way, meaning a portion is
lost to evaporation, which adds to the cost (it also adds to the gasses that cause
climate change).

Even
without converting natural gas into LNG, a little over 8% of US natural gas is used up in processing and getting it to US customers.
Converting it into LNG, exporting it across the ocean (while some more burns
off), and re-gasifying uses up even more of the product.

Perhaps
the best outcome FOR AMERICA would be if virtually none of this natural gas
export capacity ever gets built. If it is really possible to get the natural
gas out of the ground, we need it here instead.

But
that would go against the basic energy policy of the Republicans and the business
media, which is “Drain America First”.

Otherwise,
prepare for higher natural gas prices.

What’s
Wrong Today:

From today’s
NYT:

Where 3,000
workers are building a terminal that will send American natural gas around the
world by the end of next year. By 2017, the facility built by Houston-based Cheniere Energy could handle
roughly a sixth the amount of gas that flows from Russia to Europe every day. But,
50% of this gas is promised to India and South Korea. Not a problem, according
to Condoleezza
Rice in yesterday’s WaPo:

Remember what John
Boehner said in March to the WSJ:

If only
our Republican friends were correct. Here is a Q & A from Gail
Tverberg:

The US Energy
Information Association (EIA) forecasts that by 2017, we will be able to meet America’s
domestic natural gas needs. Below is their chart:
  

Source:
Our Finite World, based on EIA’s
Annual Energy Outlook 2014

“EIA Fut”
means the future forecast of production and construction of production
facilities. OK, so maybe we could
export a little to help our European allies.

Then, Tverberg
asks the $2 question: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

Tverberg
continues:

So we have
to come to the conclusion that if Republicans and the energy industry have
their way, we could be left with less
than half of current natural gas production for our own needs. And by
2040, natural gas consumption is expected to be 23% higher than in 2013. This,
according to Republicans, would help Europe to work more effectively with us to
blunt Russia’s possible continued aggression in Ukraine.

Here
we go again, listening to Republicans sing the same old tune. US natural gas
companies have been searching for a
rationale for more LNG terminals and found one in the Ukraine crisis.

The
rationale is ideal for the gas companies because politicians can help out by wrapping
themselves in the flag of national security. If these politicians are
successful, there will be more profits for the gas companies and US gas
consumers will face higher prices and more hydraulic fracturing.

This
means Republicans are fine with poisoning our groundwater in order to sell
fracked gas to Europe. Here are some additional questions for your
consideration:

• What
  exactly is in this for non-shareholders (citizens)?

• And
  how is any of this good for the American consumer of energy?

• Why
  must we place the Gulf of Mexico at greater environmental risk to enable Europe
  to avoid Russia?

• Why
  are our natural water aquifers being given away to energy companies to use up
  at will?

The
Republicans continue to placate big business and big finance by enabling them
to export our jobs, machines, know-how, and funding. Essentially, the
Republicans exported our economy, and now ask Democrats; where are the jobs? With
the export of gas we don’t really have, Republicans now want to help big
business export the fuel of our economy, one of our strategic natural
resources.

If
they continue to decimate our economy (and our nation) in so many ways like
pirates stashing their take elsewhere, we should call them traitors.

The US has been an aggressor
in the Middle East for more than 60 years, beginning with deposing a
democratically elected government in Iran, in order to control our sources of energy.

Now that we have something approaching energy self-sufficiency, the Republican plan
is to EXPORT it?

Nice democracy ya got there…be a shame if something happened to it.

What
would be job one in America if all the
people really believed in democracy? It would be to make voting as
universal and as easy as possible.

But
some Americans have other ideas about elections in our country. They include the members of the Supreme Court, who want to make it easier to buy elections, and many state governors with ideas
about voter suppression. Those who believe in massive
voter fraud also tend to believe in a few other mythical ideas, like
trickle-down economics, American Exceptionalism, a 6,000 year old earth, and
spooks (not the CIA kind). 

America has seen some
impressive winning streaks: UCLA basketball under John Wooden, Cal Ripken, the Chicago Bulls with Michael Jordan,
the New York Yankees, but few can surpass
the string of wins racked up by America’s rich. Now, thanks to your Supreme
Court, the super-wealthy can take another victory lap:

Perhaps we should now rename the first 10 Amendments:

Look out below, we’re off to see the Wizard of Wonderland:

Empires begin to die once the corruption starts. The
first sign of the down-fall is when the infrastructure starts to crumble, and we are already
way past that. When a great republic is no longer viable, it collapses.
We had a good thing going and it is a rotten shame that we have hit the auto-destruct
button without a fight. 

The GM scumbags messed with the GM airbags:

Ft. Hood has another shooting:

Obamacare crosses finish line, meets goal, but nothing changed:

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

What’s
Wrong Today?

We
celebrate Martin Luther King day in January. But, today is the 46th
anniversary of the day Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. The NYT reminded us of the assassination two
days ago, with an article about the Lorraine
Motel, which is now the National
Civil Rights Museum:

It is the room that the Rev. Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr. left for a moment on April 4, 1968, to go onto the
balcony. That was when James Earl Ray took the shot that killed Dr. King.

King was in Memphis
to support the strike of African
American garbage workers, who were on strike to protest unsafe conditions,
abusive white supervisors, and low wages, and to gain recognition for their
union.

On April
3, 1968, in Memphis, King delivered his last
speech, where he vowed
not to let “any illegal injunction” prevent a planned demonstration in the city
the next day.

In that speech,
King, 39 at the time, told the crowd about a bomb threat on his plane from
Atlanta that morning, saying he knew that his life was constantly in danger because
of his political activism. He then delivered this unforgettable meditation on
his work and his life:  

In addition to only
dimly remembering the date of his death, Americans remember the conviction of
James Earl Ray as his killer. They have little conscious knowledge that in
addition to the criminal trial of Ray, there was a civil trial in Memphis about
the assassination. It found that a conspiracy to kill Dr. King was at the root
of James Earl Ray’s act.

The suit was brought in
1999 by the King family along with Dr. William F. Pepper, a
lawyer who had become friendly with Dr. King in 1968. In 1999, the NY Times reported
on the jury trial:

More from the
NYT:

Perhaps
the most remarkable thing about the King civil trial, was that
it received almost no coverage in the US media. The Wrongologist does not generally
subscribe to conspiracies. One of these theories of the assassination is true,
but nearly 50 years later, it may no longer matter which it is.

Here is what we should remember: There is
less than three months between the observance of King’s birthday and his martyrdom.
The way each is recognized by politicians reveals the contradictions in his legacy.
In one breath, politicians of all ideological stripes extol the virtues of
racial equality, while most ignore his criticisms of war and poverty.

These criticisms
are especially important, since they show an evolution of Dr. King’s activism.
Perhaps more than any other social-movement leader in American history, King
proved capable of looking at different strands of political and social
injustice, and tying them together to
form a coherent narrative capable of leveraging mass disaffection into concrete
policy change.

This same crafting
of a narrative is what the Wrongologist has
been saying is the key to beating
the plutocracy and restoring our democracy.

Let’s also
remember that Dr. King’s last political crusade was the
Poor People’s Campaign to end poverty. His last book, “Where
Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?” posed a question that
confounded the nation at the time of its release in 1967 as much as it does today:
Where do we go from here?

But, by launching
a national movement to end poverty, King answered his own question. Pennell
Joseph offers some wisdom:

Go
out and develop a narrative, one that unites people to win back the country
from the Plutocrats and their fellow traveler politicians. Follow Dr. King’s
example.

Take
your narrative to your neighbors. Work to get out the vote in November. This is
house-to-house fighting, folks.

Our
democracy is in an existential crisis, and only you and your narrative can beat
the Plutocrats.

 

 

What’s
Wrong Today:

From yesterday’s New
York Times:

This should be a
wake-up call for Democrats. Instead of again laughing at Ryan’s budget, Democrats need to think about how easy the path to control
of the Senate is for Republicans, and what THAT could mean.

Think strategy for a
moment: A GOP takeover of the Senate would mean the Ryan budget will be on Mr.
Obama’s desk, with the president facing a “sign it, or shut down the
government” moment. Would he veto it?

Like Mr. Ryan’s past budget proposals, this one seeks
to eliminate the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion, then turn the health
care program for the poor into block grants to the states — steps which he
argues save $732 billion over the decade. He would also cap and block-grant
food stamps, starting in 2020, cutting that program by $125 billion in five
years. The budget relies on imposing new work requirements on food stamp and
welfare recipients.

According
to Mr. Ryan, this approach:

Sure, if only there
were jobs. But the toughest cuts would come from domestic programs that have
already been reduced steadily since 2011, when Republicans took control of the
House. Mr. Ryan’s 2024 domestic
spending figure would be lower in nominal dollars than such spending was in
2005. Adjusted for inflation, it would be a 29% cut from today’s levels, and 28%
below the average level of Bush administration spending.

And if the GOP wins the Senate, that’s exactly what we’ll face, if Mr. Obama won’t
veto the bill in the face of a government shutdown, or a debt ceiling default.

Ryan’s budget means a
30% cut to domestic programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and food
stamps. But, out of
every 100 food stamp recipients, 49 are children, 8 are elderly, 20 are
disabled and 23 can work, including many of the parents of those children. Of
those 23 who can work and are expected to work, 14 are already working.

Consider yesterday’s Wrongologist’s
column, “A
Plutocracy Masquerading as a Democracy”:

We have a disconnect between the
people and our government. You can only push people so far before they will
start pushing back. If you force people into a desperate situation they will do
desperate things.

A smart government should realize
that when too many people are poor and desperate, without a clear way of improving
their lot, that the vast majority of them will not be content to just lie down and
die like dogs. A smart government should realize that poverty among an
increasing portion of the population is politically unstable and dangerous.

So it could reach a point where the
cops and military won’t defend the wealthy, or government officials against a revolution.
That is what a smart government also knows.

Here are the choices for
American citizens: Work extremely hard to get out the vote. Tell a compelling story, one that stops people from voting against their interests, a story that helps them elect Congress people and Senators
who will put the politics of division in the rear view mirror.

Or, let our current political
process continue. A process where people vote for politicians in a way that
maintains a 49%-51% political split in whichever direction. This assures that the politics of
division remain a way of life in Washington. Then we can stay dysfunctional in
the face of major domestic and global political problems.

It’s our decision, our choice.

Given yesterday’s calling of balls
and strikes by John Roberts, chief umpire of the Supreme Court, even more
plutocrat money will pour into the political process, working to preserve the permanent
oligarchy that has developed in the past 30 years.

Think of all the crappy political
ads we will be seeing by Labor Day, or whatever the oligarchs decide to rename
it.

Job Creator’s Day, maybe?

 

What’s
Wrong Today:

Today,
the Supreme
Court took another step toward giving the wealthy more freedom to influence
federal elections:

Have you ever
heard of managed
democracy? No? Well, you are living in one:

In a
nutshell, our government has learned to control elections so that the people
can exercise their rights without truly changing public policy.

One major
outcome is the Roberts Supreme Court.

The
concept of managed democracy evolved from the term “guided democracy”,
which was developed in the 1920’s by Walter
Lippmann in his seminal work “Public Opinion” (1922).

So,
here we are. We have elections, but nothing changes. We have elections, and the
incumbents usually win. We vote for hope and change, and nothing changes. We vote
and today, we get an expansion of Citizens
United, while yesterday, we got the Ryan
Budget. We live in a culture of narcissism. As such, social and
political movements are unlikely to get any traction. We live for ourselves and
for those close to us.

We treat the political sphere like
the weather: We endure the persistent economic hard times and try to snag
whatever we can for ourselves. There is limited interest anywhere in improving civic
virtue. People are content to let their “betters” rule and hope for the
best for themselves. If our neighbors suffer, well, that’s too bad.

As
Ian Welsh points
out, we are:

Welsh adds
an important point: Creating the candidates, taking over an existing party, or
creating a new party are all possible. All of them can be done, both in theory and in
practice, if enough people wanted to, or, wanted it enough to do it. But they
don’t.

Welsh
concludes:

We can speculate that
this is because we are a consumer society. Consumers choose from the options presented to us, we
do not make our own options. Whoever controls the menu, controls the
consumer society.

From time
to time, one person or another will bleat something along the lines of: “You are
just nasty; it isn’t conducive to a dialogue”. That is another cop-out, like “I’m
not political”.  There’s no reason why we
should be even remotely interested in dialogue with people who willingly shirk
all political responsibility. They’ve chosen to be impotent; to be little
better than slaves – why should anybody waste their time in a dialogue with
them? The great Stirling
Newberry wrote this week:

Newberry
points out that only 9% of the population believes Congress is doing a good
job, but it doesn’t matter. It won’t change, because only 10% of the population
does the choosing on primary day, and they are the ones who prefer reactionary candidates.

A takeaway
from Howard Zinn’s 2005 “A
Peoples History of the United States“, is that our history has been
one largely of the elites playing various demographic slices of the non-elites
off against one another. Whenever we have made progress, it has been when the
non-elites set aside these artificial divisions and focus their ire at the
elites (often at great personal risk). Usually this only happens after the
elites over-reach in some way. We’re going through that phase again, now.

We aren’t
in danger of a new gilded age, we are in one.

We aren’t
in danger of losing our democracy. In any reasonable sense, we have lost it already.

We have
choices, and could make them. If we as a group fail to do so, then as a
group, we are responsible for our fate.

We were
given this republic and we should keep it. We either will work hard to change
the course and keep it; or, we will let it stay under the control of the oligarchs. In either
case, we have decided. And we are responsible for that decision, to ourselves,
our children, to our society.

But we are a nation of enablers. Are we too
comfortable to change?

What’s
Wrong Today:

Our
never-ending election season is about to shift into high gear. And it’s a
midterm election, which occur every two years in between the only elections
which Democratic voters seem to think matter. Nothing could be farther from the
truth.

From the LA Times:

First, a quick refresher: Republicans hold 30 seats that are not up
for election in 2014. To gain control of the Senate, they need 51,
since Vice President Biden would cast tie-breaking votes in a 50-50
Senate. They currently hold 45 seats. Thus the Republicans need to hold
their 15 seats that are up, plus win 6 of the 21 Democratic seats that are up this fall.
(Democrats hold 52, while there are 2 Independents)

Another
way to look at it comes from the Economist:

Four
Democrats are fighting to keep seats in states that Mr. Obama lost in 2012:
Mark Begich of Alaska, Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and
Kay Hagan of North Carolina. None has a clear road to victory.

In 2008,
Mr. Begich eked out a victory over Ted Stevens, the Republican incumbent who had
been convicted of ethics violations just eight days before the election (those
convictions were later vacated).

Eight
senators are retiring or have quit. Of these, five are Democrats, 3 of whom come
from states that Mr. Obama lost by more than ten points in 2012: Jay
Rockefeller of West Virginia, Max Baucus of Montana and Tim Johnson of South
Dakota. Republican candidates enjoy healthy poll leads in all three states. The
other two Dems are in states that Mr. Obama won by less than ten points: Tom
Harkin of Iowa and Carl Levin of Michigan.

The
biggest challenge for Democrats this November isn’t to “win” this or that
public relations battle about the president’s job performance or the economy or
Obamacare or Ukraine—it’s the challenge of improving the turnout of certain demographic
categories who do not turn out as well in midterm elections as they do in
presidential elections.

In fact, the LA Times reported that the Democratic Senate
campaign committee plans to spend $60 million to boost turnout. That’s nine
times what it spent in the last midterm election, in 2010. -And the Democratic
National Committee (DNC) has begun to make the sophisticated data analysis
tools developed to target voters in the 2012 presidential campaign available to
all the party’s candidates.

And President
Obama has talked of need for candidates to start now to work on reducing the
number of so-called drop-off voters:

The
message is that Democrats can’t expect demographics to save the Senate.

Instead, the question is how to avoid a big
drop-off.
According to exit polls, voters younger
than 30 made up 12% of the electorate in 2010, when Republicans won control of
the House, but 19% in 2012, when Obama won reelection.

Minority
voters were 23% of the 2010 turnout, 28% in the presidential election.

Gaps that
big would almost certainly doom Democratic hopes this year.

A key lesson
from the Obama campaign is to drive GOTV (get out the vote) programs. The GOTV
program can’t wait until October, it has to begin now. The problem is that the
strategy has to be deployed (and funded) state by state, precinct by precinct
in the 21 states where Democratic Senate seats are in play.

How to
reach and engage the low turnout voting blocs is the true issue. Convincing
them that voting will actually lead to an important change in direction for the
country is the key to success. Seth Godin drew a great
distinction about engagement:

With those who rarely
vote, picking a venue and getting implicit permission to talk politics is
important. Finding appropriate venues is not as straightforward as schools and
churches were in the old days. Social media affects both venues of choice, and the way the information is
received. GOTV is about unblocking legitimate practical and motivational
issues. And knowing when someone is agreeing just to get you to go away.

Here is
the story the Wrongologist prefers to use:

Republicans are dreamers.
They dreamt of a peaceful democracy in the Middle East, but, paraphrasing
Rumsfeld, you go to the Middle East with the Republicans you have and not with the
ones you need.

• They
  dream that Obamacare will destroy the US

• They
  dream that anything Hillary does is a scandal

• They
  dreamt that Mission Accomplished was real, that the WMD existed

• They
  dream that austerity will fix poverty

• They
  dream that unemployment is caused by laziness

• They
  dream of a constitution written by Jesus

And they dream that
they won’t shoot themselves in the foot before election day. It’s true that one
person’s dream is another person’s nightmare. So, if Republicans DO win the Senate,
the US will deserve whatever ensues, and it won’t be good, of course.

Unless you’re a
transnational billionaire.