Saideman's Semi-Spew

 Once again, I got the election wrong, spectacularly so.  Was confirmation bias the key?  Partly but mostly too much and too little comparative analysis.

Too much: yes, people were pissed at inflation, but it is down now and this government did better than any other at getting their country to a soft landing quickly.  Also, best wage growth for middle and lower class folks in decades.  But, nope, Americans don't think comparatively.  They were pissed about inflation and not elated about the low unemployment.  That Biden avoided a recession got no rewards.

Too little: turns out every democracy in 2024 had the incumbents losing and by big numbers.  Harris's loss was smaller than all, which might give her some due and undue credit.  US institutions and polarization limit how much she could possibly lose. 

Which gets us to the real puzzle of the election: why didn't Democrats turn out? Harris got something like 14 million votes less than Biden.  Trump got fewer votes than 2020.  All Harris really needed was to get something like 5-6 million less than Biden.  Perhaps I was deceived by the reports of my friends doing get out the vote stuff and by the fact that the Harris campaign did a lot of GOTV stuff and Trump's was run by Musk (who sucks at everything besides getting attention).  So, why did Harris not get as many votes as one might have expected:

• Incumbency.  The thing I got most wrong in my prediction post is that I thought she successfully flipped the script and positioned herself as the change candidate and Trump as the incumbent. Nope, nope, nope.
• Abortion/Dobbs didn't have the same magic on turnout this time as 2022.  Why?  I am guessing that it was partly due to the referenda that were supposed to generate turnout.  Instead, people didn't understand that these referenda would not actually protect their states from an anti-abortion government--they thought they got their umbrellas via these referenda so they could go out in the rain.  
• Racism and sexism.  Men of all kinds voted against Harris.  That a second woman lost to a clearly disqualified/unqualified man requires some consideration.  Trump won his gamble that his racism would not be problematic to men who didn't want a woman in the White House.
• No one cares about VPs.  Walz was fun, but only helped in Minnesota, JD Vance was awful but no one cared even though he has the best chance of any recent VP of becoming President.  
• Our pop culture heroes don't matter.  Beyonce, Taylor, Lebron don't move the needle.  
• The aforementioned split tickets--NC should have dragged down the GOP, but perhaps what happened was that queasy Dems knew that the Dem gov candidate would win and then didn't show up to vote for Harris.

The flip side is how could people vote for a convicted felon who also happened to be an insurrectionist.  Turns out Jan 6th didn't move the needle. Last year's inflation (and yes, prices haven't dropped, but they don't without some suffering) matters more than the threat to democracy.  What matters more to Trump voters are change, rejecting the status quo, resentment, fear, and ignorance.  Seeing a young woman say that Trump wouldn't ban abortion was just appalling.  That people don't understand what mass deportation really means is partly on the Dems but mostly on the media but also on the voters themselves.  They don't care about that or the cruelty directed at transpeople.  Yes, we only have two real choices, but showing displeasure at the status quo meant voting for the cruel and the corrupt.  That should have made a difference, but it didn't so that says much about a good hunk of the American electorate.

Which leads to this: that so many future targets of mass deportation voted for the party of mass deportation is just horrifying and appalling.  That Latino men might think they are immune because they are citizens, because they were here before the Anglos, because their families immigrated legally, whatever is even worse wishful thinking than I induldged in before Tuesday.  Empowering racist cops and sheriffs (and maybe militias?) to enforce mass deportation means lots of false positives--that people who are not undocumented migrants--will get swept up and sent to places that don't have due process and assume that those incarcerated don't have full citizenship rights.  Sure, people will learn to carry birth certificates and passports just to leave the house (papers, please!), but asshole cops and sheriffs can just take the docs and toss them aside and deny they have done so.  The people who will be enforcing the mass deportation sweeps are going to be the worst people, and they will have immunity (see Project 2025).  The camps don't have to be set up by super competent people.  They will have crappy sanitation and they will overcrowded and they won't be safe in summer (no AC) or in winter (no heating, little shelter).  And people will die due to reckless disregard (this is how concentration camps work) while the US govt spends a tremendous amount of its political capital and leverage forcing countries to accept the 10 million.  

People didn't take Trump seriously last time, but he did do a heap of bad that has been memory holed. His big campaign promises of banning Muslims and building a wall happened even if it was a shitty wall. I fully expect a weaponized Department of Justice and mass deportation to happen.  And both will be so very destructive including to those that voted for Trump.

Yes, I am angry.  Not just at myself for my wishful thinking and confirmation bias, but at the Democrats who didn't show up and let this happen and to the Trump voters who cared more about imaginary fears of an immigration crisis, who didn't care about a competent government doing much to improve things despite a Congress blocking its way, and who didn't mind either the cruelty aimed at trans people or the corruption and bullying of Trump and his people.

So, no, I am not sleeping well.  I am not sure how long this nightmare will last.  Our best hope is that we have a real election in 2 years which changes Congress so that it stop some of the worst excesses and that the GOP gets tossed in 4 since the pattern of the last three elections is tossing out whichever incumbent.  But that aforementioned weaponization of DoJ might mean that political opponents get arrested so that elections become farces.  That is how competitive autocracy works. 

 

I made a big prediction in 2016 and got it wrong.  Of course, I couldn't anticipate that Comey would tip the scale at the end, but I underestimated Republicans selling out their souls for some power.  So, should I avoid making a prediction now?  Should I put up a pessimistic one to be safe?  Nope, it is time to be ruthlessly optimistic again.  Plus I was right in 2020.  50% is a great batting average or a great 3 point percentage.

So, I shall list my reasons for optimism before putting up my prediction:

1. At the top of the list: the Republicans have under-performed in every election since 2016.  Really.  Yes, they got seats in the mid-term in 2022 but less than they should have.  Why?  Because the reality of Trump really sucks and the further spinning of the GOP from the mainstream to the far right is actually, yes, not so popular.  
   
2. I almost had this first: Dobbs.  I think Dobbs and then the passion for far right legislation--severe abortion bans, anti-IVF proposals, even anti-birth control stuff--will energize women voters far more than the potential of such stuff eight and four years ago.   Plus so many states literally have abortion on the ballot via referenda including key states like Arizona, Nevada, and Florida,   I am tempted to list the corruption and arrogance of the Supreme Court separately, but I will just leave it here.  
3. Many factors above and below: no Democratic complacency.  The near panic about Trump winning should drive turnout.
   
4. Efforts to pander to Black and Latino misogynists have been undercut by the Haitian immigrant crap of a few weeks ago and of the Madison Square Garden fiasco.  The polls always exaggerated how many Black men were going to swing towards Trump.  Yes, misogynists are going to vote for Trump, but that was pretty baked in before Biden dropped out--Trump is THE candidate for  women-haters.  MSG may have put Florida in play as Puerto Ricans will turn out against Trump in a big way.
   
5. Kamala Harris has run an amazing campaign.  She is the change candidate despite being the incumbent VP.  That takes some terrific political acumen, discipline, a great team, and, yes, Trump exhaustion.  She is also, yes, a far better candidate than either Trump or Biden--smart, attractive, dynamic, younger, with a great story about who she is.
   
6. Tim Walz.  His debate performance wasn't great, but he is fantastic in interviews and at rallies.  
7. JD Vance.  Just a repellent asshole who has negative charisma.  Because so much has happened in the past couple of months, we forget how much he turned people off.  And he still does.  I almost think he puts Ohio in play for the Presidential level as the entire state has regret about electing him to be their Senator.
8. Beyonce, Taylor Swift, Lebron, Bad Bunny, and all of the rest of the elites of our culture are on the same side.  Folks may discount this stuff, but it matters at the margins.  Who does Trump have?  Hulk Hogan.
   
9. Trump's ground game sucks. We know this.  Elon Musk "helping" is not a help.  Folks vastly overrate Musk's skills at anything, and he certainly does.
10. The GOP helped to kill its base via its anti-vax stances.  We have good stats showing that more Republicans died in the pandemic... for a reason.
11. The fucking fundamentals.  In 2016, the Dems had been in power for eight years and the economy was ok.  In 2024, the Dems have been in power for four years and people aren't tired of them yet.  Not like they are tired of, yes, Trudeau, or, yes Trump.  Oh, and the economy is one of low unemployment and low inflation.  Folks may blame Biden for the bout with inflation--things are more expensive now but the rate is no longer zooming up--but the economy is actually pretty great at the aggregate level, especially when compared with all of the other democracies.
12. There are so many shitty Republican candidates that will drag down the vote in a variety of states: Arizona as Kari Lake, NC with Mark Robinson, and so on.  This might be repeating #1.
    
13. The electorate keeps changing.  Yes, the Republicans keep courting the conservative immigrants via religious appeals and such, but their hate of immigrants matters quite a bit.  Sure, it is a grand American tradition to close the door behind you a la Musk, but the electorate is less white than it once was.  Not because of any Great Replacement plan or dynamic, but because the US remains an attractive place to live despite what the GOP is doing to it.
14. The national security stuff.  Yes, I overestimated it eight years ago, but since then Trump has stolen secret docs and kept them at his golf club and so on.  Which leads to
15. There were Never Trumpers in 2016, but the Republicans for Harris seems to be much more of a thing.
16. Because of January 6th.  That should have ended Trump's political career.  It didn't, but it does move the needle.  It should be at the top of the list, and it is a sad recognition that it is not...
    
17. The polls?  Seems to be the case that they are converging on a close race because they don't want to get it wrong.  I also think #1 matters here.
    
18. The early numbers are mostly encouraging--about turning out, about women turning out, about swing states.
19. Speaking of early reactions, Trump's social media stuff in PA is suggestive--that their internal polling suggests the state is lost.  
20. Will enough voters remember that Trump fucked up the pandemic?  I hope so.
21. Trump is frickin old. Biden got pushed out because he was seen as too old.  Trump has lost his mojo and is low energy.  He really has run the shittiest campaign this time.  Small crowds that leave early, fewer rallies. And people are just tired of him and tired about talking about him.  Time to move on.  Some would say we are not going back. 

 

 

 

I still think Nevada will go Dem, but I am not as confident.  Between the abortion referendum and Kari Lake sucking so much, Arizona is going Dem again.  NC?  Always tempts us, but this time they have a horrific Gov candidate that will help push the state over the top.   

Senate?  I haven't followed this as much--the map is brutal this time as these are the folks who won in 2018, Trump's midterm.  So, more Dem seats.  WV is lost, Montana is probably as well.  I am not worried much about Arizona.  I think the Independent wins in Nebraska.  I'd love to see Cruz and Scott lose in Texas and Florida.  Not likely but not out of the realm of the possible.  Oy.

The House?  Since I think Harris is going to do quite well in the general election, I think the Dems pick up the House.

 PS I didn't mention the Arab American vote because it is not a cause for optimism.  I have no idea how they will break at the end.  All I do know is that Trump would be far more awful for that community in the US and would not be any better and probably worse on Gaza/Palestine than Harris.  But these folks are rightly angry about the US arming Israel's disproportionate response to Oct 7.  Oh, and the Jewish vote?  Probably not moving radically in one direction or another despite the GOP being the party of far right anti-semitism, which is far more dangerous than left-wing, students protesting Israel.

 

 

 It is awful that mass deportation is supported by lots of Americans.  Perhaps because they have no idea what it means.  Let me listicle my way through why it would be the single most destructive public policy since Reagan's supply side economics?  Nope.  Smoot-Hawley?  Maybe?  Damn, I can't think of a single policy worse than this in the past 125 years, as Jim Crow was a bunch of stuff, not one single policy.

1. Lots of places to start, but let's go with concentration camps.  That any effort to take 10-20 million people out of society and then try to deport will mean putting them someplace first.  The US does not have the prison space for this, so the second Trump admin will have to hastily set up places to jam people.  Will these places be overcrowded?  Yes.  Will they have proper health/sanitation?  No (see the DHS chapter of Project 2025 for a call to lower standards below what states might set).  Will disease, such as tuberculosis become rampant?  Yes.  I have been to concentration camps in Germany, I have seen how residential schools in Canada were implemented.  The cruelty is, indeed, the point. Overstaying one's visa or trying to get asylum or seeking a better life for your kids is not justification for a high risk of death. 
2. It will be very destructive to the economy--it will rip out of key sectors much labor that citizens aren't lining up to do.  Construction? Don't we have a housing crisis?  Agriculture?  Day care and elder care? 
   
3. They are not a drain on the government coffers, as undocumented workers tend to pay into social security and medicare but aren't eligible for these benefits.  Indeed, the best way to keep social security and medicare solvent is to have more immigrants, who tend to be younger than citizens, not fewer.
   
4. It would not reduce the, yes, rather low crime rate because undocumented immigrants and immigrants of all kinds actually commit less crime than citizens.  The anecdata of this or that bad immigrant committing crime is atypical--the numbers consistently tell the tale.  
5. Who will be swept up in the mass deportation?  Undocumented people?  Sure.  How about legal immigrants?  Yes, given the rhetoric about the Haitian immigrants who are in the US legally.  How about the children of immigrants who were born in the US?  Yes, as the Republicans want to get rid of birthright citizenship.  How about Brown and Black citizens who aren't carrying documents the day they meet up with the various deportation squads (I would call them brute squads, but the giant in Princess Bride is much kinder than ICE/Customs/militias/sheriffs/etc)?  
6. The fundamental authoritarianism of it all--that we would all have to carry passports or birth certificates every day as the forces of the state demand "papers, please," whenever they want.  This is American democracy?  No, it is not.
7. The huge amount of money that will have to be spent on it to expand law enforcement at all levels.
8. The likelihood of violence between states that don't want this to happen and the Trump administration--civil war?  Something like that.
9. And, yes, use of the military against protestors who want to stop such an abhorrent policy.
10. The racism of it all.  Pretty sure ICE and the rest will be chasing people of color and not white Canadians or Norwegians who have overstayed their visas.
11. It is completely unnecessary.  There is no real immigration crisis.  The system is overburdened, but that does not mean that there are challenges to law and order, that the economy is being harmed, that people (other than the migrants themselves) are facing much harm or threat.
    
12. It is also immoral--ethnically cleansing the US to appease Great Replacement theory types who worry that people of color will govern them as harshly as the white supremacists governed the people of color.   Also, the US agreed to the international laws on asylum--we are obligated to help people who can't go back home without facing significant risks.  The US has always applied that inconsistently, letting in Cubans but not Haitians.  But one of the lessons of World War II was to provide asylum to those facing great dangers in their homelands.  That was the right lesson to learn and it should not be unlearned now to appease white supremacists.
13. update: I forgot to mention that this will distort US foreign policy as Trump's team will have to expend a great deal of effort and leverage to find homes for 10-20 million people outside the US.
    

This is not the way to address the housing crisis. The way to deal with a housing crisis  ... to build more housing.  Unemployment is very low, so this is not a matter of immigrants, legal or otherwise, stealing jobs from American citizens.  Again, undocumented workers tend to do jobs citizens don't want to do.  I am sure I could go on, that I didn't include everything that one can.  

 I just came back from my high school reunion in suburban Philly, and, oh my, I feel sorry for those living in a swing state, especially this one.  Just so many ads on the radio and on tv, so many hateful Trump signs.

The juxtaposition of Harris and Trump ads, as well as those for and against the Senate candidates, is striking.  Harris's ads vary from positive to negative, while Trump's are pure venom with one exception.  The exception is the laughable sign on the highway that Trump has, is, and will fight for all Americans.  Unless he defines American narrowly, this was pure bs, especially after the stuff came out about his unwillingness to fund relief efforts in California after a natural disaster there until his staff showed how many Republicans there were in these places.

The Harris ads generally had more policy bite to them--about minimum wage, protecting social security, tax credits for new parents and homeowners.  The main negative one I heard several times was suggesting that if one is driving an Astin Martin or another expensive vehicle, Harris isn't for them, and then there was a snide driveby about cybertrucks.  

The Trump ads were pure xenophobia and fear mongering about the border with a few hitting Harris on changing positions and taking her quotes out of context.  Just heaps and heaps of stuff about "illegals" and border crisis.  I get that this works among the GOP in Pennsylvania who, last I checked, are not affected by stuff on the border, but hate knows no boundaries.

I did see more Trump signs than Harris, and the Trump fans had to have the biggest and most numerous signs on their lawns while Harris fans tended have just one moderately sized sign.  And, yes, the bigger houses with the bigger lawns were the ones that tended to have Trump signs because you now this is all really about economic frustration... sure.  

Of course, this could be my confirmation bias kicking in.  All I know is that my desire to embrace nostalgia by listening to the same rock station I listened to 40-45 years ago (WMMR!) was squashed by the flood of campaign ads.  Again, for me, this was just a quick dip into this swing state.  I don't recall more than one or two billboards in NY.  But PA, oh my.  Perhaps the proliferation of pot dispensaries is easing the pain of the residents of this swing state.

So, the Iowa caucuses are a big mess.  Woot!  It reveals to all the farce it is to have one or two (NH) unrepresentative states feeling entitled about shaping the choices the rest of the country faces when it comes to Presidential elections.

All of this reminds me of a tendency in sports coverage: that in any playoff series, the commentators must come up with a new narrative after every game.  Things often swing 180 degrees after each game when the, alas, yes, fundamentals haven't changed.  It makes for good drama, but it is highly annoying when the narratives become so predictably swingy.

Which brings us to the modern Presidential primary campaign.  It has seemed like it has been going on forever in part because we can count the number of narratives over time as if they were rings in a very old tree.  Most candidates (sorry for the most forgettable Dems) had their week or two in the sun, being treated as a potential front-runner, only to find the next week the media swinging to cover someone else.  Remember when Kamala Harris was presented as the candidate to beat?  That was a fun week way back when.

I raise this because my strongest preference would be for the media to stop privileging Iowa and New Hampshire and to stop trying to create narratives rather than just covering what the candidates are saying and promising.  I understand that is not going to happen.  So, instead, I suggest we borrow from the NBA reformers.

The NBA problem is this: each year, there is a draft of the next generation of players, and whoever goes first gets to pick the player perceived to be the best.  Of course, this is screwed up all the time, but the key dynamic is this: it creates a temptation to tank--to lose lots of games--so that one can draft earlier.  The NBA instituted a lottery so that all of the non-playoff teams get a chance at the first pick.  But then a series of not-so-bad teams managed to win the lottery.  So, instead, they created a weighted lottery and then a lottery where the worst team could do no worse than fourth.  The key reform being discussed now is the wheel:

each of the 30 teams would pick in a specific first-round draft slot once — and exactly once — every 30 years. Each team would simply cycle through the 30 draft slots, year by year, in a predetermined order designed so that teams pick in different areas of the draft each year. Teams would know with 100 percent certainty in which draft slots they would pick every year, up to 30 years out from the start of every 30-year cycle. The practice of protecting picks would disappear; there would never be a Harrison Barnes–Golden State situation again, and it wouldn’t require a law degree to track ownership of every traded pick leaguewide.

For primaries, this would work a bit differently: arrange groups of five states so that the primary process has ten separate election periods with each group being a mix of states so that a group of five together is representative enough.  Then have each group of five being in a different spot in each election so that each group of five is first, last, fifth, and so on over the course of ten cycles.  Would be the most fair thing to do.

But then again, politics isn't fair nor is path dependence.  So, I don't anything to change except maybe folks either dump apps or actually, you know, develop ones and test them way ahead of time.  And,yes, we are stuck with Iowa and New Hampshire because politicians are cowards.

The search for a master narrative has already begun, so let's take heed not just of me but of smart folks who study American politics that there is not a single master narrative.  The pundits will try to make it so, but there is not.

However, we can consider whether this election is different--are things worse now?  This morning's conversation went thusly:

and misogyny and racism and homophobia.

The irony of White nationalism/supremacy is that tends to be inclusive.... in targeting anyone but white Christian males. https://t.co/3oyx8TiNLN

— Steve Saideman (@smsaideman) November 6, 2018

all those came way earlier (or at the very latest, c'mon we all saw 2016). Heck, even @speechboy71's tweet implies it isn't a _resurgence_ of anti-Semitism in American politics. America needs to own its history.

— Kevin (@a_more_on) November 6, 2018

 And so I pondered--are there more mentions of Soros, a signal by anti-semites to anti-semits, than before?  I was thinking it would be, but nay:




Interesting--Soros is searched for during election cycles.  Hmmm, I wonder why?  Well, my original thought was not about Soros mentions by everyone or searches by everyone but by prominent GOP mainstream types, like the President, like members of the Congress, etc.  I don't have time to do that search--I have faith that folks will do that content analysis for their papers for the next American Political Science Association meeting.  What we do have instead is, I think, a record number of GOP ads that feature the combo of Jewish candidates and handfuls of $.

A recurring theme in GOP attack ads this year: Jewish Democratic candidates clutching fistfuls of cash. https://t.co/nTZEAbqhR8 pic.twitter.com/a1qL72uwKN

— Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) November 6, 2018

So, yeah, Trump and others have normalized anti-semitism and all the rest of the hates.  While white supremacy/nationalism may not be the only factor at work in this election and thus not THE master narrative, it is far more prominent and far more destructive than in recent elections.  The GOP has always played with this stuff to divide the Democrats and because it helps to turn out an important segment of their base. But they are far more shameless.  And that, alas, gives permission and encouragement to those who have imagined grievances and a willingness to hurt people.  First you hurt the women in your life and then you hurt those who are demonized by politicians and media (thanks Fox!). 

This election is different in many ways and similar in others.  A blue wave will be read as a repudiation of white nationalism, and a failed wave will be read as support for Trump's normalization of hate.  There will be more to it than that and lots of this is traditional stuff--what happens to the party of the President in midterm elections, the fact that most of the Senate seats were won by Democrats 6 years ago in a very pro-Democratic elections, that candidate emergence is a dynamic thing (GOP stalwarts dropped out knowing that they would be in minority, stronger Dems ran not just because of Trump disgust but because they saw this as a favorable election), etc.

What is the message here?  Hate is bad and getting worse but beware of the master narrative.  These elections are fought one district and state at a time.  And this post is appropriately incoherent--because it has no master narrative either.

I storified an excellent set of tweets explaining why this election cannot/will not be rigged:

The Parti Quebecois has had a disastorous campaign, snatching perhaps defeat from the jaws of victory.  The Charter of Values had done its job of dividing the CAQ and making the Liberals waffle and pander.  However, since the campaign has started, the PQ lost its message pretty much every week:

• Announcing the Quebecor mogul, Pierre Karl Peladeau,as candidate focused attention not on the Charter of Xenophobia but on separatism (he said independence, woot!) and on the pre-existing divides within the party between left and right. Given how much the party depends on unions, its embracing of a union-buster was a bit risky, eh?
• Le Voterfraudfraud (or is it la?).  That is, the focus turned to whether non-Francophones were going to steal the election with much focus on the menace posed by McGill students.  I remember those students--they are a menace to society ... if one has a crappy idea since they have sharp critical thinking skilz.  Anyhow, again, off message.
• Pool-gate.  And this weekend, the question turned to swimming. Ok, not swimming but the desperate need to have the Charter passed so that Quebec women can swim without restriction by McGill Muslim men.  Yes, that dreaded Triple M (tm).  Oy.  Given that the Charter of Xenophobia only applies to government positions, it is not clear how it would affect swimming pool regulations.

Am I forgetting any other distractions from the core PQ message?  


The PQ is trying desperately to return to the Charter of Values as tyranny of the local majority is still their best strategy, I guess.

The best guess right now is that they lose.  And if they do, the infighting and blame-casting will be epic.  I hope this is what plays out, as karma can be so unkind.

I got a heap of grief last week for my Globe and Mail post on the Crimea referendum.  Most focused on the questionable wording.  I had to back off slightly from my original statement that the referendum wording was asking people to choose between irredentism and secession.  Instead, it was more like asking if people wanted irredentism (joining with Russia) or Quebec' 1995 unclear question.

Why is that?  Because the question focused on the 1992 Crimean Constitution and staying with Ukraine.  Well, that is more confusing than it sounds since the 1992 Crimean Constitution was actually quite controversial with much opposition from Ukraine for its secessionist elements.  Kind of like asking for sovereignty and yet not sovereignty, as confused Quebeckers may remember.

The funny thing is that folks focused on this, but that was not the only parts of the referendum that were sham-tastic that I discussed in the piece:

• Only external observers turned out to be far right folks from European Parliament.  No observers from respected election monitoring places.  And, no, the CIS folks don't count.
• The pop quiz nature of the referendum--a week?  Really, since when has any democracy held an election a week after the election's announcement?  I dare you to name one election that was held in such a short window.  Pop quizzes are to enforce attendance and reading requirements in classes, not for major political change.
• There is that whole occupation thing by Russian military folks who deny that they are Russian military folks.  Add that to opposition folks being arrested/disappearing and other forms of repression.

And so what we do get?  95% support in the referendum for irredentism.  What percentage of the Crimean Tatar and ethnic Ukrainian vote would you need to get that result?  Yeah, I am questioning the validity of the referendum's outcome.  It was a sham from the start, whether the question itself is as confusing to the voters as it was to me and to much of the coverage or not.

If you think that the referendum was perfectly democratic, then either you don't understand democracy or your confirmation bias is so strong that reality has a hard time getting through.

I have become a big fan of Brian MacFadden--the Sunday NYT cartoonist--party fraud!!!!  No, partyfraudfraud!

I hate it when a columnist smartly reaches the worst conclusion before I do.  Don MacPherson of the Montreal Gazette has pointed out on twitter and his blog that the PQ getting a majority government may not be the worst thing.  Nope, the worst outcome might be a PQ minority government that depends on more devoutly separatist parties like Quebec Solidaire.  The QS is much more sincere about an independent Quebec, so it might force the PQ to push for a referendum sooner rather than later. 

Oy.  Minority governments can be frozen, they can be empowered, and they can be destructive.  It depends on whether they need support to do stuff, where the support may come from and what might be price. Israeli governments have been held hostage by small religious parties.  Relying on centrist parties, a la Germany and the Free Democrats is much better for stability and reasonable policies.  A PQ relying on the QS or the Option Nationale would be pretty awful. 

So, let's hope that the polls are wrong.  Or really right.  Or, well, I am confused.  Good night, Quebec.

The UK is in the midst of a referendum campaign to change how folks vote and how voters are turned into seats.  This stuff can be both boring and complicated.  Good to see that folks have found a way to illustrate some of the dynamics (note, naughty language below):

“National unity” was the theme, but when all the votes were counted — then recounted and finally certified months ago — identity triumphed. In an interview this summer, Mr. Maliki himself expressed disappointment that when it came to sectarianism, the country had returned to “square one.”

Should we be surprised that the Iraqi elections did not lead to ideological-based parties that sought to be big-tent parties with many ethnic groups residing in each one?  No.  Of course not.  Iraqi Democracy is flawed in many, many ways, but elections by themselves do not create national unity anywhere.  Depending on how the institutions fit the demography, elections can create incentives to make appeals to more than one ethnic group, but even then, those incentives may be overwhelmed by other pressures.

And if one makes it very hard for the competition to compete as was the case in Iraq, then we can hardly expect the election to produce joy and happiness.  A record setting length of time to form a government was perhaps not to be expected, but not that shocking either. 

The big question is the old one: how will the dominant majority treat the minorities?  Not much hope right now, given the past, including efforts that essentially disenfranchised the Sunnis. 

While elections seem to be a tool to pass legitimacy and responsibility from the outside interveners onto the locals so that they can get out, we know now pretty clearly that elections in the immediate aftermath of conflict may not be productive.  And elections during the conflict are even less so. 

Still, I expect elections to be used in the same way in the future--to pass the hot potato. 

NYT has an article about the uncertainty of the next milestone (or is that benchmark) in Afghanistan's political development: parliamentary elections.  There are concerns that it will go just about as well as last year's Presidential election.  This is the first but not the last story about how difficult the security situation is for an election and how these challenges will just facilitate yet more corruption.

Too early to say right now, but could it possibly be worse than what happened last year? 

“We know it’s not Switzerland,” said Staffan de Mistura, the special representative of the United Nations secretary general for Afghanistan. “But I am concerned, and I am raising a yellow flag.”

Oh, forget I asked.

Not me.  Marc Lynch has a very clear analysis of the Iraqi elections.  My quick summary--the elections did not suck.  Much better than Afghanistan and Iran in terms of real competition, many more folks crossing various lines (sectarian, especially) to vote for candidates and parties that claim to represent Iraq rather than Iran or the US, efforts to undermine the Sunnis via Chalabi's anti-Baathist shenanigans backfired, and more.

Of course, much wrangling ahead between the two leading parties--current PM vs ex PM.  But given where Iraq was 6 months ago, one year ago, three years ago, this is not a bad place to be.  Does not justify the invasion, but it might justify the surge, the awakening, Petraeus and COIN, Gates and even a bit of Bush making some decent choices after making so many tragic ones.  Obama may be able to run in 2012 with Iraq largely in the background with another difficult promise kept. 

Still, this could all go haywire.  Bears watching and following Lynch at lynch.foreignpolicy.com as he continues to provide clarity on these issues.

Certainly not from me, but from Marc Lynch who had a chance to speak to the Iraqi VP.

Or so says the US Supreme Court.  Sort of.  Here is a great slate piece, explaining the decision, how it relates to existing laws and previous decisions and such.

I am not as exercised about this as other folks because I didn't think the existing regs had done that much to limit corporate influence.  I think much of the election spending law thus far has created new business for folks who are good at figuring out how to avoid them.  Plus I have been thinking that on a lot of issues, there will be corps on both sides.  Not on taxes so much but on health care reform, which pitches big insurance companies against many other major corporations that face increasing health care costs.

The big conclusion of the piece is that this process is, to be political sciency, is endogenous.     The Supremes will find that their new members down the road will be facing more and more questions on electoral finance law than before, and the balance may very well tip back.

I spent today at a workshop organized by Rights & Democracy, an organization funded by Canada "to promote democratic development and defend human rights."  I cannot say what others said since it was held under Chatham House rules or their equivalent.  But I think I can repeat what I said.

I was asked what I thought about the implications of the election, and I realized that what the election truly demonstrated was the weakness of external leverage upon the Karzai government and on governance in Afghanistan in general. 

Relatedly, I argued that while there are many meanings to elections, one purpose of them is to enforce accountability.  That is, an election is an event where a politician is held to account for their decisions, and the incumbent can be defeated for poor performance.  But in the Afghanistan case, Karzai competed by avoiding accountability.  He ran essentially against NATO and ISAF by focusing attention on collateral damage--to show that he was not a tool of the international community.  He stacked his government with all kinds of nasty folks to build a winning coalition. And he didn't mind too much when significant fraud was executed on his behalf.  And then rather than having a runoff, which would have been costly but would have reinforced the rules, Karzai gets to keep his job without being held accountable for the fraud.

Lovely.

I was definitely one of the most pessimistic people in the room, which perhaps contradicts my past and present support for the Obama surge.  Hmmm.  Will need to think about this some more

The bad news is that they’re still Republicans — with all the baggage that entails.

From a NY Times Op-ed that makes claims similar to those I made yesterday--not to read much into the outcomes.

With a handful of elections yesterday in the US, it is easy for much to be made about each one.  But as any decent social scientist will warn, with a small number of observations, generalization is risky and it is unclear that there are any trends.

Republicans won a couple of governor races and gay marriage got another defeat in Maine, but the Democrat won in the controversial election in upper New York.  What pattern can we discern?  Other than gay marriage still loses in referenda, there is not much of a trend at all.

So, instead some observations:

1) Gay marriage is still bringing out opponents to vote more than supporters.  I am confused by the following:

 Opponents repeatedly warned voters that if gays were allowed to marry, it would be taught in the public schools, a tactic that proved effective in California last year.

What does this mean?  Teaching kids to be gay?  Teaching kids that gay marriage is legal?  Teaching kids how to marry in a gay style?  I have not seen these ads, so if  any of my readers can make sense of this, I would appreciate it.

2) Sarah Palin might just be the equivalent of box office poison--she lost her election last year, and her candidate lost last night in New York.  No wonder the GOP candidates in NJ and VA ran towards Obama, rather than towards Palin.  Where the Republicans go now is a mystery, but I do not rule out further acts of self-destruction.

3)  Candidates matter.  Hoffman in New York just came off as a boob.  The NJ governor was apparently quite disliked even by those who like Obama.  There was no national momentum or flow, but, instead, personalities of each candidate mattered a great deal. 

4) The key next year for the midterm elections will be, as always, the economy.  If the job picture improves by then, then the Democrats should be more ok than not, although the President's party usually suffers in midterm elections (but not always as of late).  If health care passes, then the Dems can claim some successes.  However, I do think there are some risks to the Republicans of being the party of No.  More people want change and reform than those who do not.  Being opposed to change works to win party primaries, but obstinacy as a party platform is unlikely to gain pluralities/majorities of votes in most districts and states.


And as always (at least since last year), for expert analysis on US (and other) elections, see www.fivethirtyeight.com.