To be a candidate, you must have energy

The New Neo Posted on by

A lot of energy.

As an example, I just want you to take a look at the pace most of these candidates maintain in the final push in New Hampshire. And they’ve been doing this since last summer, including a lot of back-and-forth between Iowa and New Hampshire.

Those who stay in the race will keep doing it till Election Day. And that doesn’t even count the preparation before their initial declarations of candidacy. It’s a marathon, but a marathon composed of sprint after sprint after sprint, all day and pretty much every day, for well over a year. Among other things, you pretty much have to love it to stay in the game.

What fuels them (besides doughnuts and coffee)? It’s easy to be cynical and say “narcissism,” and that’s not a bad answer, because obviously there’s some of that (and sometimes a great deal of that). But I think there’s more. The best politicians feed not only on adulation but on crowds and also on interacting with people one on one, something most candidates must do a lot in these two states with very small populations (Iowa has about 3 million people and New Hampshire less than half that).

Obama was apparently an anomaly in that way; he didn’t like it, but did it as a means to an end. For the current GOP crop, I would imagine the ones most naturally interested in doing that sort of thing and having fun with it would be Trump, Christie, and Rubio.

[CLARIFICATION: I didn’t mean Obama didn’t like campaigning in general, particularly the adulation of the crowds. When I wrote that he didn’t like “it,” I meant the “it” to refer to the “interacting with people one on one” part.

Same for “that sort of thing” in that last sentence—it’s meant to refer to “interacting with people one on one.”]

The long reach of time

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: This is a repeat of a previous post that first appeared in March of 2013, repeated now for no particular reason except that I like it.]

My mother’s very first memory was of being frightened by booming noises—guns? cannon? fireworks?—while being held aloft above a crowd to view a New York harbor filled with ships. She wept and her parents comforted her. The year was 1918, and she was four years old, and they told her there was no reason to cry because it was a happy occasion: the end of the Great War.

They didn’t yet realize that someday it would be known as the First.

That was a long time ago. But it really wasn’t all that long ago, since my very own mother remembered it. She grew up in an extended family shaped like an inverted pyramid, the only child of an only child. Her father had become chronically ill around the time she was born, and so her parents had to move in with her mother’s parents. They never moved out again until both grandparents had died and the house was sold, around the time of my birth.

So that’s how it happened that my mother was raised by four people, two of whom had been born during the early 1850s. All four of them had held and reassured my mother when those booming noises had announced the end of the Great War in that scene that constituted her first memory. So, although my mother became a modern woman who smoked cigarettes, drove a car, went to college, and voted as soon as she turned twenty-one (in that order, I believe), two of the people closest to her in her youth remembered the Civil War vividly.

This story illustrates how easy it is to reach back in time, at least in a “six degrees of separation” sort of way. All it takes is a family with a series of long-lived people who have children relatively late in life.

For example, with the proper connections, my mother could easily have known someone who knew someone who lived in the 1700s—and in the early 1700s, at that. That’s how we get the phenomenon of those Civil War widows who died as late as the early years of the twenty-first century. The recipe for that requires a very elderly woman who had gotten married very young to a veteran husband who was very old.

I’ve already described my mother’s family. But my father’s family also had an exceptionally long reach back in time. My paternal grandfather was born around 1860 and died in the 1920s. But he was the youngest of twelve children, the eldest of whom was a sister of his born in the year 1838.

Please let that sink in for a moment: my own grandfather’s sister was born in 1838. Not only that, but she lived to be over 100 years old and dance at my parents’ wedding. She appears in photos of the occasion, a small figure wearing a black headscarf, almost impossibly old and wrinkled but smiling.

I never met her; she died some years before I was born. But what tales she might have told! One of the difficulties of reaching back in time by talking to the elderly is that the young rarely have the inclination to do it before it’s too late. Old people—who cares what they have to say?

The answer might be: people who collect oral histories, that’s who. And while it’s true that there’s a growing industry of recording the memories of the elderly while they are still around to tell them, I wonder how many people will be listening in the future. It’s in the nature of the young these days to dismiss what used to known as the wisdom of the ages, or the thought that the experience of the past has any relevance to the present or the future. It’s one of the reasons why we fail to learn all that much from history.

2016 identity politics, Republican-style

The New Neo Posted on by

Rush Limbaugh says:

Sixty percent of the Republican vote in Iowa last night went for two Hispanics and an African-American, and 100% of the Democrat vote went for a couple of tired, old, decrepit white people.

That’s pretty funny. I don’t think they’re so very tired and decrepit, though, since although I’m younger than they are, I’m not younger enough to feel immune to the charge. Rush better watch out, too. He’s 65.

It’s the Republicans who are the party of youth these days, and of diversity. But they will never get credit for it, because Republican hispanics and blacks and women aren’t real hispanics and blacks and women.

And here’s another fact for you: I’ve noticed that people just assume that Ted Cruz is a lot older than Marco Rubio. Well, he is older—about 5 months older. It’s just that Rubio’s got that baby face.

And it occurs to me that the Republican Party owes Fidel Castro a small debt of gratitude, because two of the candidates probably wouldn’t be here without him.

I don’t know where to put this next bit, so I may as well put it here. I noticed that the campaign of 2016 is the Year of the Gorgeous Republican Wives.

I’m not kidding. People call Cruz a nerd, but this woman apparently doesn’t think so. Or maybe she likes nerds:

heidiCruz

Rubio’s wife was a Miami Dolphins cheerleader. She’s had four children, and still looks like this:

rubiowife2

You’d expect Donald Trump’s wife to look good—as a former model—and of course she does. It isn’t easy to find a photo of her smiling, however. For some reason, she seems to adopt a sullen look, perhaps a relic from her modeling days? I found a smiley one, though, and then a more typical frowning (maybe “sultry” is a better word?) one:

trumpwife

melania

Melania would also be the first US First Lady who has modeled in the nude (and no guys; that’s not a link to her nude photos). But in these progressive times, she wouldn’t be the first First Lady worldwide who has modeled in the nude. I believe that honor (?) belongs to the wife of Nicholas Sarkozy of France, Carla Bruni.

[ADDENDUM: By the way, Trump’s wife is a naturalized citizen, born in an area that was then part of Yugoslavia.

Rubio’s wife was born in Florida to parents who had emigrated from Colombia:

[Jeanette] Rubio was featured in the Miami Dolphins Cheerleaders’ first swimsuit calendar before she retired in 1997. It was during her time as a cheerleader that the Rubios, who were only slightly acquainted in high school, met again and began to date.

The fact that Mrs. Rubio’s Colombian background might make her the first Latina First Lady has aroused interest in Latin America.

They didn’t meet through her cheerleading, however, although I imagine it didn’t dampen Rubio’s interest in her; they were at the same college when they began to date.

Heidi Cruz was born in California, decided at a very early age to attend Harvard Business School, developed a political interest at 8, and met her husband while both were working for the Bush 2000 campaign.]

Trump can’t be bought—and so what?

The New Neo Posted on by

A lot of Trump supporters argue that they trust him because Trump can’t be bought.

But he can buy, and he’s been doing that his whole life. And, since he’s got more money than anyone running for political office [*see NOTE below] except Michael Bloomberg, his ability to buy is almost unlimited.

Plus, he can threaten, lie about, and try to ruin—which has been Trump’s m.o. for the vast majority of his adult life towards people who cross or thwart him. He’s shown no scruples or hesitation about it, and it doesn’t matter who his target is—for example, it can be a small landowner in Scotland, if that landowner doesn’t want to sell to Trump and Trump believes his run-down farm is spoiling the view from Trump’s luxury golf course. Then he becomes fair game to Trump: the “village idiot” who “lives like a pig.”

Hey, let’s give this guy the most powerful office in the world. His slogan can be: “In the world of politics, I’m a john, not a whore.” Or, “I’ll crush anyone who gets in my way.”

But perhaps if you support him you acknowledge all of this. You say that politics is a dog-eat-dog world, and influence is bought and sold, and you’d rather vote for the buyer than the seller. And you’d rather have the power-wielding thug wielding power on behalf of you.

Many Trump supporters must think this is a convincing argument, because I see it a lot. They seem to have arrived at a very advanced stage of cynicism, and they believe Trump would be their weapon in that world. Let’s put aside for the moment the question of whether such an extreme degree of cynicism and resignation is justified, just for the sake of argument (and this post). We still can ask why trust Donald Trump, of all people? Why think that his ends are your ends, and that it would make things better? Just because he says it?

Trump has no track record in office. His track record in life is to have done whatever it took to make money for Donald Trump, mostly through real estate development of large projects, and through marketing himself as a celebrity. Paid whoever needed to be paid. Said he liked whoever needed to be liked, and then when they didn’t do what he liked, badmouthed them. Lied when he felt he needed to. Been charming when it suited his purposes. Cheated on wives, seems to have been good to his children (who are, after all, an extension of Trump). Changed his political statements and stances with a rapidity that would make your head spin if you bothered to follow it. Paid people to help him write his books.

All of it in the service of the brand known as Donald Trump and the man known as Donald Trump. His goal has been to achieve personal power through money and fame. He’s made no secret of it, nor has he used his power for good in the world (or his money, for the most part; he’s been extraordinarily stingy with it in the philanthropic sense).

I imagine that those who want to give this particular man the highest and most powerful office in the world—particularly after Obama has shown the way towards making it more powerful by ignoring (and to a certain degree rendering impotent) the other supposedly co-equal branches of government—must in some way trust him. But I’d trust such a megalomaniac less with the reins of power than other people, not more. There is nothing—absolutely nothing—about Donald Trump that would make me trust him with that kind of power, and his braggadocio notwithstanding, he is one of those dangerous people who doesn’t even know what he doesn’t know. I’d rather trust a person who had shown some understanding of and respect for the Constitution, who had actually worked in government for conservative principles, and who we can assume might be beholden to a some special interests but who has acted on some principle in life other than pure self-aggrandizement. Trump’s only special interest is himself.

[*NOTE: On the topic of very rich people who have run for office, if you look at the Forbes400 you’ll see that Bloomberg clocks in at #8 with $38.6 billion, which makes Trump’s #121 and $4.5 billion seem like chump change. Another rich politician—in his case, ex-politican—is Ross Perot, who is #138 at $4 billion, very similar to Trump (I was very surprised to learn he’s still alive, and not even that old at 85). Except for Bloomberg, the really high political rollers on the list—but in the sense of being financial contributors rather than officeholders—are, as you might expect, the Kochs (tied at #5 with ) and George Soros (at #16 with $24.5 billion).

Most of these rich people you’ve probably never heard of. Few are celebrities like Trump, although there are some who are fairly well-known, or known for something else (like George Lucas). I was surprised to see someone on the list whom I’d known when he was a little boy of about 7 and had not seen since. Although I’d known he became rich, I never realized it was that rich.]

Germany prepares to feed at the Iran deal trough

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s not just Germany, of course. This is the sort of thing that made Europe salivate at the prospect of the Iran deal:

According to the head of Iran’s state-run oil company NPC, two leading German companies are set to invest a total of €12 billion in Tehran’s petroleum and gas sector. The latest agreement could make Germany the first big foreign investor in Iranian oil sector, after the nuclear deal was signed seven months ago.

Once the deal is finalized, these German firms will start setting up petrochemical plants in Assaluyeh in southern Iran. Mullahs in Tehran plan to get 6 unfinished petrochemical projects off the ground, which could double Iran’s annual oil revenue.

Germany has been the biggest European beneficiary of the Iranian Nuclear Deal. As German companies hoping to get up to €6 billion in back payments from Tehran, once country’s banking assets are unfrozen as part of the Obama-backed deal.

Germany isn’t the only one who should be salivating:

This week, Iran’s Government spokesman claimed that the Islamic Republic has gained access to $100 billion in overseas assets. This is a good news for terrorist organization like Hamas and Hezbollah as well as Assad’s genocidal regime in Syria. As the Shia-Sunni civil war within Islam heats up, Iranian Mullahs would be free to write fat cheques to their terrorist allies and proxies across the Islamic world and beyond.

New book on political changers by Daniel Oppenheimer

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “Cornflour” has alerted me to a new book on political changers (left-to-right), a subject very dear to my heart. It’s by Daniel Oppenheimer, and it’s called Exit Right: The People Who Left the Left and Reshaped the American Century:

In Exit Right, Daniel Oppenheimer tells the stories of six major political figures whose journeys away from the left reshaped the contours of American politics in the twentieth century. By going deep into the minds of six apostates””Whittaker Chambers, James Burnham, Ronald Reagan, Norman Podhoretz, David Horowitz, and Christopher Hitchens.

As you can see from the description, Oppenheimer’s focus is somewhat different than mine, although there’s some overlap. He seems to be intereted mostly in the movers and shakers who underwent political change, whereas although I’m interested in them (and have already written about some of them) I’m also extremely interested in the ordinary people (like me!) who did something similar. In particular I’m interested in studying the process of political change itself. How does it happen, and why? What are the commonalities? What are the differences?

I have not read the book, and definitely plan to do so. But my impression from the interview is that Oppenheimer seems to have more of a biographical interest in these people rather than an analytical one in the phenomenon as a whole. He seems to come to it more as storyteller and chronicler rather than as scientist or semi-scientist. This is a fine approach, as far as it goes. I like stories and biography, and I would imagine these are fascinating, but I’m actually more interested in what we can extrapolate from the stories.

I also listened to this interview with Oppenheimer about his book. He himself is a leftist, raised a leftist, but with intermittent doubts and questions, but so far he has resisted a personal political change. Here’s the author’s webpage.

Ho-hum, more Trump—with a bit of Rand Paul thrown in

The New Neo Posted on by

The latest Trump story is based on Trump’s accusations towards the Cruz camp re Iowa. It’s a leaf out of the usual Trump playbook, and I have to confess I felt weary at the prospect of describing it here and then having a discussion that would be essentially similar to so many that have gone before. But fortunately, I don’t have to do it, I’ll just link to others that have traveled that way before me.

Here’s Leon H. Wolf at RedState:

As far as I can tell, Donald Trump’s grieving process works more or less completely in the reverse order from what you would expect from a rational human being. Immediately after the event, Trump was more or less in acceptance mode, saying he was proud of finishing second, he loved the people of Iowa, he was going to come back and buy a farm there.

Then he went into depression, secluding himself for an uncharacteristically long time from twitter and the media.

Working backwards, he skipped over bargaining and went straight to anger, blaming the media and their unfair treatment of him.

Then this morning, he went into denial mode, basically saying that the Iowa loss never even happened and there should be a do over…

Look at what Trump is doing here. He is complaining about a series of events that are, by any objective measure, ordinary politics, and he is treating them as evidence of “fraud” or that the results of Iowa were somehow completely illegitimate.

If you don’t know what that refers to, it was reports by some of Cruz’s staff at some point during the caucuses that Carson was dropping out of the race. But a story reporting what seemed to be an impending dropout by Carson had been on CNN, and that’s what the staff was picking up on; see this:

Cruz said on “The Mike Gallagher Show” that members of his campaign were “passing on news reports.”

“I don’t make a practice of scapegoating staff members when it’s politically convenient,” Cruz added.

The Texas senator reiterated that he has apologized to Carson for his campaign’s actions. In a Tuesday statement, Cruz said that while sharing news reports is “fair game,” he was sorry his campaign did not send out an update clarifying that Carson would remain in the race. The Cruz campaign circulated a CNN story about Carson’s plans to head to Florida following the Iowa caucus, and the campaign allegedly urged caucusgoers to vote for Cruz instead.

On Wednesday, Cruz told Gallagher that the media was reporting on Carson’s claims and the Cruz campaign’s actions in a “misleading way.”

Cruz added that “The reality hit the reality TV star in Iowa so nobody is talking about him now. So he’s trying to regain some attention on Twitter.”

I believe that in this quip Cruz is essentially correct in the psychological sense. I would go even further: one of the strongest motivations in Trump’s life has always been to be a celebrity and to thrust himself into the public eye. He thinks it’s good for the brand, and the bottom line, but it also seems to be internally driven. For whatever reason, he thrives on it; not all billionaires like the spotlight, but Trump adores it.

Trump has developed attention-getting to a fine art, which has helped him so far in his campaign. At this point—as with his boycott of the last debate, which he now admits may have cost him first place in Iowa—his carping and whining and blaming may (accent on the “may”; predicting that anything Trump does will make him lose any traction with his supporters is a high-risk move) cost him some support because, although it illustrates the fact that “he fights,” it underscores the fact that “he fights like a child.” Whether you believe Ted Cruz or not, there’s little question that such actions, even if done with malice rather than in error, would not invalidate an election and probably had no effect whatsoever on Trump’s figures. In fact, they should have made his number of votes go up, not down, if Carson supporters were indeed moving over to other candidates (no evidence that Carson’s voters did abandon him, by the way, because he did about as expected).

Let’s see, what else? Trump says this about his knowledge of the concept of the Iowa “ground game”:

Donald Trump on Wednesday morning acknowledged that his campaign may have needed a more robust operation in Iowa, noting that he only recently learned what the term “ground game” means.

“I think we could’ve used a better ground game, a term I wasn’t even familiar with. You know, when you hear ”˜ground game,’ you say, ”˜What the hell is that?’ Now I’m familiar with it,” Trump said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” when asked if his campaign needed better organization to win in Iowa.

“I think in retrospect we should’ve had a better ground game, I would’ve funded a better ground game,” he continued. “But people told me my ground game was fine. And I think by most standards it was.”

One of the big hypes about Donald Trump is that he’s sharp, a really quick learner, and “he hires the best people.” That some of this hype is spread by Trump himself is obvious. It’s also obvious from his remarks above that, in the case of Iowa and the “ground game,” he didn’t know squat, and he didn’t hire the “best people.” I’m not a politician, but even I am at least somewhat familiar with the term “ground game” and what it means, and I know that in a state like Iowa (or New Hampshire, for that matter) it’s important. One of Trump’s many many flaws is arrogance, and that’s not only annoying, it’s dangerous in a chief executive.

Oh, and Rand Paul is out of the race. That decision shows good judgment. Would that some of the other candidates—do you hear me, Jeb?—would follow suit. But I doubt that Jeb will. It makes me sad to say it, but Fiorina (one of my early favorites) needs to go, too, because her campaign failed to take off after an initial surge. Kasich needs to say bye-bye as well. Santorum and Gilmore hardly matter, in or out. Christie and Carson are still doing well enough that I can understand why they might stay, but I don’t think there’s any way either actually has a chance to win, and as time goes on they will seem more and more like spoilers.

Speaking of spoilers—in that aforementioned RedState piece, Leon Wolf opines that, if Trump’s results continue downward, he will run third-party:

Trump is prepping his followers to bolt with him for a third party run if he loses the nomination. In fact, if he loses New Hampshire and South Carolina, he may just do it pre-emptively. I suspect this is a decision he has already made. Now, I know that he will probably not be able to get on the ballot at this late date in many states, but the point will not be to win, it will be to damage the Republican nominee, which has been Trump’s goal from the beginning of this process.

I am of two minds about this. On the one hand, I actually think Trump is enough of a patriot, and his anger at his fellow-candidates enough of a pose, that he doesn’t want to damage the eventual GOP nominee that badly. That’s unless he’s always been a Hillary stalking horse, which is also possible, but not my leading theory of Trump.

Also, Trump doesn’t like to lose. Campaigning third-party in a losing cause, and spending his own money to do it (even though Trump could afford to spend many many millions, he’s a tightwad), is not really Trump’s style. He doesn’t like to lose at anything, and that dislike runs very very deep.

However, I do think that Trump has gotten hooked on the adulation. He’s always pursued celebrity, and he’s actually been a celebrity for most of his adult life, but never on this scale and in this way. Never with hordes of very vocal and demonstrative acolytes who practically worship him. It must be a very powerful feeling, and he would be loath to lose it. Running third-party would keep it going.

Of course, if Trump wins big in New Hampshire and many other states, there’s nothing to say he couldn’t get the GOP nomination. But it feels less likely than it did before Iowa, and in his gut I think Iowa surprised him. Because one of the many dangerous things about Trump is that, like Obama, he believes his own hype.

[ADDENDUM: CNN reports that Santorum is about to leave the race. I hope we can state that without being accused of fraudulent dirty tricks by Trump, if in fact it turns out to be untrue. But I assume it’s true. It doesn’t matter much, as I said above, because Santorum had so very few voters to begin with.]

Illinois Board of Elections: of course Cruz is a natural-born citizen…

The New Neo Posted on by

…and don’t bother us anymore with this nonsense.

Well, that’s not a direct quote. But here:

The GOP senator has had his presidential bid challenged in recent months by Iowa GOP runner-up Donald Trump, who claimed Cruz’s Canadian birthplace disqualifies him from being president. Two Illinois objectors, Lawrence Joyce and Williams Graham, also agreed that Cruz’s citizenship did not meet guidelines in the Article II of the Constitution. But the board of elections disagreed and cleared Cruz’s name for the March 15 primary.

“The Candidate is a natural born citizen by virtue of being born in Canada to his mother who was a U.S. citizen at the time of his birth,” the board said, explaining Cruz met the criteria because he “did not have to take any steps or go through a naturalization process at some point after birth.”…

A ballot commission in New Hampshire also ruled in favor of Cruz in January, but the language in Monday’s decision by the Illinois board took a stronger tone than the previous ruling, warning other skeptics, “Further discussion on this issue is unnecessary.”

Ah, but you will see further discussion—further ignorant and/or stupid and/or mendacious discussion—on various comment threads all over the blogosphere. What you will not see is that lawsuit by Trump to seek a declaratory judgment on it, because he doesn’t have standing and that’s not the proper procedure. The sort of method described here, a citizen of a state challenging a state’s Election Board from putting a candidate’s name on the ballot, is the proper procedure. And it’s not going to work, and Trump knows that. If he doesn’t know it, he’s ignorant and/or stupid (or his lawyers are, which I deeply doubt). If neither of those, that leaves mendacious. Take your pick, or you can have all three.

And no, “the Democrats” can’t do it, either. I already covered much of this in a previous post, but in case you didn’t see it, please take another look.

More extremely unsurprising news on Obamacare

The New Neo Posted on by

This:

Aetna’s chairman and CEO said Monday that the country’s third-largest health insurer had “serious concerns” about the sustainability of ObamaCare’s marketplaces.

“We continue to have serious concerns about the sustainability of the public exchanges,” Mark Bertolini said on an earnings call Monday, according to prepared remarks.

He said the company remained concerned about “the overall stability of the risk pool.”

Many insurers, including Aetna, have been losing money on the ObamaCare marketplaces, also known as exchanges, in part because of a sicker and more costly mix of enrollees, known as the “risk pool.”

Aetna added that it’s not threatening the company as a whole, since Obamacare is “a small fraction of the company’s business.”

Great ravioli

The New Neo Posted on by

I had some of this ravioli for dinner last night, and some again for breakfast this morning:

ravioli-mushroom

I got it at the supermarket, and it’s by far the best grocery-store ravioli I’ve ever had, tasting like something you’d get it an excellent restaurant.

And that makes me happy. So I wanted to share the love with all of you.

By the way, it’s delicious absolutely plain, although I’m sure sauce would be good, too. Just all-around good.

Post-Iowa musings

The New Neo Posted on by

(1) Late last night I heard some pundit on TV saying that Trump voters must have changed their minds after speaking to pollsters, and that Trump needed to find out why.

I disagree.

For one thing, state primary polls in Iowa have a history of inaccuracy. For another, the drop in Trump votes may have had nothing to do with any of his supporters changing their minds; it could just as easily been undecideds, or relatively undecideds, breaking for other candidates.

(2) Rubio won big, although he came in third place. As several commenters here have indicated, he is now the “establishment” candidate. Jeb did not come through for them, and (IMHO) this reflects a real disconnect and lack of judgment for the bigwigs who backed him, because it was always obvious that Jeb would not be a good candidate (for example, I wrote a post on it nearly two years ago).

Today commenter “Steve D” wrote: “Trump is the insider of all insiders from the other side; he’s been bribing politicians all his life. And if Rubio is a insider the establishment is scrapping the bottle of the barrel these days.”

Yes, they are, because they are desperate. Trump may be an insider in terms of buying political influence for himself, but in terms of what his goals would be as president he is a loose cannon to the establishment. They have recently begun to embrace him, however, because they remember that he’s always played ball before, and he keeps talking about the deals he’ll make with the opposition, and so that soothes them. Compared to Cruz—who is a member of the Senate but not really of it—Trump is a team player.

That brings us to Rubio. I’m not sure whether Steve D. meant to put Rubio down when he wrote “bottom of the barrel,” but I don’t think so. I think what he meant (and what I would mean if I said it, anyway), is that Rubio can only be seen as an establishment guy by default, and on immigration (and in comparison to the ultra-non-insider Cruz). Otherwise Rubio was and still is a Tea Party conservative.

As more people drop out of the race, will more endorsements come Rubio’s way? I think so, but only by default. And by the way—although I’m not going to take this up at the moment, because it’s worth a huge post or several posts in and of itself—a lot of commenters have thrown the word “amnesty” around on the previous thread, in relation to Rubio. The word is being used too loosely, and in its loosest definition all the candidates (including Trump) are in favor of it. I’d like to try to define and use it more precisely.

But not today.

(3) The Iowa caucus system is kind of crazy, particularly the way the Democrats do it. Hillary won 6 coin tosses. Hmmm. Sanders can’t ask for a coin toss recount, though. Actually, the odds against winning 6 coin tosses in a row fair and square are not that high.

(4) Big loser: Quinnipiac. They were off—by the biggest margin of all the pollsters in Iowa recently, although the others were also way off—in a poll published just before the caucuses. Quinnipiac had Trump leading Cruz 31 to 24, with Rubio at 17. They found only 3% of voters undecided, but 48% of voters said they might change their minds. I think that high number was the key to the election surprises, and often is with primaries/caucuses.

Quinnipiac also said that if turnout was high it would favor Trump. Well, turnout was mega-high, and it favored Cruz and particularly Rubio.

I never understood the common wisdom that high turnout would favor Trump, which seemed to be based on nothing whatsoever. High turnout could mean a lot of eager Trump voters, or it could be that Rubio and Cruz voters were alarmed by Trump and eager to get out and stop him.

What’s more, the Quinnipiac poll had an unusually large sample for a state poll: 890 likely GOP primary voters. That’s about twice as high as in most state polls. And yet it was way off.

(5) And then there’s—New Hampshire.

Compare to a recent New Hampshire poll by UMass Lowell/7News with 461 likely GOP primary voters, and a margin of error of plus or minus 5 (that’s high; it means up to a 10% error between any two candidates). Trump gets 38%, Cruz 12%, and Rubio 8% (Kasich and Bush are 8% and 9% respectively, with Christie at 6%). But there’s a week till the NH primary, and in question 9 of the poll—whether respondents might change their minds—the answers are quite high: 28% for Trump, 35% for Cruz, 57% for Rubio, 35% for Kasich, 59% for Bush, 66% for Christie. That’s a very fluid situation in New Hampshire.

You may remember that in 2008, an 8% Obama victory was predicted in NH and yet Hillary won it by 3%. That’s an 11% swing. The amount by which Trump is ahead in New Hampshire polls would require an even greater swing, but with those huge “could change mind” numbers, anything is possible.

I keep hearing that New Hampshire is natural Trump country. I see no reason why that should be. It’s the case, however, that it’s not natural Cruz country, unlike Iowa. He’s too openly evangelical and too strictly conservative. But Rubio is a different story, and I don’t see why he wouldn’t appeal to New Hampshirites. He’s got quite a gap to close, however, and Kasich (yes, Kasich), for example, has been concentrating on that state for a long, long time.

Are you ready for Iowa?

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s a thread for tonight’s festivities.

The results won’t be out till very late, I assume. I’m not going to pay attention till then.

This explains how the caucuses work. It’s pretty interesting, especially the difference between how the Democrats and Republicans run them:

10:24 PM: ABC projects a Donald Trump loss. I, for one, am glad. Rubio is doing rather well, and Cruz is ahead, while Clinton and Sanders are neck and neck.

If you had met a time-traveler, and a year or two ago he had told you that these would be the 2016 results in the Iowa primary, what would you have said?

11:09 PM: O’Malley and Huckabee both have dropped out.

12:20 PM: So, here’s my next question: when will Jeb Bush drop out? Yeah, I know the answer is that it almost certainly won’t happen any time soon. Another question: did Trump hurt himself in Iowa by not debating? It does seem that his absence allowed Rubio to come forward, and Rubio took full advantage of the opportunity.

[Hat tip: Legal Insurrection.]