The New Neo

Carly Fiorina endorses Ted Cruz

Posted on March 9, 2016 by neoMarch 9, 2016

It doesn’t surprise me.

Cruz adds this:

“This race, I believe, will end up one-on-one between me and Donald Trump because Donald and I are the only two that have any path to getting to 1237 delegates.”

“And head-to-head with Donald Trump, we win,” Cruz claimed. “The polling yesterday showed we beat Donald head-to-head by 13 points. And so if you don’t believe Donald Trump is the best nominee for Republicans, if you recognize as 65-70 percent of Republicans do that Donald loses to Hillary in the general, then I would encourage Republicans even if you were supporting another candidate to come, join Carly, join the millions of conservatives who are coming together, unifying behind our campaign.”

I think he is correct. The question is whether it will come to pass.

It’s clear that Cruz wants to win outright, and realizes how bad a brokered convention could and probably would be. He also realizes that his only chance of a straight win is if the others drop out, and that they are unlikely to do so in time (particularly Kasich). That’s why he needs voters to realize this and unite behind him, even if the others don’t drop out.

Reflections on yesterday’s primaries

Posted on March 9, 2016 by neoMarch 9, 2016

Yesterday Trump did well, in the 30s and 40s (except for Idaho, where he fell to the 20s). This is the pattern he has established. The difference between earlier primaries and more recent ones is that Ted Cruz has broken away from the pack and is a strong and fairly consistent #2.

It also continues to be clear that the number of people not voting for Donald Trump is greater than the number of people voting for him. And it’s become even more starkly apparent, now that Cruz has gotten closer and closer to Trump—winning in Idaho and edging out Kasich in Michigan, which is impressive because Michigan does not represent Cruz’s natural constituency—that Rubio and Kasich must drop out and yet it’s unlikely that they will drop out before March 15 and perhaps even after.

To those of us who want Cruz to be the nominee rather than Trump (and “want” is a mild word for it), their perseverance is one of the more frustrating aspects of a very frustrating primary season.

However, were it to become a two-person race, that’s no guarantee that Cruz would beat Trump. But I suspect he would. It would at the very least be a good thing to get a chance to see what would actually happen between the two, mano a mano—the outsiders slugging it out, with contrasting styles and history. I’d like to see one of them (Cruz, obviously) win it outright rather than go to a brokered convention, which I believe would cause even more lasting enmity among the various wings of the GOP than we’ve already seen so far—and that’s a lot of enmity.

Although I strongly believe that Rubio and Kasich are hurting Cruz a great deal, they might also be serving the function of getting us to a brokered convention by siphoning just enough votes away from Cruz and/or Trump to keep either of them from gaining the requisite number. If you think the fight has been bitter and heated so far, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet compared to a brokered convention.

[NOTE: How do they decide the number of delegates each state receives? I noticed that in the Hawaii caucuses there were about 13,000 participants, and in Michigan there were around 1,300,000 voters (with around 90% reporting), or about 100 times that. And yet Michigan only gets about three times as many delegates as Hawaii. What’s up with that?

That link I just gave has a handy chart that tells a lot about the primaries in each state and how delegates are awarded. It seems to me that states with larger Republican populations should get proportionately more delegates than they actually get.]

Three primaries, one caucus

Posted on March 8, 2016 by neoMarch 8, 2016

[BUMPED UP, with later updates at bottom]

Here we go again.

Caucus in Hawaii, primaries in Idaho, Mississippi, and Michigan. The last two are open, which I assume favors Trump. I expect him to do well, although Kasich will give him a run for his money in Michigan—at least, according to polls.

UPDATE 9:00 PM

Both Michigan and Mississippi have been called for Trump, as expected. The Michigan results are looking to be similar to Trump’s in a lot of other states, at about 37-38% with 15% precincts reporting so far. Kasich has been approximately 10 points behind. Mississippi only has 2% reporting so far, but Trump is getting 51.8 of the vote to Cruz’s 34.3%. If that holds up, it would be by far Trump’s best showing in any state. Both states are open primaries—although Michigan is called “closed,” voters can choose a new party as they arrive to vote, so it actually functions as a completely open primary.

UPDATE 9:22 PM

Cruz continues to dominate Rubio, whose support in these two states is very low, less than 10% in Michigan and less than 5% in Mississippi, at least at the moment.

All of today’s states have proportional delegate awards, so the actual delegate count may not really change all that much. It’s those winner-take-all states that have the most influence.

What would it take to impeach and convict a president?

Posted on March 8, 2016 by neoMarch 8, 2016

Asked Daniel in Brookline:

I have often wondered what it would take to get a President impeached.

Granted, the Constitution deliberately set a very high bar ”” which is why all of three Presidents in U.S. history have been impeached, and none convicted. Still ”” what would it take?

One glib answer is “a Republican president”. But no, that’s not the answer either ”” or we would have seen serious attempts to impeach George W. Bush, who was probably the most reviled Republican president in my lifetime. (I don’t think he deserved to be impeached, by any stretch of the imagination”¦ but the desire was certainly there.)

Once politicians liked to say that they were safe, unless caught with a dead girl or a live boy. I don’t think either would suffice anymore.

I would submit that it’s not about the offense. An offense is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition.

One thing it would take could be a situation where a majority of representatives in the House and 2/3 of the senators are from the opposition party from the president, but we are unlikely to have that wide a split government. But if we did, the members of the opposition party in Congress could always find something in a president’s behavior to call a “high crime or misdemeanor.” Otherwise, it would take a party with enough members to whom principles are more important than party. Although I think that is slightly more likely to happen with Republicans than with Democrats in Congress, it’s highly unlikely with either party.

The impeachment part is easy, if there’s a majority of the opposite party. The 2/3 Senate bar is much higher, and purposely so. But to answer Daniel’s question, Watergate plus the Republican Party of 1974 was enough to do it, because so many leading Republicans turned on Nixon and informed him that, if he didn’t resign, he would be impeached and almost certainly convicted. Watergate was the proximate cause of Nixon’s resignation, but there is no doubt in my mind that if it had been committed by a Democrat of the time, that president would have served his full term without much threat. And if it all happened today, I’m not sure that present-day Republicans would act the same way Nixon’s Republicans did.

What about the 9/11 terrorists’ families?

Posted on March 8, 2016 by neoMarch 8, 2016

I wanted to call attention to something I discussed in the comments section yesterday.

In all the brouhaha about what Donald Trump said about “targeting” terrorists’ families, it hasn’t been much emphasized that he made a blatant factual error during the debate. First, let’s look at the March 3 debate transcript:

BAIER: Even targeting terrorists’ families?

TRUMP: Well, look, you know, when a family flies into the World Trade Center, a man flies into the World Trade Center, and his family gets sent back to where they were going — and I think most of you know where they went — and, by the way, it wasn’t Iraq — but they went back to a certain territory, they knew what was happening. The wife knew exactly what was happening.

They left two days early, with respect to the World Trade Center, and they went back to where they went, and they watched their husband on television flying into the World Trade Center, flying into the Pentagon, and probably trying to fly into the White House, except we had some very, very brave souls on that third plane. All right?

…I have no problem with it.

Trump’s statement about 9/11 and the 9/11 terrorists’ wives is nonsense. Note that his statement during the debate about this was actually a repeat of something he had said back in December. It is either a lie or an error. Either Trump has no idea what he’s talking about on this subject, or he does know and assumes his supporters don’t know and he’s saying what they want to hear. Plus, this was all researched and pointed out for him back in early December, so he either didn’t see the correction or doesn’t care:

There is no support for Trump’s claims, as the report states that virtually all of the hijackers were unmarried.

“None of the 9/11 terrorists could have ”˜sent their wives home’ before the attacks because, as you suggest, none of them brought female companions to the United States,” said Philip D. Zelikow, executive director of the 9/11 Commission (and who is not affiliated with any campaign). “All, or nearly all, of the hijackers were unmarried, as far as we know. We did elaborate a bit about the story of one Lebanese hijacker, Ziad Jarrah [who was on United 93], and his German girlfriend.”

The report makes a distinction between the “muscle hijackers,” who were to restrain or overcome crew members or others, and hijackers who trained to pilot the aircraft. Regarding the muscle hijackers, the report says: “The muscle hijackers came from a variety of educational and societal backgrounds. All were between 20 and 28 years old; most were unemployed with no more than a high school education and were unmarried.” (Page 231 of the report.)

Only one of the muscle hijackers ”” Abdul Aziz al-Omari ”” is listed as being married: “Omari had graduated with honors from high school, had attained a degree from the Imam Muhammad ibn Saud Islamic University [in Saudi Arabia], was married, and had a daughter.” But there is no indication the wife ever traveled to the United States. (Page 232.)

Among the pilot hijackers, Marwan al-Shehhi (who piloted United Flight 175) was married: “When Shehhi, while still in the UAE in January 2000, held a belated wedding celebration (he actually had been married in 1999), a friend of his was surprised to see that he had shaved off his beard and was acting like his old self again.” But again, there is no indication that his wife ever traveled to the United States.

…What could account for Trump’s strange notion that the hijackers were married and shipped their wives home just before the attacks? Perhaps he is conflating reports of Saudi nationals leaving the United States after the attacks.

Here’s the story on the Saudi nationals. By the way, Bin Laden had a huge family, and most had long ago disavowed him.

If I were ruler of the RNC and I designed the primaries…

Posted on March 8, 2016 by neoMarch 8, 2016

…they would be great, they would be beautiful.

Or, at least better. I think.

These would be the rules:

(1) Only Republicans vote. A voter’s party has to be declared some fixed amount of time before the primary in each state. Each state can set the amount of time, but there would be a minimum amount of time they could not shorten. I’m open to suggestions on what that amount of time would be.

(2) No winner-take-all primaries, or at least fewer of them, and only towards the end of the line. Or, if it’s winner-take-all, the winner has to get more than 50% of the vote.

(3) No early voting. Absentee voting according to the usual absentee rules.

(4) Fewer debates. If there are a lot of candidates, the maximum number on stage is six or seven. Every candidate gets the same question. No “so-and-so-said-such-and-such-about-you” questions designed to pit one against the other. If a candidate is attacked in another’s statement, the attacked person gets a one-minute rebuttal and the other gets 30 seconds after that.

(5)If no candidate has reached the delegate threshhold for winning the nomination, there is a run-off election where (as before) only Republicans vote. First numbers 2 and 3 have a runoff if they are within 5 (or perhaps 10?) points of each other. Then the winner of that runoff has another runoff with the number one person. This ought to make sure that the nominee is the person with the most support in the party.

I’ve long been very dissatisfied with the primaries, long before Trump. The number of candidates, and the problem of vote splitting if there are too many in a particular category, have long bothered me. That’s what the runoffs are for.

The more I think about it, though, the harder creating a good design seems to be. The order in which the states vote is another problem, one a lot of people have long complained about. But unless the votes all happen on one particular Primary Day, I’m not sure how to remedy that. But there’s no question that the early-voting states get the lion’s share of the influence.

Ego Depletion

Posted on March 7, 2016 by neoMarch 7, 2016

Garbage in, garbage out?

I’m going to say something nice about Michelle Obama’s gowns

Posted on March 7, 2016 by neoMarch 7, 2016

Yes, I am, and don’t try to stop me.

I haven’t been paying a particle of attention to Michelle Obama for years. Long ago I noticed that her fashion sense was extremely variable, with probably an equal number of hits and misses, and the misses being pretty far off the mark. However, I was just idly surfing around the other day and noticed that a few of her gowns in the past two years have been lovely and quite flattering.

And really, I need a break from the primaries. Fashion forever! It must be fun to dress up so much. I cannot remember the last time I wore a full-length gown, although I had quite a few in my late teens and early twenties.

I’d have gone for a simpler necklace, but I like this gown, both color and cut:

Another winner (and yes, I know her expression here is a bit unfortunate, but this is about the dress):

The above dress reminds me of this one of Jackie Kennedy’s, which I recommended for Michelle back at the beginning of Obama’s presidency:

And here’s another elegant one, with a full skirt that is quite flattering for her:

Did Trump underperform last Saturday?

Posted on March 7, 2016 by neoMarch 7, 2016

Allahpundit says he didn’t:

Trump finished very close to where he was projected to finish in all four elections. The reason he “underperformed,” winning just two of the four states up for grabs, is because Ted Cruz overperformed dramatically. And the reason Cruz overperformed is starkly clear in Cohn’s graph, namely, a broad chunk of Rubio’s support collapsed out from under him and shifted to Cruz.

But there are several incorrect premises in Allahpundit’s analysis.

The first is in the actual figures. For example, polls in Kansas on the eve of the primary showed Trump with 35% of likely caucusgoers and Cruz with 29%. The actual figures on caucus day were 48% for Cruz and 23% for Trump. I don’t see how it can be said that Trump did not underperform there when he received 12% fewer votes than projected. Maine had no recent polls, so it’s hard to say, but Trump was widely projected to win there and he lost by over 13 points, with 32.6% of the total, despite the governor’s endorsement. In Louisiana, Trump underperformed by 2%.

In Kentucky the situation was very interesting and rather complex. Trump did about as expected (about 1% higher than he had polled). Rubio did about 5 1.2% less than he’d polled, and Cruz a whopping 16.6% more. So clearly, Cruz’s support did NOT just come from a shift from Rubio to Cruz, as Allahpundit seems to be suggesting. Where did it come from? Well, you could say some came from Carson, who had polled at 7% there, but even that 7% would only have accounted for about half of Cruz’s newfound support. To make it even more interesting, Kasich got 8.4% more votes than the polls had indicated he would. So he might just as easily gotten some of Rubio’s and some of Carson’s supporters, too.

The answer to the “where did Cruz’s new voters come from?” riddle lies in a phenomenon we must take into account: the late-deciders. Note that in the Kentucky poll 15% were undecided. Clearly, Trump did not get these late-deciders, and Cruz probably got the lion’s share, probably with some going to Kasich.

As the field narrows, Trump can’t just hold his own in order to win, especially if he ends up facing a single opponent. That’s what the math says. Not gaining voters only works to assure victory if no single other candidate starts consolidating voters. It may be true that most of Trump’s supporters have not abandoned him, and it may also be true that Cruz’s growing support mostly represents a shift from Rubio to Cruz—but if you look at the figures in most primaries, if a lot of Rubio’s support shifted to Cruz that would be enough to beat Trump. Also, late-deciders must be taken into account.

I’m not saying Trump still isn’t in a good position. But no one is expecting his supporters to desert him in droves—at least, no one who’s been listening to them. What needs to happen for him to be defeated is, as so many people have said and continue to say, for the Trump opposition to gravitate mostly to a single candidate.

The establishment ♥ Cruz

Posted on March 7, 2016 by neoMarch 7, 2016

I’ve noticed how often conventional wisdom turns out to be wrong, or at least partly wrong. And yet it gets repeated and repeated and repeated; that’s what makes it conventional, I suppose.

For example, the vitriol against the “establishment” GOP (I word I often put in quote marks because I find that it’s used to mean whatever the writer wants it to mean, which is a shifting target), has all-too-often been based on exaggerations and assumptions and ignorance.

Now, don’t get me wrong, although of course some people will get me wrong. I am not saying that there is no reason to be angry at the GOP. There is, and I often am. But I try to be angry with them (or with anyone, for that matter) for what they have actually done and not done compared to what they might have done or what was reasonable to have done, versus what my fevered imagination would have wanted them to have done had I a magic wand that allowed me to rule the world (or at least to rule the GOP).

In other words, there are reasons for anger, but the reasons should be realistic. And yes, I know that the nature of anger is that it’s rarely realistic.

I could write a book on the failings of the GOP as I see them, versus their failings that I read in the press and on blogs and on talk shows and in comments around the blogosphere. In fact, I probably have written that book, in posts and in comments on this blog. It would take me many hours to dig them up and link to them, time I don’t want to spend right now, but just as a small example take a look at this, this, this, and this, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg of what I’ve written on the subject. Some anger is justified, but a lot of it—a lot of it—is a failure to understand the limits of what can be done in House and Senate when there is a president of the opposition party at the helm.

The rage that has been encouraged and stoked, based on wishful thinking and just plain frustration at the situation—combined with justified anger at certain things that have actually occurred at the hands of the GOP—has given us the present situation the GOP candidates and the voters face this primary season. There is little question that Ted Cruz is both the conservative candidate and the non-establishment GOP candidate, but that doesn’t seem to be enough to express the rage of the “burn it down” crowd. Donald Trump’s success has been the result (not that it’s only due to that, but that is a very significant part of it).

Conventional wisdom has been that the same “establishment” hates Cruz so much that they would prefer Trump to Cruz because they could deal with Trump. I thought that for a while, too, particularly when Rubio was doing well and the establishment’s choice of Trump vs. Cruz didn’t have to be tested. Now that Rubio seems to be sinking (except in Puerto Rico, where he got a hefty 75% of the vote), the conventional wisdom seems to be proving a bit shaky.

For example, there’s a report that a bunch of Senate endorsements are about to come Cruz’s way. RINO Lindsey Graham, previously reported to have detested Cruz, has been talking him up lately and practically telling Kasich and Rubio to quit. More people who either are members of the establishment or former Rubio supporters are saying much the same thing.

I think that Trump’s behavior lately has been so egregious that it has frightened even some people in the conventional GOP “establishment” into doing something they otherwise would not have done: support Ted Cruz, or at least think very seriously about doing so.

[NOTE: Speaking of Trump’s behavior, this video (which hardly even scratches the surface), is a funny concept:

It’s more or less the flip side of that video showing someone with a British accent speaking some of the less outrageous things that Trump has said.]

We have some more primaries/caucuses today

Posted on March 5, 2016 by neoMarch 6, 2016

[BUMPED UP. See UPDATE below.]

In Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, and Louisiana. All but Louisiana are caucuses.

This is all unraveling awfully quickly, isn’t it? I know that was the design and intent, but of course when the RNC devised the schedule they never quite envisioned the situation they (and we) are facing now. You can think many things about the RNC, but “nimble” is probably not one of them.

UPDATE 8:30 PM

Well, well, well.

Cruz is projected to win both the Kansas and Maine caucuses, and both with 40+ percent of the vote. In Kansas, his total with all precincts reporting is 48.2%, awfully close to 50%, which is very impressive in a 4-person race where all three other opponents are in double figures. It also exceeds Trump’s totals in any other primary or caucus, and is over double what Trump got in Kansas, a state where on the eve of the caucuses Trump was said to have a 6-point lead over Cruz in the polls among likely caucus-goers.

That’s quite a polling error. Caucuses are not easy to predict, but that’s about a 31% difference between prediction and reality, and in a recent poll at that. However, “recent” in this case means that the poll was taken the day before the debate and the day of the debate, so it’s likely that the gap may reflect what happened during the debate rather than any polling error.

The Kansas results are consistent with Cruz’s tendency to do well in caucuses and closed primaries. That, in turn, indicates to me that a significant amount of Donald Trump’s support comes from people who are not party members, although it’s not clear who they are. Perhaps they are people who don’t ordinarily vote, but I’m not at all certain of that, either. Turnout was very high, but this obviously didn’t benefit Trump, although common “wisdom” often argues that it would.

Cruz won in Maine, too, and his win was decisive with 45.9 to Trump’s 32.6. It’s also a caucus state. Kentucky is still another caucus state, and Trump is ahead right now 43.1 over Cruz’s 30.2, with about a third of the vote counted.

A good night for Cruz, a bad night for Rubio. Rubio is only slightly edging out Kasich, below 20% in each state and in Maine he is below Kasich at 8%. My sense is that Rubio going on the attack diminished Rubio’s support and helped Cruz, although perhaps it’s just an artifact of which states happened to be voting or caucusing today. At any rate, it seems to be shaping up as a Trump vs. Cruz battle. I doubt Rubio will drop out, because Florida looms ahead. But if during the next week he doesn’t poll well there, he might.

Fascinating evening. Results are just coming in from Louisiana, but Trump was way ahead there in the polls. Louisiana’s primary is a closed one, as is Kentucky’s.

UPDATE 12:50 AM March 6:

Trump won Louisiana and Kentucky narrowly, Cruz won Kansas and Maine with larger margins. In every single one of those states, Cruz did better than expected and much better than polls had predicted. Late breaking voters seem to have gone strongly for Cruz.

Rubio and Kasich now form a second tier with a large canyon between them and the leaders, Trump and Cruz. I can only hope that Cruz’s upward momentum continues, and Trump’s downward momentum continues.

Violette Verdy: once more, with feelings (the Girl in Green)

Posted on March 5, 2016 by neoApril 17, 2016

I recently wrote about ballet dancer Violette Verdy, who died on February 8. At the time I wrote that post, I had not seen the following videos. In my post I mentioned Verdy’s astounding and unique musicality; I think these videos showcase it so that you can get at least a smidgeon of an idea of what watching her dance in person might have been like. Just multiply by 100 and you’ve got it.

And I’m even happier—I could almost say ecstatic—to see that the following video contains an all-too-brief glimpse of Verdy performing the role of the Girl in Green that Jerome Robbins created for her in the ballet “Dances at a Gathering” that I described at length in that post. It’s the only existing footage I’ve ever seen of her dancing that role since I saw the original production back in the late 60s and early 70s. Unfortunately, the Chopin music is missing in the video, which is a special shame with Verdy because her forte was expressing the secret heart of the music. But oh, how wonderful it is for me to be able to watch even this small and shadowy glimpse, a wisp and mere suggestion of the cherished long-lost memory (from 3:26 to 3:42):

Completely unique.

The first dance in this video, another clip I’d never seen before, is phenomenal (the beginning is distant and blurry, but it segues to a nice close-up after about ten seconds):

Let’s take a look at that excerpt from “Dances” again, and compare it to a more recent version, with the music. I’ve cued both of them up to begin at about the same place. First the recent one with the Paris Opera Ballet (watch till about 35:44, which is the same place that the Verdy clip ends):

Now Verdy. Night and day; night and day—her skipping, playful naturalness doesn’t emphasize each step as a step, it emphasizes the emotional tenor and flow of the whole:

[NOTE: Another thing about Verdy—in addition to her exquisite phrasing—that set her off from modern day dancers was the fact that she looked like a normal, albeit slender, woman. This only added to the magical effect, as far as I’m concerned.]