Where Is the Presidential Race?
Democrats are nervous; they've been here before; Hillary Clinton had been dominating the polls for months going into the election, when Trump pulled an improbable hat trick of flipping blue states Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Gingrich has a link on RCP arguing Trump will win 326 electoral votes. Democrats, like celebrity leftist filmmaker Michael Moore, openly warn against complacency, warning about "shy Trump" undervotes in the polls. (There's an arcane argument about whether this is/was due to Trump voters lying to pollsters or whether they systematically evaded pollsters.) [A "shy Trump voter" basically doesn't want, for socially desirable reasons, to admit they support the man.] Will lightning strike twice? I don't think so.
Let me point out that I am not vested in this fight. I just got an email notification that my (Jorgensen) ballot has been tabulated. I have made it clear in multiple posts I would never vote for Biden or Trump. I think Biden is wrong on almost every issue; Trump has been good on selective grounds, like deregulation, corporate tax reform, and certain judicial picks, but he's been toxic on trade protectionism, immigration policy, federal spending, US military aggression overseas, and his handling of the COVID-19 crisis. Never mind his extortion of Ukraine over which he was rightly impeached. (I've found it curious, especially given the fact Trump tried to force Ukraine to investigate Biden, that the impeachment has seemingly been ignored by both sides during the campaign.)
It's difficult to say why I think 2020 will be unlike 2016, but just a few points:
- almost every state in contention is a Trump state; Biden is standing virtually unchallenged on Clinton's 232 votes (ignore faithless electors) [well, technically RCP rates NV and MN as toss-up but leaning Biden; those are 16 electoral votes]; all he needs is 38 electoral votes and he is competitive in several ways--even Texas alone could get him there by itself. Right now Biden is leading in Trump states AZ, GA, NC, WI, PA, and FL and additionally competitive in TX, IA, and OH. Eight of those states have at least 10 electoral votes each. The latest state flips have been for Biden: AZ, GA, and FL, and one for Trump (IA). Right now the no-tossup race shows Biden with 350 electoral votes, 80 votes over what he needs to win. And we've seen almost every recent poll with Biden at the magic number 50; Trump is averaging about 43, 3 points below his 2016 share, just like his job approval numbers. It would take a historic run across the board for Trump to salvage his 2016 results. This is possible, but highly unlikely. Already a record nearly 92 million votes have been banked, about two-thirds of the 2016 vote, which mostly favors Biden; this reduces Trump's chances of flipping swing voters on election day.
- my native state of Texas (I haven't lived there since the Clinton Administration) is much more vulnerable than most people suspect. GW Bush was only the second GOP governor since Reconstruction, and Cruz barely won his reelection in 2018. More ominously for Trump: Texas has already seen more voters in early elections than in 2016, while my mother, among other family voters, are planning on voting Tuesday. A high turnout does not favor Trump/the GOP.
- Trump had 3 advantages in the 2016: the Democrats had just emerged from a divisive primary between Clinton and Sanders, and it probably cost Clinton (voters staying home) in the key battleground states she unexpectedly lost; Clinton had high unfavorable ratings; and Trump didn't have a track record. As I write, Biden has a 6.6 net favorability rating while Trump has a -13.1, a nearly 20 point gap. Trump has unified the Democrats like nothing else, and I expect fewer will sit out the election, and Trump, whose biggest selling point was a surging economy, is facing negative GDP numbers for this year and probably the biggest pandemic in the last century with poor approval numbers. I think Gallup has only shown one week of positive net job approval Trump's entire term; his net disapproval rating is over 8 points as I write.
In fact, I wonder if there might be shy Biden voters this cycle: Republicans and independents who have been alienated with Trump's disagreeable personality, divisive leadership and nearly daily soap opera with his unfettered inflammatory tweeting. I've seen an unprecedented number of anecdotal accounts of Republican voters saying for the first time in their lives they'll be voting for a Democrat as President. Now anecdotal accounts don't make for a statistically reliable trend, and if they're willing to talk about their choice to the media, I don't really consider them "shy voters". But Romney confirmed that he didn't vote for Trump this year, John McCain's widow has endorsed Biden, and Trump's issues with the Bush family are well-known. And keep in mind that Trump was not a Republican during Obama's initial election win (in fact supported Obama). To most of us, Trump was an interloper who saw the GOP as the easier, more expedient road to the Presidency. For many of us principled conservatives, Trump's unprovoked trade wars, cruel family separation policies at the border, his nearly $7T increase in the national debt, etc. are anathema. Not to mention Trump's support among senior citizens has dropped significantly, perhaps in part due to his inept leadership during the COVID-19 crisis, which affects them as an at risk group. So maybe there are a number of Republicans who don't want family and friends to know they're fed up with Trump, despite their policy differences with Biden.
Finally, election betting is interesting: where does the "smart money" go? I hadn't been to John Stossel's site in a while. They give, as I write, Biden a 64% chance of winning, with roughly 305 electoral votes (with FL and GA going to Trump). RCP also maintains a summary from multiple sites, all showing Biden with a 60-plus% chance of winning.
Biden As a Catholic
Incidentally, for most of us Catholics, given traditional anti-Catholicism in the US, the election of the first and only practicing Catholic President (JFK) was a watershed moment. (The only previous nominee was Al Smith, a 4-term NY governor, who lost to Hoover in 1928.) As a young boy by the time he was assassinated, I didn't really know or think much of politics and the man; I would later come to cringe over his well-documented womanizing. I mean, he specifically gave an address in 1960 to a group of Protestant ministers in part to dispel the false stereotype that he had primary allegiance to the Pope. (Anyone who hasn't noticed that I've sharply rejected several writings on secular matters by progressive Pope Francis hasn't been paying attention.) I consider myself a more traditional. conservative Catholic; I am one of the few altar boys who served during the historical transition from the Latin Mass to the English Mass (in the US); in fact as a young boy I had memorized the entire Latin Mass. (I've mentioned that my beloved maternal uncle, a diocesan priest in the Fall River diocese, got his licentiate in a prestigious seminary in Montreal where lectures and examinations were said/written in Latin.) The language change was not a choice for parishioners but imposed on us. I privately mourned the loss of the Latin Mass and all the related rich rituals: sung masses, a mass said in common unifying hundreds of millions of Catholics around the world.
Initially I had aspirations to be a priest as a young boy. In fact, my Mom fashioned me vestments through old beach towels so I could play priest. In high school, I headed the local altar boys group at our south Texas AFB and I served early morning daily mass before going to school. In appreciation, our base chaplain gave me his 4-volume hardback copy of Aquinas' Summa Theologica. My vocation had something to do with my decision to go to a Catholic university in San Antonio, a long bus ride from the local bus station. Unlike my uncle, I didn't really see myself as a parish pastor. I saw myself as more of a fusion priest/teacher, like in a religious order like the Jesuits or Oblates, not unlike Pope Francis, who used to teach high school chemistry. When I started OLL, I initially intended to major in secondary education, probably teaching math and science. Based on my affection for Aquinas, I fought my math adviser to get into my first philosophy course (metaphysics), and I was in love. Philosophy was not a teaching area and I eventually double-majored in math and philosophy. But I'll never forget one afternoon when I met Fr. Lonergan in his office. Thick aromatic pipe smoke filled the small cozy office stacked with books, classical music playing from his phonograph. In a split second, I knew I wanted to be a professor, not just a high school teacher, and I never ended up taking a single education course, although OLL being a teachers college was one of the reasons I sought admission. But despite a perfect GPA in both intellectually demanding majors, I had had been given "the talk" that there wasn't much of a career path for philosophy PhD's, so I set my sights initially on a math PhD; I went to the University of Texas and at least minored in my first love, philosophy. I ran into political problems in my initial teaching assistant assignment, which I've written about in prior posts, losing my modest stipend after my first year.
The priest vocation hadn't completely gone away. I've mentioned in the past that I did have an eventual interview with a Jesuit recruiter at my college dorm. I guess I didn't make a good impression because there was no follow-up. But there were other things that happened along the way, including my first relationship with a coed, and even though that never worked out, I was more wary of the still mandatory vows of celibacy. So the priesthood vocation went on the back burner; I was still a young man, graduating at 19--I had plenty of time to make a decision.
I was initially a pro-life social/modern liberal while in college at OLL and UT, but as a Catholic, I was more traditional/conservative. I was wary of the Church trying to accommodate vs. challenge in my opinion an increasingly morally corrupt, hedonistic culture. It seemed like old disciplines (e.g., fish on Fridays) were dropped to make the Church more appealing to the faithful and others. Sermons became less oriented to matters of faith and prayer and more "socially conscious". For me, the watershed moment was when the campus priest at UT gave a homily centered on Olivia Newton-John's signature pop hit, "Have You Never Been Mellow?". Don't get me wrong; I'm a big fan of Olivia's performances, but I was appalled that a priest would deliver a sermon on a pop song. Don't get me wrong; I enjoyed an occasional guitar mass, but to me it didn't have the look and feel of century-old rituals drawing on the majesty and mystery of God, i.e., "all hat and no cattle". How would I fit in an increasingly secularized Church and its revamped hierarchy which had rejected the old ways, all but banning them outright? I think at that moment I took my vocation off the back burner.
I didn't leave the Church, despite my increasing discomfort with a culture-pandering hierarchy. But what particularly aggravated me was the fact that Catholic politicians, particularly Democrats, tried to rationalize a "pro-abort/choice" position, arguing that they personally opposed abortion as a matter of faith but wouldn't "impose" their "religion" on others. To the faithful, this makes about as much sense as arguing I personally oppose genocide of the Jews, but I wouldn't impose that concept on Hitler's government. Christ Himself never spoke directly on the practice, likely because it was rarely practiced among Israelites of the time. It was widely perceived as a rejection of God's gift of life. It is not a matter of religious dogma but moral teaching. It became an issue when Christianity expanded outside of Israel, including Rome itself, where abortion and infanticide were practiced. The practice is unambiguously rejected in the Didache, one of the earliest early Christian documents, dated by most scholars to the first century AD. The Church has consistently rejected the practice as gravely sinful. Pelosi and others disingenuously reference an arcane dispute by theologians over the nature of sinfulness, involving the concept of ensoulment. The ancient scientific view of fetal development was largely based on a stage hypothesis that a fetus evolved through non-human stages to the point of ensoulment, roughly viability (perceived movement) of the fetus in the womb. So the thought was that abortion was exceptionally sinful after God implanted the fetus with a soul. This was abandoned a long time back with scientific advances. We now know, for instance, the preborn baby has a functioning heart within 6 weeks of conception.
So a number of prominent Catholic Dems, e.g., the late Ted Kennedy, Mario Cuomo, Nancy Pelosi, and Joe Biden, have "evolved" on the issue under the ideological litmus test of the Democratic Party, essential if you aspire to leadership. Among other things, apparently Biden has come to a position of taxpayer funding of abortions, something absolutely anathema to us pro-lifers who object to our taxes being used to murder preborn babies. I don't shy away from voicing my pro-life views, but I prefer to persuade vs. confront others on the issue (as evidenced by my "choose life" segment in my miscellany posts), and abortion is just one political issue. I'm also in a minority position among libertarians on the issue (probably a third of us reject abortion as a violation of the non-aggression principle). This does not imply prosecution of women who have aborted their children. It's more of a more consistent norm of the unalienable right to life.
In any event, I've subscribed to a Youtube channel "Catholic Vote", and I've probably embedded at least a dozen of their videos over the life of this blog. But I haven't published much of their content lately, in large part because it's taken a largely pro-Trump/anti-Biden tilt, mostly focusing on a pro-life perspective. Biden would be just the second Catholic President, but this is just recognition of the divide among Catholics. And a number of Catholics, including myself during my youth, held their noses and voted for Dem candidates despite abortion. For example, I highly oppose Trump's deliberate family separation policies on processing migrants. Plus, there's very little that the federal government does with abortion. This became a national issue because of the tragic, wrongly decided Roe v Wade decision, which basically overruled traditional state regulation of abortion. So many of the disputes have been largely symbolic, e.g., federal subsidies to Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion services organization, etc. It's almost impossible to get supermajority passage of a pro-life amendment through Congress, and a Presidential signature is irrelevant.
Incidentally, I think Trump's "pro-life" stand is politically opportunistic. For most of his adult life, e.g., when he initially sought the Reform Party nomination for the 2000 campaign, he said he was very pro-choice. As I've mentioned, Trump saw the GOP nomination as a more achievable objective, and he knew that the pro-life movement in the GOP was a powerful constituency. His position conveniently "evolved" late in life just in time to seek the GOP nomination. But note in the past he has bragged about his marital infidelities. In 2016, Trump dodged a question over whether any of his mistresses had an abortion (some of his past mistresses like Stormy Daniels have said that he had refused to wear a condom). Similarly he has dodged a question over any past contributions to Planned Parenthood, saying he gives to so many charities, he can't recall whether or not he has given to the nation's largest abortion provider. Believe me, if you're pro-life, you would remember whether you cut a check to them. Trump has been married 3 times and had countless affairs; he makes JFK look like a choir boy. I understand the passion of my fellow Catholic pro-lifers, but embracing Trump, who is basically using them, is a step too far.
No, I Didn't Support MD's Betting for Education Initiative
Let me be clear: as a libertarian I'm all for the legalization of gambling. And I know, whether we are talking about gambling, marijuana, or other businesses, the target suppliers try to appeal to citizens for support by talking about taxes they would pay, etc.
So, there is a proposition on the Maryland ballot which basically tries to argue Maryland is missing out of gambling money from state residents going to other states and they're providing a lockbox using gambling taxes dedicated to funding public education causes, like technology for students. This is what I often refer to as an "I love mommies and puppy dogs act"; what kind of monster could oppose funding education for kids? Me, for one.
The money earned by gambling Marylanders is THEIR money, not the state's. In fact, Maryland already got a bite of that apple through income tax. The idea that non-gamblers have a voice in taxing other Marylanders is tyranny. If the idea of school funding serves a public purpose, the burden should be shared across the board; to rephrase Bob Dylan, "everybody must get taxed". [By the way, I've always refused to gamble. Back around the mid to late 80's, I attended 2 DSI conferences in Las Vegas, and the only money I spent was spending a quarter playing on a poker machine, not even knowing the rules of poker, and made it last an hour.]
Entertainment Notes
Cable Movies
The Hallmark channels and Lifetime are already into Christmas cable movie marathons (well, with some nuances; I think Lifetime still runs things like its primetime "married" reality series and/or infomercials, and Hallmark has a weekday talk show at 10 AM-noon EST; check your local schedules).
Some of my favorites I've seen so far include:
- A Christmas Visitor (HMM)
- Christmas With Holly (HMM)
- Love at the Christmas Table (L)
- The Christmas Shoes (L)
Wrestling
WWE has finally had McIntyre drop the Universal belt to Randy Orton (on the inexplicable third match of the feud). There's long been a rumor that the purpose for Orton getting the belt was a championship match with former tag partner Edge, currently rehabilitating from injury. What's next? Well, the obligatory rematch seems to be stale at this point; they seem to be pushing for a program between Orton and the unlikely babyface The Fiend/Bray Wyatt.
The newly turned heel champ Roman Reigns is getting some decent storytelling including an initial feud with one of his Uso cousins where Reigns insisted on his recognition as tribal chief, cultiminating with Reigns heading a heel faction with his cousins. The WWE had Otis job his Money in the Bank contract for a title shot to the Miz, apparently using Otis' tag team partner Tucker to turn heel and cost Otis the match. This was logical because I think the WWE wants Reigns to fight The Rock, probably next Wrestlemania, so now we'll likely see Otis feud with Tucker, and I think Miz in the past grabbed his first WWE title by cashing in his earlier Money in the Bank title on Orton years back.
Shutdown Diary
Well, there's no way to lessen the blow; I had pointed out the last few weeks I didn't like some of the numbers, but I wasn't sure the numbers justified calling the third wave of the pandemic; the latest trends from Washpo make that clear, with cases per day rising to near 6-figures and nearly 1000 deaths daily:
In the past week in the U.S....
New daily reported cases rose 15.9%
New daily reported deaths rose 2.3%
Covid-related hospitalizations rose 10%
Among reported tests, the positivity rate was 6.5%.
The number of tests reported rose 7.6% from the previous week.
