Reagan On Religious Discrimination

"We must never remain silent in the face of bigotry. We must condemn those who seek to divide us. In all quarters and at all times, we must teach tolerance and denounce racism, anti-Semitism, and all ethnic or religious bigotry wherever they exist as unacceptable evils. We have no place for haters in America -- none, whatsoever."

-- President Ronald Reagan

Week One for the 45th

One of the most important duties of any head of state obviously would be serving as the nation's chief diplomat.

If one were trying to go down in history as our worst President ever, it would be very challenging to get a faster start at it than by pissing off two of our three largest export markets before even making it through the first week on the job.

As individual countries go, our 2nd and 3rd largest export markets are Mexico and China. Together, they buy almost a quarter of our total exports.

Thanks to our current President's "diplomacy", our 3rd largest export market has found it necessary to move their nuclear missiles within striking distance of us ... ya' know, just in case. And the citizens of our 2nd largest export market have begun a large-ish boycott of American companies.

So it's been a stellar week for America, right?

A Reasonable Degree of Confidence

When we say that tariffs are a bad idea, it isn't for lack of real world experience. We've seen what happens with tariffs. There may not be clear certainty on what exactly would be the ideal economics policy mix for any point of time. That doesn't mean there's any lack of clarity that adopting tariffs would be the path of fools and/or fanatics. We know enough about economics to recognize the gaps in our knowledge; but also to know what's reasonably certain. And it is reasonably certain that proposing tariffs betrays an entirely simplistic failure to understand much about economics, one might call it having a grade-school understanding of economics. Not even up to the level of Econ 101, where a whole different set of simplistic misunderstandings thrive.

When climate scientists say that anthropogenic climate change is a thing. A real thing. In the really, real world. That it's happening. Do they have doubts? Sort of. They clearly have doubts about exactly where on the range of projections the actual course of temperatures will plot in future graphs of the past. But they have a high degree of certainty that it can reasonably be expected to be within a certain range. They understand the gaps in their knowledge, the variables that could cause various differences within the projected ranges. But they also know enough to know that the people who reject the whole set of ranges just don't know what they're talking about. To wit, that they're fools.

When those with experience like Madeleine Albright say that being anti-immigrant isn't consistent with the best interest of that nation, it's with an understanding of the challenges involved. But it's also from knowing that those who would coarsely implement a blanket closing of the door from an entire country don't have a good grasp of the known repercussions. Immigration experts may be all too aware of the gaps in their capacity to achieve perfection with immigration policies and screening methods, but they're also aware that simplistically just barring the door to all comers would -- quite clearly -- be far worse than accepting the imperfections of our best available procedures that keep the door open.

There's profound difference between being uncertain as to what's perfect and being less than certain as to what's clearly wrong. Wiser people are full of doubts as to what's perfect. But wiser people tend to be quite certain that the fools' plans are at least worse and often flat out entirely wrong. There's another term for having "alternative facts"; it's called being wrong (or outright lying, in the case of those who know better).

We need to stop letting that which is clearly wrong go as if it were merely a difference of opinion rather than a flat out failure to have sufficient grasp of the subject.

Even with recognition of what we do not know, we can be fairly certain of that.

Digging into the State Story in the Rust Belt

We've already seen that on the national level, the story of the 2016 Presidential election was simply that the rough trend continued, with turnout approaching the norm.

As more analysis on the state specific level comes in, particularly with regard to the states that defied conventional wisdom, we can now get a more data-backed analysis of what happened there:

"4. The real story—the one the pundits missed—is that voters who fled the Democrats in the Rust Belt 5 were twice as likely either to vote for a third party or to stay at home than to embrace Trump."

-- from The Myth of the Rust Belt Revolt

The supposed flight of working class voters to Trump just didn't fit, as some had already guessed just from looking at the overview, particularly in income bracket totals. Instead, it was that people who'd previously shown a leaning towards Democrat decided for whatever reason that they weren't going to vote for a front-runner this year.

And since this change wasn't well reflected in the general trend of polls leading up, we can figure a good bit of it was a last minute change. Exit polls don't tell us much about the specific reasons why there, so it's hard to get more than speculation on the full details spurring such a turn.

Perhaps that last minute flurry of attacks on the Democratic candidate among "fake news" outfits?

And just how much of it was because of Comey's unconventionally timed interference?

Taxes Are Pro Growth

Will we ever get people to stop pretending lower and lower taxes are somehow more and more "pro growth"?

Infrastructure spending is pro growth.

R&D spending is pro growth.

Educating the labor pool is pro growth.

Setting safety standards is pro growth.

Grants to startups are pro growth.

Safety nets mitigating risks are pro growth.

Redistribution so all can spend is pro growth.

All of these things tend to come from taxes. Maintaining at least moderate taxes is pro growth. Increasing taxes on those of us with more tends to be pro growth.

Lowering taxes is anti-growth, unless it's strictly done only for those who already lack a surplus.

Broad Stroke Story of The Election: National Versus State

In broad strokes, the national-level story of the United States 2016 Presidential election could be described as that the rough trend continued.

	D/VAP	R/VAP	Avg/VAP
1996	0.2409	0.1992	0.2200
2000	0.2431	0.2405	0.2418
2004	0.2689	0.2826	0.2757
2008	0.3022	0.2607	0.2815
2012	0.2802	0.2590	0.2696
2016	0.2575	0.2487	0.2531

There was a swing up between the mid 90s and the mid 00s. The Democratic and Republican percentages of the voting age population (VAP) both increased in 2000 and 2004, with a much bigger Republican increase in 2000.

Then there was a transition in 2008. That year, the Democrats had a much bigger increase equivalent to the Republican jump of 2000. Meanwhile, the Republican turnout began sliding down.

And now we're in a swing down in the 10s. The Democratic and Republican percentages of the voting age population both decreased in 2012 and 2016.

Where will we go from here? For both parties, the percentage of the VAP in 2016 was still up from what either party saw in 1996 and 2000. Considering the past two decades on average, we can't really say there was low turnout in 2016; just not quite as high as the peaks. Both candidates this year got a higher percentage of the potential vote -- more support -- than even the winning candidates from 16 and 20 years ago. We'd have to go back to 1984 to find a higher percentage of the VAP turning up for the two major parties; and that was the only higher year between 1980 and 2000. Based on the trend of the last 10 elections, we're likely only approaching the valley and barring some particular phenomenon drawing more people out to vote we'll likely see yet another decline in overall turnout next Presidential election.

If there's one thing we can say from the overall national trend, it's that the narrative of unenthused voters doesn't really fit. We've heard claims that voters were particularly disinterested in these candidates. Yet what drop there was this year was only in keeping with the direction of the past few elections. The turnout / VAP in 2016 remained over the average for the last 10 elections.

There also quite clearly was no national surge whatsoever toward the Republican party. On the contrary, the Republican specific turnout was yet again down slightly, just like in the previous election. In fact, this year's Republican turnout brought it low enough at 24.87% to be below the 25.47% average Republican turnout for the last 10 elections.

Democratic turnout also was only down this year by about the same degree it was down the previous Presidential election. And that was only returning it towards the rough trend, smoothing out from previous big gains. The 2016 Democratic turnout of 25.75% remained slightly above the 24.92% they've seen for the last 10 elections.

By and large, the nation continued a return towards trend. The Republican party dipped slightly below their average; and the Democratic party remaining slightly above. There may have been changes in the character of each party's support, such as the widely reported gains among the less educated for Republicans and among the more educated for Democrats. But these qualitative fluctuations did not budge the totals from the previous quantitative heading nationally.

If there's a major story specific to this 2016 Presidential election that differs from the typical trend of the previous years, it would have to be at the state-by-state level. It isn't just that a few states decided the election in the electoral college; it's also that what happened in those particular states and the states that went the other way from them would together have to be the entire story of how this election might differ from the norm in voting.


* Popular vote totals used for the above analysis were derived from Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections as of 11/28/2016.

Broad Stroke Story of The Election: National Versus State

In broad strokes, the national-level story of the United States 2016 Presidential election could be described as that the rough trend continued.

	D/VAP	R/VAP	Avg/VAP
1996	0.2409	0.1992	0.2200
2000	0.2431	0.2405	0.2418
2004	0.2689	0.2826	0.2757
2008	0.3022	0.2607	0.2815
2012	0.2802	0.2590	0.2696
2016	0.2575	0.2487	0.2531

There was a swing up between the mid 90s and the mid 00s. The Democratic and Republican percentages of the voting age population (VAP) both increased in 2000 and 2004, with a much bigger Republican increase in 2000.

Then there was a transition in 2008. That year, the Democrats had a much bigger increase equivalent to the Republican jump of 2000. Meanwhile, the Republican turnout began sliding down.

And now we're in a swing down in the 10s. The Democratic and Republican percentages of the voting age population both decreased in 2012 and 2016.

Where will we go from here? For both parties, the percentage of the VAP in 2016 was still up from what either party saw in 1996 and 2000. Considering the past two decades on average, we can't really say there was low turnout in 2016; just not quite as high as the peaks. Both candidates this year got a higher percentage of the potential vote -- more support -- than even the winning candidates from 16 and 20 years ago. We'd have to go back to 1984 to find a higher percentage of the VAP turning up for the two major parties; and that was the only higher year between 1980 and 2000. Based on the trend of the last 10 elections, we're likely approaching the valley if not having bottomed out for the current downswing.

If there's one thing we can say from the overall national trend, it's that the narrative of unenthused voters doesn't really fit. We've heard claims that voters were particularly disinterested in these candidates. Yet what drop there was this year was only in keeping with the direction of the past few elections. The turnout / VAP in 2016 remained over the average for the last 10 elections.

There also quite clearly was no national surge whatsoever toward the Republican party. On the contrary, the Republican specific turnout was yet again down slightly, just like in the previous election. In fact, this year's Republican turnout brought it low enough at 24.87% to be below the 25.47% average Republican turnout for the last 10 elections.

Democratic turnout also was only down this year by about the same degree it was down the previous Presidential election. And that was only returning it towards the rough trend, smoothing out from previous big gains. The 2016 Democratic turnout of 25.75% remained slightly above the 24.92% they've seen for the last 10 elections.

By and large, the nation continued a return towards trend with the Republican party dipping slightly below their average and the Democratic party remaining slightly above. There may have been changes in the character of each party's support, such as the widely reported gains among the less educated for Republicans and among the more educated for Democrats. But these qualitative fluctuations did not budge the totals from the previous quantitative heading nationally.

If there's a major story specific to this 2016 Presidential election that differs from the typical trend of the previous years, it would have to be at the state-by-state level. It isn't just that a few states decided the election in the electoral college; it's also that what happened in those particular states and the states that went the other way from them would together have to be the entire story of how this election might differ from the norm in voting.


* Popular vote totals used for the above analysis were derived from Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections as of 11/28/2016.