Month: December 2015

 

One of the most important jobs in a national campaign is targeting — where do you allocate your resources?  This is where 538.com’s nifty election tool really comes in handy.  Once you start playing with it one thing becomes clear:  the Electoral College Blue Wall of the Democrats isn’t a wall at all.  Even with their creeping demographic advantage, in 2016 it’s a facade.

Yesterday I ran a simulation adjusting only the black and non-college white (NCW) demographic groups from the 2012 results, adjusted for demographic change.  Evening out both of their turnout percentages back to historical averages, 60%, lowering the black Democrat vote to 90% and increasing the NCW Republican vote from 62%  to 66% gives you IA, OH, FL, and VA  — 272 Electoral Votes.

Maybe a four point jump in the NCW Republican vote is too ambitious.  How about just a two point increase in the total white vote, college and non-college?  If you also decrease the black Democrat vote from the absurdly high 93% down to a realistic 89% you also pick up Pennsylvania and New Hampshire, for a total of 296 Electoral Votes.

So if I’m plotting my general election strategy, I want to hold on to my percentages in the Hispanic and Asian/other categories and concentrate on the white voters of, first, IA, OH, FL and VA.  Second tier targets are Pennsylvania and New Hampshire.

Read the rest at American Thinker.  Here’s the link.

 

Obama’s giving a speech this evening.  More mush from the wimp.  I’m hoping he talks a lot about gun control.  This one issue could easily win the election next year.  The states that are the key in 2016 all have a lot of NCW’s who are either members or sympathizers of the NRA.  Depending on where you live, and who you socialize with, you may not realize how big this issue can be.

When I moved to Alaska in 1974 I didn’t have any idea how strong the gun rights movement is.  I was a urban California boy, who’d done a little hunting and target shooting, but it wasn’t a big thing to me.  When I ran for the legislature my friend Rick Halford told me to become a life member of the NRA.  If you were a Republican politician in Alaska, that’s what you did.  Babbie and I didn’t have a lot of money at the time, and $500 was a big deal.  But I did it, and it was the best political money I ever spent.

There are a whole lot of guys, and not just in Alaska, who take gun ownership very, very seriously.  I’ve become one myself.  These are, or can be, single issue voters.  I’ll even bet there will be more Second Amendment single issue voters than there are on abortion.  Politically, it’s a very big deal.

O’Hillary has declared war on the NRA.  The NRA is at war with her.  If you don’t think this issue can deliver Pennsylvania and the other target states I think you’re uninformed.

Roger Simon at PJ Media has even joined up.  Welcome aboard, Roger.  When you get an old Jewish Hollywood screenwriter on board, you’re on to something.

This is how most American men react to something like San Bernadino.  We think of defending ourselves and our families.  We don’t think about how calling 911 might help.  I decided today to get the Glock I’ve always wanted.  Gun sales are going to jump.  NRA membership will get a boost.

How do you think guys like that feel when they see Hillary raving on about gun control?  What are you, woman, nuts?

For me, the attitudes of the coastal elites are something of a mystery.  Maybe it’s part of being a metrosexual.

There will never be real gun control in this country.  If such a law was passed, it would be ignored, and if attempts were made to enforce it there would either be secession or civil war.

What, specifically, were the Minutemen of 1775 defending?  Their armament.  The British attempt at gun control sparked the Revolutionary War.  Let’s not let that happen again.

This made a big impression on me, that the young Moslem woman in San Bernadino was given a baby shower by her husband’s co-workers, none of whom she actually knew.  They were strangers welcoming her into their community.  They gave her gifts for her new baby.  Six months later she walks in to his workplace and guns down these self same women.

In the name of Allah.

There are other young Muslim women out there just like her, who will be inspired by her.  There’s no way to tell which ones they are.

Explain to me, once more, why we want to let these people into our country?

 

 

It was only a few months ago when we had seventeen candidates.  And for some time now it’s been clear that the final would be an all Cuban face off.  Trump may still be standing this spring when it gets down to either Rubio or Cruz.  If so, either one will dispatch him with relative ease.  Trump’s not a serious candidate; he’s a joke  — a vulgar showman, and a crude bully.

Rubio is the finest natural politician on the national stage since John F. Kennedy.  Cruz is an arrogant and off putting man.  He’s got that tinge of fundamentalism about him.  He’s a hard man to like.  Because Rubio is by far the superior candidate, he’s been my choice all along.  A Rubio/Hillary election would be a mismatch.

But Cruz could win as well.  Maybe not by quite the margin that Rubio would win by, but a clear and convincing win.  He’s not that great a candidate, but Hillary’s a disaster.

I have to admit that, on substance, Cruz is a stronger and more consistent conservative.  Yesterday he voted for a  Rand Paul amendment that would have suspended visas and green cards from 30 Muslim countries with jihadi connections.  Rubio voted no, and it failed 10-89.  I think that was a mistake, though I’ll await his explanation.

I haven’t researched it myself, but Cruz says Rubio supported the coup in Libya against Khaddafi.  Major screw up.  Poor judgment.

Rubio is also apparently committed to taking out Assad in Syria.  This is also unwise.  We took out Hussein in Iraq, and Khadadafi in Libya.  How much good did that do us?  What makes us think that Assad’s replacement will be any better?  Are you sure of that?  How can you be?

Rubio is looking like a neoconservative lap dog.  He got fooled into sponsoring the Gang of Eight immigration bill, and it blew up in his face, and that error is the main obstacle to his winning the nomination.   Now he’s toeing the neoconservative line in Syria, another major mistake that he’s somehow been talked into.  This could be a problem in the general.  If the voters think Rubio is too eager to get back into the Mideast quagmire, it could cost him.  And if he’s elected and gets into another messy war, we’ll all suffer.

But I like Rubio, and I can’t bring myself to like Cruz.  He has no humility, a big liability for a politician.  He’s always got to be the smartest guy in the room.  He’s a self righteous, goody two shoe kind of guy who was undoubtedly the number one chalk board monitor in grammar school, a teacher’s pet kind of guy.  Something’s wrong with any guy that Alan Dershowitz likes.  He seems like a kiss ass, to be crude.

But you don’t have to be a nice guy to be a great President.  James K. Polk was one of the most successful Presidents in our history, and when you read his diaries you realize he’s an insecure,  paranoid little man.  Other examples abound.

It reminds me of when I was trying to talk my neighbor Norm out of voting for Wally Hickel for Governor.  I knew Hickel.  He was an a-hole, as I was able to demonstrate.  I’ll never forget Norm’s response.

So?

Aaron Bycoffe and David Wasserman of 538.com just gave us a Christmas present.  It’s an interactive chart that allows you to adjust the 2016 turnout and a party’s vote share of five demographic groups:  college educated whites (CW), non-college educated whites, NCW), blacks, Hispanics, and Asians/others.  They take the 2012 results, after adjusting them to fit the 2016 demographic, as the starting point.  Then you can  make adjustments and see what happens  — instantaneously!  —  to the electoral college as a result.

They point out in an accompanying piece that the Hispanic vote isn’t that big of a deal.  It’s concentrated in non-competitive states, for the most part.  It mainly effects Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado, which the Republicans would love to have, but can do without.  They also express doubt that the Black vote for Obama can be duplicated by Hillary.  Spot on, lads.

You should try it yourself.  The really cool thing about it as that it gives you instant feedback. Let me illustrate.  I start off adjusting the black turnout to normal levels, from 66% down to 60%. Then I reduce the Democrat percentage from 93% to 90%.  Perfectly reasonable, maybe on the pessimistic side, actually.  Voting for a black man to the Presidency was a huge thing in the black community.  There’s no way in hell Hillary can duplicate it.

Then I up the NCW turnout from 57% to 60%, the same as the black turnout model.  This, again, is entirely reasonable.  Then I start cranking up the Republican percentage of the NCW vote, starting at 2012’s 62%.  I go to 63, 64, 65, and voila!, at 66% of the NCW vote the Republican gets 272 electoral votes, flipping Iowa, Ohio, Virginia and Florida.

If I’m working on one of the campaigns I’m in love with this thing.  All else being equal, if the Republican concentrates his energy on the non-college whites of those four states he wins the election.  They’re the key.

Or one of them.  The beauty of this thing is that you can tinker with all five demographic groups.  I only adjusted two.

If you only adjust the Hispanic vote, the Republican would need 69% of it to get over 270.  Which do you think is easier?  Getting 66% of the NCW vote, or 69% of Hispanics?

It’s a beautiful tool, and I’m grateful to 538.com and these guys for coming up with it.

So San Bernadino was ISIS inspired.  The media is going to try to get us to move along, and may well succeed.  If the shoe was on the other foot, or if this was closer to the election, it could have had the same political impact as Oklahoma City.  But if there’s another one, all bets are off.  Forget all my talk of hundred year tides.  You don’t need any sort of political tide to win an election against a President and a party that has failed to keep this country safe.

We let in 680,000 Muslims on green cards in the last five years.  How many of them share the beliefs of the San Bernadino couple?  How can you tell?   It’s as though the Muslim population is infected with a deadly, invisible virus.  A virus that just killed fourteen Americans, far more than ebola ever did. But with ebola we cut off travel to the sources of infection.  The jihadi virus is more dangerous than ebola ever was.  There is no known disinfectant.

Why do we let these people into this country, when we can be virtually certain that some of them will try to kill us?

Maybe I shouldn’t be so inflammatory. Loretta Lynch may be watching.  Our AG says her “. . .greatest fear is the incredibly disturbing rise of anti-Muslim rhetoric . . .”.  She vows to prosecute what she deems violence inspiring speech.

It’s good to know that the American people are now fully aware of her priorities.

The media decides.  The Oklahoma City bombing in April of ’95 was a black swan.  The jihadi rampage in San Bernadino was not.

Before Oklahoma City, Clinton and the Democrats were on the run.  Newt Gingrich had taken charge of the House, and Clinton was whining that he was still relevant.  There was a lot of anger at the federal government, especially in the West.  The memory of federal law enforcement gunning down a fourteen year old boy at Ruby Ridge was still fresh, and the ATF deadly Waco fiasco was one year old.

The media was able to turn the entire attitude of the country around in the wake of Oklahoma City.  People who were angry at the federal government were potential domestic terrorists.  Before Oklahoma  City, Clinton looked vulnerable in ’96.  They’d just lost the House for the first time in 40 years.  The Democrats were on the run.  But Clinton and the media managed to cooperate in exploiting the tragedy so successfully that he could win reelection easily, despite his failures.

If it cared to, the media could turn San Bernadino into a black swan.  Islamic terrorism in San Bernadino?  That means Islamic terrorism just about anywhere in this country.  We let the Fort Hood shooters, and the Boston bombers, and the San Bernadino killers into this country.  Why?  What’s in it for us?  What justifies the risk?  How many of us have to die before we reexamine this whole idea of Muslim immigration?

The media will downplay this whole episode.  Nothing to see here, move along.  But maybe the American people don’t buy it.  May be they say, for all to hear, no more Muslim immigration. Some of these people, and there’s no way to know which ones, want to come here and kill us.  Keep them out of this country.  They have nothing to offer us.  We don’t need them.  They are of no benefit to this country.

Obama will have none of it.  This is one issue I suspect he won’t budge on.  He sees himself as a world historical figure, personally bridging the divide between the Muslim world and the West.  Her cannot condemn Muslims any more than he can condemn himself.

Hillary will pay the price, and it will be steep.  Obama’s approval numbers are going to resume their slide, and he doesn’t care.  The American people don’t approve of him?  Well, he doesn’t approve of them, either.  So there.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the hundred year tide, and the prospects of it actually happening.  I’ve read a lot of Walter Russel Mead the last couple years, and his theory of the failing blue state model.  This guy’s no righty.  I believe he voted for Obama in ’08.  But his analysis supports the theory, if not the timing.  The Democrats are reactionaries defending a failing status quo.  If you go along with Mead, as I do, it’s just a question of when, not if, the whole thing blows up.  Momentum is escalating, and everything points to a political crescendo next year.

Absent a black swan.  But if some nuts start attacking Muslims in this country in retaliation, the media would do all it could to change the entire narrative.  But no one has any control over this, and all you can do is hope and pray nothing happens.

On a brighter not the Obama administration announced today that women can do any combat job that men can do.  On a day when we’re worried about our personal safety and national security, we can all feel better knowing that if a woman wants to be a member of Seal Team 6 there’s nothing stopping her.

Take that, jihadis!

Hundred year tides don’t appear in cycles of a century.  They’re just very rare, occurring when a powerful storm coincides with the regular high tides of the autumn equinox.  I submit we’re in such a moment, politically, today.

Because Hillary is seeking to succeed a relatively unpopular two term incumbent in a slack economy, the deck is stacked against her.  That’s the normal ebb and flow of politics, a typical tide.  But the political storm that threatens to break next year, in conjunction with this tide, is quite untypical.   It’s practically perfect.   Josh Kraushaar of National Journal has outlined the shape of the race, and listed most of the Republican advantages.

It starts with the candidates.  Hillary will be the worst politician nominated by a major party since the 19th century.  She is mistrusted and disliked.  She has no natural political skills, and her age and baggage weigh her down.  Add a sluggish economy, a nation convinced it is on the wrong path, national and homeland security anxieties, uncontrolled illegal immigration, an NRA on the warpath, and the Democrats, the party of government, arguing for more of it at a time when the government is held in almost universal ill repute, and you’ve got the storm.   It will turn a spring flood into a tide the likes of which we haven’t seen in a hundred years.

For the rest of the article, here’s the link to American Thinker.

I’m off camping for a couple days with my friend Danny.  He’s a matchmaker,  the guy who told me to strap on a set and ask Babbie out on a date.