Political Hermeneutics

Running for Office

I expect to file next week as a candidate for the AZ House of Representatives, LD 7. Obviously, this is a busy time of life so I'll let this blog go ... for now.

So many of you have read my blog, sent personal emails and publicly commented. I can't thank you enough! Those who email me, please continue -- those who haven't yet emailed me, please consider it.

Our virtual conversations are precious. Priceless. Necessary.

Again, thanks.

Kristen

Formulas for Predicting Midterm Elections

Gosh, I love this stuff. Sorta addicted.

Some people -- like me -- just love sorting through political data. I get a thrill looking for trends, trying to smooth out outliers, and in the best of all possible worlds, accurately predicting future races. Every morning, before I get out of bed, I reach over to my laptop and pull up Rasmussen's daily, Gallup's daily, Hedgehog, Right Pundits, RCP averages, and 538. My daily fix.

I've met quite a few political "junquies" who spend considerable amounts of their waking hours devising formulae for predicting upcoming elections. They're sick puppies -- really! -- who can't quit thinking statistics. They're the ones who use words like autocorrelation and heteroskedasticity. Huh? Predictably, their statistical myopia obscures emotions and passions within the populace. They don't see it and thus, don't understand it. Blinded by the world of numbers, they're useless ... almost.

Any formula must start with the voter's inertia, or the unwillingness, in the short term, to admit they've been duped or made a mistake, and in the long term, to change party affiliation or sympathy. People don't like to change, in spite of Obama's rhetoric to the contrary.

Also, the formula must somehow quantify how different events or happenings effect the natural inertia of voters. This isn't easy. Politicians often work under the radar of ordinary voters. In normal years, voters aren't very motivated to gain information. So ignorance, in itself, has to be a factor contributing to inertia.

So far, inertia + ignorance ...

When voters are well informed by the MSM as well as alternative media sources such as Fox news and talk radio, their skepticism rises quickly. Currently, the health care debate is an example of voter ignorance changing to knowledge. Ordinary people are actually trying to read the opaque bill. They're watching Glenn Beck. Listening to Rush. And the upshot of this voter "education" is passion.

So, so far, inertia + (ignorance - passion) ...

Most politicos love to add economic data to the formula. Its clean. Easy to quantify. Accessible. And it makes the formula look so academic! As the above referenced article puts it, "The motivations for including growth in per capita GDP, real taxes, and real transfer payments in our regressions of course is to measure the impact of economic conditions on election outcomes ..." Did you see that "of course?" What a snit.

Here's the interesting stuff.

Every ONE percentage point increase in per capita GDP increases the presidential party's share of by 1.47 percentage points.

Every ONE percentage point increase in real transfer payments adds 0.12% to Obama's increase.

Every ONE percentage point increase in per capita federal taxes subtracts 0.36% from Obama's midterm election results.

And then he fudges. He says, in reality, that the impact of growth in output and taxes to be larger than the impact o government transfers. Another interesting tidbit is that taxes and benefits at a local level do not have any impact on how voter's react in federal midterm elections. Really?

So here's the formula, with X as the leading coefficient or variable:

Inertia + X(information efficacy)(1.47GNPdelta)(0.12transferpaymentsdelta)(-0.36federaltaxdelta)

Pretty cool, huh?

Gender gap in Obama approval

Posted elsewhere, but my words:

Okay, as a gal, I’ll give my $0.02, though I’m not sure its worth even that.

I’d suggest we look at the gender gap from the other direction. Rather than ask, “Why do women approve of Obama?” lets ask, “Why don’t men approve of Obama?” Frankly, I think its easier to answer. After all, Obama is a MAN.

I find it interesting that men are rejecting a man, particularly because men were more supportive of GBush than women. In other words, something about Obama turns men off — and something about Bush attracted men. What could it be?

Bush seemed masculine — at least from a woman’s perspective — and comfortable being masculine. He did guy stuff like clearing out the brush at his ranch. Can you imagine Obama clearing brush? Can you imagine him doing any physical labor? Something about Obama doesn’t seem right and men are picking up that off-scent. He’s just not comfortably male. Even his basketball playing seems … stilted.

Remember watching Bush walk to the presidential plane? He had a commanding walk. He oozed confidence. Masculinity. I think he drove the metrosexual media mad when he jumped from planes or showed up in Iraq.

Now note Obama’s walk. He seems to be trying to be authoritative. Trying too hard. He walks fast, but not confidently. Its more like he’s prancing than commanding.

As a woman, I rather like powerful, confident men. I remember watching Bush on tv and thinking he had a Reagan-like, genuine masculinity. I am blessed, however, by postive experiences with men. I’ve never been physically abused or mishandled and the few bad apples in my life were usually emotionally needy, not abusive. In short, I like men as men.

Many women don’t have such positive experiences with men. For them, a powerful man is threatening. They’d rather see a pseudo-male with a dominant/big wife than a strong man with a wife who knows to love him as he is. I see the support for Obama, among women, as an indicator of social dis-ease.

Although I don’t have any statistics to back up this claim, I’d wager that women who were raised in divorced homes, or with abusive parents, are most supportive of Obama. Conversely, women who were raised in happier, intact homes probably support a Bush-like president.

Similarly, women who are divorced, separated, abused, single or absent a good man in their lives will vote for the weakened male, the controllable Obama.

Remember when the MSM swooned over Obama? The most urban, divorced and metro reporters thought he was sexy, not slimy.

I’ve got a doctorate in history and am not a shrink, so take my psycho-babble with a grain of salt.

Conversing with Frank about Independent Voters

Frank,

I’m not as sanguine about the motives and thought-processes of the “middle,” but your interpretation does make much sense. Still thinking about your words …

The polarization of voters — Rs huddling around the R pole; Ds huddling around the L pole — could also be due to “rationalization” of political parties.

Back in the 1970s, in the pre-Carter years, boweevil (sp.?) democrats were conservative Southerners, but still Democrats. Their own particular history and (then) recent civil rights legislation pushed the white South into the Democratic party. The D party, then, was tempered by the political moderation of Southern conservatives.

Fast forward to 2009. Moderates in the D party, now called “Blue Dogs” are a pitiful minority. Moderates in the R party are also a slim minority. Few northeastern moderates remain in the R party.

“Rationalization” occurs when the party makes ideological sense and its adherents share some sort of cultural/political POV. That is to say, a political party composed of like-minded members is rationalized because the party stands for a set of ideas that somehow cohere.

Thus, Republicans, for the most part, have a set of beliefs that arise from a realistic (some say jaded) view of human nature. In their view, civil society bridles the human tendency to coerce or dominate others. Political action, then, should only take place when civil society breaks down to the point where order needs to be reestablished.

Dems, have a set of beliefs that flip between viewing ordinary Americans as stupid and needy and viewing people as innately good and perfectible. (There’s an incoherence to their “faith.”) The badness of humanity comes from contact with civil society — the social environment in which people are reared — and not from an innate tendency to dominate. To Dems, political action, then, should be ever-present and potent, both to coerce society as a whole to behave in ways Ds deem good, as well as to train individual citizens to counter the values of civil society.

These POV are incompatible, aren’t they? These incompatible ur-beliefs, in my wee opinion, divide Dems from Reps.

Now, back to the polling data. Yes, the data suggests a widening split between the D and R. But this makes sense. It mirrors what voters are thinking, perhaps subliminally or unconsciously. It mirrors those ur-values that inform political choices. It mirrors the widening gap between D and R.

But only recently have political parties reflected ur-beliefs; that is, only recently have political parties been rationalized. Today, Ds stand for their set of beliefs and Rs stand for their set of beliefs.

I rather doubt these party differences can be papered over. Differences between D and R are too innate and deeply rooted to be moderated or compromised. They’re just too important. Too constitutive of who we are and what we believe.

Thus, I see moderates/Independents as irrational. Independents are refusing to make the choice. THey’re refusing to see the irrationality in political compromise. For this reason, too, I see the moderate middle slowly disappearing as information becomes more widely spread and political discussion heats up. As they know more and think a bit, society will further bifurcate. Its just that people, Frank, can’t stand in intellectual quicksand. Eventually, they’ll seek stable ground. The parties represent that ground. They make sense.

Excuse my rambling.

I’m quite curious about your thoughts, Sir.

Kris

Independent Voters?

I have never understood the motive and mindset of Independent voters. In a partisan, bifurcated political universe, standing in the middle and refusing to choose sides seems a bit irrational. On another blog, I questioned a man I have never met -- Frank -- whose opinions and insight I deeply admire. Below is the text of my post and his response, as copied from Rightpundits.

Frank,

Respectfully, why do you assume that independent voters want a centrist? If the electorate is “ideologically split” then it follows, logically, that voters really want either a left or right candidate, not something in between? I still maintain that the centrist American is a myth.

Bipartisanship makes sense when the two parties aren’t far apart in important values or ideology. But when core beliefs diverge as widely as those between the Reps and Dems, bipartisanship means making convenient, unfelt alliances, as done in France or other multiparty states.

Though bipartisanship may APPEAR centrist, its only expedience, and the necessary compromise when one side can’t dominate.

Today, it seems that independents are:
1) Those with less political knowledge — to know is to bifurcate!
2) Those who feel estranged from mainstream culture (hippies come to mind)
3) Those whose political beliefs or worldview has been (fatally?) challenged and thus are moving slowly toward the opposing political party
4) Those with the emotional desire to rectify conflict — voting isn’t rational.
5) Those who can juggle nonsensical, irrational and conflicting political desires and somehow, after adding the R and D positions, come up with a net zero. Thus, independent is
neither R and neither D AND
both R and both D.
6) Those who need a label that keeps them from being defined by peers. In the workplace, for instance, often it is far wiser to describe oneself as a centrist and Independent.

Thanks for all you do, Frank. You surely make us think more deeply about the nuances of polling data.

K

Kristen,

Independents, as well as most democrats and republicans, really want things to be done. They want people to sit down together, negotiate in a serious way and come up with a compromise. They want a way to try to fix problems.

Independents want a give and take. It should be easy to come up with a compromise with healthcare. Portability, pre-existing conditions, insurance across state lines are three possible items that could and should be passed. Clauses that cancel a law if expectations are not met should be included. For example, if costs are not saved by “universal healthcare”, using an independent arbitrator that has been pre-determined (sounds like the CBO), then the plan is canceled.

I agree with most of your descriptions of independents but, as you can see from my paragraphs above, I think most independents fall into your categories 4 and 5. They want solutions.

Notice that the independents are increasing. The bi-partisanship of the candidate Obama is not the governing of the President Obama. Independents who had fallen away from the republican party are slowly drifting in that direction and the independents who had fallen to the “bi-partisan” mystique of the candidate Obama is now drifting towards the “independent” category again.

Watch the Rasmussen numbers with party ID. It isn’t self-indentified democrats that are becoming self-identified republicans, it a slow drift to the right.

On a ten point scale where 1 is a very left democrat and 10 is a very right republican, the following is occurring:

3’s (Obama voters) are drifting towards 4’s and 5’s. 5’s and 6’s are shifting toward 7’s and 8’s. What is occurring, however, is that more people are drifting from D to I than from I to R. That caused party ID to drop among democrats rather significantly (3-4 pts since inauguration) and republicans to gain only about a point of so.

Frank

Father's day

Another Father's Day.

I'm ambivalent, as usual.  I loved my father -- still do -- but never really understood him.  He was a private man, the last of the east coast WASPs, who lived according to the public Protestant ethic in spite of his lack of private faith. As a child, he told me what was expected of me.  I was told to "be upstanding" and "give back to society what society has invested" in me.   These were my social rules. These were my expectations. And for years, I rebelled against them.

I was told I was lucky, that I lived in a country of prosperity, an accident of history.  As an accident, I was to be grateful -- to recognize my good fortune and give back.  Always give back.

I was told I was lucky to be upper class, and with this social benefit, I had unwillingly inherited, by chance, a demanding set of social expectations.  I was to be humble; to treat others with gentleness; and with a benign snobbishness, to remember that others who had not my "advantages" were to be seen as accidents of history, just as myself, no better or worse.

I was told that an Ivy education was expected.  

I was told that success was expected.  

I was told that being honorable and giving back was expected.

Strangely, I was never expected to make money.  Wealth, in itself, was grubby -- beneath me.  Great poets and writers, of a similar class, were often poor, father said.  Thus, poverty, in itself, could be honorable, the mark of social giving.  If I amassed wealth, which I haven't, I was never to show it. For wealth was to be hidden. 

The importance of raw money was only its ability to lead the public by example.  So my money, I was told, was to be given away to causes, peoples or museums.  It was to be given anonymously.  I was not to be like those who had buildings named after them, for example.  Their philanthropic motives were incorrect for they had sought immortality or recognition, not social betterment.  True social giving was to be subtle, directed and done without fanfare.  Thus, anonymity.

With these sorts of expectations, I've let my parents down. I never lived up to my father's standards.  I haven't given back enough.  I haven't lived the WASP ethical standard ... at least, not enough.  But as I age, I understand my father's demand far more than I did as a child. Now I want to give back. Its no longer an embarrassment, or a burden, but a burning desire.  I want to live in a self-sacrificing way, quietly, without self-consciousness.  I want to live up to his standards.

At a time when the edifice of social values is crumbling, I may have something to give that is more than opinion, but rather my inherited worldview which can be easily interwoven with the values of the Mayflower Compact, Constitution, Declaration of Independence, Federalist Papers, etc.  These are, after all, the ancestors of my thought.  They're not just my genetic forbears, but also more importantly, my social lineage. When I give back, then, I am merely recalling the generosity and honor of those who lived before me.

The glory of this social lineage is it is assumed, not inherited.  All Americans can be grafted onto the values of the Founders.  All are equal by thought and belief, by behavior and a sense of social obligation.  Its no longer a class thing, but a way to be American.  Mostly, I find this sense of givingness within the Republican Party.  Republicans assume that before taking, one must give.  Social responsibility, then, precedes social rights.  We give because we are Americans. We give because that's what it means to live in a free society -- and our freedom is predicated on social giving or responsibility.  I could never be a Democrat as long as the Democratic Party stands for redistribution -- taking, not giving -- and rights before responsibilities.  I find their values abhorrent.   

I thank you, dearest Father, for the values you have given me.  I hope to live up to them more honorably and humbly than last year.  I hope to keep my successes and failures quietly in my heart.  And I hope that I leave society a wee bit better than it was before me, that I make my small, anonymous mark with honor and generosity.

And I really, really hope you never read this.

 

 

True Individuality is Conformity

"I think no persons are more hypocritical, and have a more affected behaviour to one another, than the young.  They deceive themselves and each other with artifices that do not impose upon men of the world; and so we get to understand truth better, and grow simplier, as we grow older." William Thackeray, The History of Henry Esmond.

_________

It’s amusing to watch teens and younger twenty-somethings "express individuality" -- the same way. After awhile, their pretend uncommonness becomes strangely common. For example, body tattoos fail to attract more than a passing glance. Avant-garde haircuts, spikes and piercings ... so typical.  Jack-booted girls ... so predictably anarchic. White ringed, stretched earlobes ... so primitive. It has all been done before. Many times.

We’re all unique, remember? Each and every one of us has their own genetic code.  Is also true, however, that deep within, we know our differences pale in comparison to our common traits. Most people are truly different, to the point of being unusual, in only one or two traits or abilities. No more. 

As a kid, I felt different, mainly because I couldn't stop reading. I loved reading. I loved ideas. But I also loved being popular. To conceal my nerdiness, I consciously and carefully crafted an image -- I was the surfer chick, sun-browned and athletic, with long, stringy ocean-blonde hair. This image worked. My peers positively responded to my fake individuality. I was one of them.  

I remember thinking it was far too easy, that popularity was a such a simple sham and cheap deception. I had learned, at an early age, that part of being accepted, ironically, was pretending to be unique, by adopting the same look as other "individualists."  As I grew older, I found it easy to see pretenders, particularly in occupations which require extreme (and false) individuality such as the arts. Though artists may think they're oozing with pathos, their weirdness is nothing more than narcissistic insecurity and copy-cat individuality. It’s uncreative. 

But not just pretentious "arteests" conform to unconventionality -- supposed conformists also conform, at least outwardly. I have a theory that those who try hard to look unconventional are too typical for their own liking; similarly, outward conformists are dangerous iconoclasts trying to hide. 

I've sometimes wondered what I'd look like if I didn't have to deceive. I think I'd wear long loose skirts, commando and braless, with a tight shirt. My hair would be comfortably caught into in a ponytail. No makeup. Only sandals.  

I write this because I caught a glimpse of myself a couple days ago as I walked past a long window. The woman in the window, I didn't recognize. I saw a briskly walking professional woman in a tight navy skirt modestly hidden by a long navy jacket. She looked harried. Her hair was sprayed to perfection. Her eyes were covered with large, Cali glasses, like a movie star, and her little heels made a definitive clicking sound with each determined step. 

When I realized the reflection was my own, I looked away. Instinctively. I felt I’d been caught lying.

But life isn’t so black-and-white. White lies, like pretend conformity, are easily justified. Pretend individuality isn’t quite as tolerable, though, after one has passed through those young adult years. Aging hipsters look foolish. Middle-age women wearing teen-age clothes look doubly foolish. As one ages, one’s true oddities become better known. Conformity, then, is a way of hiding individuality, not expressing it.

Strange, but true.

The Socially Divisive Internet

Today is my day to lounge, a deserved day of rest and respose.  My house is relatively clean.  The gardeners come tomorrow so I don't have to worry about such things.  My younger son is idly sleeping before a day of software and calculus -- my older son is taking an exam in a more difficult level of calculus.  And the cat is sleeping.

A few minutes ago, I finished reading Theodore Dreiser's The Genius, a rare book I've wanted to read for years.  It is a dissolute book of illicit sex and twenty-something ambition, but also of touching sensitivity. The artistic mentality -- allowing oneself to be pulled into a vortex of passion -- is unmasked, for passion is both entrancing and dangerous, lovely and deadly.

I will not commit my thoughts of art-mindedness to paper.  These ideas remain unwritten and hidden within.  

But I will write about finding Dreiser's book on the Internet, in full text, each page carefully photographed. What an incredible experience.  I haven't left home and here it is on my screen.  A reader before me had bracketed words, lines and paragraphs. Those brackets remain.  The book, then, feels real, not virtual.  It's been marked. Pondered over. Someone has been to its words before me.

Such availability of information, once confined to elite university libraries, will have a profound impact on society.  At the Yale Beinecke rare book library with its eerie, yellow-green light through translucent marble walls, I remember putting on white cloth gloves to touch books written years -- no, centuries -- prior.  I was overwhelmed with the notion of perpetual learning; a writer's mind was knowable long after death through his or her writings.  Writings, then, were that touch of immortality, for in my hands, in musty view, were the words of another person, long gone but strangely present.

Similarly, the Internet brings this presentness of the past to people who ordinarily would not have access to such monographs, maps and other material.  Seeing texts on the Internet is not quite the same experience as having them in hand -- not fully sensual -- but, still, a good approximation.  In this way the Internetlevels knowledge by making it accessible to almost everyone. Now, an isolate, wandering into a library with a computer can look at books that only the studious elite had been able to see. How wonderful this is!  I worry, though, that it will further birfurcate society into the intellectually curious and intellectually dull. Accessibility used to be the obstacle to learning. Now, it is ability. And our differing abilities cut deeper. They divide crisply.  

In the past, raw intelligence had both a nurtured and natural component. It still does, of course, but when nurture is everpresent and available, people who seem less learned can no longer be thought of natively intelligent, but unfortunately lacking access to the materials of learning. The Internet denies that excuse. When nurture is everywhere, nature is dominant.  

For any individual who desires to know ... can. 

What this portends for our well-functioning society with its patina of egalitarianism, I don't know.  I'm just thinking, here.  Aloud.

Legislating and Living Meaningfully

Qoheleth in Ecclesiastes: "What is twisted cannot be straightened; what is lacking cannot be counted."

 ____________________

For those of you who don’t know, or haven’t guessed, I’m seriously considering running for the House of Representatives in LD 7.  I will run only if it is a meaningful act, and by meaningful I mean, simply, that my presence in the legislature will make a difference in the lives of at least one of my constituents. Otherwise, why legislate?  If the twisted cannot be straightened, and the lacking cannot be counted, why would I want to untangle and enumerate? 

My answer, of course, is that I believe that good legislation, though always flawed, offers incremental improvement both in individual lives and in the character and quality of society. But watching Arizona’s budget unfold, from a safe distance, as well as Obama’s autocratic destruction of our nation’s free(r) economy, causes me to doubt my political optimism.  I find myself vacillating between a feeling of helplessness, the Francis Fukuyama-Qoheleth view of politics as meaningless and futile, and a feeling of optimism, the hope that my small political acts conjoined with the acts of other politicians will enlarge the social space that ordinary people need to craft lives a wee bit better.

Fukuyama earnestly thought that Soviet-era communism had been replaced with a stable European-style socialism.  Thus, the end of history.  With total socialism, history will reach some sort of culmination, a thesis between capitalism and communism, a compromise that works.

But the second half of his book, though less well known, betrays his optimistic view of history. Even the title suggests that the second half of the book holds clues to understanding the first half: The End of History and the Last Man. 

The last man?  As in, the last man standing?  Or, as in, Nietzsche’s vision of a society that had devolved, because of consumption and frivolity, to der letzte Mensch, the last man?

I do believe history is moving, inexorably, toward a terminus that my political acts cannot change or influence. I do believe that it ends, not in a political stasis, but in a way I cannot fathom or articulate.  I see history, therefore, as linear, not cyclical or static.  And because of history’s linearity, my wee acts have wee significance.  They add to history as a drop adds to the volume of water in a moving river – my acts are not much, perhaps not measurable, but still significant in that they add to the total flow. 

There will never be der letzte Mensch, thankfully. Political stability will always elude us.  Certainly history won’t end with socialism.  But my small acts may help create a better moment in history. 

And, with that, I’ll be satisfied.

 

  

Disgusting Anti-semitism of the Religious Left

I am thoroughly disgusted at the non-reaction of the MSM over yesterday's antisemitic statement by Rev. Jeremiah Wright. 

In a interview, when asked about recent conversations with Obama, Rev. Wright said, "Them Jews aren't going to let him talk to me. I told my baby daughter, that he'll talk to me in five years when he's a lame duck, or in eight years when he's out of office. ... They will not let him to talk to somebody who calls a spade what it is. ... I said from the beginning: He's a politician; I'm a pastor. He's got to do what politicians do."

"Them Jews ..."  Where is the outrage?

Obama received 78 percent of the Jewish vote in 2008, the seventh highest percentage in American history and 95 percent of the African-American vote.  

Update:  Five minutes after I posted this brief article, Drudge had a two-line mention of a shooting in the Holocaust Museum.