For 6 months I’ve been telling people that Trump is a lunatic, and my commenters keep insisting that I’m “deranged”, or “unhinged”, or off my meds.

If so, my condition is getting worse:

. . .  if Hillary Clinton defeats Trump in 2016, one of the Republican nominee’s former campaign advisers predicts there will be protests.

“I mean civil disobedience, not violence, but it will be a bloodbath,” Roger Stone told Breitbart News in a recent interview. “The government will be shut down if they attempt to steal this and swear Hillary in.”

Stone left Trump’s immediate orbit last year, but the veteran GOP consultant told Yahoo News last month that he keeps in touch with his former boss.

On Monday, Trump, who is currently trailing Clinton in national polls, told supporters at a rally in Ohio that the fix is coming.

“The election is going to be rigged,” he said.

So what does Trump consider to be a stolen election?  Perhaps something like 1960, with the controversies about voting irregularities in Texas and Illinois?  An election narrowly won by Kennedy.  Nope, it’s the 2012 election that was stolen. No, Obama did not easily beat Romney by millions of votes, it was all rigged:

And then there are reports and more reports that he’s contemplating ending the US practice of no first use of nukes.

But no worries, the man us not a lunatic, it’s just that I’m deranged and unhinged. Obviously his advisors are patriots, and they’d warn us if Trump was becoming mentally unstable.

Oh wait .  .  . 

Donald Trump is getting “nuttier and nuttier,” according to those within the tycoon’s presidential campaign, who say they are increasingly frustrated by his outrageous comments and behavior.

The Republican candidate has been engaged in a prolonged war of words with Khizr and Ghazala Khan — whose son, a US Army officer, was killed in Iraq in 2004 — which many inside the presidential campaign see as, at the very least, a total distraction.

“I did not think he’d be great in a general election, and thought there’d be episodes of paranoia/irrationality, but this is surprising for me,” one Trump operative told The Post.

“Trump is getting nuttier and nuttier,” the person added.

Campaign chairman Paul Manafort and other staffers “feel like they are wasting their time,” CNN reported Wednesday. . . .

And CNBC’s John Harwood quoted a source as saying: “Manafort not challenging Trump anymore. Mailing it in. Staff suicidal.”

Nuttier and nuttier . . . paranoia . . . irrationality . . . staff suicidal . . . the world is laughing at us . . . first use of nukes . . . stolen elections . . . total sham and travesty . . . we are not a democracy . . . bloodbath . . .

I guess you Trumpistas were right; I’m just being hysterical.  What could go wrong with a 70 year old President who seems a bit . . . eccentric?

By the way, military officers who control nuclear weapons must pass a battery of psychological tests.  How about the President?

HT:  Tom Brown

I just read a couple of characteristically brilliant Scott Alexander posts.  That got me thinking that I ought to try to say something halfway intelligent about the election, instead of my usual mindless drivel.  So here’s my attempt.

Scott says:

I have yet to meet anybody in person (other than my patients) who supports Donald Trump.

I feel exactly the same way.  In contrast, I met lots of people who supported Mitt Romney in 2012.  So things must be really bad for Trump?  Nope, he trails Hillary by roughly the same 4% that Romney lost to Obama.  OK, then maybe Trump has a completely different set of supporters.  Perhaps, but most of the evidence so far points to almost an exact rerun of the 2012 election, albeit with perhaps a bigger chunk of third party voters.  (And remember, third party support tends to drop off on election day.)  Here’s how Romney did:

Whites:  59%

Minorities:  Very low numbers

I see no evidence at all that it will be any different this time.  Is there any evidence that I’ve missed?

At some point almost all smart pundits come around to talking about the “hillbilly issue”.  Here’s Scott:

At the same time, old outgroup hatreds will take on a different character. Even If You Don’t Like Donald Trump, You Should Understand The Pain Of His Poor White Supporters. And I Know Why Poor Whites Chant Trump, Trump, Trump. And Millions Of Ordinary Americans Support Donald Trump; Here’s Why. And The Incredible Crushing Despair Of The White Working Class. I’m not saying these articles are typical; for every one of these articles there are ten “Trump Voters Are Xenophobic Trailer Trash” pieces. I’m saying that it’s weird that they’re happening at all.

So perhaps if all the people Scott and I meet are not voting for Trump, then there’s been this massive rotation within the 59% of whites who vote Republican.  Romney got the country club set and Trump will lose those while picking up the hillbilly vote. But here’s the problem with that view. Romney crushed Obama in West Virginia by 27 percentage points (way more than usual for the GOP).  Obama crushed Romney in Connecticut. Yes, there has been a rotation within the white community over the decades, as white professionals have drifted left and rednecks have moved to the GOP, but that migration was mostly completed by 2012.

Many generalizations about Trump voters are a bit innumerate.  (Not the voters, the generalizations).  I wonder if people realize how big a number 59% is.  If you are getting 59% of the white vote, you need to have strength in all sorts of areas. I expect Trump to easily win the white vote in Orange Country, and those people are mostly helped by globalization.  China is not stealing Orange County jobs.  Coal burning restrictions aren’t causing Orange County coal miners to lose their jobs. There simply aren’t that many hillbillies, especially in Beverly Hills.

Of course, there have been a few shifts.  Trump is obviously losing ground in Utah, and seems to be gaining some ground in the depressed areas of the northeast.  But these changes are at the margin, and are pretty small in the overall scheme of things.  The GOP will still get about 59% of the white vote (ignoring third parties). Florida and Ohio are still very close.  And the Trump will still win the upper middle class (especially whites) by a solid margin.  Here was Romney’s support in 2012:

Some high school 35%

College grad:  51%

Or how about this:

below $50,000  38%

above $100,000  54%

So we have an entire industry of brilliant intellectuals writing thoughtful essays about why unemployed factory workers are supporting Trump, while his actual support (as far as I can tell) is almost the same as (pro-free trade) Romney’s.  He’s getting 90% of GOP voters, as Hillary gets 90% of Democratic voters.

But that brings us back to the original mystery.  Why did I meet lots of Romney supporters in 2012, but no Trump supporters today?  I think it’s partly because Trump supporters know that their candidate is not PC.  And they know I’m a college professor—so they don’t volunteer the fact that they support Trump.  Another possibility is that Trump support has rotated out of intellectuals, but as with Mormons, we just aren’t numerous enough to move the needle.

Let me try to head off some objections.  I understand that the GOP’s poor performance with low income and low education voters partly reflects the voting patterns of blacks and Hispanics.  But there’s no getting around the fact that Trump support is pretty strong in affluent white areas.  If 59% of whites vote GOP, then they are drawing from a wide cross section of (white) America.  Thus when thinking about the Trump phenomenon, I think it’s a mistake to visualize a single type of voter.  Many intellectuals (including me) think Trump’s obviously a buffoon. However it’s unwise to then jump to the conclusion that his supporters must be poor and uneducated.  One reason I am so negative about Trump supporters is that I think many of them should know better.  On the other hand, I understand that many don’t actually like Trump, but are holding their noses and voting for him because they hate Hillary more.  The one’s that annoy me the most are the commenters who try to explain away all of the Trump’s nonsense, who think he’d be a better President than Jeb Bush, or John Kasich.

PS.  If you didn’t chuckle at the Alexander quote up top, it may be because you don’t know that he’s a psychiatrist, or perhaps because you do know, but are a Trump supporter.

PPS.  This Alexander post is also brilliant.

PPPS.  Now for some mindless drivel. Tom Brown sent me the following (which if the primaries are anything to go by, should give Trump a boost in the polls):

Yesterday morning, we wrote that Donald Trump’s campaign seemed like it was unraveling over his inexplicable clash with the Khan family. Twenty-four hours later, the word “unraveling” seems like an understatement. Take a look at what’s happened in the last 24 hours:

• In a Washington Post interview, Trump declined to endorse House Speaker Paul Ryan against his primary challenger
• He reiterated that he hasn’t endorsed Sen. John McCain and said the onetime prisoner of war “has not done a good job for the vets”
• He slapped out at Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte, saying “she has given me zero support”
• He suggested that Americans should pull their 401(k) funds out of the stock market
• He said he’s “always wanted” to receive a Purple Heart but that having one gifted to him by a supporter was “much easier”
• He said that the handling of sexual harassment has “got to be up to the individual”
• He accused Khizr Khan of being “bothered” by his plan to keep terrorists out of the country, and said that he had no regrets about his clash with the family
• He appeared to feud with a crying baby during a rally
• He reiterated that “if the election is rigged, I would not be surprised”
• The sitting president of the United States publicly called Trump “unfit to serve” and urged Republicans to withdraw their support for him.
• Trump spokesman Katrina Pierson suggested that Obama and Clinton are to blame for the death of Humayan Khan, who died in 2004, when neither were in the executive branch at the time
• An ally of Paul Manafort told our colleague John Harwood at CNBC that the campaign chairman is “mailing it in,” leaving the rest of the staff “suicidal.”
• Sitting GOP congressman Richard Hanna, HP head Meg Whitman and former Christie aide Maria Comella all said they plan to vote for Hillary Clinton
• The Washington Post released a transcript of its full interview with Trump, indicating among other things that he paused five times to watch TV coverage in the middle of the sit-down
• A GOP source told NBC’s Katy Tur that Reince Priebus is “apoplectic” over Trump’s refusal to endorse Ryan and is making calls to the campaign to express his “extreme displeasure”

What are we missing? Any one of these items would be problematic on a normal campaign day. This all happened since 8am yesterday.

It’s silly to poll Americans on economic policy questions.  They do not understand enough economics to give an intelligent answer.  But people keep doing so.  A recent poll found that 62% of Americans favored making college free for everyone, and nearly 90% were in favor of making college free for students from lower income families, including a sizable number of Republicans:

Once an idealistic pipe dream of the far left, free higher education is now largely supported by a majority of Americans. Sixty-two percent say they support debt-free university tuition, according to a July survey of 1,000 American adults conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International for consumer financial company Bankrate Inc. Among those who are opposed to the initiative, 26 percent said they would support making college debt free for students coming from families that earn less than $50,000 annually. Another 5 percent are willing allow it for those whose families earn less than $85,000 a year.

This seems like a loony idea on both efficiency and equity grounds.  Imagine the tuition increases that will occur after college is made free.  I should not have retired from teaching. (Or perhaps the government will “regulate” college spending, what a wonderful idea!!)

The following helps to explain why Americans find the idea so attractive:

But when it comes to putting their money where their mouth is, Americans are more reluctant. Among those surveyed, 48 percent [said?] they would not be willing to pay more in federal taxes to fund free college.

I wonder if the near-zero interest rates make people even more prone to think in free lunch terms.  Over at Econlog I have a post discussing Trump’s proposed tax cuts, which would balloon the budget deficit.  Who will benefit from these tax cuts?  People who vacation here:

I would benefit enormously if Trump’s plan were enacted.  My taxes would be cut sharply, and so I would join lots of other affluent boomers in being able to stay at 4-star hotels when I visit Bali during my retirement, instead of the lousy 3-star hotels I currently stay at.

So us top ten percenters will enjoy more consumption.  But will it come at anyone’s expense?  Let’s think in terms of the GDP equation:

Y = C + I + G

Trump plans to increase G, so it’s not coming out of that category.  He also plans to cut taxes for working class American, so it’s not coming out of the consumption of the bottom 90%.  I suppose you could argue that it will boost GDP, but I doubt it.  The Fed would offset any demand-side effects, and Trump’s program looked at in its entirety is anti-supply-side, especially regarding foreign trade and investment.

So that leaves crowding out of investment.  Less investment, and less future GDP growth.  And it makes no difference whether interest rates are 1% or 10%.

Right now Trump polls extremely well among the old.  Perhaps they know that Trump plans to shovel lots of money their way, and leave a poorer country for their children and grandchildren.

Selfish b******s.

Here’s the latest:

Donald Trump previewed on Monday what could be his excuse if he were to lose the general election in the fall: It’s “rigged.”

“First of all, it was rigged,” Trump said of the Democratic primary race between Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

He continued: “And I’m afraid the election is going to be rigged. I have to be honest. I think my side was rigged. If I didn’t win by massive landslides … I hear more and more that the election on November 8, can you believe, we’re almost there.”

Trump would be the first candidate in modern presidential times, if not ever, to potentially blame an election loss on voter fraud or a rigged election.

Another first! And I don’t even have time to list all of Trump’s loony conspiracy theories. A wonderful quality when dealing with complex foreign crises. When our (potential) next president looks out at the world, he sees nothing but “grassy knolls”.

Trump also turns his supporters into evil people:

Taking questions from the audience at a rally in Carson City, Nev., the Indiana governor was asked how he could “tolerate” Trump disrespecting military families.

“Time and time again Trump has disrespected our nation’s armed forces and veterans and has disrespect for Mr. Khan and his family is just an example of that,” Catherine Byrne asked, as the crowd started loudly booing. “Will there ever be a point in time when you’re able to look Trump in the eye and tell him enough is enough? You have a son in the military. How do you tolerate his disrespect?”

They booed that question?  I’d be like, “Well I like Trump, but he was out of line calling McCain a loser, so fair question.” It goes without saying that Pence refused to answer the question. Here’s a comment I received yesterday:

Scott, I did all my laughing at Trump when I supported Cruz in the primaries. But after Cruz lost, it became time to understand Trump enough to determine if I could support him or not. As it turns out, I’ve learned there is much more going on than his detractors think. Reading Scott Adams is a good place to start. On Russia, google the Stephen Cohen interview from a couple days ago. Trump is playing a much, much smarter game than people think.  (emphasis added.)

His comment may seem like a joke, but Steve F seems to actually believe what he wrote.  The film that best describes America over the past 12 months is “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”.  Trump has actually stolen the brains of these people.

PS. I highlighted “it became time” as that was a “tell” that Steve did not randomly discover that Trump was a brilliant genius, rather he saw the danger posed by Hillary and decided it was time to let the pod creatures take over his brain.  It was all voluntary, and probably didn’t hurt a bit.

Update:

A June poll from the Hinckley Institute-Salt Lake Tribune shows the two are virtually tied with 35 percent for Donald Trump and 35 percent for Hillary Clinton. That is as close as a Democratic candidate has been to victory in more than half a century.

(In fairness, another poll has Trump up by 9%—so average them at 4.5%)  I’m 60 years old, and during my long life I’ve only met one group of people who are consistently good people—Mormons.  I have not met a single Mormon who is a jerk.  Gee, I wonder why Trump is tied while Bush won the state by 46 percentage points?

Those thinking of moving to Canada next year should look at Utah, it has better weather.

Update#2:  Ezra Klein ponders the character of a man who might soon be handed the nuclear briefcase:

Trump, for no reason at all, responded to this speech wondering whether Ghazala Khan hadn’t spoken on the stage because, as a Muslim woman, her husband wouldn’t permit her to talk in public. “If you look at his wife, she was standing there,” he said, on national television. “She had nothing to say. She probably, maybe she wasn’t allowed to have anything to say.”

Trump’s slander of Ghazala Khan was cruel. It was factually untrue. But it was also deeply, profoundly counterproductive — a man so angry about being cut off in traffic that he crashes his own car in revenge.

People keep asking me to write something criticizing Hillary.  OK, consider the following from Bloomberg:

Just last month, Hillary Clinton began including an idea in her speeches that suggests a shift in thinking for the Democratic Party: Wage growth may not just be good for the people who get a raise. It may be good for economic growth.

“It’s really simple,” she said at a rally in June in Ohio. “Higher wages leads to more demand, which leads to more jobs, which leads to higher wages.”

This is voodoo economics on steriods.  Most economics textbooks are written by left of center economists, and yet I don’t recall reading this sort of argument in any of them.  For good reason.

Even if wage growth led to more demand (it doesn’t), the Fed would simply raise interest rates enough to prevent demand from rising.  I was especially disappointed to see some famous economists endorse her message:

“I think it’s a very marginal way of promoting economic growth,” says Robert Gordon, economist at Northwestern University who specializes in the subject. Like Summers, he prefers a massive investment in infrastructure. But he does agree that a shift in business income away from profits and toward salaries would create growth. Workers are more likely to buy things from their paychecks than businesses are to invest out of their profits.

For Gordon, “the question is, how do you get this increase in wage income?” He believes the best way for a president to raise wages is to let the Federal Reserve do it, by keeping unemployment low.

[Alan] Krueger agrees that the Fed has been able to improve wages, but says there’s more that politicians can do. A labor economist, Krueger has long been a proponent of a limited increase in the minimum wage. “I think the time could be right for a more virtuous growth model,” he said, “which is driven by stronger wage growth…more consumption, more demand, creating more jobs.”

Artificial attempts to raise wages merely serve to reduce AS.  The Fed controls AD.  That’s what the economics textbooks say, and they are right.