Over at Econlog, I have a post discussing the Trump victory.

Here I’ll focus on happier news—pot legalization continues to be on the march.  Last night pot was legalized in California, Nevada, Massachusetts and Maine.  It failed in Arizona.  But even there it’s just a matter of time, as opposition is very strong among the over 65 group, and they are dying off.  (I’ll be over 65 in four years.)  The young will propel it to nationwide legalization within a few decades.  Medical marijuana won in Florida and a few other states.

The carbon tax failed in Washington, which I suppose is not surprising given that it was opposed by environmentalists.  I guess those are the kind of people who think a vote for Jill Stein makes more sense than a vote for Hillary.

The death penalty made a comeback, which I did not expect.  I still think it’s on the way out, but it will take longer than I assumed.  Outside of Texas, the death penalty is almost never used in America.

Stocks bounced back.  Perhaps they are looking past Trump, and whetting their tongue about the the goodies the GOP Senate is about to deliver to them.  We will see.

Don’t get too despondent:

I suppose there must be a bright side somewhere:

1.  Trump may still lose the popular vote.

2.  I still think his anti-Hispanic rhetoric was outrageous.  But if millions and millions of Hispanics are going to vote for the guy, I’m not going to lose sleep over it.

3.  He’s a pathological liar, so perhaps he won’t do all the awful things he says he will do.

4.  There actually are a few decent proposals, like unifying the tax on debt and equity.  I doubt it will happen, but who knows?

5.  There will be lots for bloggers to talk about over the next 12 months.

I’m out of ideas, what else ya got?

Update:  Don’t know if this is true, but people need to read this post.

Update:  Pot legalization passed in California and Massachusetts, still too close to call in three other states.  Medical marijuana passed in Florida. So that’s a silver lining. In fact, I could use a  . . .

Update:  If the NYT popular vote estimate holds, then the RCP average of polls will actually be more accurate this time than in 2012.  But the huge misses in the upper Midwest are killing Hillary.

PS. The thing that surprises me most is that Obama is highly popular after 8 years, but the voters just voted in a government (President/Congress) promising to basically repeal every significant thing he did.  Will they?  I kind of doubt it.  And how would the Tea Party react to that “betrayal”?

PPS.  I wonder if he’s still going to sue those 10 women?  Will he have to testify in each of the 10 libel cases?

PPPS.  He said we should have stolen Iraq and Libya’s oil.  Is that still the plan?  Is torture and assassination now the official policy?  And why can’t we use those nukes?  Is Putin now our ally?  Are WE now part of the axis of evil?

PPPPS.  American’s know that Trump was just kidding, don’t they?  He has no advisers, no plan, he’s just winging it.

PPPPPS.  Below is a screenshot of all the polls taken in Wisconsin.   As I write this (11:30pm) the NYT says Trump will win the state by 4.0%.  That means the absolute best poll, the one that got closest, still missed by 7.0%!  Recent polls were even worse. That miss is getting up there with the recent Colombian peace treaty vote fiasco.

PPPPPPS.  Why did most Americans vote for Trump?  They probably didn’t.  He won because of the electoral college, AFAIK.   (Although like all my other predictions, this one might also end up incorrect.  And yes, even an electoral college win for Trump is a stunning achievement, which I didn’t expect.)

Update.  About to go to bed, but the NYT now says Wisconsin by 3%, still a pretty big miss.

Justin Wolfers and others had argued that a Trump win would produce a sharp drop in stocks.  Unless I’m misreading the futures markets, that hypothesis has been confirmed.  It looks like stocks may crash 10% if Trump wins. (As I write this post things are up in the air, but S&P futures are down nearly 4% (from the peak), as Trump’s odds have risen from 10% to 45%)

Update:  Forget the 10%, it looks more like 5% to me—risks of extrapolation.  Interest rates down.  I don’t even want to look at the Mexican market.

I’d add that the people who said Hillary was 98% certain to win also look bad.  (I mention that because I also look bad, so I’m looking for people who look even worse.)

It also seems like the exit polls were off.  That would indicate that the pre-election polls were off for the same reason (sampling error or “ashamed Trump voter syndrome”.)

Interesting that at 9:45 pm the NYT has Hillary winning the popular vote by 2% but losing the election.

I think it’s fair to say the the Clinton/Bush era is finally over.  Put a lid on it.

Update:  Given that the Senate candidates also seem to be overperforming, it can’t be all due to the “ashamed Trump voter syndrome”—sampling error must have been involved.  This is the third straight election where the GOP did far better than expected when an African American was not running for President.  I’ll bet the turnout of young voters and African American voters was low—another Brexit similarity.

I have no idea if this is reliable, but it’s 7 pm and time for jumping the gun:

Can someone tell me why the Trump odds are still at 10%?  Is there a time lag in the betting odds website?  Trump’s clearly lost, hasn’t he?

I hear that Little Marco Rubio is dramatically outperforming Trump in Florida.  Hmm, do you think the GOP primary voters picked the wrong guy?

Trump now rising in the betting markets up to 15%.

State betting markets look better for Trump than the national market.  Starting to remind me of the Brexit vote.

US stock market crashing, another good sign for Trump.  If I was Hillary, I’ll be really worried.

Some conservative intellectuals have been able to convince themselves that Trump is making some important points, albeit in a less than perfect fashion.  The problem here is that they are not describing the actual Trump, but rather the Trump they wish were running:

1.  They say that he’s a useful corrective to political correctness.

Nope, just as Joe McCarthy weakened anti-communism (a fine cause), Trump is weakening anti-PCism (another fine cause).  A helpful opponent of PCism would offer the alternative of common courtesy combined with frank talk.  Trump offers crude insults combined with frank talk.  He’s discrediting the movement.

2.  They say he’d offer an alternative to our recent militarism.

Nope, someone like George McGovern would offer that alternative.  Trump talks about rebuilding the military, bombing our enemies back to the Stone Age, bringing back torture, assassinating the families of terrorists.

3.  They say that at least he’s focused on the plight of the working class.

A fan of the working class would be promoting free market policies, not protectionism and higher minimum wages and massive government spending increases.  How’d Argentina’s working class do under Peron?

4.  They say he’s an alternative to Obama’s imperial overreach.

An opponent of overreach would not cite numerous foreign dictators as role models, would not promise to imprison his opponent after the election, would not promise to stop the media from printing lies about him, would not promise to drag corporate CEOs into the Oval office and tell them where they can or cannot invest in new factories.

5.  They say he’ll Make America Great Again, by boosting growth:

A fan of growth would not promise a crackdown on immigration, or attempt to expel millions of productive workers doing jobs (like picking grapes in the hot sun) that most Americans are unwilling to do.

The Trump of their dreams exists only in their imagination.  He’s not on the ballot. The man on the ballot would hurt their cause in all sorts of ways. Conservative intellectuals are much better off with a Trump loss, after which they can start rebuilding their movement.  A good first step would be expelling the alt-right, just as W.F. Buckley expelled the John Birch Society:

In the 1960s, Buckley, largely through his position at the helm of National Review, displayed political courage and sanity by taking on the John Birch Society, an influential anti-Communist group whose members saw conspiracies everywhere they looked.

PS.  That’s not to say people can’t vote for Trump if they think Hillary is worse.  But please, stop writing op eds defending Trump.  He’s terrible.

PPS.  Question for fans of PCism.  My daughter is half white/half Asian.  Does that mean she’s half privileged and half oppressed?  I’m trying to decide how big her reparations allowance should be.