The Second Sex
I don’t follow Democratic politics closely, but those who do suggest that Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer would have been a strong possibility to be the nominee if there were an open primary. She’s a popular governor in a part of the country that will determine the election.
[Conditional forecast: If Harris wins Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, she wins the election. If Trump wins even one of those 3 states (as I expect), Trump wins the election.]
But after Harris was picked. Whitmer completely dropped off the list as a possible VP candidate. Why is that?
I was recently chatting with someone about Harris’s upcoming VP pick. In my conversation, I specifically suggested “the Michigan Governor” would be the obvious choice, without mentioning her gender. When I said this ideal candidate wasn’t being considered, the person responded “What’s wrong with him?” I said, “That’s exactly the problem, the presumption that the pick will be a him.”
Here’s Wikipedia:
The Second Sex (French: Le Deuxième Sexe) is a 1949 book by the French existentialist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir, in which the author discusses the treatment of women in the present society as well as throughout all of history. Beauvoir researched and wrote the book in about 14 months between 1946 and 1949. . . .
Beauvoir asks, “What is woman?” She argues that man is considered the default, while woman is considered the “Other”: “Thus, humanity is male, and man defines woman not herself, but as relative to him.”
A lot has changed since 1949. Today, affirmative action programs favor women and minorities for certain positions. Harris herself was chosen by Biden partly because she was a woman. At the same time, I suspect that Beauvoir was on to something. A man is viewed as a human being, whereas a woman is viewed as a non-male human being. I don’t recall people being surprised that Trump picked another male to serve as his VP. People objected to Vance, but not because a presidential ticket was unbalanced if both candidates were male. There’s little doubt that Harris is not considering Whitmer precisely because she fears the electorate would view a ticket with two women as being “weird”. But why?
PS. Lots of people think in moralistic terms, and as a result their their thinking on issues of race and gender lacks nuance. For example, it can be true that blacks are favored over whites for some jobs, and also be true that whites are favored over blacks for some jobs.
It can even be true that some blacks are discriminated against because of the way that civil rights laws have been interpreted by the courts, which has led some employers to fear that they’d be unable to fire a poorly performing black employee. So they refrain from hiring people with black sounding names. You rarely hear of this problem, because it doesn’t fit well with either left or right wing moralizing. Among both the left and the right, our intuition about what’s fair doesn’t always conform to the way that the world actually works.
PPS. Studies of bias for or against female candidates have been in the news. These studies have zero bearing on the question of bias toward female candidates running for president.
PPPS. As Trump has demonstrated, a man can be nasty and rude and still be an effective candidate. A woman must come across as more appealing. Whitmer looks like the sort of woman that men would vote for:
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4. August 2024 at 17:05
@ssumner:
The reason Whitmer isn’t a possible VP for Harris is partly as you say, they don’t want to go with an all female ticket. But also, Whitmer correctly thinks of herself as ‘above’ Harris (a more viable presidential candidate), she should be the top of the ticket. She probably also recognizes that Harris is unlikely to win so Whitmer can be the top of the ticket in 2028. No rush for her (or Newsom, another person who has no interest in the VP slot)
If Biden had not screwed us all over and just done the obvious thing and announced late last year he was not going to run again, the Dems would have had a legit primary with Whitmer, Newsom. Harris and others competing and likely Whitmer or Newsom would be the nominee now with a significant lead over Trump.
Alas. Thanks a lot Joe.
4. August 2024 at 20:52
Whites and Asians are discriminated against, not blacks. 90% of all new jobs have gone to migrants, and to black Americans because human resources departments are afraid to hire white men for fear that Blackrock, Vanguard and State Street will stop investing in their company. The only reason DEI was implemented in the first place was because it was a WEF goal, which the aforementioned investment firms agreed to support. Blackrock basically went around threatening stock sales of companies who didn’t comply. I know, because unlike you, I own a company.
Try being a white man or asian man on the job market in 2024. White men are forced to search for jobs on sites like red balloon, or hope Elon takes them, where merit is still the deciding factor, because nobody else will.
Re: socialist Gretchen
Gretchen Whitmer gives taxpayer subsidies for rent assistance to all newcomers to Michigan. Is that your idea of a free market? Nobody voted for that.
Whitmer mandated vaccines state-wide. Nobody voted for that.
She has presided over the worst economic growth of any rustbelt state.
She’s a proponent of CRT and DEI.
This is just a brief glimpse into a laundry list of terrible policies, yet you support her. Why?
Becuase as many commenters have pointed out: you are not a libertarian. You are a neo-lib, warmonger, hell-bent on imposing your will upon other people.
The libertarian motto, Scott, is “don’t tread on me”.
You tread on everyone.
5. August 2024 at 01:05
When I was a boy, the generic ’he’ was in wide use, as it had been for centuries before. While less popular today, it remains far from extinct.
What does it all mean? Damned if I know. Between obvious sexists, those scoring cheap points, and others selling clicks, I find it easier to criticize other’s takes than to formulate my own.
Most VP talk concerns shallow speculation on how a person might help in some battleground state. Fair enough. Today, identity politics excites us more, which strikes me as less serious. Four years ago, Biden’s pick had obvious importance given his age. I don’t recall that having engendered much discussion. And yet here we are. The speed at which Biden went from sharp as a tack and ready for four more years, to his every word weighed, to now forgotten (is he even in the news any more), has my head spinning. Harris went from liability to the second coming overnight. Trump’s bloodied-ear photo went from being in future history books to the bargain bin to the memory hole in a flash. I think we’ve gone collectively insane.
5. August 2024 at 03:51
One has to assume opinion polls regarding Whitmer, Shapiro, Harris et al are completely faked. It wouldn’t be hard to do. Whitmer is an extremely unlikable governor, for the reasons stated by other commenters above (especially the vaccine totalitarianism).
5. August 2024 at 06:46
Does it really matter if a woman or man is a president? Isn’t the answer obvious? Of course it doesn’t. Israel, GB and Germany are recent examples. 0ne would have thought this idiocy would have been long gone by now. Who cares? Why didn’t Hillary win? Because she was a woman, or a terrible candidate?
My God, have we ever seen a candidate as bad as Harris? Then there are the bad men candidates/—Gore, Kerry, Romney etc.
We are ridiculous
5. August 2024 at 06:46
Very good evaluation of arguments going here, and then you pull out that no woman could do what Trump does with respect to being rude, mean, and viable. There can be no outlier women like there are outlier men?
5. August 2024 at 06:48
Perceptions matter so Harris cant choose Whitmer. Many white people believe that everything is tilted towards minorities and they cant get good jobs anymore, yet the numbers continue to show that white people still overwhelmingly have the good jobs, make the most money and run the govt. The perception is that DEI programs give minorities an unfair edge, and maybe in some cases it does, but most DEI programs exist just to provide cover for businesses so they can pretend they care.
Due to these perceptions, along with as you note it is still considered the default that white men run stuff, Whitmer cant be the pick. I am kind of hoping for Shapiro. He has been able and willing to work for ideas most commonly associated with the right like supporting school vouchers and has worked well with both Dems and Repubs. I suspect national politics will make that irrelevant but would be nice to at least try to have someone in office with that mentality. However, my Jewish friends think that country isn’t ready for a Jewish POTUS.
Steve
5. August 2024 at 06:49
I think Whitmer is a strong candidate in the sense of being more likely to win than other candidates (not in the sense of moral strength).
5. August 2024 at 07:30
My understanding is she declined being considered, like Cooper. Looking at the tipping point state (Pennsylvania) and finding the person who can help the most there seems like the right electoral strategy, despite me hating the particular person
5. August 2024 at 07:40
1.) Newsome and Whitmer are not going to run because they see it as a losing cause and don’t want to be tarnished with it.
2.) However, conditions have changed dramatically and the odds of the dems winning have risen substantially. The betting markets suddenly have a toss up.
3.) At first this I found this rather confusing because I think you are right, the dems need to sweep WI, MI, and PA. Trump only needs to win one of them.
Based on current polls we could say that the odds of the dem winning in WI = 0.5, in MI it’s 0.55 and in PA it’s 0.45. Assuming independence, the dem cumulative odds would be 0.50*0.55*0.45 = 12.375%. That’s not good.
However, the states are not independent. We know that when a candidate over performs in one state, they tend to over perform in another.
We can play around with this by converting the state by state probabilities to z-scores, defining the upper and lower the bounds, imposing dependence between the states using the covariance matrix, and then computing the cumulative probability using the multi variate normal cdf.
This is where this gets interesting.
If we define cov = [1,0,0; 0,1,0; 0,0,1] with ones on the main diag and zeros off (0 correlation between the state by state results) we can plug in our probabilities based off the polling and arrive at a cumulative probability that the Dems win = 12.375% again.
However, if we all for moderate correlation between the three states:
cov = [1,0.5,0.5; 0.5, 1, 0.5; 0.5,0.5,1], the cumulative probability that the dem wins rises to 24.7%.
If we go back and use the vote shares among these states from the 2012, 2016, 2020 elections to estimate the covariance matrix, we end up with extremely high correlation among these states. In fact, the estimated cov matrix is:
Cov = [1,.99,.99;.99,1,.99;.99,.99,1] – (yes that’s how correlated these states vote shares were over the past three elections!)
Then the cumulative probability the dems win becomes 44.9%.
What this means is that since these states voting shares are highly correlated, they are almost perfectly linked. Under that senario, it effectively turns the problem into a single event where the overall probability is determined by the average probability across the states. Thus, why the betting markets have it at about 50/50, even though the dems have to run the table on WI, MI, and PA.
What I think this means for Harris is she shouldn’t worry about who helps her in Michigan or whatever, she should worry about who helps her on average across all of the states. That would probably be Josh Shapiro.
5. August 2024 at 08:47
I said:
“Lots of people think in moralistic terms, and as a result their their thinking on issues of race and gender lacks nuance.”
Sara said:
“Whites and Asians are discriminated against, not blacks.”
I personally know of cases of blacks being discriminated against because of fear they would not be able to be fired if doing poorly.
“socialist Gretchen”
Sara, you are the socialist advocating that my tax dollars be spent on boondoggles like Bitcoin investments.
Keep the government’s dirty hands off the Bitcoin market!!
Michael, You said:
“We are ridiculous”
You certainly are.
Scott, There are millions of such women, but exactly zero get elected president. Ever wonder why?
Student, One could probably narrow it down to just Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. If she wins those two, she’ll win Michigan.
Everyone, Lots of people are sexist without knowing they are sexist.
5. August 2024 at 08:55
@ Scott
Whitmer was considered for VP, she does not want to be on the ticket.
She has a good shot at being a real presidential contender and does not want to ruin her shot by being added to a ticket that will likely lose to Donald Trump.
I also agree with you, she would be a much better choice than Kamala and in an open convention, would have likely been able to come out ahead. Again though, she does not want to risk the chance she may lose to Trump even with her name on top of the ticket.
Better for her to let this play out, come back in 4 years.
5. August 2024 at 09:01
Tom, Trump is likely to be a much weaker candidate than the next GOP nominee in 4 years. Someone like Nikki Haley would be 10 points ahead right now.
When a person becomes VP, they dramatically increase their probability of eventually becoming the nominee. If Shapiro is the VP nominee, and they lose, I wouldn’t be surprised to see him get the presidential nomination in 2028.
5. August 2024 at 09:11
I think that Trump should have picked a woman, and was stupid not to.
Harris is going to pick a white man for her VP pick, not because two women seem weird, but because Harris wants to credibly signal to white men that Democrats don’t hate them. If she doesn’t get enough votes from white men she will lose. Listen to Ezra Klein’s interview with Tim Walz on the politics of this.
5. August 2024 at 09:15
Some have been saying that Shapiro may not be chosen because he is Jewish and that would anger the Democrats’ pro-Palestinian faction. I hope that Shapiro’s Jewishness plays zero role in Harris’s decision, but who knows? Ironic that the party that fancies itself the “inclusive” party has probably excluded a VP candidate for being a woman and at least seems to be considering a candidate’s Jewishness as being a negative.
If Biden hadn’t chosen Harris at least in part due to her race and gender, then Whitmer probably would not be excluded now due to her gender. There seems to be a lesson in that, although the people that would benefit from learning that lesson don’t seem to be…
5. August 2024 at 09:24
Agreed. Whoever wins WI is probably winning PA and almost certainly MI too.
While VPs don’t matter all that much, Harris should pick a white male moderate with broad appeal. I think waltz and Shapiro do that.
Trump made the worst pick he possibly could have. An extremist type that under performed in Ohio and so would likely underperform across the Great Lakes region. He should have picked someone like Haley. A woman that broadens his appeal across a swath of the population.
Trump is going to get it in the next presidential debate, blame it on Vance and dump him by October lol.
5. August 2024 at 09:40
@Scott
If she accepted the VP pick, then got crushed in Nov, I am almost certain she would not be looked at in another 4 years. She does not want to be tied to Kamala because she knows what a weak candidate she is at the national level. Better to wait 4 years.
My guess is, she (and others) are calculating a loss in November with Kamala as the top of the ticket, and they want to be able to point at how terrible Trump is for the next 4 years and run against someone like Vance in 2028. That to me seems like a much better pathway to the Oval for aspiring politicians than gambling that Kamala can keep it together.
5. August 2024 at 10:27
Tom, You need to slow down and think a bit more:
“then got crushed in Nov”
There’s almost no chance of this. Everyone agrees it will be a close race. In any case, Mondale actually was “crushed” as the VP nominee in 1980 and became the presidential nominee in 1984, so your point is moot.
5. August 2024 at 10:32
FWIW, I made exactly these same calculations when speculation about Biden dropping out strongly emerged and then when it was clear Harris was the chosen one. I received exactly the same response you did. I was similarly baffled.
5. August 2024 at 11:04
@BC, I don’t buy it. The new FLOTUS is Jew. It’s actually amusing to be honest the line up. We have a old white guy married to a foreign sex worker running against a first generation Indian immigrant married to a Jew. And for their ladies-in-waiting, you have a cross dressing crypto-atheist white apologist married to yet another Indian and a unknown but most like Jew married to a Jew. So of the eight, we got three Jews, two Indians, a token white, and two other whites both of whom don’t really like American whites.
The more amusing thing, and it’s something I think Trump’s team needs to push is both Harris and Shapiro were prosecutors who made their living and life’s working sending innocent black men to prison while protecting bad cops. That might fly with the average GOP voter and the working class wing of the DNC but I don’t think it would with their progressive and youth wings. Just paint them for what they are, anti-black misandists who hold nothing but contempt for the poor and massive Zionists..
5. August 2024 at 11:54
Kevin, Yup, there’s way more sexism than people realize.
Peter, You said:
“I think Trump’s team needs to push is both Harris and Shapiro were prosecutors who made their living and life’s working sending innocent black men to prison while protecting bad cops.”
So Trump wins by saying “Harris is just like me”? Trump is famous for advocating sending innocent black guys to prison, even after they’ve been exonerated.
5. August 2024 at 12:18
Scott,
Out of the whole of women in the history of the United States we have 0 that have been elected. So what good is your question that I look to the number of mean women elected as a guide to whether a rude and mean one could get elected? Answer: nothing.
Consider how many rude, mean men have gotten elected. And I’m talking about Trump level rude and mean. That would be ONE. You wouldn’t have suspected him possible until you saw him.
5. August 2024 at 13:13
“There’s almost no chance of this. Everyone agrees it will be a close race. In any case, Mondale actually was “crushed” as the VP nominee in 1980 and became the presidential nominee in 1984, so your point is moot.”
Ha! It’s funny, I went back 10 elections to remind myself of who was the VP on the losing ticket, and you pulled out the one from 11 elections ago. Of course, Mondale lost that one pretty convincingly too, so I’m not sure what that proves.
For the record, here are the last 10 VPs on the losing ticket. Have any of these candidates seen their political career prospects go up after losing? Genuine question, as I’m certainly not a close follower of politics and don’t have a great memory. I mean, Paul Ryan became Speaker, which isn’t bad at all, but was out of politics completely a few years later. Any others?
2020: Mike Pence (Republican)
2016: Tim Kaine (Democratic)
2012: Paul Ryan (Republican)
2008: Sarah Palin (Republican)
2004: John Edwards (Democratic)
2000: Joe Lieberman (Democratic)
1996: Jack Kemp (Republican)
1992: Dan Quayle (Republican)
1988: Lloyd Bentsen (Democratic)
1984: Geraldine Ferraro (Democratic)
5. August 2024 at 14:03
Scott, Use your comment sense. A female Trump would have had zero chance of winning.
Dylan, The more important point is that the betting markets give Harris a 50% chance of winning, and many, many VPs eventually become president. If there were betting markets on this, any person chosen by Harris would see their odds of eventually becoming president go up just on the announcement.
5. August 2024 at 15:13
Scott, betting markets give her nearly a 50% chance now, they were much lower when Biden withdrew and Harris consolidated support (which is reportedly the time that Whitmer declined the VP nod). Looking at this list, it looks like over the last 40 years or so, being the VP on a losing ticket has a pretty decent shot of ending your political career, where if you are on the winning ticket you’ve got a good shot at becoming your party’s nominee for president. From an EV perspective, maybe it is a wash, but considering most only have one shot at it, I can see wanting to maximize your chances.
And, just for my curiosity, I figured I’d take a look at what happened to the above prospective VPs after they lost the election. Adding it here in case anyone else was curious.
Mike Pence – Ran for president in 2024 primary, didn’t get much traction and withdrew early
Tim Kaine – Serving senator
Paul Ryan – Went on to become Speaker, but left political life in 2019
Sarah Palin – Hasn’t served in office since losing the election
John Edwards – Hasn’t served in office since losing the election
Joe Lieberman – Served as Senator until he retired in 2013 – but his 2004 presidential campaign failed to get traction and he withdrew early in the primaries
Jack Kemp – Didn’t serve in office again (but he was already retired from political life when he was chosen by Dole for VP)
Dan Quayle – Hasn’t served in office after losing ’92 election. Ran for president in 2000 and dropped out before New Hampshire
Lloyd Bentsen – Served as Treasury Secretary under Clinton (was already an elder statesmen during the ’88 election, so was unlikely to go on and do his own presidential campaign
Geraldine Ferraro – Never held another elected office
5. August 2024 at 18:28
@BC: You’ve got the political logic exactly backwards. Pandering to her existing liberal base is the LAST thing that Harris needs to do. Not only doesn’t it matter if Harris’s VP pick “would anger the Democrats’ pro-Palestinian faction” … that would actually be a POSITIVE.
The election is very very close. Nothing matters except a tiny number of undecided voters in a handful of swing states. NOTHING ELSE matters. The only thing Harris should be considering is what that tiny population from those few states care about.
Trading a few million votes in California in exchange for a few tens of thousands of votes in Pennsylvania is an excellent transaction. Getting more left-wing liberal Democrats to vote for her helps Harris not at all. Losing their votes doesn’t hurt either. (What? The pro-Palestinian Democrats are going to suddenly decide to vote for Trump? Be serious! At worst, they just don’t vote.)
5. August 2024 at 19:05
We don’t disagree on that Scott but the thing is many of Trump’s traditional GOP voters love that hence it’s a selling point whereas not so much on various branches in the DNC. This is a case where he can legitimately smear her with no blowback because how is she going to respond. Also big difference between bluster and actuality, Harris actually imprisoned innocent blacks personally and intentionally, Trump just gave a shout-out to it and then in practice pursued no increased policy of it during his administration; he actually was quite restrained in lawfare as opposed to Obama and Biden.
It’s actually one of my bigger disappointments with Trump this go round. You think he would learn from his recent experience with the legal system but nope, hrs doubling down on it and he’s a fool for doing so.
What he should do is day one just issue a pardon to any Federal prisoner where there is a record they registered as a Republican at any point or gave money to one. That and every black man who can show his victim was another black man.
5. August 2024 at 19:11
“Studies of bias for or against female candidates have been in the news. These studies have zero bearing on the question of bias toward female candidates *running for president*.”
Zero?
I won’t ask for a defense of that word choice, I’m just wondering what the reasoning would be if we replaced “zero bearing” with something like “less bearing than you might think.” (smile emoji)
5. August 2024 at 19:46
“Whitmer looks like the sort of woman that men would vote for:”
Bill Maher made the joke (in a bit some time back on who would replace Biden) that many Americans may think Whitmer has already been the president, because so many TV shows have portrayed the president using an actress that looks just like her. (With 6 pretty good examples).
This is a fun clip:
https://x.com/truegretch/status/1811405683612406216
5. August 2024 at 20:35
Scott: I don’t know anything specific about Whitmer’s politics or where she would stand relative to the current admin, but if I were in her shoes I would have declined too. Harris is not a great candidate in general and the Dems have a lot of problems to answer for – which is why Harris is running neck and neck with an imbecile like Trump, even though she’s largely free of Biden’s personal low approval ratings.
Regarding discrimination against some minorities, what about the possibility that some minorities really do believe that every percieved slight has racist motivation and therefore they *are* more likely to claim racism when none has been directed at them? What about the possibility acting on these mispercieved believes causes other disruptions that inhibit the work of others, so that even before the person files a claim, they are already causing problems?
Combine that with the fact that they actually may well be less competent than their peers, having been hired *because* they are minorities – even though on average they less educated than other groups; and the fact that in some communities – especially black and native American – they are taught from day one that they have been denied opportunities due to racism and that racism is everywhere around them and it you have a recipe for a lot of inflammatory, disruptive and false claims about racism.
After all, isn’t that what Critical Race Theory claims? That racism is built into the system? No one has to conciously implement it – it’s already there in everything (everyone not X-minority) does. If that’s the case than every slight is a racist slight.
Kall it Kapernick Syndrome. Kap doesn’t seem to have been discriminated against for his race. After all, he did get the starting job on a contending team – making a fat paycheck in the process. But when things went wrong all of a suden it was all about race. His conduct became highly disruptive to the team and racism or not, the disruption he caused was a *real* problem and a real justification for: a) keeping him benched; b) letting him go; an c) no one else picking him up. Is it possible Kap suffered some amount of racism? Sure. But everyone suffers at times from the misperceptions of others. But most of Kap’s suffering was a direct result of an unrestrained and mostly unjustified outrage about racism combined with an bone-headed ignorance of how his conduct affected others around him and how he put himself in a position where the team had no choice but to bench his sorry ass. Kap is just the boy who cried wolf.
Many people of all races and colors suffer from unhappiness because of mispercieved slights. There have been several popular books writen about it, including the famous “How to Win Friends and Influence People”, and others that help people revise their thinking using techniques like CBT. But I can only imagine how much worse this problem can be in people who are actually trained for all their lives that everything they experience outside their own community *actually is a racist slight*. It’s really sad. Personally I believe this is perpetuated for selfish reasons by black leadership, which relies almost exclusively on percieved racism for it’s justification to exist.
Cheers sir!
And remember Scott: Its never much fun to destroy prosperity. So why not vote Democrat and get it over with quickly?
5. August 2024 at 21:06
@Don Geddis, I was pretty clear that I hope Shapiro’s Jewishness has zero impact on whether he is chosen as VP, so I don’t think that *I* have the political logic backwards at all. I was just reporting the antisemitism that Dems themselves have been talking about: [https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4812605-jewish-democrats-josh-shapiro/].
For what it’s worth, Dearborn, MI, has a heavy Muslim population — apparently the largest Arab-majority city in the US [https://alumni.umich.edu/education-gateway/a-brief-history-of-dearborn-michigan-the-first-arab-american-majority-city-in-the-us/] — so we’re not just talking about California Social Justice Warriors. Dearborn is represented in Congress by notorious Squad member Rashida Tlaib, recently censured for “promoting false narratives regarding the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and for calling for the destruction of the state of Israel” [https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-resolution/845/text].
6. August 2024 at 07:41
“But most of Kap’s suffering was a direct result of an unrestrained and mostly unjustified outrage about racism combined with an bone-headed ignorance of how his conduct affected others around him and how he put himself in a position where the team had no choice but to bench his sorry ass.”
Great and creative n = 1 analysis, but why not just look it up?
In 2015 the 49ers had a new coach (for trivia buffs, Jim Tomsula) and the team won the opener, then lost 6 out 7, with a point differential of -92 in those eight games. Kaepernick was then benched, but also was injured, having left shoulder surgery (and other surgeries) during and/or after the season.
In 2016 the 49ers had another new coach (Chip Kelly) and won the opener again, then dropped the next four by 57 points and Kaepernick’s SA was put back in the starting lineup for the remaining 11 games of the season. (1 – 10 record, -142 PD)
In 2017 the 49ers had another new coach and released him. I think that for most people, understanding the arc of Kaepernick’s career from this point on is mostly a function of their ideological beliefs.
6. August 2024 at 07:51
Kangaroo, Stop wasting your time typing, and do something useful.
anon/portly, Close to zero. The perception is that the top dog should be male. How does showing that people accept woman in lower positions address that perception?
Even among men, the taller candidate usually wins.
6. August 2024 at 09:21
Good points, but women also buy into these stereotypes, and at times actively promote them. Trump won in 2016 because white women favored him over voting for a perfectly competent and experienced white woman that would’ve also been the first white woman president. Maybe it’ll be different this time.
6. August 2024 at 09:27
Samuel, I complete agree, but don’t say “but”, as your comment in no way modifies anything I said. But yes, you are correct. Many women are biased against strong powerful women.
7. August 2024 at 11:05
“The perception is that the top dog should be male. How does showing that people accept woman in lower positions address that perception?”
Go back to the other quote a sec:
“Studies of bias for or against female candidates have been in the news. These studies have zero bearing on the question of bias toward female candidates *running for president*.”
Now consider three outcomes:
1. Studies of bias for or against female candidates show no bias against female candidates running for lower positions.
2. Studies of bias for or against female candidates show a strong bias against female candidates running for lower positions.
3. Studies of bias for or against female candidates show a strong bias *for* female candidates running for lower positions.
Should we expect “bias toward female candidates running for president” to be the same, or for that matter even roughly the same, regardless of which outcome (1, 2 or 3) obtained?
Claiming or even demonstrating “there’s an important difference between two things” is not the same thing as claiming or demonstrating “there are no important similarities between two things.”
7. August 2024 at 16:16
If Trump wins even one of those 3 states (as I expect), Trump wins the election.
If you really believe Donald is going to win you can make some money. As I write this Harris is +10 at Predictit. She’s also ahead in the polls — including in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — and in the resulting electoral college projection as per Nate Silver. That’s quite a sudden fall for Trump. Why? What’s happened? Nothing surprising…
During the NY criminal trial as a NY lawyer I followed the coverage of another NY lawyer who is a top litigator (victor at the US Supreme Court), knows the law at issue, knows Trump well personally (formerly flying on the presidential plane with him, etc.) and who watched the trial daily: George Conway. His analysis was that while Donald was 100% fully guilty, the jury’s “we find him incredibly guilty” (as per The Producers) 34-of-34 verdict was entirely on Donald. He blocked his own lawyers’ best arguments, forced them to make stupid ones, and acted like an arrogant jackbutt before the jury all the way through.
Conway predicted: ‘This is how the Democrats will win in November. Just get out of Donald’s way, let him be his jackbutt self and laugh at him. He can’t stand that — he’ll roll over his own best advisors to double down as a double-jackbutt. It’ll be like with the jury all over again. Democrats are beginning to understand this.’ (George gets credit for putting his own money where his mouth is, with effect!) And this is exactly what’s been happening. You *know* Donald rolled over the RNC to pick a VP candidate with the worst polling numbers in polling history. You *know* he had a script and talking points to use with the black journalists and ignored them to just rant like himself. It’s not going to stop.
OTOH, IIRC, you preferred the trial analysis of what’s-his-name at Reason, not a lawyer, no knowledge of the NY law, or of Trump. Why? Because he’s libertarian? (‘Trump, victim of the over-reaching state.’ Cough, gag.) Gotta watch that confirmation bias stuff, it’s not just “them”, it’s us too. As to the quality of libertarian political acumen, note the political influence of libertarians generally and the Libertarian Party in particular, and read Jonathan Haidt on why. Always consume with extra doses of salt and alternative viewpoints, check the likes of Conway too.
Who will win in November? I don’t know, but I do know two things: (1) The best estimate of a future market price is the current one, and (2) Donald’s self-destructive narcissistic behavior is not going to change from what has produced for him the worst polling VP candidate ever, the black journalists rant, the epic 34/34 guilties, the $454 million civil fraud case disaster (MUCH, MUCH worse for him in every way than the criminal case, yet somehow ignored by you and all the political pundits), the disastrous $88 million E Jean Harris sex assault case, the Trump Org criminal tax fraud conviction, etc., etc…
Starting from behind, today, is this the kind of behavior recommended to stop a plunge and lead a turnaround into success? I dunno. Things do happen. But in a 50-50 bet if you want to take Donald, I’ll be happy to take the other side. While if you want Donald to lose, just sit back, enjoy his show and LAUGH at him! 🙂
7. August 2024 at 18:52
The algorithm never fails!
Ha! They surely are. Immediately after I posted that comment the all-knowing algorithm sent me this from Times Radio UK…
I don’t know if the report of these leaks is real or Democrat propaganda. But the message is the same either way. The Dems have finally figured it out. Don’t get angry, deny his self importance, laugh! It works.
This is exactly how to handle a Cluster B personality (Narcissistic, Borderline, Histrionic.*) I’ve had the unhappy challenge of dealing with a couple in my personal life, and the professional joy of having one such opposing party blow apart on the witness stand. This is exactly how you get them to blow apart. The Dems have figured out, if eight years late. Maybe by watching the lawyers who have gotten Trump to blow himself apart at the cost to himself of $454 million, $85 million, and 34/34 counts convicted in those various cases, among others. It works!
* Also Anti-Social Personality, but don’t try to handle these, they sometimes qualify as “psychopath”.
7. August 2024 at 21:15
anon/portly, Fine, the studies have very little bearing . . .
Jim, I’ve been laughing at him for 8 years, so you are preaching to the converted. I’ve also been calling him a senile old man—glad others are beginning to agree.
I think you misunderstood me on the legal case. I don’t recall saying he wouldn’t be convicted, I said the charge was bogus. Lots of people get convicted of bogus charges—recall Mike Milken? In any case, he deserved to be convicted for those other cases where the Supreme Court let him off, so it’s perhaps cosmic justice.
Speaking of humor, Trump’s been complaining that the Dems have been passing laws allowing felons to vote. Who’s going to tell him?
8. August 2024 at 10:21
“Fine, the studies have very little bearing . . .”
It seems to me it could very little, or a lot. Why the certitude? Why am I supposed to think the “very little bearing” view is insightful? (The argument I would expect to get from a random proponent of this view is casual empiricism, but that to me is too easily refuted). I lean towards “a lot” but am open to arguments.
8. August 2024 at 12:18
“The Dems have finally figured it out. Don’t get angry, deny his self importance, laugh! It works.”
This is right, I think. He’ll say something outrageous and people will get outraged, but Trump’s purpose wasn’t the content of the outrageous statement, it was to generate a response.
Still, I wonder if the Dems really have it figured out, or if they’re just temporarily giddy. Walz seems overly feisty.
Jim Glass doesn’t mention “simply don’t respond.”
I’ve had to deal with a situation in my own life not unlike that faced by Jim Glass, and I’ve found that simply not responding, just moving on with a minimal response, has worked really well. And this person, who was for a few years estranged from everyone in our extended family – I was stuck dealing with them – has become much more reasonable. (I like to think I played a part but who knows).
It never would have occurred to me to think about Trump in this context. The person in my life belongs to a cult, or cult-like organization. Is the cult leader in the cult, if the cult is devoted to themselves? Hmmm…
8. August 2024 at 12:25
I’ve been wondering if SS agrees at all with this, from Yglesias (points 6 and 7 from “13 Ways of looking at Tim Walz”):
“The big issue to me is that once again, a flawed set of identity considerations seems to have unduly limited Democrats’ options — in 2020, Biden seems to have only considered Black women, while in 2024, Harris seems to have only considered white men.”
“If you want a popular swing-state governor who is not Josh Shapiro, the answer is Gretchen Whitmer. If you want a Minnesota politician with a strong track record of over-performing in the rural midwest, the answer is Amy Klobuchar. If you want a talented political communicator, the answer is Pete Buttigieg (who is a white man, but who seems to have had being gay counted as a strike against him).”
I wonder if partly Yglesias is applying the “people care for three days and then move on” idea, which I’ve seen referred to a lot lately.
9. August 2024 at 05:45
It’s quite funny that people are so concerned about Donald Trump’s rudeness.
They were upset when he called Rosie O’Donnel a fat pig, but never mentioned that Rosie attacked him first.
Sumner and democrats like him, love to attack people verbally, but when the person they target swings back they begin to cry. They go on a temper tantrum about kindness, and compassion, and empathy, and love — all of which they don’t have. The democrats are some of the most vicious, vile people I’ve ever met.
These same people protest over Israel’s bomardment of Gaza, yet they don’t protest when Yemeni citizens are starving, or protest when muslims kill Hindus in Bangladesh because they don’t care.
CNN won’t cover that. They won’t tell you that Muslims are dragging hindus through the streets, beating them to death with stones.
That’s not interesting to those who set the narrative, and to those who have an agenda.
The democrat party is mentally sick. Be careful this november, because this might be your last opportunity to hold onto your freedoms. Give them enough power, and they will send you to a gulag somewhere, where they will beat you or starve you to death. Marxism is not something you want to flirt with.
9. August 2024 at 14:37
anon/portly, My claim is not just based on introspection, I’ve met women with exactly this perspective—women are fine for most political jobs, but not president.
I tend to agree with Yglesias on these things, and I would have preferred Shapiro or Whitmer to Walz. But I think he might underrate the effectiveness of Walz. High information progressives like him, so you end the risk of a repeat of Chicago 1968. And low information voters think he comes across as a macho moderate. In political terms, a win-win.
Edward, What’s wrong with those white boys in the UK? Why are they rioting?
9. August 2024 at 22:11
after Harris was picked. Whitmer completely dropped off the list as a possible VP candidate. Why is that?
Whitman, Harris and the DNC all agreeing that a two-woman ticket would be a bad idea works for me, as obviously they’d be right. Decades of research also show that on election day the tall out-poll the short, the handsome out-poll the gawky, those with deep voices out-poll the squeak — all the way back to the Kennedy-Nixon debate where people who listened on the radio reported Nixon won on substance but the TV watchers went big-time for tall, handsome, charming, JFK. Is all this because short, unattractive, squeaky voiced men are viewed as “non-male human beings” too? Nah.
Science says facial looks predict 70% of election results. Etc. Which shows that while voters aren’t exactly stupid — having on average an average IQ — they are staggeringly stupidly superficial in making their choices. Why? It’s simple…
Voters are rationally massively ignorant and apathetic about politics (as political scientists and economists know in the classroom but forget in real life). Most neither know nor care. The proof is that even after the parties spend gigadollars to engage them every possible way, good and evil, to get them to vote, still the turnout in presidential elections runs from only 50% to rarely just over 60%. The *marginal votes* that win the election are pulled from 50+% of voters that are the most ignorant and apathetic. Of course their choices are the most superficial and ignorant, and most likely to be turned by even micro-biases.
A few weeks ago I was in a local Italian restaurant and the staff was going on about how they were going to vote for Trump because Sleepy Joe was too old. We’re friends so I teased them with: “What do you think about a dozen of Trump’s closest aids going to prison, and another 20+ saying they will never again have anything to do with him?” Their reaction was, “Huh? Don’t know about that. But we can’t have an old man representing the USA!”
Ageism is a thing too on election day. But now Trump’s the old man, and the polls have reversed. Democracy in action.
10. August 2024 at 10:06
“Science says facial looks predict 70% of election results.”
Science? The link is to a 2007 Psych paper – what does that have to do with science? You meant “this likely bogus study,” surely. Okay, maybe I am overstating things but Psychology has been Ground Zero in the replication crisis.
10. August 2024 at 15:31
“My claim is not just based on introspection, I’ve met women with exactly this perspective—women are fine for most political jobs, but not president.”
My thought process is/was different.
One thing I thought of was a simpler area with a similar bias. How about the bias against black NFL head coaches? Even as the bias against black coaches and especially against black OC’s and DC’s (the talent pool for head coaches, more or less, except for NCAA HC’s) goes down, the bias against the head coach being black might persist.
There’s an “income effect” and a “substitution effect.” As you get more black coordinators, even for the same head coach bias you’ll still get more black head coaches because of the effect on the talent pool (the “income effect”), even if for a particular black OC or DC the receptiveness of owners towards them becoming their head coach (the “substitution effect”) doesn’t change.
Of course in this situation you only really have 32 voters, owners or GMs or owner/GM pairs. Obviously the bias won’t be the same for all 32, it’ll be greater in some and lesser in others.
You can immediately see that the high-bias owners are conferring a competitive advantage on the low-bias owners, the standard story, and then it becomes a question of under what conditions this situation will persist and for how long.
Of course the woman-as-president thing is very different, you have tens of millions of voters to consider, and only one president instead of 32 head coaches. The voters will get punished by electing less talented male presidents in place of more talented female presidents, but how will the voters know that? International comparisons?
A simple model might be to divide the voters into Dem Primary voters, GOP Primary voters, and Independents.
There’s obviously a limit on the strength of the “woman as president” bias since Hillary Clinton did win the popular vote against a man. Of course Trump was an absurdly weak candidate but then again it isn’t at all clear that HRC herself wasn’t an unusually weak candidate, for a woman even.
Once again as the bias against women as Governors and Senators declines, you’ve at least got some sort of “income effect” or talent pool effect, increasing the number of women presidential nominees over time, even if the receptiveness of voting groups towards any individual female candidate stays the same.
This is of course assuming that some women will have an appeal/funding/luck/talent (/whatever) advantage over the best male opponent that overcomes the women-as-prez bias. But in that case what’s the chance they’ll have it over the male nominee from the other party?
At first glance (at least not at my first glance) it’s hard to show that a persistent “substitution effect” might not dominate. You might even suspect that if for the voters of one party the “substitution effect” declines more rapidly it could even disadvantage them, as they’ll start nominating women who will then lose in the general election, especially if the “woman as president” bias is strong enough to cause some voters from their own party to defect.
I’ll stop here, as a courtesy to the estimated 0.38 readers who have read this far.
10. August 2024 at 22:22
>Jim Glass wrote:
anon/portly wrote:
“Science says facial looks predict 70% of election results.”
You meant ‘this likely bogus study,’ surely.
Whenever I say “science says”, irony is implicit. But I haven’t been posting here since a long time, so I’ll have to add smileys now. Though I hate them. 🙂
As to the rest, not at all. You make an assertion ignoring all evidence. When theory and data agree 100% that’s pretty convincing. Theory says the marginal voter (and, typically, average eligible voter) is profoundly ignorant and easily manipulated emotionally. That’s been known since Plato. Also that we are all a stew of subconscious animal emotions and biases that drive our conscious thinking. That’s been documented from Freud through Kahneman and beyond. Thus, votes are easily directed by all kinds of ‘stupid’ emotional biases. (You haven’t noticed?)
For the data, you can easily find the “decades of research” I mentioned by Googling ‘voter bias attractiveness’. My first search page produced 40+ studies (I stopped counting) from 2021 back to 1974, from countries all over the world. This is from the second one:
QED
11. August 2024 at 15:22
Jim, I think you misunderstood me on the legal case. … I said the charge was bogus.
I understood you. There is nothing bogus about the charge. Try this on …
My understanding is that you have university connections and are married. Imagine you had an affair with an undergraduate student who threatens to go public in a way that will cost you your university job, professional reputation, and marriage. So you pay her off with $130k. You could give her a personal check or bring her a backpack full of cash taken out of your personal bank account, no legal problem. But why would you do such an honest thing?
You also own a business, collecting extortionately profitable modern-day rents from real estate. You have some partners. So of course you run your 100% personal-expense bimbo-payoff through the business, via reporting false business expense items, “legal fees” and such — and intentionally issuing false 1099s to payees “documenting” them, which is a crime. You file corresponding false business financial statements, which is a crime, and resulting false tax statements, which is a crime, on both state and federal level. 26 U.S. Code § 7206. Do you see the word “felony” there?
The fact that the state-level reporting crime intentionally and willfully furthers a federal felony upgrades the state offense. (For some reason Reason obsesses about the election fundraising felony. Why? I can name a bunch of other felonies in play here that will do. But let’s stick with this.) Now, oooops, the state and IRS catch you.
Your defense is: “What did I do? I merely paid off my ex-girlfiend! This is America!”. And they ask you, “WHY did you run your payoff to your ex-girlfiend through your business accounts?” You say, “Because I wanted the cost to be picked up by my partners and the taxpayers, obviously. This is America!” Them: “That is the definition of fraud.” You: “Help! I’m being oppressed! I’m as innocent as Michael Milken!” (NO, don’t say that!!! They might agree with you!) Well, good luck with that defense. 🙂
SURELY you see the need for law requiring honest financial reporting. Say, “Enron/Ken Lay through Madoff and beyond.” How this somehow is supposed to be “bogus” is beyond me. Do you have anybody managing retirement investments for you? OK, now let’s look at enforcement…
A quick check finds 9,000 of these cases in the last 10 years. At *worst* this offense is a Class E felony, typical penalty for a first offender being a fine and/or probation. Of course the *huge majority* are settled with the admission “it’s a fair cop”, the financial reporting being adjusted, maybe some interest paid on a tax bill, no criminal guilt, done. (Not exactly Pierre’s Leviathan stomping on the necks of the world’s formerly free John Galts!) A few become misdemeanors. But it takes a Trumpian megalomaniac narcissist to turn such a thing into a Steel Cage Death Match with 34 criminal counts — and to get himself “guiltied” all 34 times, via megalomaniacally stupid orders to his lawyers and open contempt for the judge and jury.
Poor billionaire Donald, hapless innocent victim of the mighty State. What did he do wrong?
11. August 2024 at 16:54
anon/portly. OK, but to be clear I’m thinking the bias is probably only 1% or 2%, so Hillary winning the popular vote isn’t a significant data point.
Jim, Life’s too short for me to investigate your claims, but that’s a heckuva impressive comment, so I’ll assume you win the debate.
BTW, his problem on the secret documents case was also the cover-up, which was worse than him having the documents, so that supports your point.