The wisdom of Monty Python
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.
Tags:
8. November 2016 at 19:57
Trump says he’ll replace Scalia with someone like him. He wants to privatize infrastructure. He wants to repeal Obamacare.
That’s a start. And he knows that profits do not eat up overhead.
8. November 2016 at 19:57
Meet President Trump’s foreign policy advisor:
http://www.politico.com/blogs/2016-gop-primary-live-updates-and-results/2016/03/trump-foreign-policy-adviser-220853
Nobody here lives in the Baltics, right?
8. November 2016 at 20:00
What a dark day for the United States of America. The implications on monetary policy are horrifying, and they are not nearly the most horrifying implications of a Trump presidency. Let’s hope the whole campaign was a sham. Let’s hope we were wrong about Trump.
8. November 2016 at 20:03
‘The implications on monetary policy are horrifying….’
How could he be any worse than Obama, who thought it was the consensus of the economics profession that you fight recession with fiscal policy. He also ignored the vacancies on the Fed Board.
8. November 2016 at 20:12
Your beloved home state of Wisconsin can still save us.
8. November 2016 at 20:26
http://www.electionbettingodds.com not looking too good at the moment. Yesterday they had HRC odds of winning at 82%, and 20% and hour ago.
8. November 2016 at 20:58
Trump makes Brexit look like the pre-game warm-ups.
Trump make Truman’s upset look trivial.
The American commentariat need to ask itself: “What bubble are we living in?”
Why are voting populations repudiating our story lines?
Orthodox macroeconomists need to ask: “We say living standards are rising. The voting population has another view. Are we missing something?”
And why is the issue always the minimum wage, but not property zoning? Which hurts the middle and working classes more?
Hint: Not the minimum wage.
So why is the minimum wage always the topic, but not property zoning?
8. November 2016 at 21:03
538 (Nate Silver) is now giving Trump an 84% chance of being the next Prez.
8. November 2016 at 21:09
‘Looking good, Ray;’
https://fairmodel.econ.yale.edu/vote2016/index2.htm
‘I have been asked whether I believe any of this? The coefficient estimates are based on data going back 100 years—25 elections. They show that the economy has significant effects on voting behavior, as does the duration variable. In this election the duration variable is working against the Democrats, and G and Z are quite low by historical standards, which also works against the Democrats. P is low, which is positive for the Democrats, but this is the only bright light for them. If one assumes that the empirical regularities gleaned from the past 25 elections, as reflected in the coefficient estimates, hold for this election, one would conclude that the Democrats’ chances are quite poor.
‘It is no secret, of course, that Donald Trump is an unusual choice for a candidate. It may be that people who would otherwise vote for the Republicans because of the sluggish economy and a desire for change will vote for the Democrats because of Donald Trump’s characteristics that they don’t like. If so, then one might say that personalities overwhelmed the economy in affecting voting behavior for this election, which means that the equation’s predictions could be way off. The econometric analysis behind this work assumes business as usual, which may not be the case this time. There is no way I can test this before the fact, and even after the fact it is only one observation.’
8. November 2016 at 21:13
Recession followed by NGDP target?
8. November 2016 at 21:20
Cameron, Monetary policy is one of the few issues I’m not worried about.
8. November 2016 at 21:39
Do the state polls in Wisconsin have any parallel? Brexit did not miss this bad. The nationwide polls only missed by 1-2 points.
8. November 2016 at 21:51
Scott,
Isn’t bad monetary policy responsible for Trump?
8. November 2016 at 21:55
At this point I hope he gets impeached or more likely gets bored and quits after a bit. Why wouldn’t he, he won it, he proved us wrong. Why actually bother with it?
So weird how different the 2 halves of America see things. Strange times.
8. November 2016 at 21:59
Scott you said “Monetary policy is one of the few issues I’m not worried about.”
Really? We have to now think about who Trump will replace Yellen with. He’ll want gold standard back and tight money.
Or is it that you don’t worry about monetary policy because there are couple of more serious things to worry about now (like nuclear war)?
8. November 2016 at 22:16
“Really? We have to now think about who Trump will replace Yellen with. He’ll want gold standard back and tight money.”
I started a similar line of thought, but then realized Trump may be quite bullish for NGDP specifically. All of his policies are a complete drunken sailer fiscally. Barring actually going back to a gold standard which will offset the fiscal policy, Trump’s fiscal policy can keep us away from the zero bound.
Now, this is NGDP. RGDP could theoretically be absolutely terrible with possible complete abdication of free market principles. Venezuela and Zimbabwe are probably able to hit their NGDP targets and then some.
8. November 2016 at 22:19
“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?”
-Yup.
“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?”
-Yup, although I don’t think formal membership in the Axis of Resistance is on the table, only a partnership.
8. November 2016 at 22:23
I live in Finland. Me and my colleagues were just only half-jokingly wondering if we can now go to war with Russia like our grandfathers.
It’s not only Americans who are affected by this. The question in Eastern Europe this morning is that what will Putin do now that his man is in the White House. I’m more scared of this result that anything in my lifetime.
8. November 2016 at 22:25
This rambling post by Sumner should have been tagged as the “Sumner Derangement Syndrome”. As Andy observes, Trump is as likely to back a gold standard as anybody. (Luckily IMO money is largely neutral so it won’t really matter).
8. November 2016 at 22:27
@Andy – Off-topic – I’m reading a pretty good war book: A Frozen Hell: The Russo-Finnish Winter War of 1939-1940 [William Trotter]. As you may know, the Finns actually had the advantage over the Russians due to the latter’s incompetence. It was no accident the Finns won the early stages of the war.
8. November 2016 at 22:29
THE FAT LADY HAS SUNG – To quote a book title by a Southern author (and would likely be a Trump supporter) “It’s all over but the shoutin'” – Rick Bragg (“this haunting, harrowing, gloriously moving recollection of a life on the American margin is the story of Rick Bragg, who grew up dirt-poor in northeastern Alabama, seemingly destined for either the cotton mills or the penitentiary, and instead became a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The New York Times. It is the story of Bragg’s father, a hard-drinking man with a murderous temper and the habit of running out on the people who needed him most…”)
Good night and good fight! Congrats to E. Harding, who called it though he lost nerve at the end (and predicted Clinton would win by 1%). This election is undoubtably the biggest upset in US presidential history! Congrats to the winners, though I never would have voted for you.
8. November 2016 at 22:37
“I live in Finland. Me and my colleagues were just only half-jokingly wondering if we can now go to war with Russia like our grandfathers.”
-You’re a paranoid idiot. Russia has no interest in Finland.
8. November 2016 at 22:53
“You’re a paranoid idiot. Russia has no interest in Finland.”
I hope I am. What about Baltics then? He said that NATO can’t guarantee their safety anymore.
8. November 2016 at 23:33
The actual scientific polls didn’t miss. IBD and LA Times got it. The lying media had a thumb, or a palm on the scale. The major network polls over-sampled Dems, absurdly so. Those of us who saw this won a lot of money, we got lucky but we were also right abut the thrust of it.
8. November 2016 at 23:37
Justin, wrong, Trump did not win the popular vote. The polls were off almost to exactly the same extent as during Brexit (3-4 points).
Andy, here’s a red pill: it never could.
8. November 2016 at 23:51
It’s easy
https://hwasshoi.wordpress.com/2016/09/30/less-is-more/
https://hwasshoi.wordpress.com/2016/11/09/thats-what-i-am-talking-about/
9. November 2016 at 00:30
Given that stocks plunged and gold rose on the Trump victory, does this lead you to reconsider the uncertainty theory? There is much more uncertainty about how bad the Trump presidency will be, than there was about Clinton.
9. November 2016 at 00:49
God help us all
E Harding
Congrats, on your boy winning. The most racist, misogynistic, authoritarian, unqualified presidential candidate has now won.
I have never been more ashamed to be an American.
Does anybody here think Trump will seriously try to repeal the First Amendment and institute one party rule?
This is
A
Dark day for
American freedom and
Democracy.
Does anyone remember the scene in the Star Wars prequels where
Emperor Palpatine
Declares the
Empire? Natalie
Portman says, ” so this
Is
How liberty dies, to thunderous applause.”
9. November 2016 at 00:52
The little people despise the elites(and vice versa), and they just got to show them. A couple centuries ago, they would have invented the guillotine and really shown them. Be happy that all you have to endure is trump.
9. November 2016 at 02:24
Scott, you said; “Why did most Americans vote for Trump? They probably didn’t.”
Not to be pedantic, but no President has ever received the votes of “most Americans.”
9. November 2016 at 02:30
Edward,”… Trump is the most ….authoritarian”. Are you serious? Hillary Clinton is a corrupt, statist, vindictive control freak. who would have further stacked the executive branch, especially the FEC, EPA, FCC, and IRS to crush individual liberty and any opposition for years to come. That’s “how liberty dies.” She treats those around her, especially those “below” her, with contempt and vitriole. As badly flawed as Trump is, he is somewhat accquainted with the notion of freedom.
9. November 2016 at 02:31
Patrick,
“How could he be any worse than Obama, who thought it was the consensus of the economics profession that you fight recession with fiscal policy. He also ignored the vacancies on the Fed Board.”
First thing I heard on the BBC after the concession was a Trump guy gloating about how hey’re goind to rebuild US infrastructure, but with US steel, not Chinese one etc. Approvingly quoted FDR’s New Deal make work programmes too. So if THAT is where it’s goind, it’s going to be even more absurd than imagined.
9. November 2016 at 02:34
The one thing even worse than Trump the man is that half the country seems to think the filth he’s been spewing is basically OK. And this has a signalling effect world wide. On top of that, US foreign policy will be in the hands of complete rookies for a while, in the face of Russia’s and China’s teams that have decades of practice. This basically hands the Pacific sphere of influence to China, and Europe to Russia. As Scott points out hopefully Trump won’t do most of what he said and also let his advisors run the show, absent any competence or interest, save a few pet issues. Basically a rerun of Bush-Cheney. What could possibly go wrong??
But hey, what gives, at least now some dudes in the US now feel better about themselves sticking it to the “elites”(i.e. those people that are actually competent).
9. November 2016 at 02:51
BTW, S&P futures are now off 1.8% pre-bell, which is bad but not the 10% cited earlier by Scott Sumner.
Which leads to an interesting question: In citing stock markets, do we cite only market-hours trading, or pre-bell and after-market trading?
9. November 2016 at 04:05
Summers would quote pre-bell though liquidity effects are far stronger at that time. Though every trader is at their desk on a day like this.
I’m seeing a big discrepancy of the view of stocks tonight. Lots of retail types have buy interest as they see lower taxes and stimulus being good for stocks. While most professionals are fairly bearish.
I can see both camps.
Policy uncertainty is the biggest thing under Trump. Monetary policy is based on an overall policy path. With Yellen down to 1 year remaining on her term anyone could be in charge in a year.
9. November 2016 at 05:43
Scott, Scott, Scott…. a month ago you accused a comment of mine as being the stupidest comment of the year (or words to that effect). I said that you were blinded by your liberal friends, that Trump enjoyed far more support than the polls and media suggested and that the race was more or less over (in favor of Trump). I pointed to my position on the Hypermind leader board as an indication that I had an edge on political events. I’m now 16th on the leader board and my personal bets have earned me a considerable sum of money. Firstly, I’d like an apology for the aforementioned slur. Secondly, I’d like you acknowledge that markets are dominated by people with edges, not by sheer randomness driven by EMH. Finally, I’d like you to stop using your MP blog to shamelessly cheer lead for ideals and policies that over half of your country despise. The Fed is independent of elected government for good reason. You should follow their lead.
9. November 2016 at 05:45
Memorandum
From: A. Deco
To: Messrs. Sumner, Freelander, and Brown.
Date: 9 November 2016
—-
http://previews.123rf.com/images/atic12/atic121403/atic12140300756/26697377-Closeup-portrait-of-senior-mature-man-showing-loser-sign-on-forehead-looking-with-disgust-isolated-w-Stock-Photo.jpg
9. November 2016 at 06:02
http://www.weeklystandard.com/trump-redrew-the-map/article/2005303
————-quote———–
After the 2012 election, Real Clear Politics’s Sean Trende, a respected election data analyist, wrote a piece called “The Case of the Missing White Voters.” Democrats, fresh of Obama’s triumphal reelection were buying the “demography is destiny” explanation for their win hook, line, and sinker. While it’s true the electorate is become less white and this should in theory benefit Democrats, Trende offered up an alternate explanation: The changes in demographics seen in that election were brought on less by the changing ethnic composition of the electorate, and more by a drop off in participation by white voters. In fact, Dave Wasserman notes that while Obama won by a 5 million vote margin in 2012, “about 47 million eligible white voters without a college degree — including 24 million men — didn’t bother to vote” that year. As Patrick Ruffini said last night, “The political class was blinded by the demographic change theory and the immutability of partisanship/demography.” It would certainly appear the he electorate hasn’t changed as much or as fast as was believed. Based on the limited information we have so far, Trump won these rustbelt states because he reactivated rural and white voters that were out there but maybe hadn’t voted in the Obama years.
And while Trump’s strength may have potentially come from “missing” working class white voters, Trump’s overall strength with white voters was notable. “Clinton suffered her biggest losses in the places where Obama was strongest among white voters,” observed New York Times polling guru Nate Cohn. Polls also underestimated Trump’s support among some key portions of the white vote. Trump apparently won non college educated whites by 40 percent, but also won college educated whites by 4 percent—and many pollsters had assumed he would lose the latter group. Further, “exit polls show Trump only losing white women with college degrees by 6 points,” noted pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson. “There’s your shy Trump vote.”
————–endquote—————
9. November 2016 at 06:14
I pretty much agree with almost everything Scott has posted on this blog about economics, and I also thought he was correct in his expectation that Trump would lose.
So what happened yesterday? Here’s what happened to me: I was going to vote for Gary Johnson because he was better on the issues. But as I started filling in my paper ballot late yesterday afternoon, I found myself voting for Trump almost automatically. The thought of four years of listening to that cackling witch pushed me over the edge.
When the outcome became clear last night, my wife said she was deeply satisfied that Hillary Clinton’s 50 years of scheming and machinations had all come to naught. I think she put her finger on it.
9. November 2016 at 06:24
Jeff Orwell,
Just because you claimed there was more support for Trump than seemed apparent doesn’t mean you were right. It’s not enough to guess an outcome. You have to guess it for the right reasons. If you had no scientific data upon which to base your prediction, then it was meaningless.
9. November 2016 at 06:25
Song of the day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0GFRcFm-aY
9. November 2016 at 06:30
Scott, are you surprised that Trump was able to win Wisconsin, at least with the benefit of hindsight? I am shocked that Trump won the election but, at least in hindsight, I am actually not surprised that he won Macomb County, MI, which is where I am from and which is the home of the original Reagan Democrat.
Also, S&P futures seemed to have recovered quite a bit (as of 9:25am), down only 0.90% from yesterday’s close. Rates are way up, however. 30-yr is up about 0.12%, 10-yr up about 0.08%. Do you think the move in interest rates is related or unrelated to election?
9. November 2016 at 06:40
Obama is highly popular after 8 years,
Kennedy and Eisenhower were ‘highly popular’. Clinton and Reagan had high peaks late in the day (for the others it was pretty much downhill, with some flux). Obama has about 52% of the public in his corner as we speak. He was underwater with the public from about May of 2010 to August of 2012 and from May of 2013 until June of 2016. His mean, per Gallup, is higher than 3 post-war presidents (Truman, Ford, Carter) and lower than the other 8. He’s one of the six presidents who have been underwater on average (two others being Nixon and Bush the Younger). What’s unusual about BO is that his floor is higher than the others. I’d attribute that to communal identity politics and something no other president has had since 1966: the media covers for him. The media didn’t cover for Lyndon Johnson after the going got tough in VietNam and never covered for Jimmy Carter. Broadcast media covered for Bilge Clinton, print media did not.
9. November 2016 at 07:40
Matthew, The nationwide polls missed by 3%, that’s similar to Brexit (which was 4%).
Cameron, Maybe partially, but there are surely other factors, like immigration.
Andy, I doubt Trump will bring back the gold standard, but who knows?
Justin, No, the LA Times was more wrong than the average of polls. They had Trump by 3%, whereas Hillary won by 0.6%
Maurizio, My uncertainty theory related to RGDP growth, not stocks. I agree that they don’t like uncertainty, but even there they have recovered.
Dtoh, You said:
“Not to be pedantic,”
Don’t you mean “to be pedantic” 🙂
Sean, I made that point at Econlog this morning.
Geoff, I did not do what you said I did, and no, more than half the country did not vote for Trump–more voted for Hillary than Trump. The national polls were off by 3%, not much different from 2012.
Patrick, Yes, Sean Trende nailed it. Ironically I started off my parade of errors last night with a tweet from Sean that was way off. But on the bigger question he was absolutely right.
Jeff, Interesting comment, and perhaps indicative of what happened last night.
BC, I think it probably does reflect the election, although keep in mind it’s a relatively small increase.
Everyone, Ironically, I’m personally far better off financially with Trump, if only because my wife is in biotech. (Biotech is up dramatically today, as Hillary was promising strict price controls on drugs, and that had been hammering biotech stocks for a year.) I’ll also probably pay less tax under Trump, etc. But I still find the election results appalling—I just don’t take it personally. Bad stuff happens all the time, and I don’t get depressed every time a tsunami kills 100,000 people, so I’m not going to lose sleep over Trump. Just wait and see what happens, they’ll certainly be lots to blog about. Even if nothing happens, that would be a sort of shocking surprise in its own way.
You can leave comments over at Econlog, but be polite—they don’t tolerate the sort of garbage that I do.
9. November 2016 at 07:44
Geoff Orwell:
Congratulations on your understanding of the American electorate.
I think, however, you draw a wrong conclusion to say the election betting markets disprove EMH. If people were going around buying and selling their presidential votes in an open market before the election, then you might be able to make that claim.
Imagine trying to figure out which direction the stock market was going to move if there was only one day every four years when people were allowed to buy and sell and you were having to base your bet only on their answers to questionnaires over the last six months and what they bought four years ago.
9. November 2016 at 07:47
Matt,
Nice call. Here’s my pick of song of the day:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D97OxHZzBeQ
[… and the white man dancing…]
Runner-up:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tOKYFR4Rzg
[…Satan’s coming for you…}
9. November 2016 at 08:29
Classic light side:
“The politics of failure have failed!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRdNOQcfp-8
Why did most Americans vote for Trump? They probably didn’t. He won because of the electoral college
This is like saying a team won the World Series only because it won the most games instead of counting total runs over all games. If the rules of winning were different both teams would have played differently. (See Cubs v Indians)
The Republicans won big at every level, Senate, Governorships and all the rest. The electoral college didn’t do that.
9. November 2016 at 08:31
I did some number crunching on three key states – WI, PA and MI, states that voted for Obama in 2012 vs Romney, but voted for Trump in 2016.
In all three of those states, the margin of victory for Obama was significantly higher than the margin of victory for Trump.
In WI, Obama won by 213k, but Trump only won by 27k.
In PA, Obama won by 310k, Trump won by 68k
In MI, Obama won by 450k, Trump won by 16k
If HRC couldn’t mobilize Democratic voters in those three states to vote for her, that’s on her. That’s a reflection of her lack of appeal to Democratic voters, and has little to do with Trump.
Unless you believe Democratic voters said to themselves “I’d vote for Hillary, but Trump is a racist, sexist horrible person, so I think I’ll just not bother to vote at all”
9. November 2016 at 08:54
Markets up big, bond yields higher. Yet another negative prediction about Trump fails. Just a thought but maybe it would be smart to not bet against Trump. He’s making everyone who does so look like a fool.
9. November 2016 at 08:58
I love the Monty Python clip.
To recap the Sumner philosophy on a Trump win:
– Trump will double-cross his supporters while still upsetting his opponents. No one will win. Specifically, he will engage in mass blanket immigration amnesty with no serious increase in immigration restriction.
– Trump’s policy won’t be terribly dangerous at all. Sumner’s biggest fear of a Trump presidency is turning the Republican party in a neo-reaction direction long after his personal exit.
– Trump probably won’t honor his supreme court pick list.
I bet against Sumner on all three points.
9. November 2016 at 09:00
If Trump doesn’t perform he will get kicked out so fast. Contrast this to the current President, who was elected on identity and exalted as a hero, yet performed poorly yet would still have won this election if he was eligible to run.
Now that Trump has the Presidency, the hoaxing media will be less capable of manipulating how we view him. It will take many months to a few years for the fears the hoaxing media beat into us to wear off. I’m not interested in anybody eating crow. Even though I supported Trump big league, I’m a little depressed right now because I don’t like it when people feel bad, and the reality of the power of the hoaxing media has further sunk in for me.
9. November 2016 at 09:16
You’d have to have a heart of stone not to laugh at Hillary for putting up with Bill’s shenanigans all these years, because she thought it was the price she had to pay to become President….
9. November 2016 at 09:18
She is so getting a divorce now, right?
9. November 2016 at 09:18
And wouldn’t I love to have Kellyanne Conway’s future this morning.
9. November 2016 at 09:44
–“So what happened yesterday? Here’s what happened to me: I was going to vote for Gary Johnson because he was better on the issues. But as I started filling in my paper ballot late yesterday afternoon, I found myself voting for Trump almost automatically. The thought of four years of listening to that cackling witch pushed me over the edge.”–
Something similar happened to me. I started my ballot by voting for Senate and went through the entire thing, only deciding the Presidency last. My options were writing in Evan McMullin, leaving it blank, or picking Trump.
Trump troubles me – aside from personal conduct, he simply does not have the depth of knowledge I would like to see, and I disagree with him on a few major policies (trade in particular, and having a big disconnect between business and personal tax rates is a mistake, as is blowing a hole in the deficit). The uncertainty surrounding his Presidency is ‘yuge’. I really, really did not want to have to vote for him.
But at the end, this was a binary election, between Trump and Hillary. Hillary and her inner circle are openly contemptuous of Catholics, and even nominally Catholic Tim Kaine wouldn’t even so much as apologize for it. Trump wrote a letter to CatholicVote pledging to protect the rights of Catholics and that he doesn’t care if people call him politically incorrect for it. Trump may well not have been sincere, but I’ll take an insincere friend over a sincere enemy. And with that, at the very last second, Donald Trump got my vote.
I didn’t like Hillary Clinton anyway – policy aside, it seemed clear that her government would be a sewer, and I have never been comfortable with how cozy the media has been with her. It was clear this summer that she committed a felony, with the FBI basically explaining how this was so and then suddenly stating, without any explanation, that ‘no reasonable person’ would bring charges. I was never going to vote for her.
I could have abstained from what I considered to be two bad candidates, or picked the hopeless one which was better, on average, on policy. But in the end, I had a sense that in the core of my identity, Trump was for me (or at the very least was indifferent), and Hillary was against me.
9. November 2016 at 09:48
I hate to defend Trump (I am already looking forward to 2020), but I don’t believe that Trump is a “pathological liar”. He definitely uses “strategic ambiguity” (saying self-contradictory things that are believed because of confirmation bias). He is a probably a “strategic liar” (not going to build that wall or audit the Fed). But he doesn’t lie when he doesn’t have to and his word salad syntax is hard to fact check. He is clever or ignorant in the things he says, but not pathological.
Hillary is a pathological liar. Her email controversy was made larger because she lied about stupid details (I only use one device). How could that lie have helped?
10. November 2016 at 09:55
Everyone, Just to reiterate, I said during the campaign that I had no idea what Trump will do. I still don’t
mbka, Thanks. Two great choices.
Jim, You said:
“This is like saying a team won the World Series only because it won the most games instead of counting total runs over all games.”
Yes, and that would be correct response to a person who claimed “Team A scored more total runs than Team B”, if it were not so. Sorry, but people who said that more people voted for Trump than Hillary are LYING. They are LYING. It’s a LIE. You may not like to hear that, but It’s a LIE.
If I said that “Hillary actually won” then you’d have grounds for complaint. Logic 101.
As for the House and Senate, yes the GOP did well, but I’d point out that the system is also rigged in the GOP favor in those two areas, they can win a majority with fewer votes than the Dems, due to the small state advantage in the Senate, and gerrymandering in the House. All I’m saying is that it’s an election, not a popularity cost. The GOP won the election, they did not win any popularity contests. I’m actually happy they took Congress, so don’t count this as grousing on my part–I’m just making an intellectual point.
Dan, I see you are the kind of guy who thinks the fact that Wall Street banks stocks are soaring on news of sweetheart regulatory changes is just what the blue collar voters wanted.
Justin. So there are two–that’s a trend.
Don, Trump is far more dishonest. One study showed that Hillary lied about 4 times per debate, Trump about 30. I don’t watch much tv, but when I hear him speak it’s breathtaking how he spews just one lie after another. Hillary is a more dishonest than average politician, but not at Trump levels–not even close.
12. November 2016 at 13:36
I live in Finland, and I like to joke to my Finnish friends that they’d better be glad they don’t have oil like Norway, otherwise they’d be speaking Russian. I get nervous laughter followed by a typical brooding Finnish silence.
On the other hand, Russia has been busy doubling (or tripling?) the size of their embassy in Helsinki for the last six years or so, so there’s that.