A Tale Of Two Conventions. Almost.

Try not. Do. Or do not. There is no try.

(Master Yoda, Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back, 1980)

© Bob Weir, John Perry Barlow, 1987

There are only two seasons in Washington, lovers of liberty

Tax season, a shameful time when your nation’s leaders 

Rob you blind for their own amusement and unending sloth 

And election season, a shameful time when your nation’s leaders offer you

Empty platitudes in exchange for your votes and your hard-earned cash

I can smell the change in the air

It smells like hairspray and apple pie and fresh manure like America itself

So let’s rejoice, lovers of liberty, all the leaves are brown but the sun is out and the sky is blue

(Sally Langston, Scandal: Wild Card, 2016)

So it's this time of Election Year when American political parties have had their National Conventions. Or some version of them. As this year they have been mostly covided out and replaced by socially-distanced micro-events and Zoom sessions, which the punditariat will of course punditify about for days without end, just as they have done with the full-fledged conventions of years past. Of course the best moment of the Republican Convention was Donald Trump Junior telling his audience that Joe Biden is Nessie and Loch Ness is a swamp. Which would not have struck American audience as odd, as most of them probably think Loch Ness is an amusement park near London. Then we had the next news cycle totally hijacked by right-wingers outraged at Bette Midler's comments on Melania Trump's speech. Which were indeed unfair as Melania does speak better English than her husband.  Pundits will now keep a close watch on post-Convention polling, awaiting the proverbial Convention bounce that could benefit Trump. The last time the Republicans actually had a Convention bounce was in 2008. when they got Team Blue all sweaty for a few days as John McCain briefly overtook Barack Obama in national polls. Then Sarah Palin spoke and Obama cruised to victory. But this year Trump would need way more than a bouncelet to prevail, as the trend of national polls and the weighted average of the six most recent ones conclusively show Biden ahead by a safe margin, even with a few less good polls recently. And remember this is the USA, so Red is Blue and Blue is Red.

Now Biden's main problem will be to keep the momentum for the next two months and avoid any embarrassing gaffes. He still has a margin of progress in a few states if he wants to upgrade from 'convincing victory' to 'fucking Trump-woodchipping landslide', even if most of the South and Midwest look like lost causes. If you think Trump's core electorate in the backwaters of America, from Appalachia to Terrebonne Parish, are going to desert him because he went campaigning in 'Frorida' before discussing 'Yo-Semites' going on vacation (that's American for holiday) in 'Thighland', just bear in mind half of America can't even spell 'G8', and those who can think it's some sort of car engine. Never forget this is a country where a solid third of voters will never mind being ruled by an illiterate psychopathic moron because they are illiterate psychopathic morons themselves, who still think that Father Knows Best, there would be fewer deaths in school shootings if all the kids carried guns and universal publicly funded healthcare is a plot by Communist reptilian aliens hell-bent on removing God from the American Way Of Life. Or something like that involving France and North Korea. But right now even Trump calling Biden 'Joe Hiden' will misfire as most people are likely to conclude he was just mispronouncing and not trying to make a lame joke.

© Paul Kantner, Marty Balin, 1969

Of course what really matters is what state-level polls say, and how many Electoral Votes (EV) they predict for each candidate. The punditariat are as always punditifyingly cautious but sill lean Biden's way, with the most recent 'pundit consensus' predicting 278 EVs for Biden, 169 EVs for Trumps and 91 tossups (which, as you remember, is American for marginals). This is already enough to take Biden to the White House as 270 EVs are needed, but I think the situation is actually worse for Trump as my own calculations have Biden with a more solid base of 302 EVs to Trump's 111 EVs and 125 possibly going either way. The most likely outcome is Biden winning with a projected 334 EVs and possibly more. Biden still hasn't gained back Iowa and Ohio, two swing states won by Obama and then by Trump but both are extremely close. It says a lot too that several states supposedly safe for Republicans are now close to a tie like Arkansas, Georgia and Texas. So a pro-Biden upset in the last stages of the campaign appears now more likely than a pro-Trump upset, and the map below shows what my calculations say, with thanks to 270ToWin for this and other templates.

Compared to the 2016 result, Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Wisconsin are predicted to switch from Trump to Biden for a total of 101 EVs. No state this time is predicted to switch from Biden to Trump. Compared to Obama's winning map in 2012, Biden would add North Carolina (which Obama bagged just once in 2008) and Arizona (which Obama never won). But he would lose Iowa and Ohio, both of which Obama bagged in 2008 and 2012. That leaves out just one difference with Obama's 2008 map: Indiana, which Obama won then to everybody's surprise including his own as Democrats had not won it since Johnson in 1964, and before that Roosevelt in 1932 and 1936. The most interesting case here is Arizona, which voted for a Democratic candidate for the last time in 1996. Here the demographics have slowly changed the Democrats' way, with both the Latino population share and the Latino turnout increasing. These are the same trends that made New Mexico first and then Nevada and Southern California turn Blue, including Richard Nixon's home turf in Orange County, the affluent southern suburbs of Los Angeles. And might even switch Texas back to the Democrats for the first time since 1980, probably not at this election but quite possibly at the next one. The current projections have Biden in a very strong position anyway as even his worst case scenario would still have him winning by a convincing margin. What remains to be seen though is the impact of Trump's Project Fear, switching to a hawkish 'law and order' message and calling major unrest in a few cities the 'Biden riots'. It doesn't seem to have switched many voters so far, but of course the effect of deception and lies on swing voters should never be underestimated. 

© Chris Riddell, The Guardian, 2020

The main event since my last post has been of course Joe Biden choosing California Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate. Harris is a clever and yet safe choice for several reasons. The first and obvious one is that she is a woman, only the second time in US history a woman has an actual shot at becoming Vice-President. She is also of Indian and Jamaican ancestry, both her parents were immigrants to the USA in the 1960s and she self-identifies as African-American. Which ticks quite a number of boxes on the Democratic scorecard, though her background is definitely a privileged one, quite far away from the deprived inner cities. Then she has held elected office continuously since 2004, meaning she has been vetted often enough and under scrutiny for long enough to make any unpleasant surprise highly unlikely. In a country that loves nothing more than having all skeletons in the closets dusted off and lined up so they can have a good look at them, it's a safe bet that Republicans will not unearth any smoking turd from Harris's past. But paradoxically the main positive in selecting Harris is that she is ideologically ambiguous enough to be a difficult target for the Trump campaign. They will have a hard time making the 'radical left' label stick to either Biden or Harris (but bear in mind that, by American standards, the SNP would be radical left and Jeremy Corbyn totally off the chart), while the Democrats have plenty of ammunition to fire at Trump and his far-right nutcase of a Vice-President and running mate, Mike Pence (who, by British standards, would still be a far-right nutcase). Ironically the best weapons Trump would have come from disgruntled supporters of Bernie Sanders, but he can't use them as they hit at Biden-Harris for not being radical enough. So my best educated guess now is that Biden will win the Electoral College by at least the same margin Trump had in 2016, and probably by the same margin Obama had in 2012 when the Republican candidate was way saner and had a lot less baggage than Trump.

Hope is like the sun
If you only believe in it when you can see it, you’ll never make it through the night
(Leia Organa, Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi, 2017)

© Seamus Jennings, The Guardian, 2020

The day we stop believing democracy can work is the day we lose it
(Queen Jamillia of Naboo, Star Wars: Episode II – Attack Of The Clones, 2002)

© Bob Dylan, 1974

The Senate is a gilded cage, a place of great comfort and wonderful perks

Where you think that you’re making a difference, but you’re not

It’s just you and 99 others grimly reminding yourselves every day

That the only way out of this, the only way to make your mark, is to be President

(Senate Majority Leader Edison Davis, Scandal: Pencils Down, 2016)

The second major battle is for control of the Senate, and the Democrats' prospects also look really good. 33 of the 35 seats up for re-election this year are the same that were up in 2014 when Democrats lost control of the Senate, so we have 23 Republican incumbents to only 12 Democrats. Republicans are clearly on the defence here and Democrats on the offence as several key seats are in states that are predicted to give a majority to Biden at the presidential election. Democrats now have 45 seats and need only 49 to take back control as the two Independent Senators (Angus King of Maine and Bernie Sanders of Vermont) caucus with them. Which could be translated into English English as 'take the Democratic whip' if there was anything like a formal whip in the US Senate. But there isn't and Senators have voted outside of party lines multiple times without any consequences, even during the more ideologically polarised last four years. And technically the Democrats actually need only 48 seats as it would lead to a clean 50-50 split. If Joe Biden is elected, Kamala Harris, as Vice-President and ex officio President of the Senate, would have the 101st and tie-breaking vote. There is a distinct possibility of this happening as the current spread of projected seats is 48-53 Democrats and 45-50 Republicans. But polls actually predict 50 Democrats and 48 Republicans when you sort out the marginals, which would avoid any heart-attack-inducing suspense on key votes. And this result has also a direct impact on the United Kingdom as the Senate is constitutionally empowered to ratify international treaties, or not. Including.... aye.... you got it.... a US-UK trade deal. Not that Democrats in charge would necessarily make a bad deal less likely or less threatening to the food industry or the NHS, but there is definitely a slightly-larger-than-fuck-all probability that the worst could be avoided. So here is what we have now, with the grey states indicating no Senate election this year. Projected Democratic gains: Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Iowa, Maine, North Carolina. Projected Republican gain: Alabama which Democrats won by serendipity at a 2017 by-election and don't really expect to hold. 

Democrats are unlikely now to stage an upset in Kansas, though the Republicans' position remains surprisingly weak in a state that has been represented by two Republican senators continuously since 1938. But it says a lot that polls suggest Iowa could kick out their incumbent Republican Senator after just one term and bring back a Democrat, even with presidential polls predicting the state's EVs will go to Trump. Or that 'moderate' Republican Susan Collins, who has an ambiguous record on alternating between opposition and support to Trump, would fight the one election too many and lose her seat after 24 years in the Senate. Another significant gain for the Democrats would be Arizona, both politically and symbolically. The Democratic candidate there is Mark Kelly, a retired Captain in the US Navy and astronaut who flew four Space Shuttle missions, two as Pilot and two as Commander. Kelly is also the husband of Gabrielle Giffords, a former Democratic Representative for the city of Tucson, who retired from politics after being severely wounded in an assassination attempt in 2011 and has since become an icon for the supporters of stronger gun control, which Kelly has also fully embraced during his campaign. Less emotionally charged but probably more politically significant would be a Democratic gain in Georgia. Atlanta, the state capital and largest city, is home to a successful, affluent and well-organised Black community who massively supports the Democrats. While the rural areas, once part of the historic Cotton Belt, are mostly Republican strongholds. Remember this is where Gone With The Wind was set and it was not all fantasy, though of course the Democrats were the evil slaveowners and the Republicans the progressive abolitionists back then. So now we have the perfect mirror image of that, with demographics again vastly favourable to the Democrats. 

It is my experience that senators focus only on pleasing those who fund their campaigns
And they’re in no means scared of forgetting the niceties of democracy in order to get those funds
(Obi-Wan Kenobi, Star Wars: Episode II – Attack Of The Clones, 2002)

© Bob Dylan, 1978

There’s no such thing as a clean campaign, it’s an oxymoron

(Fitzgerald Thomas Grant II, Scandal: A Criminal, A Whore, An Idiot And A Liar, 2013)

Current polling for the House of Representatives is also very favourable to the Democrats, though it is not much different from the 2018 result which was already a very good year as they took back control of the House after eight years of Republican majority. So this year's polls predict Democrats cruising towards a second consecutive victory at the House elections, something that has not happened in twelve years. The trend and the weighted average of the three most recent polls both point to a higher Democratic vote share than in 2006, the midterms of George W. Bush's second term, when they took back the House on 52.3% of the popular vote and 233 seats. Or 2008 when they rode Obama's coattails to 53.2% of the vote and 257 seats. The discrepancies between past results and today's projections show the impact of heavy-handed gerrymandering in states controlled by the Republicans during the redistricting cycle that followed the 2010 census. A rough estimate is that Democrats need a 5% lead in the popular vote nationwide to achieve a tie in seats, and beyond that the dominoes will only fall slowly as Republicans post-2010 mostly avoided the post-2000 dummymandering that cost them dearly in some states in 2006 and 2008.

The weeish swing in the popular vote would only switch a few swing seats from Marginal Red to Marginal Blue. The punditariat's expert opinion says five to ten and my model says seven. Enough anyway to solidify the Democratic majority in the House and turn the elections into the Magic Trifecta result every party wishes and doesn't always get even when they win the White House. And even a Trifecta in a presidential year can be overturned at the next midterms. Clinton, Bush Junior, Obama and Trump have all known this, not to mention all earlier Presidents who suffered the same fate. Now the seat projection is an exact mirror image of the 2010 midterms, when Republican took back the House in the middle of Obama's first term. But at these elections, the last held before the last redistricting, the Republicans needed only 51.7% of the popular vote for their 242 seats, which again illustrates how the post-2010 gerrymandering in Republican states was used to make a victory more difficult for the Democrats. The next redistricting cycle (what would be called a boundary review in the UK) will probably be less controversial than the last two as about a third of the states have now taken it out of hands of the state legislatures and devolved it to an independent commission without political interference. For now we have Democrats cruising to a 50ish-seat majority, give or take. And we can expect a stronger party loyalty in the current ideologically polarised context, with 'centrist' Democrats (who, in British terms, would be the left wing of the Conservatives) much less likely to vote with Republicans to defeat 'progressive' legislation (which, in British terms, would be the Liberal Democrat manifesto, no shit).

What matters most for the Democrats is that even their worst case scenario has them holding their majority in the House. But the bigger the majority, the better it is for the progressive wing of the party as the House has the final say on the federal budget and a stronger Democratic majority makes 'compromise deals' with 'moderate' Republicans less likely here. Another challenge for the Democrats is to take back control of state legislatures they have lost over the last ten years, especially in the now Republican states where redistricting is still under political control and produced obvious gerrymandering in the last cycle. Which is definitely a square-the-circle thing as the states the Democrats need to gain back the most are also the ones most heavily gerrymandered by the Republicans like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, North Carolina and South Carolina, so a string of uphill battles even if some are projected to turn blue at presidential or senatorial level. Finally the major key to all of this year's elections in how much PAC money (which would be dark money in British terms) each party can inject into their campaigns. The Democrats certainly have an advantage here as unfavourable polling will force the Republicans to divert resources to some states that were supposedly safe for them, and don't look like it now like Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania or Georgia. The larger the state, the more money you need to pour into it and the less you have for competitive states, something Democrats don't really have to worry about as their own safe states like New York, Illinois, most of New England and the Pacific West, definitely look immune to any sort of Republican offensive and could even prove safer than expected. There is even a double-whammy against Republicans here as political advertising is already more expensive in large states with large cities, and the more competitive the state gets, the more the prices rise again and again. Still two months to go before we know how the whole circus ends....

We need a system where the politicians sit down and discuss the problem

Agree what's in the best interest of all the people and then do it
If the people don't agree, well, then they should be made to by someone wise
Might sound an awful lot like a dictatorship but, well, if it works...

(Anakin Skywalker, Star Wars: Episode II – Attack Of The Clones, 2002)

© Bob Weir, Eric Andersen, John Perry Barlow, 1973