What if Hillary had won?

 Acouple of recent conversations made me wonder how things might be different if 80,000 people had voted differently in 2016 and Hillary Clinton had edged out Donald Trump in the Electoral College. One school of thought holds that the second President Clinton would have represented the end of America as we know it, but is that really what would have happened?

If other election results were significantly unchanged, Clinton would have been faced with Republican majorities in both the House and Senate. As with Barack Obama, the same Republicans in Congress that enabled Donald Trump would have acted as a brake on Hillary’s progressive agenda.

One of the first places where history would have diverged would have been the appointment of a replacement for Antonin Scalia. While I agree that any Hillary or Obama appointment would have been a step down from Scalia, Hillary would not have been able to appoint a fire-breathing liberal to the Court.

Why? Because a Republican Senate would not have to confirm a far-left justice. We would not have Neal Gorsuch or Brett Kavanaugh, but moderately liberal Clinton appointments might not have significantly shifted the balance of the Court.

Still, judicial appointments are an area where Trump has hands-down performed better than Hillary would have. Trump’s appointments are a clear conservative victory… Except that if Joe Biden wins and Democrats take control of the Senate and pack the Court, those gains might quickly prove ephemeral.

Another area of difference is with trade. Hillary waffled on the Trans Pacific Pact, but I am skeptical that she would have abandoned the treaty. She definitely would not have launched the tariff war that Donald Trump began.

While many Trump apologists view this as a weakness for Hillary, as an economic conservative, I disagree. Trump is actually to the left of Hillary and Obama on trade as he himself acknowledged when he compared his trade policy to that of Bernie Sanders.

Far from being a winning strategy, Trump’s trade policy has been disastrous. His taxes on trade have offset the benefits of tax reform for most Americans and devastated American manufacturing and farm exports. Trump’s farm base was pacified with billions of dollars in bailouts but the US manufacturing sector was in a recession for all of 2019. The rest of the country followed in February 2020, a month before the pandemic hit the US in earnest and after negative economic growth began in the fourth quarter of 2019 following the escalation of the trade war with China.

How do you get Republicans to cheer for tax increases? Have President Trump call them tariffs. But tariffs are taxes and come with all the negative economic consequences of any other tax increase.

But what about the stock market? The Dow has been on a tear throughout the Trump era. Wouldn’t the stock market have crashed under a Hillary Administration?

It’s true the stock market has done well under Trump, even recovering most of its losses from the pandemic spring, but many of the stock market graphs touting Trump’s success with the market end in 2017. If we zoom out and look at a longer time scale, we see that the market has been on a steady climb since the recovery from the Great Recession began in 2009. The market has been tumultuous since the onset of the trade war in 2018.

It’s also true that tax reform would have never happened under Hillary Clinton. I favored tax reform, but the new tax laws also have a downside. Federal revenues flattened after the tax cuts while spending increased sharply under Trump. As a result, both the federal budget deficit and the national debt ballooned even before the pandemic.

If Hillary had been president with a Republican Congress, federal spending would have been more restrained. In fact, when Barack Obama was president, the much-maligned John Boehner led the House to reduce federal spending in consecutive years for the first time since the Eisenhower Administration in 2012 and 2013. Ironically, most Republicans that I talk to refuse to believe that this victory occurred.

But wouldn’t Hillary have eviscerated the Second Amendment and instituted abortion on demand? Remember that Republican control of Congress would have limited her actions on those issues to tinkering around the edges with Executive Orders as Obama did. Barack Obama was president for eight years and Republicans in Congress stonewalled gun control for the entire time. In fact, President Trump has been more successful at enacting gun control than Obama, having instructed his bureaucrats to ban bump stocks without going through Congress.

As for abortion, the practice has been in long-term decline for decades regardless of which party occupied the White House. Abortion declined throughout the Obama years and is now at a lower level than prior to Roe v. Wade when it was totally illegal in many states. This milestone occurred before President Trump took office.

What else might have been different if Hillary Clinton had become president? There are both good and bad possibilities. Our allies would not have been alienated by our erratic foreign policy and attempts to retreat from the world stage. The US would not have recognized Jerusalem as the Israeli capital. On the other hand, the US would likely still be party to the Iran deal and the Paris Accords. Deregulation, another big accomplishment of the Trump Administration, would never have happened. Republicans would have likely prevented abuses of executive power by Hillary that they ignored under Donald Trump.

Some things would not have been different. With the Iranian threat to moderate Arab nations growing, the Middle East treaties might still have happened. In a Hillary presidency, Obamacare would still have not been repealed and there would still have been no border wall. Hillary Clinton would still not be locked up.

One of the other big differences would be the outlook for the current election. Rather than being on the brink of electoral disaster, Republicans would be poised to expand their hold on Congress and to elect a conservative president. Conservative America would be united against Hillary and the suburbs, seniors, and minorities would not be fleeing the Republican Party.

Hillary would also have probably responded better to the pandemic. Clinton would have been more likely to heed expert medical advice and follow the pandemic plan established by the National Security Council rather than winging it. The pandemic response might not have been politicized. Tens of thousands of lives might have been saved.

Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump represented mixed bags for America. In some areas, Hillary would have been worse, but in others, Trump has been the worse of the two.

There are two lessons here. One is that a Democratic president, even with control of Congress, won’t necessarily mean the end of America or an economic implosion. America is resilient and has been strong enough to withstand both Barack Obama and Donald Trump. We can also survive Joe Biden and/or Kamala Harris.

The second is that control of Congress is ultimately at least as important as controlling the White House, if not more so. Especially if President Trump loses the election, it is important for Republicans to maintain control of the Senate. Doing so will minimize the ability of a Democratic administration to enact radical progressive change.

Divided government would also encourage the parties to work together as the Founders intended. A government in which the two parties are at a standoff should be the goal of conservatives who truly believe in limited government since both parties have shown that they cannot be trusted with unchecked power.

Originally published on The First TV

Trump’s Re-election Chances Are Slim But Not None

I’ve long been skeptical about Donald Trump’s chances for re-election. The mere fact that the president started with a popular vote loss and then proceeded to become even more unpopular due to his behavior and policies while in office is an obvious sign that his battle for re-election will be fought in an uphill fashion. Now, as more and more polling comes in about potential matchups with Democrats, the data confirms that Trump is in for a hard fight.

I have noted in the past how President Trump’s approval has fallen almost everywhere since the 2016 election. The president’s popularity has sagged to the point where even many red states now look like battleground states. This is particularly true in those states where farmers have suffered from the trade wars.

Josh Kraushaar recently wrote in National Journal that Trump is “in the weakest political shape of any sitting president (Republican or Democrat) since George H.W Bush.” He continues, “Trump hits 50 percent disapproval... in North Carolina, Arizona, Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Iowa — all states he carried in 2016.”

Now, The New York Times reports that even Mr. Trump’s own internal polling shows him to be trailing Joe Biden in the states that he needs to carry in order to win the election and the president seems to be in denial of that fact. “After being briefed on a devastating 17-state poll conducted by his campaign pollster, Tony Fabrizio, Mr. Trump told aides to deny that his internal polling showed him trailing Mr. Biden in many of the states he needs to win,” the Times said this week. “Trump instructed aides to say publicly that other data showed him doing well.”

If you’re a Trump supporter, you’re probably thinking that you’ve heard all this before. The polling up to Election Day showed Mr. Trump being soundly defeated by Hillary Clinton and he won. The pundits gave Hillary a 99 percent chance of winning and she lost. The polls were wrong then so they are garbage now.

Not exactly.

If we look back at archived national polls of the 2016 election on Real Clear Politics, the average of polls gave Hillary a three-point lead. That is almost exactly identical to the national popular vote result. The split between the popular vote and the Electoral College came down to about 53,000 votes spread over five key states. Most of the polling in these states also showed a close race. Polling was substantially off in only one state, Wisconsin, where Hillary’s eight-point lead in the polls turned into a one-point loss.

Some analysts realized that the race was closing in the final days of the election. The wonks at FiveThirtyEight gave Trump an almost one-in-three chance of winning in a forecast that is still archived. While they still figured Trump to be an underdog, a 30 percent chance of winning is a far cry from a 99 percent chance of losing.

Even with stolen Democratic emails dribbling forth throughout 2016 campaign, it took yet another October surprise to put Donald Trump over the top. Polling showed that James Comey’s memo to Congress was the deciding factor in pushing voters toward Trump. The president cannot depend on a similar fortunate circumstance to save him next year, however.

An unnamed “ally” of the Trump campaign made Trump’s case to Axios, saying, “Trump has always under-polled. Until it's actually a binary contest, though, these polls really don't matter.”

“When Trump gets a shot at defining someone one-on-one,” the Trump surrogate said, “They're no longer going to be what they are now, which is, for the most part, a 'generic Democrat,’” He added that the Trump campaign hopes to define the eventual Democratic opponent by support for such policies as the Green New Deal and Medicaid-for-all, policies that he hopes will frighten away most Americans. Finally, the solid economy is what the Trump campaign hopes will be its ace-in-the-hole.

“Historical data says that with the economy roaring like it is, the incumbent always wins,” the Trump ally says.

The problem with this strategy is that Trump previously faced the candidate widely panned as the worst in modern American history, a candidate who also had a radical agenda that included a public health insurance option, and he still failed to win a majority of the popular vote and came within a whisker of losing the Electoral College. Likewise, voters twice refused to be put off by Barack Obama’s radically leftist ideas. Portraying the Democratic candidate as a radical will motivate the Republican base but won’t necessarily win swing voters.

Likewise, depending on the economy is not a sure thing. Just ask Hillary Clinton who was running on the promise of “four more years” in an economy that was not so different from the current one. Unemployment has been trending down since the Great Recession ended in 2009 while the stock market has continued a ten-year climb. Economic growth under Trump is only marginally better than it was under Obama.   

Another problem with relying on the economy is that the trade war is taking a toll. I recently reported how the tariffs were offsetting the benefits of tax reform for both individuals and businesses. With the Chamber of Commerce and agriculture groups signaling opposition to the tariff war, President Trump may be about to lose core Republican constituencies such as businesses and farmers despite the good economy.

Worse, there are signs that economic growth may be slowing due to the trade war. One leading indicator is the transportation industry. Forbes recently reported that rail shipments were down almost every month of 2019. There are other indicators as well, such as last week’s disappointing jobs report and slowing transaction volume for businesses, which may be partly due to trade uncertainty. A recession is not a foregone conclusion, but if one occurs President Trump will own it.

The 2018 midterm elections should have been a wakeup call for Republicans. Despite the good economy and Trump’s control of messaging in the final weeks of the election, the GOP took a beating in the House and only maintained control of the Senate through a very favorable map that allowed red state Republicans to eke out victories. Swing voters who supported Trump in 2016 swung back toward the Democrats in 2018.

The wild card is Russia. In 2016, Trump benefitted from Russian interference even if the Trump campaign did not actively work in concert with the Russian government. Few steps have been taken to protect the election infrastructure from similar interference next year. If the Russian government does launch new attacks on the 2020 elections, there is no guarantee that they will benefit Mr. Trump this time.

The bottom line is that neither President Trump’s personality nor his policy has endeared him to swing state voters as they have to his base. While Trump cannot be counted out for re-election, he faces a difficult campaign. If he can stay off Twitter and not act crazy for the next 18 months, his odds would improve greatly, but both are unlikely. On the other hand, if the economy softens in the months leading up to the election, Trump’s goose is likely to be cooked.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Republicans Should Stop Driving Off Voters

President Ronald Reagan, arguably the most successful president of our time, said the Republican Party should be a big tent party that is welcoming of many views. In more recent years, the GOP has shifted gears to become party more focused on Barack Obama’s model of victory through dividing the electorate and appealing to specific demographic groups.

The shift began in the early 2000s with the appearance of what I like to call the “RINO hunters.” The GOP became a party focused on purity tests and identifying “RINOs,” Republicans in name only. The irony is that because many conservatives are free thinkers and have different priorities, it’s likely that a majority of Republicans were RINOs on one issue or another.

In a country of 350 million people, regional differences mean that issues are viewed by different people in different ways. Polling from 2017 showed that conservatives were the largest ideology in every state, but were not a majority in any state. Even so, on average a conservative in New York is not going to being identical to a conservative in Texas. Nevertheless, many Republicans preferred to push these perceived “closet Democrats” out of the party.

A second wave of purity came in 2016 when Donald Trump was nominated. Since the 2016 primaries, support for Donald Trump has become a litmus test for Republicans. Last year, a letter from the chairman of the Arizona Republican Party became public warning Arizona’s elected Republicans that support for President Trump was “non-negotiable.” It is safe to say that state Republican Parties elsewhere have communicated the same message. While many Trump critics “self-deported” themselves from the Republican Party, I do know of at least one case where a friend repeatedly had his dues refunded by his local Republican chapter because of his critical remarks about the president.

There are other prominent of examples of Republicans writing off large groups of people as well. Much of the Republican opposition to immigration, legal or illegal, is grounded in the belief that immigrants come to the US for welfare benefits rather than to find work and chase the American dream. As a result, many Republicans often say that Democrats want to use immigration reform, derided as “amnesty,” to import new Democrat voters.

The answer is that immigrants cannot vote until they are US citizens. Illegal immigrants also can’t get government benefits although naturalized citizens, U.S.-born children, refugees, and asylees can.

Once they become citizens, immigrants are more likely to vote Democrat if the Republican Party drives them into the arms of the party of Pelosi. If Republicans treat them fairly, compassionately, and with respect, then the GOP has a decent chance of winning the votes of people who value jobs, family, and economic growth.

The fact that states like Texas and Arizona regularly elect Republicans should shoot down the theory that Hispanic immigrants are crossing the border en masse to elect Democrats. Even in the 2018 elections where illegal immigration played a central role in the final days of the campaign, Republicans won about 29 percent of the Hispanic vote. In contrast, only nine percent of black voters cast a ballot for the GOP.

Yet another group that Republicans seem intent on driving away is federal workers. Under the current government shutdown, about 800,000 federal employees are not getting paid, either because they are furloughed or because they are being forced to work with no pay. The reaction of many Republicans to the pain of federal workers has been to say, “Good.” Even President Trump tweeted on Jan. 5 that “most of the workers not getting paid are Democrats.”

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1081563196249513985

While many federal workers are Democrats, not all of them are. Workers not getting paid include law enforcement workers such as the FBI, Border Patrol, and Coast Guard. Many of these workers could probably be expected to vote Republican. Federal employees are not just concentrated in the DC suburbs, they are spread throughout the country and have political views that vary just as much as other Americans.

The Government Business Council conducted a survey of federal workers in advance of the 2016 presidential election. In the August 2015 survey, Republican- and Democrat-leaners were split almost evenly at 40-44 percent. Ironically, the top primary choice of Republican federal employees was Donald Trump.

Polls show that more Americans blame President Trump for the shutdown than the Democrats. It would be surprising if federal employees did not agree. However, where most voters might move on to other issues after the government is reopened, those who work for the government will be stuck cleaning up the financial mess that the shutdown has made of their lives. It is likely that many of the federal workers and their families who are being forced to sell their possessions on eBay or drive for Uber to put food on the table will remember the callousness of President Trump and the Republican Party when they go to the polls in 2020.

The bottom line is that Republicans can’t afford to lose any more voters. Even though Donald Trump won the 2016 election he lost the popular vote. Since then, he has played to his base rather than trying to bring more people into the Republican tent. The result was a midterm election in which Democrats won 59 percent of the popular vote in Senate elections and 53 percent of the popular vote in the House. This lopsided vote tally even includes a high Republican turnout in many areas after the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings motivated the Republican base.

The incredible shrinking Republican Party does not bode well for President Trump or other Republican candidates as the country gears up for the 2020 presidential elections. A smaller, purer party may help Republicans feel good about turning RINOs out to pasture, but it is big tent parties that win elections.  

Originally published on The Resurgent

Giuliani Open To Possibility That Members Of Trump Campaign Could Have Colluded With Russia

In what may be one of the largest reversals of the Trump Administration, President Trump’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, admitted that it is possible that there was collusion between some members of the Trump campaign and the Russian government. While Giuliani denies that his position on collusion has changed, eight months ago he called the idea of Russian collusion “fake news.” Mr. Giuliani continues to deny that Donald Trump colluded with Russia in any way that broke the law.

Giuliani’s most recent comments came in an interview with CNN on Wednesday when he told Chris Cuomo, “I never said there was no collusion between the campaign. Or between people in the campaign. I have no idea.”

“I said the President of the United States,” Giuliani added. “There is not a single bit of evidence the President of the United States committed the only crime you can commit here, conspiring with the Russians to hack the DNC.”

When Cuomo asked if sharing polling data with the Russians would have constituted collusion, Giuliani answered, “Donald Trump wasn't giving polling data to anyone. He did not know about it until it was revealed a few weeks ago in an article.”

The Trump campaign’s position on collusion has evolved over the past few years. Initially, Team Trump issued specific denials that any collusion occurred between members of the campaign and the Russians, but those denials have been walked back and limited in subsequent public statements after numerous contacts were revealed. In November 2016, Hope Hicks responded to statement by Vladimir Putin’s spokesman that claimed that Russian experts had been in contact with Trump’s campaign staff by saying, “It never happened. There was no communication between the campaign and any foreign entity during the campaign.”

In February 2017, President Trump said, I have nothing to do with Russia. To the best of my knowledge, no person that I deal with does.” He added, “How many times do I have to answer this question? Russia is a ruse. I have nothing to do with Russia.”

At the same time, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, “This is a nonstory because to the best of our knowledge, no contacts took place, so it’s hard to make a comment on something that never happened.”

In March 2017, Donald Trump, Jr. said, “Did I meet with people that were Russian? I’m sure, I’m sure I did. But none that were set up. None that I can think of at the moment. And certainly, none that I was representing the campaign in any way, shape or form.”

Yet in July 2017, details of a pre-planned meeting at Trump Tower with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya in June 2016 were leaked. Initially, Trump, Jr. claimed that the meeting was about adoption and said that “ it was not a campaign issue at that time and there was no follow-up.”

The next day that claim evolved as well when Trump, Jr. admitted, “The woman [Veselnitskaya] stated that she had information that individuals connected to Russia were funding the Democratic National Committee and supporting Mrs. Clinton. Her statements were vague, ambiguous and made no sense. No details or supporting information was provided or even offered. It quickly became clear that she had no meaningful information.”

In May 2018, Rudy Giuliani appeared on The Sean Hannity Show and said, “Russian collusion is total fake news.” He added, “Mueller owes us a report saying Russian collusion means nothing. It didn’t happen.”

Since the interview with Hannity, Giuliani’s claim has evolved as well. In July 2018, he echoed similar claims from other Trump Administration officials, telling CNN that “collusion is not a crime.” While it’s true that there is no legal definition of “collusion,” specific charges that could relate to collusion include conspiracy, fraud, or receiving stolen information such as the hacked data from the DNC.

While it isn’t clear that anyone in the Trump campaign committed a crime, it is clear that the once-strong denials of any contact at all between Russians and the campaign have been proven false and the denials from Team Trump are getting weaker. The Trump Administration and the president’s lawyers continue to deny that Donald Trump had any contacts with the Russians, but the new evolution on collusion by Mr. Giuliani leaves open the possibility that other members of the Trump campaign could have had illegal contacts with the Russian government, either with or without the president’s knowledge.

The continual evolution on Russia along with the evidence that early statements were not true provides ample reason that the Mueller investigation should be continued. It’s possible that no laws were broken and it is also possible that the president was unaware if there was illegal activity on his behalf by members of his campaign. However, the constant evolution of the story being told by Team Trump makes the president look like he has something to hide, even if he does not. The bottom line is that the American people have the right to know if members of the Trump campaign conspired with the Russian government.  

Originally published on The Resurgent

Nate Silver: Clinton Campaign Strategists Were 'Huge Dumbasses'

There are many myths about the 2016 election. On the left it is an article of faith that Donald Trump could not have won without illicit coordination with the Russians. On the right, there is the pervasive notion that because Trump beat the odds to win the presidency, all polling is wrong and should be disregarded. Yesterday Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight managed to blow up both of these theories in a single tweet.

The exchange began with a tweet from Ben Collins of NBC News that asked, “What did the Kremlin's cutouts know about targeting MI and WI? How did they know it? And is there data to show they took action on it?”

https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/1082750493842173953

Silver, the head of the FiveThirtyEight polling analysis site, responded quickly with a tweet that slammed the door on that particular aspect of Russian collusion. “The 538 model, which was based on publicly-available polling data, said the campaigns should target WI and MI,” Silver wrote. “You didn't have to have any proprietary info to know they were important states. You just had to look at the data and not be huge dumbasses like the HRC campaign was.”

https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1082777389460004864

Silver followed up with a link to a FiveThirtyEight article from February 2017, “Donald Trump Had A Superior Electoral College Strategy.” The thrust of the article, subtitled “How Hillary Clinton and the media missed the boat,” was that Hillary made two key errors in the campaign. First, she focused on states where the race was close rather than states that had the potential to tip the race. In particular, the article points out that Clinton did not set foot in Wisconsin after the Democratic primary. Second, she was overconfident and limited her focus to a narrow range of states. Hillary’s main focus was on Florida, North Carolina, and Ohio.

Silver didn’t explicitly address the idea that because the forecasts were wrong in 2016 that all polling is wrong, but it is implicit in his statement that the Clinton campaign was made of “huge dumbasses” who ignored polling data that showed that Hillary was in trouble. Many Republicans claim that the media gave Hillary a 99 percent chance of becoming president on election night, but FiveThirtyEight’s forecast, which is still posted, gave Donald Trump a 29 percent chance of winning. Under those circumstances, Trump was an underdog, but not prohibitively.

With respect to the two states in question, FiveThirtyEight gave Trump a 21 percent chance in Michigan and a 17 percent chance in Wisconsin. Many polls were within the margin of error in Michigan, but Wisconsin polling was further off, showing a consistent albeit single-digit lead for Hillary.

As I pointed out a few months ago, polls are snapshots rather than predictive. One good technique for examining polls is to look for trends in the big picture. The big picture of the polling average from 2016 is still available on Real Clear Politics in convenient graph form. If we look at the trend, we can see Trump plunging in the polls about Oct. 10 then starting a slow rise on Oct. 20. There is a sharp increase between Oct. 28 and Nov. 2 that brought Trump to within two points of Hillary, well within the margin of error of most polls. Going into Election Day, the national polling average had the two candidates about three points apart, a close race by any standard.

If we look at key events that occurred in the campaign, we can see exactly what caused these movements in the polling. Keeping in mind that polls are lagging indicators, we see that Trump’s decline in early October followed the release of the Access Hollywood tape on Oct. 7. The final presidential debate was on Oct. 19 and Trump’s performance seems to have helped him in the polls, but not enough to close the deal. The event that sealed the race in Trump’s favor occurred on Oct. 28, the release of FBI Director James Comey’s memo to Congress that detailed the discovery of thousands of emails that related to the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private email server. In a May 2017 article, Silver also made the case that Comey’s memo cost Hillary the election.

There are lessons for both parties in Silver’s tweets and articles. For the Democrats, candidates should not take the Rust Belt states for granted. Traditional party loyalties may not be enough to carry a state, especially in an election where everything seems to be going wrong for your candidate. There is no substitute for getting into the field and making appearances. Charisma, broad appeal outside the party, and the stamina to campaign should be factors in nominating a candidate.

For Republicans, the lesson is also that the Rust Belt states should not be taken for granted. Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin were all decided by about one percent of the vote after being all but ignored by the Democrat candidate. Just because they voted for Donald Trump once does not mean that they will do so again. The Clinton campaign made mistakes that will probably not be repeated by the next Democratic candidate. Even with these mistakes, however, Trump still lost the popular vote and would most likely have lost the electoral vote had it not been for James Comey. Donald Trump has the stamina to campaign, but he lacks charisma and popularity outside the GOP.

Despite claims from both sides, the 2020 election is far from a sure thing for either party. The outcome will be determined by which side better learns the lessons of the 2016 election and adapts their strategy to a changing electoral environment.

Originally published on The Resurgent

How To Skeptically Look At Polls

It’s election season. The time when a political junkie’s fancy turns to polls, polls, and more polls. With so many polls being released, many of the polls will show results that are contradictory from each other, which one do you believe? Should you believe any of them?

Conservatives have long been leery of polls, but that skepticism reached its height after Donald Trump’s surprise victory in 2016. Much of this skepticism lies in a misunderstanding of how to look at polls and what they represent. Some of this misunderstanding is fed by media outlets and politicians that misuse polls.

When considering polls, keep a few simple rules of thumb in mind:

Polls are historical, not predictive. They provide a snapshot of public opinion when they were taken. By themselves, they do not forecast the outcome of elections. Polls are lagging indicators that measure public opinion as it was on a given date.

Look at the trend of all the polls. To see which way public opinion is moving, don’t just look at one poll. Look at similar polls taken over a period of time and compare the results. For example, one poll on Donald Trump’s approval rating isn’t very useful, but if you look at the trend of all polls showing the presidential approval rating you can see whether it has improved or declined.

Real Clear Politics is a useful site that acts as a clearinghouse of polls. You can look up individual poll types such as President Trump’s approval, individual races such as Ted Cruz v. Beto O’Rourke, or generic ballots.

RCP shows all the polls of each particular type, which makes it easy to see trends. For instance, the page of Cruz-O’Rourke polls shows 10 polls going back to April. The trend shows a surge by O’Rourke in which Cruz moved from a double-digit lead to a statistical tie.

Discard the outliers. Politicians and the media often trumpet shocking poll results such as the recent Rasmussen poll that showed President Trump’s support among black voters at 36 percent. Polls that differ wildly from other polls are outliers and should be treated with suspicion.

One way of reducing the effect of outliers is to take an average of polls. Both Real Clear Politics and FiveThirtyEight have pages that show the average of polls asking about President Trump’s approval rating that go all the way back to his inauguration. These are useful tools for getting the big picture of the longterm trends in presidential approval.

Look at the nuts and bolts of the poll. Not all polls are created equal. You can get an idea of how reliable a poll is by looking at who it surveyed. The most accurate polls talk to likely voters. Polls of registered voters are less accurate while those that survey adults are the least accurate.

Pollsters also must make assumptions about who will show up to vote. These assumptions are used to weight the data from the poll, but there is no way to test their validity until Election Day when we find out who comes out to vote. Many polls give information about the weighting and the mix of Democrat and Republican respondents if you read the fine print.

Consider the margin of error. No poll is exact because they all represent only a sample of the population. The accuracy of the poll can be calculated and is usually disclosed as the “margin of error.” A large sample size is more accurate and reduces the poll’s margin of error.

The thing to remember is that the closer a poll is, the less it can be used to predict a specific outcome. For example, the most recent Cruz-O’Rourke poll that showed a one-point race had a 4.4-point margin of error. This is known as a statistical tie. The one-point difference is well within the margin of error so the key takeaway from the poll is that the race is currently too close to call, not that Ted Cruz would win the election by one point.

If a poll shows a large difference discrepancy between two viewpoints, you can be reasonably confident that the general breakdown is correct, even if the specific percentages are not. For example, when 72 percent opposed the Trump Administration policy of separating immigrant children from their parent and only 27 percent were in favor in a June CBS News poll, there was little doubt that Americans strongly opposed the policy.

Consider polling difficulties. The smaller the race, the tougher it is to get good polling. National polls are the most accurate, but state and district polls are more questionable. There might be no public polling at all in some House and Senate races.

The root cause of much of the 2016 polling problem was polling at the state level in a few Rust Belt states. By Election Day, national polls were showing a close race between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. The RCP average gave Hillary Clinton a 3.1 point edge, within the margin of error of most polls. In the final tally, Clinton won the popular vote by 2.1 points which was very close to what the polls showed.

Of course, the popular vote does not decide presidential elections and the predicted outcome of elections in key states turned the Electoral College results. An after-action report by the American Association for Public Opinion Research noted that “eight states with more than a third of the electoral votes needed to win the presidency had polls showing a lead of three points or less” and that “polls on average indicated that Trump was one state away from winning the election.”

The outcome in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin was the surprise for forecasters that turned the election to Trump, yet the polling in both Michigan and Pennsylvania showed a close race. In both states, the last poll before the election favored Donald Trump. The polls were only substantially off in Wisconsin where the last poll favored Hillary by eight points, but Trump won by less than one point.

In the end, most polls did not capture a late surge by Donald Trump in the wake of FBI Director James Comey’s memo to Congress. The lagging indicators were too far behind to include the rapidly changing landscape but did reflect a very close race in most cases. The AAPOR after-action report also faults an overrepresentation of college graduates in many polls that would have favored Clinton.

Polling is not an exact science. Poll results shouldn’t be considered to be gospel, but neither should they be ignored. By looking beyond the headline, you can determine whether a poll is reliable and how it fits into the big picture of the election.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Democrats Decide Superdelegates Are Undemocratic

The Democratic Party is continuing to at least make token reforms after its 2016 Hillary Clinton debacle. The Democratic National Committee decided over the weekend that the party would jettison its longtime system of superdelegate votes in primaries.

In the Democratic primary, 712 superdelegates to the convention are free to vote for whichever candidate they want, regardless of how their state votes. The superdelegates, who are typically members of the party establishment, make up about 15 percent of delegates to the Democratic convention and could swing a close primary.

Last Saturday, the DNC voted to eliminate the role of superdelegates in the first round of balloting at the convention. If no candidate is selected on the first ballot, then superdelegates would be allowed to vote on subsequent ballots.

The change was pushed through on a voice vote by DNC Chairman Tom Perez. The measure was largely popular with DNC members, but a vocal minority argued that it would disenfranchise party elites.

The Democrats have used superdelegates since the early 1980s as a way to balance the party’s populist and establishment sides. Prior to 1970, party bosses picked the party nominee. In These Times noted that Hubert Humphrey won that year despite not competing in a single primary. This outraged supporters of the antiwar Eugene McCarthy and threatened to split the party. The solution was to rewrite party rules in favor of primary elections.

After George McGovern and Jimmy Carter lost two of the next three elections in landslides, Democrats went back to the drawing board. The creation of superdelegates, which were first used in 1984, was intended to temper the Democratic voters’ preferences for radicals and unknowns by giving some control back to party elites.

Fast forward to 2016 when more than 92 percent of superdelegates supported Hillary Clinton over the populist sensation, Bernie Sanders. The superdelegate system performed exactly as intended in preventing a grassroots insurgent from defeating an establishment favorite, but the contest left the party divided. Contrary to popular belief, Clinton would have won even without the superdelegates, but the one-sided nature of the battle for the superdelegates made the system seem, well, undemocratic. There is also the deep-seated belief among many Democrats that Bernie Sanders, who did not carry Hillary Clinton’s massive amounts of baggage, could have beaten Donald Trump.

Sanders expressed approval for the change in a statement quoted in The Hill. “Today's decision by the DNC is an important step forward in making the Democratic Party more open, democratic and responsive to the input of ordinary Americans,” Sanders said.

That could be translated to mean that the change could help Democrats nominate an even more transparently radical leftist. The party has become more radical and accepting of socialists since 2016 so the new rules could lead to the nomination of the most radically left candidate that American politics has ever seen in a mainstream party.

Before Republicans prematurely celebrate the nomination of an “unelectable” candidate, they should remember that the last two presidents were both considered unelectable until they were, in fact, elected. The American electorate has whipsawed between extremes in past elections and, given Donald Trump’s persistent unpopularity, it is within the realm of possibility that, if the Democrats nominated a socialist like Bernie Sanders, America could elect its first socialist president.

For better or worse, the change remakes the political landscape for the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. The election of 2020 is shaping up to be an interesting one to watch, even if the candidates may be the most unpopular and uninspiring nominees since… 2016.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Trey Gowdy Blows Up 'Spygate'

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) just undercut President Trump’s claims about “Spygate.” The fiery former prosecutor from South Carolina responded to the president’s accusations of illegal spying on his campaign by saying that the FBI has an “obligation” to follow leads.

“When the FBI comes into contact with information about what a foreign government may be doing in our election cycle, I think they have an obligation to run it out,” Rep. Gowdy said as he discussed President Trump’s accusations about improper conduct by the FBI on CBS News on Wednesday.

“Based on what I have seen, I don't know what the FBI could have done or should have done other than run out a lead that someone loosely connected with the campaign was making assertions about Russia,” Gowdy continued. “I would think you would want the FBI to find out whether there was any validity to what those people were saying.”

Gowdy, who chairs the House Oversight Committee, was one of the congressional leaders briefed by the Department of Justice on the surveillance of Trump campaign associates last week. After the briefing, Gowdy says he is confident that Russia was the target of the investigation and not the Trump campaign itself.

“I think the FBI, if they were at the table this morning, they would tell you that Russia was the target and Russia's intentions toward our country were the target,” Gowdy said. “The fact that two people who were loosely connected to the Trump campaign may have been involved doesn't diminish the fact that Russia was the target and not the campaign.”

In response to a question, Gowdy said that he doesn’t know why President Trump persists in using the term “spy” to describe the FBI informant. In his role as a prosecutor working with law enforcement, Gowdy said that he had never heard the word “spy” used to describe an informant.

“Under cover, informant, confidential informant, those are all words I'm familiar with, I've never heard the term spy used,” Gowdy said.

Rep. Gowdy said that he doesn’t believe that President Trump has enough information about the investigation to understand the true aim of the probe. “I think his lawyers have an obligation to share with him what Devin [Nunes] and Paul [Ryan] and I saw last week,” Gowdy said. “I'm convinced when he sees it, he's going to say, 'you know what, that's what I told [James] Comey I wanted the FBI to do.”

Gowdy said he believes that the president should agree to testify before Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation, saying, “He didn't collude with Russia, he doesn't know anything about it, and if anyone in his campaign did, he wants the public to know it, I think that's what he ought to tell Mueller.”

Gowdy also criticized Attorney General Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from the Russia probe. “If I picked someone to be the country’s chief law enforcement officer and they told me later, ‘oh, by the way, I’m not going to able to participate in the most important case in the office,’ I would be frustrated too,” Gowdy said. President Trump immediately used Gowdy’s comment to attack Sessions.

So far, none of the congressional leaders briefed by the DOJ have backed President Trump’s claims that the FBI acted improperly. It is undisputed that the FBI investigated members of the Trump campaign, the questions are whether there was probable cause for them to do so and whether the surveillance was political in nature rather than a legitimate counterintelligence investigation. To date, the president has not supplied evidence that the surveillance was scandalous rather than necessary.

Claims that the FBI investigation were used to undermine the Trump campaign seem implausible. Even though the Steele dossier was investigated in the summer of 2016, it was not public knowledge until after the election was over. Where the FBI did intervene to affect the election, Comey’s October memo to Congress, it was to Donald Trump’s benefit.

President Trump has a duty to clarify his accusations against the FBI and the Department of Justice. If he has evidence of improper conduct, he should come forward with it. If he cannot provide evidence, he should stop publicly attacking and undermining America’s top law enforcement agency.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Can Democrats Win Back Trump Voters?

When Donald Trump won the election in 2016, it was not because he turned out the Republican base. Although important, that was not enough to sweep him to victory. This is illustrated by the fact that Mr. Trump lost the popular vote. What made the difference was that Trump was able to win just enough Obama voters in the right places – Florida, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania – to eke out an Electoral College win. The question for 2018 and beyond is whether Trump can retain his hold on these voters or whether Democrats will be able to woo them back.

Elections are normally won by the voters who care least about them. Even though political parties often focus on turning out the base, neither party has a majority of voters. Even including “leaners,” the most recent Gallup polling shows Republicans at 39 percent and Democrats at 49 percent. Although the percentages vary by state, the dominant party in every state must win some independent voters to carry the election.

It’s difficult for political junkies to believe, but many of these independent voters are not even thinking about the upcoming election yet. In a New York Times piece today that interviewed people who voted for both Obama and Trump, one of the scariest quotes to the politically tuned-in comes from 28-year-old Sharla Baker of Ohio.

“Honestly, it hasn’t crossed my mind really at all,” Ms. Baker said, when asked about the upcoming midterm elections, which are just six months away.

What Ms. Baker is telling us is that the crucial demographic that decides most races, the late-deciding independent voter, has not even begun to think about who they will vote for. These voters can be swayed by late-breaking “October surprises,” flashy ad campaigns and the roll-of-the-dice that is the daily news cycle in 2018. Any polling at this point should be taken with a grain of salt and an eye toward the percentage of undecided voters.

The 38 voters in 14 states interviewed by the Times is not large enough to form a statistically valid sample, but their comments do provide insights. The group almost uniformly did not like Mr. Trump as a person, but many did like his policies. In particular, tax reform and attempts at curbing illegal immigration were popular.

“Only a few regretted their vote,” the Times notes in a sentence that must fill Democrats with foreboding.

The voters said that they still liked Obama, but did not want to vote for Hillary Clinton. In fact, many voted for Donald Trump for the same reason that they voted for Barack Obama: A desire for change.

Charlotte Griffin, of Bear Grass, N.C., said that Trump was the first Republican she had voted for in 50 years. Her vote was based on anger at both political parties and frustration at the government’s inability to get things done.

“Did I really like Trump? No. I still don’t,” Ms. Griffin said. “But at least I thought we might move. We were in a stalemate. We were at dead center zero. We were just sitting there spinning our wheels.”

She added that Trump’s behavior is “severely testing my sensibilities.”

Sharla Baker was disappointed that Mr. Trump had not raised the minimum wage and forced companies to expand employee benefits. “He’s not there for the poor and the middle class,” she said. “I thought he would be, but he’s not.”

Brad Ziegler, a 68-year-old retiree from Warren County, Ill., regrets his vote for Trump, who he says he thought would be “contained” by his advisors. Ziegler, who seems representative of the middle-of-the-road voters who feel alienated by President Trump, is open to voting for Democrats, but complains that the opposition party has moved too far left.

“The Republicans are about money and big business and the Democrats have lost their way,” he said. “They are not taking care of that core group they know is out there.”

Some of the voters say they intend to vote Democrat this fall while others plan to cast their ballot for a Republican. Most are undecided.

Many Trump voters are open to Democratic candidates and, while they don’t like Donald Trump on a personal level, do like the extra money from the tax reform that he signed. While President Trump’s character isn’t going to be enough to push these voters into the arms of the Democrats on its own, it does provide Democrats with an opening. Republicans who claim that voters don’t care about Trump’s erratic behavior are wrong, but voters may look past Trump’s foibles to consider the Republican record of accomplishment.

Democrats need a positive and not-too-radical agenda to pair with President Trump’s unpopularity. For their part, Republicans have a record to stand on that includes more money in people’s paychecks, but must balance loyalty to the president in the primary with distancing themselves from his behavior in November.

President Trump remains unpopular outside the GOP, but his unpopularity may not be enough to win back Democrat Trump voters. The Democrats are in danger of blowing what could be a monumental midterm election by assuming that dislike of Trump is akin to embracing far left political positions. It isn’t.

Where Democrats have succeeded in special elections is where they have run competent candidates with moderate political views. Conor Lamb, the Democrat who won in a red Pennsylvania House district, disavowed the unpopular and extreme Nancy Pelosi and did not throw mud at President Trump. A successful national strategy could include working with Republicans on popular reform bills, but also holding Trump accountable for bad behavior, something most Republicans have been hesitant to do.

Congressional elections and presidential elections are different, but the 2016 status quo would favor Democrats by default. Since Donald Trump won with a minority of the popular vote, Democrats need fewer gains than Republicans to win the next elections. This is a goal that could be accomplished simply not running Hillary Clinton.

In contrast, barring a repeat of Trump’s unlikely Electoral College victory, Republicans need to flip more voters than the Democrats do. There is little evidence that is happening.

The midterms are currently shaping up into yet another election in which voters without a political home will have to decide which party they dislike less. It frequently seems that both parties are doing their best to push voters in the opposite direction. Considering the up-and-down news cycle of 2018, the unpopularity contest may go down to the wire.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Trump Campaign Aide Communicated With Russian Agent During Election

Robert Mueller's team has drawn the first direct line between the Russian government and Donald Trump's campaign. Court filings by Mueller's investigators allege that Rick Gates, an advisor to the 2016 Trump campaign, was in contact with a known “former Russian intelligence officer” during September and October 2016. Gates was on the staff of the Trump campaign at the time.

The revelation came from the testimony of London-based attorney, Alex van der Zwaan, who said that he was told by Gates that his business associate in the in Ukraine was a “former Russian intelligence officer” with the GRU, Russian military intelligence. The court filings cited by the Wall Street Journal say that van der Zwaan admitted to concealing the fact that he and Gates had been in contact with the Russian just prior to the election. The conversations allegedly concerned the possibility of criminal prosecution in Ukraine for the activities of van der Zwaan and others under the previous pro-Putin regime.

Rick Gates and Paul Manafort worked in the Ukraine for supporters of Viktor Yanukovych from 2004 through 2014. Earlier this year, Gates and Manafort were indicted on charges of money-laundering and making false statements relating to their time in the Ukraine. Gates pled guilty and agreed to cooperate with Mueller's investigation.

Paul Manafort was hired to be Donald Trump's campaign manager in the spring of 2016 and Gates joined the campaign at the same time. Manafort was fired in August over his Russia connections, but Gates remained until after the election and worked on Trump's inaugural committee, only leaving as the Russia investigations heated up. The Daily Beast reported that Gates still had access to White House advisors as late as June 2017 without the president's knowledge.

The Russian agent is not named in the court filings and is referred to only as “Person A.” The filings state, “The lies and withholding of documents were material to the Special Counsel’s Office’s investigation. That Gates and Person A were directly communicating in September and October 2016 was pertinent to the investigation. Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agents assisting the Special Counsel’s Office assess that Person A has ties to Russian intelligence service and had such ties in 2016. During his first interview with the Special Counsel’s Office, van der Zwaan admitted that he knew of that connection, stating that Gates told him Person A was a former Russian Intelligence Officer with GRU.”

The Wall Street Journal has identified “Person A” as Konstantin Kilimnik. The Journal notes that Kilimnik was a language instructor at the Institute of Foreign Languages and has denied being a spy.

Van der Zwaan is a Dutch national and the son-in-law of German Kahn, a Russian billionaire. He currently lives in a hotel in New York. As a member of an international law firm, van der Zwaan worked with Gates and Manafort on matters relating to the Ukraine. His lawyers say that he lied to Mueller to protect his job rather than to hinder the Russia investigation.

Gates' attorneys had no comment on the new allegations.

The filings by Mueller provide a direct link between the Russian government and an active member of the Trump campaign, but the trail does not go all the way to the president. The Daily Beast report on Gates notes that he was not liked by President Trump. One Trump campaign aide called him Trump's “whipping boy.”

Thus far, the court filings fall short of proving collusion or illegal activity relating to the campaign beyond making false statements to the FBI. The contacts allegedly deal with previous activities in the Ukraine rather than the 2016 election.

The new revelation will make it more difficult for President Trump to end the Mueller investigation. With direct links between members of his campaign and the Russian government, it would politically untenable to fire Mr. Mueller, even if the president feels more pressure to do so.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Trump Wins ‘Lie of the Year’

A few years ago, Politifact named President Obama’s statement that “you can keep your doctor,” the website’s Lie of the Year. This year that dubious honor will go to President Trump for his repeated denial of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

“When the nation’s commander-in-chief refuses to acknowledge a threat to U.S. democracy, it makes it all the more difficult to address the problem,“ Politifact said. “For this reason, we name Trump’s claim that the Russia interference is a hoax as our Lie of the Year for 2017.”

At times, the president has conceded that Russia meddled in the election, but as recently as last month Trump said that he believed Russian President Putin’s claim that Russia did not have a role in the election interference. At the same time, Trump said that he also believed US intelligence agencies who have pinned the blame for the cyberattacks squarely on Putin’s government.

There are two separate Russia tracks to the Russia story. The first is the accusation that Russia interfered with the election through “fake news,” the hacking of Democrat emails and cyberattacks on the voting infrastructure. There is ample evidence to support this aspect of the Russia story, which was the subject of a report released by US intelligence agencies last January. Many Trump Administration officials, including CIA Director Mike Pompeo, Defense Secretary James Mattis and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, have all confirmed Russia’s meddling in the election.

The second aspect to the Russia story is the possibility of collusion by members of the Trump campaign. Collusion has not been confirmed, but campaign emails show that members of the Trump campaign were open to working with Putin’s Russia.

In September, the president called the Russia hacking story a “hoax” in a tweet. The tweet addressed Russian ads on Facebook, part of the Russian meddling story rather than the collusion claims.

Trump acknowledged that Russia had attacked the election last January, but waffled on the issue afterward. In July, the president said, “It could have very well been Russia but it could well have been other countries and I won't be specific but I think a lot of people interfered.”

Originally published on The Resurgent