Slicing the Two Americas

Last week, in writing that Hillary Clinton was as uninspiring as she was, in part because she wasn't saying anything at all, I got a bit into the fact that the left and the right don't seem to be speaking to the same things -- certainly not in recognition of what people care about.

I suppose that the leftist voter probably thinks that he cares about income inequality, gay marriage, global warming, black lives not mattering, bakers not catering gay weddings, and that sort of thing, because he has been browbeaten by the media and the left to believe that the fact that those things exist are why he doesn't have a good job, can't pay his bills, and fears an invasion by ISIS.  As if fixing income inequality is going to get him a better job.

So let me credit occasional guest columnist Ed Fenstermacher for a note a few days ago in response, actually, to a different column:

"Your article ... points to an issue that has become increasingly worrisome to me.  We seem to be becoming two Americas (or maybe more) so completely that we don’t even agree on what the issues are anymore.  When Kennedy and Nixon debated, they differed in style and approach, but I believe it was a given that we wanted America to be safe from foreign threat and for the economy to grow.  They differed on "how", but not on "what."  Carter and Reagan certainly disagreed about how we should obtain energy, but neither of them disputed the need for it.  And so on until at least 2004.   

"But it all changed with Obama in 2008, and I think it started changing before the election.  He really has fundamentally transformed America, to the point where his party cares only about things that I don’t care a whit about.  Income inequality (not poverty).  Transgender bathroom and locker room availability.  Not hurting the feelings of enemies who have publicly sworn to kill us all.  Penalizing success.  Freedom from religion, except for the new churches of environmentalism, global warming, and secular humanism.

"Then there are the things I care about: economic growth, over-regulation of not just the economy but every facet of our lives, freedom of religion, security against foreign invasion whether by armies or illegal aliens, security against terrorism, balancing the federal budget and reducing the debt to a manageable level, getting entitlements under control, having a simple and fair tax system, not penalizing success.

"It’s kind of like the Tower of Babel again, except we nominally understand the same words."

You simply cannot argue with that, and it plays massively into the ongoing presidential campaign.  It isn't just that Donald Trump is offering a lot of easy solutions to the problems that matter to most of us; it is that he is talking about them at all.  He takes credit for getting us talking about illegal immigration and, frankly, he should.  The Democrats don't talk about it because they're afraid we'll shut down a spigot of future Democrat voters.  The Republican leaders, to some degree, don't talk about it because they're afraid we'll shut down a spigot of future cheap labor.

Do you get it?  In most cases, the left and right are talking about (and running for office on) completely different issues; ironically, on immigration if it weren't for Trump neither side would talk about it.  At the same time, illegal immigration is causing huge demands on strapped governments to educate and hospitalize illegals and their illegal families; and their huge numbers and the willingness of enough of them to work for a living not only drives down labor costs, but keeps (particularly) black unemployment at catastrophic rates.

But I actually digress.

There are two sets of voters.  It's fascinating; I would like to hope that my liberal friends at least believe that I do indeed care about those things Ed mentioned above because I believe them to be significant problems, the resolution of which would make the country better.  I really hope they do.

At the same time, though, I don't believe the liberal voter really believes that all those special-interest things are going to make the country better.  I imagine that liberal voters vote that way out of a sense of obligation ("my mother was a Democrat"), indoctrination in college (where the mid-to-late-teen need to fit in morphs to being a political motivator as well as social) or of not wanting to appear heartless or something.  Come on, Michael Brown was a pot-smoking convenience store robber who rushed a cop, tried to steal his gun and then got shot when he rushed the cop again.  This constitutes the basis for "black lives matter"?

So you have one part of America believing that we need to simplify government and streamline it, and that will ease the burden on the economy, create jobs and lift the middle class a lot and the poor somewhat.  Another part of America is exercised because a bakery in Indiana prefers not to sell a cake for a gay wedding.  I couldn't possibly explain any better how much liberals and conservatives are ships passing in the night.

Sometime this fall, we will start having presidential debates between the parties.  You mark my words, if you can turn off the rest of your filters and just look at one of the debates asking "Are they even sensing the same problems?", you'll decide that no, they aren't.  And I'm sure the questions won't help either.

It will indeed be like the Tower of Babel, except that it isn't the language that's the problem.  It's the reason to use it.  And one side ought not even bother.

Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
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On Strategy and SCOTUS Nominations

I had a few interesting email conversations with readers yesterday in regard to Barack Obama's nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court this week.  I sincerely wish, and trust me when I say this, that the framework of the discussion had been different.

In principle, I actually don't have a problem with the president making the nomination.  I actually would make a nomination if I were president myself, and would advocate for my nominee.  There is nothing in the Constitution that says anything different, and in one of the few points I would agree with Obama on, I cannot truly conceive of a rationale not to nominate someone.

The other part of this that is almost pointless, however surprisingly so, is Judge Garland's qualifications, which are essentially irrelevant at this point.  He is clearly of sufficient experience, as chief judge on the circuit in which he now sits, to be at least considered as a justice of the Supreme Court.  That doesn't say that I support him but, on his own experience, he would merit Senate consideration before deconstructing his opinions.

There is, of course, a third part before we get to the actual point I want to get to.  That is the fact that those opinions of his I just mentioned are now being evaluated not for judicial consistency or rational thinking, but by political spectral analysis.  That, I have a huge argument with.  Since "borking" became a verb, it has been a particularly Democrat-driven approach in the Senate to evaluate candidates for SCOTUS based on political viewpoints, as expressed in or derivable from their written opinions.

I really hate that.  I interpret the Constitutional directive as being that the president should be given relatively wide leeway to nominate justices as long as they are adequately experienced and qualified.  But I also believe that the experience of the past 40 years has effectively and permanently neutralized that position.  It is now the way of the world that it is OK for a leftist Senate to reject an amply-qualified candidate based solely on the conservatism of his or her opinions (and therefore, to a much lesser extent, vice versa -- the "lesser extent" is only because the press makes it more difficult on a conservative Senate).  That's where we are.

So we set aside Judge Garland completely from the equation; it matters not who he is, what he believes in, what he has ever written until now and what experience he has.  Poof.  It is all about whether the Senate will even take up the nomination before the election.  Except there is one thing -- though his track record is poor on the Second Amendment, Judge Garland is, by all current information, considerably less leftist than someone who would have been nominated by this president two years ago, or someone who would be nominated by a new Democrat president if one were tragically elected in November 2016.

It's nice to hear a prominent authority agree with me, but on Thursday I heard Sen. Flake of Arizona tout the exact strategy I would take, as if he had read my mind (I hadn't written this yet on line).  And that is very simple.

We have a nominee and the action now rests with the Senate.  And the operative word should be "rest."  As in "do nothing."

Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, has at least one thing on his side, which is a series of well-documented quotes (thank you, press!) from people like Joe Biden and Barack Obama in absolutely comparable situations with a Republican president, saying how they shouldn't act on the analogous nomination late in a Republican president's term.  McConnell even cheerfully referred to Biden's explicit statement, all over the news now, as the "Biden Rule."

So knowing that, and knowing that we've no idea who the next president will be, or of what party, it would seem to me there is an easy solution.  Merrick Garland wants to be confirmed.  He isn't going to withdraw his nomination anytime soon.  So what the Senate should simply do is slow-roll the heck out of things.  Schedule the Judiciary Committee hearings for, say, September.  Make them once every two weeks.  Get an idea of how Judge Garland actually thinks and what kind of justice he would make.  By November, they ought to have a good idea.

Then on the day after the election, call a vote.  If a Democrat wins the White House, confirm him on the spot as being far less damaging than someone the new president would appoint.  If a Republican wins, then schedule a vote on December 31, the last day of the Senate term, and reject Judge Garland.  The new president would make the appointment, and we would get, hopefully, a much more conservative new justice.

The only downside would be if a Republican were to win the election but the Senate were lost to the Democrats -- Obama's term would run 20 days past the start of the new Senate, and with an incoming Democrat Senate, once the outgoing Senate rejected Judge Garland, Obama could appoint a replacement after January 1st, who would be far more liberal, and the new Senate would confirm immediately.  If that were the case, the current Senate would have to confirm Judge Garland after election day, same as if a Democrat president were elected.

This is precisely what Sen. Flake said on TV Thursday.  Great minds think alike.

I hate to be writing this.  I have so much more belief in the institution of the Supreme Court than the above political strategy would seem to imply.  But actions have consequences, and the Democrat rejection of Judge Bork strictly on political grounds, decades back, has had the consequences of politicizing the SCOTUS appointment process more than it should ever be so.

It is, unfortunately, not different; it is what it is.

It didn't have to be.

 Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
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Nothing To Say, Nothing At All

On Tuesday, after winning  few more primaries, Hillary Clinton went on (at least to the extent I could make myself listen to her) about "uniting" people, and "not building walls, but breaking down barriers" and that sort of thing.

I don't want to extract one part of her speeches and assume that's all there is, but again, to the extent that I could handle listening to her, it seems to be all there is.  And, like so many things that Democrats routinely say in campaigns, once you peel back the words and try to analyze the actual ideas and proposals, there simply doesn't seem to be anything there.

Her candidacy is generating an amazing lack of ... anything, other than managing to have locked up the super-delegates (what a scandal that is) and certainly getting little in the way of enthusiasm and actual voters.

For example, as I write this, 99% of the ballots in Ohio have been counted.  Ohio is a perfect state to use, since both parties are contested in the presidential primary and it is definitional "swing" state for the general election.  How many Democrats voted in the primary there on Tuesday? About 1,197,000 votes, probably still just short of 1.2 million by the time all are counted.

Want to guess how many voted in the Republican primary?  Over 2,040,000, meaning that almost 70% more Ohioans voted in the Republican primary than in the equally-contested Democrat one.  In case you think, as I did, that the "John Kasich favorite-son" kind of thing was the big difference there, we can look at Florida, which had a comparable situation as a swing state.

Total vote for Democrats in Florida was a bit short of 1.7 million.  Over on the Republican side, the total number of ballots cast was astonishingly higher -- 2,350,000 votes or 38% more Floridians voting in the Republican primary.  In fact, if you omit all of home-state senator Marco Rubio's votes, there were still more ballots cast for Republicans.  Yep, more votes were cast for just Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and John Kasich in Florida than for all the Democrats combined.  And the Democrats' total was about 50,000 smaller than even its own last contested primary, in 2008.

So what's going on?

Well, I think we need to relate the two parties' response to the pulse of the nation.  That pulse, in case you hadn't noticed, is the one generally referred to in the media as "anger", meaning that the voters are not happy with Government right now.  They see an entrenched bureaucracy and an entrenched Congress with most members (Ted Cruz a rare exception) so devoted to their own reelection, that they feel it worthwhile -- or are at least content -- to let the bureaucracy grow.  And the people see high, high tax rates, a Gestapo IRS, and idiotic legislation like Obamacare whose content is totally unrelated to its stated purpose.

Does Hillary Clinton even come close to addressing that?  Well, heck no.   She's off on leftist garbage like "building bridges" and "breaking down barriers", tra la la la la la.  Might as well have a unicorn doing her simultaneous translation for the deaf.  Except, of course, that she is the one who is "deaf", as in not hearing the voice of the people.

Some 50-60 years ago, the Democrats and Republicans would have heard the same voice, and disagreed as to how to address it.  They would have debated strategy -- hotly, no doubt -- but they would have at least been trying to solve the same problems.

No longer.  While we are overtaxed, grossly underemployed, in debt up to our hairlines, no longer trusted by our friends and increasingly laughed at by our enemies, Hillary Clinton is talking about bridges and barriers.  And she wonders why the Democrats aren't getting anyone to the polls in the primaries?  Well, actually, I suspect she doesn't wonder that, being so smug that she just knows she will win in November, at least if she is not in prison by then (another area of denial).

If you want to know why the Republicans are outdrawing Democrats by a lot in states where you can actually compare the two, well, it's actually pretty easy.  Whatever you think of the Republican candidates, however you regard their solutions, at least they are seeing the right problems.

And those "problems" are the ones that we American voters confront daily.  They are not "income inequality"; they are not "barriers and walls."  They are not that America is over-sufficiently great.

Hillary Clinton does not see the problems, so she cannot begin to provide solutions.  You will see that in the eventual candidate debates, when she and the Republican candidate look like they are talking past each other -- and they will be.  Without looking like she knows what actually is on our minds, she will look like she is running to be president of some other country entirely.

So we see her as having nothing to say.  Nothing at all. 

 Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There's a new post from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com at 10am Eastern time, every weekday, giving new meaning to "prolific essayist."  Sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu.

The Best We Can Do

I have to confess that I'm following the two sets of primaries with as much attention as I ever have in previous years.  So when I got a note from my brother the other day bemoaning the candidates' respective flaws, I had a lot to think about.

No one is perfect, and politicians are particularly less than perfect.  They are innately prostitutional, promising so much if only we will elect them to whatever office they seek.  Because the presidential election season is so long -- well over a year and a half, and that's just the active part -- the promises get bigger and the credibility smaller.

It's a hard thing to survive, a campaign like that, and none actually does with his or her integrity completely intact.  I mean, I've seen a few, but as was the case with, say, Mitt Romney in 2012, surviving with your integrity only a bit diminished (as opposed to Hillary Clinton, who had little to begin with and lost all of it around 1992) doesn't make you a necessarily good candidate.

So at about this time in the campaign, after a long season and a few Super Tuesdays, we have to ask ourselves -- not about the process, which needs repair but won't get it, but about the candidates themselves -- "Can't we do a lot better?"

You want flaws, I'll give you flaws.  Donald Trump is a New Yorker's New Yorker, with a bent to bully and a tendency to avoid specifics.  Bernie Sanders thinks there is a money tree somewhere on Wall Street that can fund his government-is-all, hyper-socialist approach.  Marco Rubio, no longer a candidate as of last night, has whatever robotic character flaw let him do that God-awful debate in New Hampshire amidst a dozen really good ones, and I'm concerned he is not mature enough yet.

Hillary Clinton is ... well, get out the list.  Self-centered, corrupt, completely untrustworthy, contemptuous of Americans, shorter on resume than she imagines, void of accomplishment and, frankly, annoying as heck to listen to.  That's just off the top of my head.  Ted Cruz doesn't play well with others and comes across as if every conversation is a debate.  And John Kasich offsets his resume and accomplishments with incredibly poor campaign skills.

No one has it all, but come on, isn't there anyone who has, you know, most of what is needed?  I'm really trying not to use any individual as a standard, because everyone is different.

I'd just like to see more of the qualities I once write about in the same person.  A real sensitivity to the issues important to me, wrapped in an ability to communicate them to the public to make the case.  Financial common sense ... a sense of America's role that maps with mine ... a long, long view to the future.  All wrapped up in a decent person.

Is that too much to ask?

I have not looked through the governors' offices, the House and the Senate to ponder people who might have more to offer than the current crop.  I'd like to think there are plenty of people who could be at least as worthy or maybe a lot more so, than those running now.  I mean, I really liked Mike Huckabee and he never got wind in his sails at all.  And he isn't even in government now.

Unfortunately, it isn't really a "system" delivering flawed candidates.  If anything, the system is what is making it so hard for someone capable and impressive to want to go through it.  Debates.  Insults.  The press up your backside all the time.  Tax returns back to 1947.  Secret Service protection.  Challenges to your principles on a daily basis.

I know I sure wouldn't want to go through that, and I'm younger than a few of the candidates still in it.  Candidates decide for themselves that they want to be president, and are willing to put on the armor and go through the fight.  But man, it sure doesn't produce people who look good politically at the end of a campaign, any more than had they actually gone to war and come back.

I don't want to have to cast votes reluctantly.  I want to believe in a candidate.

Maybe in four years.

Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There's a new post from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com at 10am Eastern time, every weekday, giving new meaning to "prolific essayist."  Sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu.

Foreign Endorsements? The LAST Thing We Need

And she bragged about it!

Yes, on Sunday evening, your soon-to-be-indicted former Secretary of State and mine, she of the unsecured server full of state secrets, Hillary Clinton,  actually said the following to the USA

"But one argument that I am uniquely qualified to bring, because of my service as Secretary of State is what this presidency would mean to our country and our standing in the world. I am already receiving messages from leaders, and I am having foreign leaders ask if they can endorse me to stop Donald Trump, and I am like, no, this is up to Americans, thank you very much."  Underlines are mine.
  
Two things, or maybe ten, ought to be troubling about the message above.  The first is that no one asked how many "foreign leaders" asked her to endorse her candidacy (Two?  Eleven?), nor where they were from and which ones.  Assad?  Putin? Trudeau?  No one asked, but it was CNN, after all, where journalism is flexibly defined and "investigative journalism" only goes one way.  You know that, because no one asked her once if any of those "foreign leaders" had ever paid her or Bill to give a speech, or donated to the "Clinton Foundation."

The other is that, incredibly, Hillary Clinton was actually proud to have said it.  Yes, kiddies, in her isolated, ivory-tower mentality, she assumed that having certain leaders endorse her would be thought of as a good thing.

Now, let us listen for a second to the contrary argument, the one that is why Donald Trump, whatever you may think of him, is packing crowds of 25,000 or more into auditoriums and stadiums across the country.

Donald Trump: "America is being beaten by China, Japan, Mexico and the rest of the world.  They are laughing at us and taking advantage of us."

Hillary Clinton: "I am having [the leaders of the countries who are taking advantage of us] ask if they can endorse me to stop [the candidate who is exposing the fact that they are indeed taking advantage of us]."

I don't know how high Hillary's ivory tower actually is, or how insulated she has made herself from reality.  The press rope-off she started her campaign with is probably a good indicator of where she is innately.  I don't know if she really can internalize how widespread the "America first" feeling is, the one that led to the Trump candidacy's success to date.  I am pretty sure no one is telling her that from a devil's advocate perspective.

But isn't it telling, folks, that despite the "huge" movement of pro-American, USA-first attitudes driving Republican primary numbers up while Democrat primary numbers have sagged dramatically,  she would actually think that foreign endorsement would be a good thing.

I can hear the thinking in her head and the nodding agreement among the sycophants and toadies in her inner circle.  They think that she has, first, a lot more actual experience than she actually has (a few years as Secretary of State and a term in the Senate; the rest is all whom she was "married" to).  So to make that experience look important, she waves around her impact on foreign rulers -- and we still don't know how many, how few or from which countries.

The problem is that the other couple hundred countries on earth are the ones who want to take down the USA.  They range from North Korea declaring it can bomb one of our cities off the map, to our trade partners manipulating their currency and imposing barriers to our selling or manufacturing there, to Putin doing what Putin does, to the oil sheiks letting us defend them without accommodation on energy.

Americans aren't that stupid.  We know we're being taken advantage of.  It's just that Hillary and her toadies either don't understand it or, like Obama, are happy to have it happen.  They want the USA to be just another country.

We, on the other hand, get it -- whether Trump supporter or not.  Hillary invoking support from abroad as being a "good thing" is precisely in opposition to the vein that Trump's candidacy tapped into -- tired of the great nation the USA was, before Obama, being deemed as incorrect; tired of condemnation of American exceptionalism; tired of being walked all over.

Hillary just aligned herself, knowingly or not, with the America Last crowd.

And she probably wonders why people aren't coming out in droves to vote for her.

Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There's a new post from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com at 10am Eastern time, every weekday, giving new meaning to "prolific essayist."  Sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu.

Confounding Primary Rules

Back in 2014, when I first started this column, one of the early pieces had to do with Election Day and how to make it better.  I wrote, as you can see here, that we would be well-served as a country with a robust press corps and great curiosity, if we were to switch Election Day to a full 24-hour cycle beginning and ending at the same exact instant in all voting areas.

That seemed so logical to me -- 24 hours meant that no one had an issue with work schedule since there was always a long period where anyone would be away from work and could go vote.  It also meant that people in, say, Oregon, who were late-afternoon or evening voters, would not be influenced by results already being broadcast from Eastern time zone states.  Every polling place closed (and, of course, opened) at the same exact moment.

I don't think that has gone anywhere, by the way.

Now, my best girl made a comment the other day that prompted me to think about the primary-and-caucus structure we now have.  She asked why we didn't have all the primaries on the same day to get them over with and shorten the season.  And I had to think about it.

The answer, of course, differs between the consideration of "how it got this way" and "why it should stay that way."  It got that way because certain states have managed to leverage early positions in the calendar, which offset their relative insignificance in size and relevance to the rest of the USA.  Iowa caucuses have sort of always been first, then the New Hampshire primary, and you get the rest.  There is no reason on earth why it should stay that way, save for politics.

Now, why it should stay that way, at least spreading primaries out for a full season with lots of debates, rather than all states on the same date, is completely different.  Absent a focus on single states or groups of states, there would not be an opportunity to have candidates pay attention to the issues specific to certain states or regions.

The general election is prima facie evidence -- in the past few elections, the candidates from each party might as well have stayed in about five states -- Ohio, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire and New Mexico, something like that.  The others were so solidly Democrat or Republican that they rarely -- or never -- got visited.  No attention was paid to the needs of Idahoans or Californians or New Yorkers or Oklahomans.  Why bother?  The electoral math meant only a few swing states mattered.

But I actually didn't intend this column to be about spreading out primary and debate season, even though a discussion of that is what got it going.  No, I'm here thinking about the fact that the allocation of delegates varies way, way too much from state to state.  On Tuesday, the crucial states (at least for this Republican primary season) of Florida and Ohio will award all their delegates to the candidate with the most votes.

Last week, and pretty much for all states contested to this point, the delegates were awarded based on some type of proportionality to the total vote count.  Sure, there were some state-specific rules -- in some cases, only candidates receiving 20% of the vote shared in the delegate pool -- but none, I think, was a "winner-take-all" primary.

And now most of the remaining ones, at least including some big states with high delegate counts, have winner-take-all rules, kind of like the Electoral College.  And this is ... why?  What is different between Florida, say, which will have one candidate get delegates, and Texas, which already held its primary and apportioned them?  What benefit is there to the party or the candidates to allow that difference?

I mean, I can understand the argument for all the primaries to be proportional, or for none to be, but it doesn't seem to be beneficial to anyone that there are such distinct rules.  We just simply seem to have evolved that way, and no one has the political will to say that this is tantamount to the spaghetti-code metaphor, and it is time to start all over.

What do you think?  Is the inconsistency in the way different states award delegates, and the concentration of winner-take-all primaries in the later states, a conspiracy of some kind to ... well, I don't know what.  But after this season, the last thing we need is more to question in the process.

At least for next time, let's suppose we can fix it.

Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There's a new post from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com at 10am Eastern time, every weekday, giving new meaning to "prolific essayist."  Sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu.

Now, Mr. Trump, Tell Us about Carrier

Between yesterday and today, and perhaps because of a fairly high readership of yesterday's piece, I decided to ask another question of Donald Trump to clarify something he has been saying on an ongoing basis.  Yesterday, we'll note, I had a clarifying question regarding the border wall with Mexico, which I thought was reasonable to ask.  I even offered to write his speech answering the question, at least for a modest fee.

Today, I thought we might slip over to another item in the news that he mentions often.

First, though, is an obligatory disclaimer.  I am not writing this out of any specific feeling toward Donald Trump, whom I may or may not have voted for in the Virginia primary a week back.  For the record, if he is the nominee of the Republican Party, I will vote for him.  That is assured, almost no matter what happens between now and then.  I won't be voting for Hillary, whether or not she is in prison by then.

So the news item at issue today is the Carrier Air Conditioning plant moving its operations from Indiana to Monterrey, Mexico, and the associated loss of most or all of the 1,400 jobs that were there, employing people at the plant.  We have all read the story, all heard the outrage, and all heard Trump raise it as an example of the loss of jobs here to other countries.

That won't happen, Mr. Trump has been saying, and the jobs are coming back to the USA.  We all applaud, and we all support American products being made and sold in the USA.  I agree.  We're Americans, and the president should be acting first based on what is good for us -- he works for us.  And surely, losing a thousand jobs of an American company to Mexico is not a good thing.

Or at least it sounds like it is not a good thing.

But Carrier, it should be told, did not move the manufacturing plant to Monterrey, Mexico because of the palm trees and warm weather.  It's not even near the coast, for God's sake.  No, they moved for one simple and unalterable reason.

The cost of manufacturing in the USA was and is too high to manufacture a product that could be sold at a competitive price.  But it is affordable to do so in Mexico.

It is Economics 101, unfortunately for the employees in Indiana.  They have mortgages and kids' college bills and food, clothing and life in general.  To pay for that, they need a certain wage, and that wage, times 1,400, produced a cost to Carrier too high to make a competitively-priced product.  If Carrier couldn't break even, or could barely break even to the point that its shareholders could not earn on their investment, they would have to raise their air conditioner prices beyond what Americas would pay, because they had alternatives.

Knowing that, you have to look at it as Carrier not having a choice.  And essentially, they didn't, at least not one that would allow them to keep manufacturing in Indiana.  So they're moving.

The obvious question to Mr. Trump, then, is this --  

"Carrier was forced to move because they would lose money if they stayed.  The underlying problem is not the greed of Carrier, but the costs of manufacturing here.  If you try to make it illegal for them to leave, or tax them when trying to bring the products back to the USA to sell, you're not fixing the cost problem, you are simply changing the cost of producing an air conditioner that is ready to sell in a store, from a high-cost basis in Indiana, to a lower-cost-plus-a-high-import-tax basis manufacturing in Monterrey.  Carrier still cannot make an air conditioner to sell here on which they can make money.  And they will close.

"Just the economic impact of trying to legislate to bring jobs back here is going to be to raise prices on goods and services.  So please, Mr. Trump, first take us through the Carrier example and explain in simple terms what legislation will apply, what incentive will be there for Carrier to move manufacturing back to Indiana, and how the whole process results in air conditioners Carrier can sell at a competitive price and make a fair profit.  Then, use that Carrier example to explain how that "competitive price" will be comparable to the competitors and affordable by Americans -- neither of which is true now and is what has forced Carrier to Monterrey."
 

I think that is a pretty straightforward question, and I absolutely believe that Mr. Trump has, in his mind, an answer.  He is an astute businessman.  I hope it involves something that allows us to manufacture competitively here, but if it's so, I'd really like to hear it.

I'd like to hear it, so I can then explain it to others.  Fair enough?

Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There's a new post from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com at 10am Eastern time, every weekday, giving new meaning to "prolific essayist."  Sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu.

Tell Me More About the Wall, Please

As almost everyone is aware, and as Donald Trump himself has stated hundreds of times at this point, he has a first solution to the immigration problem at our southern border.

"We are going to build a wall.  And we are going to have Mexico pay for it."

Now, deep breath first.  This is really not about the need for the wall.  In fact, I am going to stipulate, for argument's sake, almost all of what he has been saying, assuming or alluding to during the campaign, to wit:

1. The current border is porous as heck, and is even more porous because the incumbent president does not want to stop illegals from crossing into our country, even when they occasionally come over and murder innocent Americans.  After all, they are likely to be overwhelming Democrat votes if and when they vote, legally or not.

2. The heroin epidemic, devastating people in states such as New Hampshire, is directly affected by the fact that drugs can be brought into this country across a border that is not enforced and barely patrolled.

3. There are plenty of good and decent people crossing the border seeking a better life, who would happily go through a legal path to becoming Americans, however long it would take.  And mixed among them are drug dealers, gun-runners and low-lifes whom we would never admit, if we had the same choice as to who immigrated that every other country has.

4.  Mexicans are no worse and no better, as a population, than anyone else -- including Americans whose families have been here for generations.  This is not about ethnicity or race.

5.  If I were to figure out who I'd like to have build that wall, Donald Trump would have been up there on my list even before he declared his candidacy.  The man can build things.  Last stipulation -- Donald Trump can certainly build that wall.

So we all should understand, and I certainly concur, that we need the wall.  If you have a country, you have borders, and borders need to mean something.  Got it.

Here's the thing, though.  Donald Trump keeps on saying that "Mexico is going to pay for the wall", and that's the part I don't quite get.  I mean, to me it would be nice if they paid for it, but not absolutely necessary.  Just having a border secure enough to reduce the flow of illegals to a trickle, and virtually eliminate the flow of drugs across that border, well, that would be good.

I don't actually care who pays for it.  What I have not gotten a handle on -- and this is one of those areas where Trump's lack of specificity challenges me -- is how the money flows from Mexico to the U.S. Government.

He has been asked -- oh, he certainly has been asked.  But his answer, to me, wanders directly over to the trade deficit, which is a commercial figure.  Trade deficits measure the dollars in goods and services sent from the people of the USA for those purchases  to another country, vs. the pesos (in this case) in goods and services sent from that nation's people to suppliers in the USA.  A trade deficit of $100 billion means that Americans bought $100 billion more in goods from Mexico than Mexicans bought from us.

Now, this simple equation I just gave you gets complicated really fast, in at least two particular ways.  First, we're bigger than Mexico.  We're also more prosperous.  So it makes sense that we will normally have a trade deficit, presuming equal barrier levels to imports and exports between the two.  Mexico's economy and people simply aren't large or prosperous enough to order as much from us as we do from them.

Second, there is the exhausting factor of currency exchange and valuation.  If Mexico or any other country suddenly decides to devalue its currency against the U.S. dollar, then instantly it becomes cheaper for Americans to buy goods from Mexico than it was before, and if Mexican shoes, say, were less than American shoes before, now they're even more so.  China does this strategically to boost its exports to the USA, and make our goods really hard to sell there.  Mexico, same thing.  Multiple countries do this.

I understand that trade deficit thing a bit, really I do.  What I can't extrapolate from that is what Trump plans to do to move actual dollars from Mexico to the U.S. Government to reimburse us for the wall.  Is he going to propose to devalue the U.S. dollar?  Would that work?  If so, how would he actually get the Government to get it hands on the amount for the wall?

Will he threaten Mexico with devaluation, or trying to change NAFTA, to extort them into paying for the wall on a "pay up or else" basis?  Will he threaten them with some other economic sanction if they don't pay?  Wouldn't you like to know how?  I would, for two reasons -- first, I actually am curious to know and, second, his answer would give some insight into the way he thinks about economics on an international scale.

At this point, after Tuesday, it is perhaps more likely than not that Trump will get enough delegates to be nominated as the Republican candidate, or at least come so close that the convention will be pretty much forced to nominate him.  Hillary Clinton is a very unconvincing speaker and a weak debater, but she surely knows enough to press Trump on how he will get Mexico to pay.

If he tries to answer with the same trade-deficit responses he has been giving, it will not play too well by then.  I have a degree from M.I.T. and I want a wall built at the border, but I sure can't tell you how the money will come from Mexico to pay for it.

Donald Trump needs a better answer and he needs it pretty soon.  So here is an offer.  Mr. Trump, please drop me an email or give me a call.  Explain to me how Mexico is going to pay.  I will write you a simple, compelling speech you can give going forward, that will make sense to people.  I will charge my normal, inexpensive consulting rate.  It won't guarantee you the nomination or the election, but it will at least stop the nagging question.

Deal?

Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
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Bernie, Just Answer the Question, Please

I give Bernie Sanders a lot of credit -- well, some -- for showing up for the town hall meeting Monday on Fox News in Detroit.  I certainly give him more credit for being there than I give Hillary Clinton, first because she got shamed into attending after Sanders said he'd be there, and second because Bernie had nothing to fear -- he actually believes the things he is saying.

Unfortunately for the nation, some of the things he believes don't make a shred of economic sense.  And worse, the Vermont senator, who polls hugely higher than Hillary among those who claim to care about whether their candidate is "honest and trustworthy", was less than that on Monday -- though it clearly helped him win the Michigan primary last night.

I refer specifically to his comments in regard to the national debt, relative to his proposals for spending money on things that the Government even now with our bloated and unsustainable budget deficit is not spending on.

I know you know the difference, but just so we have our terms correct, or at least agreed-upon, let us note this.  When I mention the deficit, I am talking about the amount by which the government overspends its revenues each year because it spends too much -- there is a fiscal 2015 deficit, a fiscal 2016 deficit, etc.  When the deficit goes down from year to year, it simply means that we were less profligate than the prior year, which isn't much to crow about unless it goes from something bad to zero, as in a balanced budget.

A deficit, then, is a year's worth of loss because spending exceeded income.  When you run a deficit, as we have since John Kasich was in Congress in the 1990s and worked with Speaker Newt Gingrich and (reluctantly) Bill Clinton to eliminate it, you have to borrow money to pay the overspending. 

The debt, on the other hand, is what we still owe at any given moment -- the accumulation of all the borrowing we have had to do to pay for all of the deficits of prior years, less the amount of principal on all those loans which has been paid back with interest.  A national debt of $19 trillion, as we have now, means that we have borrowed $19 trillion more than we have paid back, against all the loans we took out for the deficits of prior years, and that what is left that we owe.

Bernie Sanders was asked pretty specifically about the debt, and how he would address it.  And he didn't come close to answering the question.  He rambled on about "Wall Street", and then started in on his making public colleges "tuition ... free" with his signature hand gesture pointing to the right with his hand when saying "free."

I don't know what your definition of "honest and trustworthy" is, but mine includes something that would entail answering a direct question reasonably directly and not immediately going off on a journey by way of Kansas City and not returning.  And despite the moderator, Bret Baier, trying to get the senator to talk about debt in and of itself, Bernie never came close.

Now, I realize that Fox News probably figured it was lucky to get both candidates to come to Fox in the first place, and Baier probably didn't want to have Bernie get up and walk away, had he tried a third time to get him to answer.  But had I been there in the moderator's chair, I really think I would have pressed the issue, as any good moderator should.

"Senator", I would have said, "we start with a $19 trillion debt that is costing us a huge amount of our budget each year to pay on and, with annual deficits, it is getting larger.  As things go now [he had a chart of this in the town hall] we expect to go to $29 trillion by 2026.  You have proposed additional spending, which would increase that debt over the years, further.

"You have proposed additional taxes and a rate upwards of 90% on the highest income levels.  But you know, or should know, and I know certainly, that even if you took the top 1% and confiscated all their property and their next ten years' earnings, it would not be enough to take the Government through a year or two -- and then there would be no money left with the "rich" to pay for ongoing services, let alone your additional spending, for more than a year or two. 

"Please talk only about the debt, and either explain how you actually will balance the budget to get it paid down, or why you think we can sustain annual trillion-dollar deficits without eventually collapsing economically as a country."

Bret Baier tried; I'll give him that.  But the answer to the debt and the annual deficit problem is not to be found rambling on about "Wall Street" and "taxing the rich."  The annual deficit is very simply explained -- without crashing the economy, the Government can only take in X dollars in revenues.  We spend X plus a lot more now.

It is an economic and geopolitical fact of life that, as one of the recent chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff noted, our national debt is the USA's biggest threat.  Even Republicans, who recognize that fact, are hard-pressed to find solutions, and that's without making proposals that exacerbate it.

The Democrats appear unwilling to mention the problem at all, or answer questions about it, sort of like the way they won't say "Islamic terrorism."  The media, especially in the rare opportunities the conservative elements of the media get to confront candidates, need to press this matter.

And Bernie, maybe everyone wants you as their uncle, but you still need to answer the question.  Because unlike Hillary's emails, we need to care about the debt.

Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
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If You Don't Know Security, Please Shut Up

OK, I have officially had it up to here regarding the whole Hillary Clinton email thing, but not in the Bernie Sanders perspective, where no one cares about the emails.  Everyone cares; it's just that many of the people are trying to apply their own logic to something they know nothing about.

We have all probably read the comments sections of articles touching on the email issue that the former first lady has gotten herself embroiled in.  The latest was some Democrat commentator on Fox News being interviewed Monday morning and dropping some talking point about how "long ago" this all happened, as if that were even relevant (note: there is no statute of limitations on selfishness, pathological control-freakism and particularly exposing national secrets).

But that is really not the point.  What is at issue is this whole part of the argument about when material is classified.  And what has me up a wall is when people who do not hold, and never have held clearances, who have no real understanding about classified material (but fondly believe that they do) try to make an argument in defense of Hillary regarding the material that flew through her personal email server.  Hillary says that herself.

You know the argument -- "Well, none of that material was classified when she sent it and received it ...".  That sort of thing.  And people who should know a lot better than to make assumptions about how material is classified, or when it becomes classified, blather on about the "when" part in an effort to defuse the situation and defend the indefensible actions of Mrs. Clinton.

So let us start with the facts, ma'am, and just the facts.

(1) The people who are currently reviewing the emails before they are being sent to the FBI are with the State Department.  That is the current administration's State Department, run by John Kerry, who reports to Barack Obama.  When they say that material is classified, it is by definition a shot at Hillary's integrity, so you just know they're doing this reluctantly.

(2) To date, over 2,000 of the emails which passed through her private server and have been turned over to the FBI have been deemed to contain classified information, including over 100 that she wrote herself, meaning that she "created" the content.

(3) Classified information is not classified because of its classification "headers" -- confidential, secret or top secret -- but because of its content.  According to Federal guidelines for the handling of such material, it is "born classified."  If it is suitably sensitive, it should (A) be labeled as such on its creation, and (B) handled only in accordance with those guidelines.

(4) Every individual in government or industry who holds a clearance is given annual retraining in handling classified material.  That includes the Secretary of State.  That training is mighty specific about not doing any of the things that Mrs. Clinton did.  That specifically includes being trained that sensitive material without markings is still classified, as Judge Andrew Napolitano pointed out this morning. There is absolutely no leeway for an "I didn't know" defense.

So I hope you understand that for someone creating, receiving or passing along perhaps 2-3 items in a career containing sensitive but unmarked information, that is bad, and would get you a slap on the wrist (and possibly the loss of security clearance).  To have done so over 2,000 times, including your own initiation of over 100 such emails, is horrific.

There are, at this point, two sets of people.  One set includes those who handle such information, almost none of whom can support Hillary or her contention and claims.  They simply know better, and shake their heads at both her arguments and her sycophants.  They know that her actions regarding that information are beyond specious.

The others are the sycophants themselves -- the Hillary supporters who either know better but feel obliged to push a narrative they don't believe, or who don't understand that there is no legitimate waffling on this issue.  And the latter group includes those who bug me the most, because they are trying to make a case -- "Well, gee, all those emails weren't marked classified at the time" -- that has absolutely no grounding in reality or law.

"Born classified" means just that.  That is why it is so devastating to her argument and those of her sycophants that it now comes out that she herself initiated over 100 such messages that should have been labeled when she created them.  "Oh no", she said last night.  "The State Department decides whether those are classified."  Quoth the head of the Department as she includes the names and itineraries of agents and ambassadors on a private, unsecure server.  L'etat, c'est moi.

It is incredibly frustrating when people who don't know the law try to defend her with an argument that does not really exist.  It is equally frustrating when they are put on television -- or when Hillary says this stuff herself -- without someone standing there like an interpreter for the deaf next to a speaker, pointing out calmly that as everyone knows who handles such material, classified material without a header is just as classified.

It is similarly devastating that there is email evidence -- provided to the FBI, it should again be pointed out, by the Obama/Kerry State Department -- that she asked for certain material to be stripped of its headers before forwarding.  That she arranged for the private email server to be set up on the day her confirmation hearings began.  That she communicated regarding national security information with Sid Blumenthal, an uncleared person not even part of the Government.

So for those of you who might possibly read this and still want to say that "it wasn't classified when she sent it or received it", I have this instruction for you.

You don't know what you're talking about.

You don't know the laws.

Please shut up.

Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
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Donald, You Make It Difficult

Last week, the Commonwealth of Virginia joined ten or so other states in having a primary for the Republican presidential nomination.  The winner, as you recall, was Donald Trump, who was a couple percentage points higher than Marco Rubio with both a bit over 30% of the vote.  The two received about the same number of delegates, while the other three (now two) candidates trailed behind them.

I voted for one of the five of them, and I'll keep my ballot secret as we all have a right to do.  The main reason for doing so -- frankly, in another year I might have shared it regardless -- is, because of, like almost everything else to do with this campaign on both sides of the aisle, of course, Donald Trump.

Here's the thing.  My best girl and I go back and forth and back and forth about The Donald, probably changing 2-3 times a week whether or not we would vote for him if the primary were that day.  Now, the primary has already happened, and whether or not we voted for him or one of the other candidates is now a matter of private record and cannot be changed.

But Lord knows, both of us have gone back and forth even since our vote.  People who supported Trump and go back and forth tend probably to react more negatively to his debate performances, which lately have tended to go all junior high when not saying the same things over and over without depth or clarification.

The problem is that the "same things" he says repeatedly resonate -- with us and presumably most of his supporters -- because they are precisely the things that bug us about (1) the Obama administration, and (2) the Republican-dominated Congress doing so little about #1, as if they share some vested interest in "going along to get along" (i.e., reelected).  We don't understand how "going along to get along" actually works, so we get frustrated and understand the appeal of Trump.

Of course, the above paragraph applies just as well to Ted Cruz, who over the weekend won two out of the the four states contested, with surprising strength.  He is "in" that Republican-dominated Congress, but he certainly isn't "getting along."

But I digress, a little.

The thing is, since even last week when we actually voted and had a heck of a time deciding right up until we parked at the polling place, even since then we have gone back and forth.  We are reasonably intelligent people, so we do occasionally remember to point out that keeping Hillary Clinton out of the White House, if she is not in prison by then, is really important.  Just for the record.

But with Trump, however much one might go along with those few, key points he does make, he provides you about three avenues for evaluation -- the debates, his many interviews, and his speeches.  I've heard many examples of the latter two and all of the first.  And they can be summarized as I did above.  The speeches pound the same high-level points; the interviews consist of those points plus refusing to apologize for something he said that he generally shouldn't have to apologize for; and the debates are the points plus the junior-high attacks.

So if you like the points and detest the 7th-grade aspects of the persona, you are going to change your view frequently.  Because Donald Trump makes it so, so hard for even those of us who agree with him to be as supportive as we would otherwise be.  If indeed you are like that, then you can be comforted in the knowledge that you are far from alone.

Welcome to the club.

Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
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Uncle Sucker

My dear older brother recently reminded me that our late father -- yes, the same one about whom I just wrote as having voted Democrat his whole life, the best we know -- had pretty strong opinions about foreign aid.

The opinions were not exactly positive.

Dad would say that the government here in the USA was an incredible source of waste, both abroad and here at home.  He decried wasted money anywhere, but I believe that while wasted money here was bad enough, and that between fraud and incompetence in the bureaucracy, which was a pile, it was where it came to foreign aid that he really got steamed.

And even though I don't yell nor do I ever swear, I can assure you I didn't get my disposition from Dad.  He could get steamed pretty well, though not often.  Swore he was not Irish, mind you, but he sure shared a lot of habits with the Hibernians.

Let me tell you, he was not a fan of sending aid to foreign countries.  Certainly he understood where it was a charitable situation; disaster aid like the Haiti earthquake relief, or where there were countries who were strategically important to the USA, the places where we -- Americans -- could decide that our taxpayer dollars could be provided in a way that ultimately benefited us, those who provided them.

But Dad had no desire to countenance frauds, and that is where he ultimately decided that foreign aid had turned into an open-wallet policy there to be abused by the rest of the world.  He was, after all, a combination of fiscal conservatism and utter contempt for frauds.  And he saw foreign aid as having gotten to the point where it seemed that anyone who asked got it, and our own priorities had nothing to do with it.

For example, if you extract the military assistance out of the equation -- and I think that is probably reasonably fair, given that military assistance is generally provided to countries out of our own self-interest rather than extortion or corruption by the receiving nation -- you might be a bit surprised to see who is getting aid from us.

The Number One recipient of non-military aid from the USA taxpayers, by a factor of three over the number two recipient, is Afghanistan.  That is $2.6 billion (with a "b") to Afghanistan, which Barack Obama swore when running for president that he would get us out of.

Want to know the next few on the list?  Well, numbers two through eight are Jordan, Ethiopia, South Sudan (which didn't even exist three years ago), Malawi (surely you've heard of Malawi), Uganda, South Africa and Nigeria.

I realize the strategic nature of our relationship with Jordan, at least the strategic relationship we would have if we had an actual president with a spine and a clue, rather than a pen and a phone. I get that.  But what on God's green earth are we doing sending a total of $3.4 billion (with a "b") which we have to borrow from China to send, to the other countries in 2013, the latest year I could find quickly?

By the way, can you tell me who you think #9 on that other list of greatest receivers of U.S. taxpayer dollars actually borrowed from China is?  That would be the $445 million that -- get this -- we borrowed from China to give to Russia.  How's that?  We borrow almost half a billion from one country trying to ruin us and give it to another country trying to ruin us.

Dad would say "It isn't that we're Uncle Sam -- we're "Uncle Sucker."  And I think he was exactly right.  The only reason we are giving aid to many of those countries is that they ask for it, and we are unwilling to provide the fiscal responsibility, the accountability by the recipients, the proper auditing of its use and the willingness to protect the exposure of the American taxpayer, whom this Government simply does not respect.  We are unwilling to be seen as other than generous, and accordingly are taken advantage of, over and over and over.

We are "Uncle Sucker", and though excessive foreign aid greatly preceded the current administration and truly does represent a relatively small part of the bloated Federal budget (think $50 billion out of a $2-3 trillion budget), it is, a Dad would also say, the principle of the thing.

Mitt Romney may have made an unfortunate decision in making that ill-advised speech yesterday, and he may have given away the 2012 election by pulling his Benghazi punches in the debates.  But the one thing he did right in the debate was to declare that he would go through every expense area in the Federal budget and determine whether "it was important enough to borrow money from China to pay for it."

Dad, I think, would have been pretty challenged to have looked at the candidates back in 2012 had he lived one more year.  He would have looked at Obama and the open spigot of Dad's money and the rest of ours that his administration allows to be doled out without rationale or accountability.  He would have looked at an opposing candidate, even with "R" after his name, who said he was going to eyeball an entire budget with respect toward the taxpayer's contribution.

He might have said "Enough being Uncle Sucker."  No more Democrats.  None.

At least I hope he would.

Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
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Democrat Indifference

You may not have noticed, but while the heat was high during the Super Tuesday primaries in most of the states on the Republican side, something else was happening on the Democrats' side of the primaries, which essentially were conducted in the same states.

And it was not a good thing for Democrats.

Now ... I'm not talking about the fact that Hillary Clinton actually won enough of the states' primaries to give her a mortal lock on the nomination, if she is not in prison by then.  That is bad enough for their party as it is, having a candidate who may likely be indicted along the way to Election Day.  This is worse.

According to the folks at Edison Research who track this sort of thing, the change in turnout on the Democrat side from the last primaries was remarkably high -- on the down side.  Think of it for a moment -- eight years ago the two candidates, one of whom was the selfsame Hillary Clinton, generated more interest among the Democrat electorate than was shown in Tuesday's primaries.

State by state, that difference was a lot.  Percentage drops in voting were in double digits in at least five of the nine states, and at least seven of the states had drops in votes.

The problem is not just the utter lack of enthusiasm the Democrat voters have for their terribly-flawed candidates (when you are on the verge of indictment, or are a socialist who only called yourself a Democrat in time for the campaign, well, that is "flawed"). 

It is that in all seven of the states where the Democrat turnout had declined from the last contested campaign, the Republicans recorded big increases from 2008, six of which were in double-digits.

Well, only five of those six were actually in double digits really, because Virginia, my home state, was in triple digits.  Yes, Virginia, the number of people voting in the hotly contested primary on Tuesday was more than twice as many as voted in the 2008 primary.  And, it should be recalled, the campaign was certainly no less hotly contested in 2008.

What are we to make of that?  Well, Occam's Razor, the principle by which the simplest, most straightforward explanation is generally the correct one, makes it pretty clear.  The Democrat electorate frankly has little to no enthusiasm for the candidates the party has put forth.

Hillary Clinton is not running on any accomplishments of her lifetime; her career has been primarily one of positions held and time served, along with marrying someone who ended up as president.  In other words, hers is a campaign of entitlement, the same concept that she ran on (and, it should be pointed out, lost on) in 2008 -- "It is my time and I am entitled to the nomination and the presidency because, well, it's my turn."  Am I wrong?

Bernie Sanders, with anything like a platform, could have competed hard and more successfully.  Had he taken Hillary on relative to her biggest vulnerability, the email scandal, he could be close enough even to be stealing super-delegates. He didn't, but the fact that he was (and still is) competing vigorously tells you that the level of enthusiasm engendered by the Clinton campaign is so minimal as to allow a 74-year-old severe leftist with precisely no Senate accomplishment to give her a run.

Bottom line -- regardless of the ugly contention in the Republican contest, and the rather hideous tone some of it has taken (as I wrote yesterday), the voters are coming out and voting for Republicans in huge numbers.  And at the same time, the Democrat voters are staying home in, well, huge numbers.  The contrast is not something subject to interpretation of polls; it is the arithmetic of counted votes.

Perhaps in the bowels of the DNC they are looking at Super Tuesday and are really scared for November.  Perhaps they are laughing it off, assuming that Hillary is unbeatable in November and they shouldn't worry -- it is certainly a liberal mindset not to listen to opposing data, even when it is scarily in conflict with your predetermined set of facts.

But right now, in comparably competitive campaigns, the Republicans are getting their voters out of the door and to the polling places, in literally record numbers.  The Democrats can't get voters to come out in numbers even resembling eight years ago.

It is pretty simple.  Hillary Clinton is such an unattractive candidate, and her campaign so much based on the unstimulating concept of entitlement, that her supporters don't care enough to show up and vote.

There is a message in there.  Fortunately for conservatives and the USA, liberals only hear the messages they want to.

Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There's a new post from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com at 10am Eastern time, every weekday, giving new meaning to "prolific essayist."  Sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu.

Stop It. Just Stop It. Now.

Yesterday I went to the polling place here in Virginia and cast my ballot in the Republican primary.  It really, really did not need to be as difficult as it was.  If it were going to be difficult, I would have preferred it be so because, say, multiple attractive candidates running attractive campaigns had conducted themselves in such a way as to make choosing one difficult.

Well, that wasn't it.

I found myself in philosophical agreement with pretty much all the candidates, when it came to the issues.  I might have differed with some on the ranking of priorities -- I, for one, want the tax code overhaul process started on presidency day one, along with reversing all of Obama's illegal executive orders.  Big deal.

Unfortunately, I had to look at the top three candidates and find certain actions in their campaigns to be a real challenge.  My best girl and I, who have the TV tuned to Fox News in the background of our day fairly often, have done a lot of shaking of our heads the past week.  This is junior high school, not a presidential campaign.

I mean, I don't need for candidates to appear presidential in the campaign in order to vote for them.  Sure, Mitt Romney looked presidential as heck in his campaign.  So did Reagan and others since that time who actually won.  But I can't countenance what is going on now, and I want it to stop somewhere around this second, if not sooner.

Sweating.

Hand size.

Lack of stature.

Hair.

Con man.

Tanning salons.

I want that garbage to leave right now, and certainly in time for the debate tomorrow night.  What is particularly scary, to me, is that a guy like Marco Rubio ought to know so much better than to escalate that war.  Not, mind you, just because it is unbecoming of him and in no way makes him look good -- especially being the "young candidate" -- but because the judgment call that he made in jumping into that insult cesspool showed lack of, well, judgment.

Donald Trump does what Donald Trump has always done.  He is from New York and quintessentially so; it seems typically junior-high for him to engage in that sort of thing.  It is still bad, mind you, that he does, but he always has, and supporters simply tolerate that.  Marco Rubio flat-out looks completely wrong playing that game.

You see, here is the simple alternative.  Marco Rubio is a talented speaker who can make a persuasive argument for his points.  If not for his slip-up in New Hampshire, he could be substantially higher in the polls and this could be a real race, just on his speaking ability alone.  But his alternative approach would be this, and he needs to say this before tomorrow night:

"I am a United States Senator running for the presidency.  Donald Trump and, for that matter, Senator Cruz and the others in the race have their own views on how to advance their agendas and I respect that.  So regardless of what any other candidate says, including Mr. Trump, I will immediately cease challenging my opponents on anything other than the issues, and I will confine myself to promoting the conservative vision I have for America.  I will not stoop to personal attack and apologize for having done so.

"I will speak to my own approach rather than attacking the others' views.  If the voters support my views and my approach, I will win the nomination and the election.  If they do not, then I would concede that America does not agree with me right now -- but I believe the voters do, and that I will be their choice."

It is called the "high road."  Had Rubio taken that tack, Donald Trump would have looked pretty bad going after him in that junior-high style.  In fact, he probably would have left Rubio alone, knowing that he would have appeared much smaller himself going into the gutter after someone who had stepped out of it.

Most importantly, though, the current tone of these candidates is embarrassing them to themselves, as well as staining the good ideas they actually have to bring to the table.  I am beyond sick of having to watch it.  I don't want to see it, ever again, and I ask the five remaining candidates -- OK, I don't suppose you could accuse Gov. Kasich and certainly not Dr. Carson of doing that -- to step out of the gutter, clean off their suits and get this campaign back where it belongs.

To a forum of ideas.  Not perspiration.

Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There's a new post from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com at 10am Eastern time, every weekday, giving new meaning to "prolific essayist."  Sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu.

Momma Was a Liberal -- What Happened to Me?

What seems like months ago (because it, well, was), I did a piece for this column, laughing at Ben Affleck for feeling the need to try to hide the fact that an ancestor of his had been a slave-owner in Georgia.  I loved doing that piece; I loved it because of his utter hypocrisy and because of the final point of the episode, which is that we are not accountable for the actions of our ancestors.

Now, that may have been the only time I will agree strongly with anything Ben Affleck says in regard to consequential matters, but it bears repeating.  Gentle Ben, forced to burnish his liberal reputation though confronted by a distinctly illiberal ancestor's actions, had to blurt out in Twitterese or the like, that we should be judged on our own belief system and actions, and not those of our progenitors.

So how do we deal with the frequency with which children -- not grandchildren, but actual children seem so often to have differences of opinion on the fundamentals of the liberal vs. conservative debates of our time?  Certainly it is not the overwhelming norm, but it happens often enough, and certainly not just where the children resent their parents.

I feel that personally.  My parents lived long and healthy, productive lives.  They were good people who even into their nineties maintained their own house, and presented a close front together for the almost 66 years they were married.  Dad would have been 100 this past December; Mom would have turned 99 a month ago, and they could certainly have lived longer than they did.

And they were both Democrats.

That is particularly relevant because they had two surviving children, my older brother and I, and while we both loved our parents, we are both very conservative adults.  My brother "took care" of our folks, in the sense of being there for them (I lived far away) for many, many years, and so had to avoid much in the way of political discussion with them to keep the peace.  I was an occasional visitor and so the topic rarely arose.

But the fact is, as the title of this piece asserts, "Momma was a liberal."  And she was.  She would be out there for Hillary Clinton now, if she weren't in the Bernie Sanders camp.  I want to tell you, she was an extremely bright and well-read lady who thought about things.  Of course, the issue is not that she was a liberal or, for that matter, that Dad was a Democrat (I hesitate to attribute the term "liberal" to him; I doubt he voted other than Democrat his whole life but I can't actually recall an actual liberal comment from his mouth in the 60 years we were both on earth).

No, the question is why my brother and I became so conservative in contrast, when we loved and respected our parents.  And I think I understand.

I believe that people's political leanings are such that opinions on various topics assort.  In fact, my very first piece here was about just that; that there are no real groups called "moderates" who could coalesce around a single candidate, because our views on even unrelated issues tend to assort along what we think of as conservative or liberal lines. And I believe that is a product of an individual's upbringing as much, or more, than anything else.

My brother and I, less than three years apart in age, had essentially identical childhoods and upbringings.  Our lives diverged quite a bit after I was 15 when he went off to college, but when we finally lived in the same state again, after some 45 years, we discovered astonishing similarities -- even down to our choice in ballpoint pens.

And politics.  That we agree upon right down the line, and it does not resemble the leanings of our parents at all.

I suspect, when it comes down to it, that we learned from our parents the value of work, thrift, risk, charity and other things.  I suspect that once upon a time those might have been values of people called Democrats.  I know that certainly is not the case now.  Perhaps it was liberalism itself that changed, and we're a lot more like Dad and Mom than the candidates we would now support would indicate.

But to feel like, say, Federal budgets should be balanced, well, that's something you extrapolate from what you learn at home -- and that, at least today, is a conservative belief.  To feel like any one group should be prejudiced against -- or favored -- based on their race, well, I don't know that our folks would feel much different from what we do.  And to agree to both sides of that is to be a conservative.  To believe that government exists to do the things that the Constitution says it does and no more -- I don't know what that says.  But my brother Rich and I are both big fans of the document as written.  And we are conservatives.

Perhaps Momma was a liberal once, but might not be now.  Were she still alive, she might support Hillary more out of subconscious obligation than actual sharing of values.  I have trouble thinking Dad wouldn't have thought more than once before voting for her, and who knows what he would have done in the booth.

I think, at the end of the day, that they may have been liberals, and we are certainly conservatives, but they raised us the best they knew how.  And that may very well explain why we are who we are.

No wonder the left doesn't seem to support strong, two-parent homes.

Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There's a new post from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com at 10am Eastern time, every weekday, giving new meaning to "prolific essayist."  Sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu.