Trump apologists

Secular Outpost@SecularOutpost I don't want to hear another word about "objective moral values" from any Christian apologist who still supports Trump. #apologetics8:42 PM - 8 Oct 2016

I assume this tweet is from apostate atheist Jeff Lowder. I'll use it as a springboard to make some general observations:

1. I'm unimpressed by the leftwing critics and "progressive Christians" who denounce an evil thug like Trump, but refuse to denounce an evil thug like Hillary. Indeed, leftwing critics and "progressive Christians" act as though denouncing Trump automatically makes them virtuous. As if merely opposing Trump is any kind of substitute for having a good alternative ideology. Opposing Trump while supporting Hillary doesn't make you virtuous. Rather, that masks your own evil preferences. Selective, one-sided indignation leaves me yawning. What about the locker room banter between Vernon Jordan and Bill Clinton? 

2. Jeff's statement is a non sequitur. Indeed, he has it backwards. The fact that some "Christian apologists" (whatever that means) still support Trump despite objective moral values, at best shows their inconsistency. But we can only evaluate their support thanks to objective moral values, which atheism cannot sustain. That illustrates the necessity of a Christian worldview.

3. NeverTrumpers have some reason to feel vindicated by currently developments. But while schadenfreuda is understandable, we need to guard against too much triumphalism. The prospect of Hillary winning is truly tragic. 

4. Since I've consistently opposed Trump, I don't fall under Jeff's censure, although I don't measure myself by his yardstick. 

5. But now is a good occasion to classify and assess Trump apologists. These are not all of a kind.

i) Some people openly disdain Trump, but support his bid because they think he's relatively benign compared to Hillary's malevolence. That position is consistent with objective moral values. It's not my own position. But it's not a position that discredits the person who takes it. 

I'd add that the current revelations about Trump don't change that position. To begin with, we didn't learn anything new about Trump that people who were paying attention all along didn't already know about Trump. And it's not directly germane to the (alleged) contrast between Trump and Hillary on policy. 

True, it's a thankless task to be a Trump apologist. He makes it very hard for his defenders to support him. However, the apologists I'm talking about would blame the situation. They didn't ask to be put in this situation. They resent this situation. It's the fault of primary voters. But now we have to play the hand we were dealt. 

That's not my own position, but it's a morally and intellectually defensible position. So that's the best of the Trump apologists. It goes downhill from there.

ii) There are Trump apologists who combine principle with credulity. Take Wayne Grudem. 

Although Grudem's endorsement was ill-conceived, he has many compensatory virtues. By contrast, many Trump apologists have no compensatory virtues. 

iii) You have Trump apologists who measure conservatism by Trump rather than measuring Trump by conservatism. Trump's barfly effusions become the new definition of conservatism. That's a marriage between a candidate with no core values and a subset of voters with no core values. 

iv) You have Trump apologists who act as character witnesses for the Donald. That includes some prominent evangelical "leaders". They assure us that he's a changed man. Critics have exaggerated how decadent he is. 

That's what happens when credulity meets wishful thinking. 

I wouldn't necessarily say evangelical "leaders" who endorse Trump discredit themselves. That's because some of them were flakes to begin with. They had no line of credit to lose. 

v) Even worse are Trump apologists who measure Christianity by Trump rather than measuring Trump by Christianity. We even have people comparing Trump to "flawed" Bible heroes like King David. Problem is, Trump was never a man of faith. And he's never been contrite. 

vi) There are Trump apologists who lie about his stated positions and his shifting positions. They pretend he takes positions he doesn't. They pretend that he's consistent. 

vii) There are empty-suited apparatchiks like Reince Priebus.

viii)  There are Trump apologists who want a piece of the action. 

ix) Conversely, the fact that someone like Russell Moore happens to be right about Trump is hardly a ratification of his judgment in general–which is highly erratic. 

6. Many public Trump apologists will be disgraced when the dust settles. Their reputations permanently tarnished. 

It's been striking to see the stampede for the exit by people who formerly endorsed Trump. He's exactly the same man he was a week ago. But now they're panicking. It feeds on itself, like a stock selloff. 

Stealing elections

http://nypost.com/2013/11/18/census-faked-2012-election-jobs-report/

The reelection in perspective

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/obama-better-or-worse/

“Republicans should fight aggressively for a piece of the minority electorate”

I found this little bit of post-election mop-up the other day and wanted to pass it along to you:

Even as Republicans have engaged in some agonizing over their candidate and agenda, many have sought comfort in the notion that a big part of the loss came down to simple mechanics. President Obama had a stunning Election Day operation, which turned out his base. Mitt Romney's shop, by contrast, failed to get people to the polls. That explanation is soothing because it suggests that, in the future, all the GOP needs is a slicker piece of get-out-the-vote software.

It's also broadly wrong.

The turnout myth comes from a statistic that has been endlessly repeated: Mitt Romney got fewer votes than John McCain in 2008. This isn't quite true (Mr. Romney this week eked past the McCain totals), and in any event it is somewhat irrelevant. The Romney vote count reflects a nationwide voter turnout that was down nearly five percentage points from 2008. What matters is how the GOP did in the battleground states.

And there? Mr. Romney beat Mr. McCain's numbers in every single battleground, save Ohio. In some cases, his improvement was significant. In Virginia, 65,000 more votes than in 2008. In Florida, 117,000 more votes. In Colorado, 52,000. In Wisconsin, 146,000. Moreover, in key states like Florida, North Carolina, Colorado and Virginia, Mr. Romney turned out even more voters than George W. Bush did in his successful re-election in 2004.

By contrast, Mr. Obama's turnout was down from 2008 in nearly every battleground. He lost 54,000 votes in Virginia, 46,000 votes in Florida, 50,000 votes in Colorado, 63,000 votes in Wisconsin. Ditto Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio. The only state where Mr. Obama increased his votes (by 36,000) was North Carolina, and he was still beaten by a Romney campaign that raised its own turnout by a whopping 147,000.

The temptation here is to conclude that Mr. Romney did better than Mr. McCain, just not well enough, while Mr. Obama did worse, just not badly enough. Yes, there is no question the GOP turnout effort could have been improved. Project ORCA, developed and run by the Romney campaign to refine its turnout efforts, was a dismal failure. And the GOP lagged behind the Obama campaign's sophisticated use of technology, in particular social media.

Could better use of these tools have added enough to the Romney totals to eke out victories in key states? Maybe. In the end, it was 334,000 votes—in Florida, Virginia, Ohio and New Hampshire—that separated Mr. Romney from the presidency. Then again, had Mr. Romney succeeded in grinding out a narrow victory, it might also have masked the party's bigger problems.

Because what ought to scare the GOP is this: Even with higher GOP turnout in key states, even with Mr. Obama shedding voters, Democrats still won. Mr. Obama accomplished this by tapping new minority voters in numbers that beat even Mr. Romney's better turnout.

In Florida, 238,000 more Hispanics voted than in 2008, and Mr. Obama got 60% of Hispanic voters. His total margin of victory in Florida was 78,000 votes, so that demographic alone won it for him. Or consider Ohio, where Mr. Romney won independents by 10 points. The lead mattered little, though, given that black turnout increased by 178,000 votes, and the president won 96% of the black vote. Mr. Obama's margin of victory there was 103,000.

This is the demographic argument that is getting so much attention, and properly so. The Republican Party can hope that a future Democratic candidate won't equal Mr. Obama's magnetism for minority voters. But the GOP would do far better by fighting aggressively for a piece of the minority electorate.

And that, for the record, was the GOP's real 2012 turnout disaster.

If at first you don’t secede, try, try again!

At last count, 40 states have filed petitions to secede from the Union. I have a better idea: let’s petition the District of Columbia to secede from the Union. Not only would that be mathematically simpler, but just think of all the problems that would solve at one fell swoop.

Perhaps we could even petition the Navy corps of civil engineers carve out the District of Columbia, put it on a barge, and float it up the Potomac into the Atlantic Ocean.  

Feeding the hand that bites you

Google executives and employees were among the largest contributors to the Obama campaign.

Meanwhile:

http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/267175-google-braces-for-antitrust-suit-following-obama-win

President Obama’s reelection means that Google is unlikely to receive a reprieve from a looming antitrust lawsuit.

The Federal Trade Commission is nearing the end of a yearlong investigation into Google’s business practices.

People familiar with the case say the commission staffers have concluded there is reason to believe Google is violating antitrust laws and have recommended that the commission take action.

The commissioners are currently reviewing that recommendation.

If Mitt Romney had won the election, he would have appointed a new FTC chairman and Republicans would have controlled three of the five commission seats.

It is possible that a GOP-led FTC would have still gone after Google, but a Romney victory was probably Google’s last best chance at escaping the investigation unscathed.

Republicans could have had the votes to win this year

It seems as if many Republicans just stayed home again this year, as they did in 2008. Here are the nationwide vote totals from the last three presidential elections:

Nationwide:

2012	Obama	61,814,180	Romney	58,586,318
2008	Obama	66,882,230	McCain	58,343,671
2004	Kerry	59,028,109	Bush	62,028,285

Note that Romney and McCain received almost exactly the same vote totals in 2012 and 2008. Obama received approximately five million votes fewer this year than he did in 2008. And this year, Obama received fewer votes than George W. Bush did in 2004.

[In 2008, Nader pulled about 740,000 votes, almost the same as the combined total of the libertarian and constitutional party candidates, a wash. Vote total sources: 2004, 2008, 2012. Admittedly this chart doesn’t take into account new young voters, old voters who die, and people who relocate, but it does put the Republican party into recent historical context.]

So if Republicans had been able to replicate their effort in 2004, they could possibly have defeated Obama this year.

There are two types of presidential elections. Almost always we see an “appeal-to-the-center” or median voter theory election. This model holds that the outcome of the decision is the outcome most preferred by the median voter [Holcombe, Randall G. (2006), Public Sector Economics, Upper Saddle River: Pearson Prentice Hall].

This type of effort might be characterized by something Nixon said in the 1960's [and this is an approximate quote]: “you have to run as hard as you can to the right to win the Republican nomination, then as hard as you can to the center to win the general election”.

Romney followed this pattern, and attempted to “capture the center” in the general election. And toward the end of the election season this year, Obama was appealing to his base, which from our perspective appeared to be out of a fear that Romney had actually captured the center.

However, by contrast, as noted here, Bush’s strategy in 2004 “disregarded the median voter”, and “ran on Bush’s conservative record in office instead”. This effort to “expand the base” enabled Bush to win a significant victory.

If the Republicans had been able to run the kind of campaign in 2012 that Bush did in 2004, it seems entirely likely that they could have brought out that element of the electorate that Bush captured, but which stayed home [again] this year.

Meanwhile, Romney received approximately same vote total as McCain did in 2008, and achieved very nearly the exact same Electoral College map.

Romney’s “get-out-the-vote” effort was a huge technological failure

Amid all the navel-gazing that Republicans have been doing about “messaging”, and the state of conservatism in America -- what “the voters have overwhelmingly told us” – there is another problem, much more simple, that may have been caused by a technological failure in Romney’s “get-out-the-vote” (GOTV) effort.

The story at the right is from a blog article by a writer named John Ekdahl who evidently provided a first-person account of having been one of the Romney volunteer brought in to use the system:

From the very start there were warning signs. After signing up, you were invited to take part in nightly conference calls. The calls were more of the slick marketing speech type than helpful training sessions. There was a lot of "rah-rahs" and lofty talk about how this would change the ballgame.

Working primarily as a web developer, I had some serious questions. Things like "Has this been stress tested?", "Is there redundancy in place?" and "What steps have been taken to combat a coordinated DDOS attack or the like?", among others. These types of questions were brushed aside (truth be told, they never took one of my questions). They assured us that the system had been relentlessly tested and would be a tremendous success.

On one of the last conference calls (I believe it was on Saturday night), they told us that our packets would be arriving shortly. Now, there seemed to be a fair amount of confusion about what they meant by "packet". Some people on Twitter were wondering if that meant a packet in the mail or a pdf or what. Finally, my packet arrived at 4PM on Monday afternoon as an emailed 60 page pdf.

Ekdahl’s article continued to describe his frustrations with having to print out a document, unclear instructions on how to use the system, etc.

A CNET article described how the system was supposed to work:

Here's how Orca was supposed to work. On election day, the Romney campaign would deploy 34,000 volunteers with an Orca mobile web app in swing states to monitor turnout. In Boston Garden (now called TD Garden), 800 staffers would direct get-out-the-vote efforts in key precincts based on incoming data from volunteers on the ground and other sources.

The Romney campaign further described what Orca would do on Election Day:

The general idea is to conduct the world's largest exit poll. Through Project ORCA, at any given moment we will know the current ballot in every State, DMA & County.... For example: if we happen to be down in a state at lunch time, we can pinpoint exactly what is causing it. So, if we know we're going to win X state by 3 points, let's move our resources to Y state, county. In sum, Project ORCA will give us an enormous advantage by being able to know the current result of a state.

It is estimated that Project ORCA will decipher [how] 18 to 23 million people have voted by the time all voting has concluded. This massive "sample size" not only ensure the most accurate ballot projections ever, but it will also ensure hyper-accuracy of our supporter targeting as we work to turn them out to the polls.

"We are going to know more than the exit polls will be able tell us because we will know who voted in which precinct, and based on micro-targeting we know who that person likes"…

The Romney campaign described purpose of this the effort: “based on the data, the Romney campaign could take action to boost voter participation. "If we know that there is a low turnout in one of our target precincts, then we can lob phones into them...we'll send a robocall, or whatever, or our state offices will have volunteers to pick up the phone and say, 'Have you voted yet, go to precinct here.'"

This effort was supposed to be the technological foundation an advanced “get-out-the-vote” effort the campaign would be running in the swing states.

However, as it turns out, the data collection effort failed on a broad scale. “There were reports that the Orca app crashed on Election Day, and wasn't beta-tested sufficiently”, CNET said.


Politico said:

The collapse of the ORCA platform is all the more astonishing because of how aggressively the Romney campaign hyped it in advance of Nov. 6.

Centinello was quoted in The Huffington Post on Nov. 1 touting ORCA to volunteers in these grandiose terms: “There’s nothing that the Obama data team, there’s nothing that the Obama campaign, there’s nothing that President Obama himself can do to even come close to what we are putting together here.”

But for operatives within the Romney orbit, there was reason for skepticism even before the system went down on Election Day. Strategists in the states never got a chance to test-drive ORCA, which would have left them unfamiliar with the software on Tuesday even if it had worked.

Ekdahl concluded:

So, the end result was that 30,000+ of the most active and fired-up volunteers were wandering around confused and frustrated when they could have been doing anything else to help. Like driving people to the polls, phone-banking, walking door-to-door, etc. We lost by fairly small margins in Florida, Virginia, Ohio and Colorado. If this had worked could it have closed the gap? I sure hope not for my sanity's sake.

Another blogger described the Obama “get-out-the-vote” effort:

Obama entirely relied on his people. There’s a reason they call it “thick as thieves.” I know many are trying to harpoon that white whale that ended everything, but we have to ask a different question. If a winner lost, how did a loser win?

Votermom looks at the real ground game of the Obama campaign. The reason Chicago politics work is not only because of the illegality, it also relies on the tireless efforts of cronies to harass and threaten voters. Pat Caddell’s much envied Obama “data mining” operation seemed to consist of lists of registered voters who had not requested an absentee ballot or early voted. The campaign then paid people to call them daily until they either got a ballot or voted. I guess we know where that 7.8% unemployment figure came from.

Of course, the harassment was also personal and constant to certain persuadable groups like union workers and the inner cities. The county political identification maps are nice for a Republican to look at because they are vastly red. The downfall is that people in Democrat counties are packed like rats. A GOTV operation can hit thousands of people with just a busload of volunteers.

It seems to me that, at least at one level, the failure is pretty clear. The Romney campaign put a lot of its eggs into a technological basket that seems to have had a hole in it.

Regrouping

A recent exchange I had at Justin Taylor’s blog:

Mark

November 7, 2012 at 8:37 am

“We face a worldview challenge that is far greater than any political challenge, as we must learn how to winsomely convince Americans to share our moral convictions about marriage, sex, the sanctity of life, and a range of moral issues.”

I agree with this, but in all reality the only way that America will see and agree with any Biblical moral conviction is not through our trying to convince them to agree with us. It has and will utterly fail. The only way that the tide of immorality in America will be stemmed is through the work of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of men. That means that the church needs to get off it pew and preach the gospel message with all their heart, soul, and strength.

A question was raised to me recently: “What would happen if the church actually lived as God calls us to in scripture?” My answer: “Amazing things.” Including the changing of the moral landscape in America.

    steve hays

    November 7, 2012 at 12:23 pm

    There’s no one-size-fits-all solution. No single silver bullet is going to work on everyone. Due to natural revelation and common grace, some unbelievers are open to rational persuasion. To deny that is Manichaean.

    Even if you could evangelize everyone, that wouldn’t convert everyone. Evangelism is not a substitute for law.

    God’s calling isn’t limited to evangelists. There are many different Christian vocations.

“I saw almost no substantial critiques of Mitt Romney throughout this campaign, besides the obvious Mormonism motif. My eyes did not see one negative mention of the “47% comments…”

Try this:

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/290150/message-mitt-larry-kudlow

Mark

November 7, 2012 at 4:01 pm

I was unable to vote for Romney because I don’t know that he has a stable moral core — so how can I reasonably trust him? I haven’t the faintest idea who he is or what he stands for, nor am I sure that he even knows…Obama offers no panacea, but at least I think we know who he is and what he wants to pursue.

Is it really okay with so many Christians that Mitt Romney was waving his sabre (militarily and economically), talking about Iran and China…

    steve hays

    November 7, 2012 at 4:33 pm

    So you prefer voting for someone you know is evil rather than voting for someone who may or may not be evil. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

    And what about Iran?

Mark T

November 7, 2012 at 4:21 pm

It’s way easier to pretend poor people don’t exist — but the church doesn’t do a very good job of helping them if we can’t even *see* them (and your whole proposal rests on the ability to see them, which you apparently don’t).

    steve hays

    November 7, 2012 at 4:34 pm

    Obama is contributing to poverty.

David Davis

November 7, 2012 at 11:04 am

I agree with some of your points about morality but I strongly disagree about the role of government. Morality should be encouraged by example and good works. Not at the point of a gun held by a tyrant. A lot of “tough” laws are destroying families and branding people as criminals for life who should be given a chance to improve.

    steve hays

    November 7, 2012 at 12:14 pm

    What laws are you alluding to?

steve hays

November 7, 2012 at 4:53 pm

Mark S

“Why would anyone ever want to be a Christian after talking to these people? The racism, conspiracy-mongering and hyper-individuality reached epic levels among Christians this election season.”

You yourself are indulging in prejudicial, defamatory stereotyping.

“Don’t believe me?”

No, I don’t.

“Go back and look at all those emails your Christian friend circulated.”

What emails would those be? So, no, I still don’t believe you.

“Shameful.”

What’s shameful is your own bigotry.

“By the way, did anyone get any of those emails Christians were circulating about Romney’s Mormonism and his high ranking positions in the church? No? Oh yeah, they don’t exist because Christians conveniently ignored it.”

You suffer from self-reinforcing ignorance. You despise conservative Christians, so you don’t bother to actually study what they said or didn’t say.

Romney’s Mormonism was an issue during the primaries in both election cycles. But once he became the nominee, the relevant comparison was Obama.

“How about we start embracing the immigrant?”

No one is stopping you from doing that. Why don’t you invite them to stay in your home? Why don’t you give them your credit card or debit card?

If you really cared about the plight of immigrants, why don’t you move to Latin America, roll up your sleeves, and try to fix the problem at the source?

It’s not as if the immigrant issue has been ignored by conservative Christians. Take James Hoffmeier’s The Immigration Crisis.

However, American can’t host all the poor people of the world. American wage-earners aren’t responsible for providing for all the poor people of the world.

“How about we start demanding Wall Street and big corporations follow the same standards those ‘shiftless poor folks?’ Why don’t we demand corporations and big oil care for and protect God’s creation?”

Why is big business bad, but big government is good?

Green policies hurt the poor by shutting down job-producing industries while hiking the price of food and fuel.

“How about we invest in our teacher and schools so that every child has an opportunity to succeed?”

We sink thousands of dollars per child into public education. Money is no substitute for competent teachers, a quality curriculum, and motivated students.

“How about we stop worrying so much ourselves and ‘our’ money and look at ways we can invest in our communities?”

Why don’t you sell your laptop, discontinue your internet carrier, and give to the poor?

“How about we care for the orphan, adopt, take in the foster child.”

You’re fond of telling others what to do. When are you going stop talking about doing things and start doing what you talk about?

Situation Lousy, Don't Change a Thing

http://reason.com/archives/2012/11/08/situation-lousy-dont-change-a-thing/print

Stop Over-Interpreting the Election

http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2012/11/08/stop-over-interpreting-the-election/

Does the election mark a cultural shift in popular opinion?

Something I found on Facebook:

Guys,

I just don't understand this talk about some enduring liberal hegemony or cultural decline evidenced in this last election. The fact of the matter is that at the national level, all the prime indicators are of a trend away from Obama and the Democrats. These trends weren't enough to cost him the election, but the trends are there nevertheless.

Bizarrely, both liberal websites like the NY Times and some Christian commentators want to compare things to the 2004 Bush election. But surely the relevant point of comparison is 2008 Obama vs. McCain.

In 2008, Obama had an 8% edge over McCain in the popular vote. In 2012, that shrunk to perhaps 2%.

In 2008, the electoral vote totals were 365 (Obama) vs. 173 (McCain). In 2012, the totals were 303 (Obama) vs. 206 (Romney). Once again, the trend is away from Obama.

In 2012, Democrats lost the electoral votes of two states they carried in 2008 (North Carolina and Indiana), and they gained no new states.

So, by all indications, the nation was far less enthusiastic about Obama than four years ago. How does this translate into some national shift towards the Democratic agenda, or an enduring Democratic majority? Such talk floats as free of the evidence as all the triumphalistic blather about a permanent Republican majority in the wake of W's trouncing of Kerry in 2004.

To be sure, legislative bellwethers aren't great: same-sex marriage, legalizing recreational marijuana, etc. But the national election just isn't indicating what many pundits are claiming. Check out the NY Times page on the exit polls, and click "Show Change From 2008":

http://elections.nytimes.com/2012/results/president/exit-polls

Nearly every demographic category trends toward Romney and away from Obama, compared to 2008, including the black vote, the unmarried vote, and all categories of age or education! The only exceptions were the Hispanic and Asian vote.

Finally, the AP calculates that voter turnout was significantly down, only at 60%:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/11/07/turnout_shaping_up_to_be_lower_than_2008_116092.html

Perhaps 117 million voted, compared to 131 million in 2008. If anything, the trend is towards apathy, not Obama-approval.

As I usually ask: what am I missing?

This wasn't a referendum on social conservatism

I’m going to reiterate a point I already made. This election was not a repudiation of social conservatism. If Mike Huckabee or Rick Santorum had been our standard-bearer and lost to Obama, that would be somewhat different.

Even then, it would be simplistic to say their loss represented a repudiation of social conservatism. Some voters are voting for something, some voters are voting against something, and some voters do both.

For instance, if a voter cast his vote for Obama rather than Santorum, that wouldn’t necessarily–or even presumably–mean he was voting against Santorum’s social policies. He might simply be voting for something he likes about Obama. And it might not even be a policy issue. He might find Santorum’s demeanor off-putting. He might find Obama more personable.

Now, that doesn’t mean conservatives should be complacent. The election was a setback for social conservatism.

But there’s a danger of mirror-reading. Because social conservatives vote ideologically, it’s tempting for them to project that outlook onto other voters. Yet that runs the risk of viewing another voter’s motivations through our own spectacles rather than their spectacles.  

Reelecting Obama does reflect moral indifference on the part of many voters, which is not the same thing as moral endorsement. 

Voter turnout lower than it was in 2008

Voter turnout lower than in 2008

WASHINGTON (AP) - A drop in voter turnout in Tuesday's election didn't keep President Barack Obama from winning a second term.

Preliminary figures suggest fewer people voted this year than four years ago, when voters shattered turnout records as they elected Obama to his first term.

In most states, the numbers are shaping up to be even lower than in 2004, said Curtis Gans, director of American University's Center for the Study of the American Electorate. Every state is showing lower numbers than in 2008, Gans said. Still, the full picture may not be known for weeks because much of the counting takes place after Election Day.

"This is one of those rare elections in which turnout in every state in the nation went down," Gans said….


Both Obama and Republican Mitt Romney made voter turnout a top priority in the waning days of an intensely close race. But for months leading up to Election Day, both candidates were obsessed with that tiny sliver of undecided voters.

It may be that those who were still undecided Tuesday decided just not to show up, said Kyle Kondik, a political analyst at the University of Virginia's Center for Politics.

"Everyone was talking about how the Democrats are unenthusiastic and the Republicans are fired up," Kondik said. "It sounds like that was all talk."

But a few voter demographics exceeded 2008:

Polls earlier this year showed cooling interest among young voters in the Obama re-election campaign. But turnout among voters ages 18 to 29, in fact, eclipsed the 2008 election, with nearly 60% siding with the president.

The robust turnout by younger voters boosted Democrats nearly as much as the strong showing among Latinos.

The Mistake That Is the Libertarian Party

I saw this one a few days ago and wanted to post a link to it, but never got a chance:

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203922804578080684214526670.html

As a young libertarian, I was very enthusiastic about the formation of the Libertarian Party. I proudly cast my vote for Roger MacBride for president. I attended the 1975 national convention in New York that nominated him. But, while I am as libertarian today as I was then, I have come to believe that the Libertarian Party was a mistake.

The reason is simple. Unlike a parliamentary system in which governments are formed by coalitions of large and small parties, our electoral system is a first-past-the-post, winner-take-all one in which a winning presidential candidate just needs to get more than 50% of the vote. This means each contending "major" party is itself a coalition that needs to assemble enough diverse voting groups within it to get to 51%. Hence the need to appeal to the so-called moderates and independents rather than the more "extreme" elements within.

To the extent that a third party is successful, it will drain votes from the coalition party to which it is closest and help elect the coalition party that is further removed from its interests. The Libertarian Party's effort will, if effective, attract more libertarian voters away from the candidate who is marginally less hostile to liberty, and help hand the election to the candidate who is more hostile to liberty.

Fortunately, because this drawback is so obvious, the Libertarian Party's presidential vote has remained minuscule...

Libertarian activists should choose whichever party they feel more comfortable working within. That's what Ron Paul did. Likewise, Rand Paul has brought his libertarianism inside the GOP tent. The small-"l" libertarians in the tea party movement identified the Republican Party as the coalition closest to their concerns about fiscal responsibility and the growth of government power, and they have gone about making the GOP more libertarian from the grass-roots up. They have moved the party in a libertarian direction, as has the Republican Liberty Caucus.

Despite all this, some libertarians continue to insist that, because the Republican and Democrats are equally bad for liberty, it makes no difference who gets elected. However true this once was, in recent years Republicans have been better for liberty and Democrats have been worse...

Libertarian activists need to set aside their decades-old knee-jerk reactions to the two major parties, roll up their sleeves, and make the Republican and Democratic parties more libertarian. When it comes to voting, libertarians need to get serious about liberty and give up on the Libertarian Party.

I am all for "coalition building". I think that social conservatives need to think along these lines as well.

There are two reasons, I think, why that guys like Barone, George Will, Dick Morris and the others predicted a big Romney win, but missed something.

First, turnout among voters ages 18 to 29 eclipsed the 2008 election, with nearly 60% siding with the president. This support was largely invisible because it wasn't visible in the sources we were looking at. It largely occurred in various social media: Facebook, reddit, etc. Places where young people would hang out but which some of us older guys didn't see very well.

Second, "social conservatives" largely did stay home. Voter turnout was far below 2008 levels in many places. While in Pennsylvania, for example, Obama was able to match his 2008 totals here, Romney pulled far lower vote totals than even McCain did. I think that was the difference.

It doesn't pay to be a one-issue voter in a Presidential election. One-issue voters will not be able to win. It takes consensus-building and a willingness to compromise on some issues in order to become successful in the bigger picture.

What message were the voters sending?

I think some evangelical commentators are overinterpreting the election. No doubt it was a setback for social conservatives.

However, this wasn’t a referendum on social conservatism. Romney’s not a culture warrior. He’s uncomfortable in that role. He didn’t run on the social issues. In a sense, he ran away from them.

Had Rick Santorum or Mike Huckabee been the nominee, that would have made it more of a referendum on social conservatism.

But even then, it’s hard to overestimate the superficiality of many voters. They’re driven by fads. Peer pressure. The last thing they heard. Whether a candidate is telegenic. Whether he projects empathy. They get their "news" from political satirists like Jon Stewart or SNL skits.

It’s the Culture, Stupid

http://www.proginosko.com/2012/11/its-the-culture-stupid/

One analysis

Gerald Seib of the WSJ has put up this analysis of what ails the Republican party:

Now the inevitable question Republicans will ask is: What went wrong?

There are certain to be rounds of recrimination and second-guessing as Republicans try to answer that question. Tea-party supporters will say the party erred by failing to nominate a standard-bearer who was a more reliable conservative than the once-moderate former governor of Massachusetts.

Moderates will say that the party’s primary process pushed nominee Mitt Romney too far to the right to win in the general election. And they will charge that tea-party foot soldiers in the House undermined the party's brand by refusing to back House Speaker John Boehner’s efforts to strike a grand deficit-cutting bargain with President Barack Obama, opening up the party to charges of obstructionism and extremism.

But the most significant critique will be the one that says the party simply failed to catch up with the changing face of America. Exit polls showed that Mr. Romney won handily among white Americans—almost six in 10 of them—but lost by breathtaking margins among the nation's increasingly important ethnic groups: By almost 40 percentage points among Hispanics, by almost 50 points among Asians, and by more than 80 points among African-Americans.

No solutions here, just something to consider.

We are still in the game

I post this video as a reminder that there was a generation that believed “We’re on the Eve of Destruction” back in 1965. Some of these folks studied hard (or not) in school, and went on to become some of the college professors and news media and celebrities who seem to be among the thought leaders of the liberal movement that has brought us to this point.

In the meantime, I do remember quite a bit of Christian literature from the 1970’s, 1980’s, 1990’s, and beyond, looking forward to the Rapture. In doing so, they may have soothed their minds about any potential destruction that was coming, but they seemed to have abdicated some other, very important responsibilities.

In some sense, Christianity in America must bear some responsibility for the situation that we now find ourselves facing.

But not all of it.

I’m sure we all are disappointed, but we can look at the bright side. We don't have a Mormon as president.

And it certainly does seem possible to “blame Bush”. It seems as if Obama did right under our very noses the thing that Bush did in 2004: cede the center and expand the base.

It was that “expand the base” part that we didn’t see coming, even though he did it right under our noses.

We were busy counting that “ceded center”. To paraphrase the words of the venerable James T. Kirk from Star Trek II, we got caught with our pants down.




Fortunately for us, we’re not trapped on an unstable planet, watching our self-destructed starship break up in the atmosphere, with a madman trying to kill us. Getting by in Obamaville is not going to be quite so difficult a problem.

I have seen several Christians already talk about this election in apocalyptic terms. I don’t think that we should be doing that. It's true, it will be difficult to be a Christian in the coming years, but no more difficult than some other Christians have had it in the past. We do need to “watch and pray”. I thought of the phrase, “Occupy till I come”. That is the KJV version of the command in the parable that Bock translates as “trade with these [minas] until I come”. “Do business”, another translator renders it.

We need to keep in mind, this being a parable, that it is not a direct command to us, but rather, we are to draw a lesson from the parable.

I think we all approached this election with a measure of optimism. I certainly did. And I’m certainly disappointed. But life is going to go on, and Christ is still king. We will be able to work toward a goal in 2016 that we didn’t achieve tonight. (That is, if it is even proper to consider this “our achievement” or “our loss”).


I am honored beyond measure to be a Triablogue writer. I know I have my weaknesses, as we all do, but the Lord has put us where we are for a reason. In any given situation, a chess grandmaster will assess the position on the board, and form his plans accordingly. He will look for weaknesses in his and his opponent's positions, he will look for opportunities to strengthen his own, or to disrupt the plans of his opponent, and he will attempt to make the strongest possible move.

No doubt we’ll face some difficult times ahead. One thing we have been given, in a strange way, is more time. I’m sure we’ll have to use that time wisely, not the least of which will be to try to understand the position on the board, and to learn how to move forward in the present environment.

Steve mentioned below, “I don’t have a great personal stake in life at this juncture. I’m just sorry for the future which Obama’s policies will deny to the innocent, the undeserving.” I don’t quite feel that way. With six kids, several of whom voted for Obama, I now feel more compelled than ever to become engaged and to deal with the position on the board, to understand the world as it is and to work to foster the Kingdom in the world as it is. So, with the time that we have been given, my hope is to do what I can with what the Lord has given me.

We are still in the game.

* * *

James T. Kirk: My God, Bones... what have I done?

Leonard McCoy: What you had to do. What you always do. Turn death into a fighting chance to live.

Audio here.

That almost sounds Messianic.

Who lost?

In a superficial sense, Romney lost. But in a deeper sense, Romney had nothing to lose. His personal fortune will insulate his family from the consequences of Obama’s economic and social policies. He will live out his remaining years in comfort and security. 

The real losers are the Obama voters. They are blindly empowering a man who will destroy them.

That would be poetic justice, but unfortunately, they drag down the rest of us.

Mind you, my best years are behind me, so I don’t have much to lose either. I don’t have a great personal stake in life at this juncture. I’m just sorry for the future which Obama’s policies will deny to the innocent, the undeserving.