Its over...or we hope it is....

I keep thinking its all over! Certainly this blog is now over - as Ceri is now following Nate Silver (but you know he got the primary wrong?) who is more interesting than me. Most of my local friends have been treating it as over for quite some time, and in part that’s because the World Series was way more exciting. There are a lot of Cubs fans here, so the Cubs-Dodger’s Playoffs were big, followed by the World series itself. Not many locals cheering for the Indians to win - except for the ones in Dakota. Everyone here seems to be on their side, sadly except the authorities.

It really ought to be over. There is something called ‘an October surprise’ as part of a Presidential campaign but we had weekly surprises every Friday in October and now going into November, surprises daily it seems. And everywhere people express a wish that it were over - but its like a nasty scab that you can’t stop picking.  Which makes you wonder if it will ever heal? I think it will definitely leave a scar. Others are talking about it possibly getting worse even after Tuesday. So many Republican’s joking about taking up arms, if they lose that one feels certain that some kook will take it seriously. There is a strong sense of apprehension as everyone prepares for the craziness of the past months to turn up the heat on voting day, almost certainly resulting in tragedy of some form.

The sense of disgust at this election is the one thing that everyone here agrees on. Perhaps the rest of the world also but perhaps they are still laughing at us - who knows. What makes it so disgusting is that the political has become so personal that we can no longer distinguish one from another. This is happening in both Presidential campaigns, and without, in general national, state and local politics. I have said before in the campaign that the racism, xenophobia and misogyny that the campaign has brought to a fore is not characteristic of my life here in suburban Los Angeles county. Quite the contrast - my neighbors all get along amazingly, including an incredible scale of diversity. In my community we have many Muslim and atheist families, many Christians, LDS and Jewish families, and many same sex couples, people with disabilities, people of color, and immigrants from Russia, Japan, China, Korea and  Latin America who are all accepted as respected members of our community. Even from the UK!  It is still hard for me to believe that the same people who are so friendly and accepting of each other in the community could be voting in support of candidates and policies that would make life so uncomfortable for their friends. But politics is happening instead online - in Facebook groups and twitter where you live in a bubble with people who you agree with and when you disagree, apparently do not have to remain civil.

In my city we are represented by a Republican in our State Assembly, who actually has been a good assemblyman, whose seat is being contested by his predecessor, a Democrat.  Our mailbox is filled with endless flyers, as the two campaigns sling mud at each other. The Democrat says that the Republican supports Trump, which he says is a lie, and the Republican says that the Democrat supports keeping paedophile teachers in the classroom, and all of us are wondering why there are these flyers on our doormat about paedophile teachers, like that’s a problem we have to deal with every day. But it works - I find it hard to think of the Democrat now without thinking about that issue. None of us know or care any longer about this race - they both seem disgusting.  And none of it seems to pertain to me or my local issues.

The biggest local issue in our city is the harbor redevelopment plan. But again most people find it impossible to understand the plan or the issues because the two sides have two separate online conversations. The pro development people post wonderful plans and glossy videos and the anti-development people post dire warnings. If you challenge either the whole post is often removed. What happened? I asked a friend in the know when a FB discussion vanished.  There were too many personal attacks, I was told. I didn’t see the whole thread but I think the personal attacks were bringing up issues such as whether people posting in favor of the plan failed to disclose that they worked for the developer which is not a personal attack as much as a matter of good faith in internet etiquette. On the other side there are also ‘personal attacks’ based on where someone is from, feeding into a narrative that only people who have lived her all their life deserve a say in its future. (On this the natives are mistaken, plenty of people who chose this as their home want to keep it just as they found it.) But the flaws in the process have themselves become a big part of what people are opposed to - the sense that people are not listened to, that the decisionmakers have already made up their minds, and that any question puts you in one camp or another. You can’t be in favor of a little bit of development with some tweaks to iron out the problems, you have to be all in whatever the consequence or utterly opposed to any development at all. And this creates an atmosphere that people want to exclude ‘politics’ from local discussion - as though we can talk about coyotes and book clubs without it being political at all.

In Easter Europe in the 1990’s we talked about the need to rebuild civil society - Putman’s book ‘Bowling Alone’ was a big hit because it talked about the erosion of civil society in the US.  We talked about the need for social capital.  Social media creates its own community but it sucks all the social capital out of the offline community, creating an uncivil society. But it also personalises politics in numerous ways. The Facebook algorithm is designed to focus your attention on things that you are going to like or at least interact with. The news it shows you is provided by channels you have previously liked or clicked on. It also allows you to say things in a group or a filter that aren’t going to be read by all your friends. You end up with a personalised opinion magazine that will always confirm your preconceived notions.

Many people have noted the lack in this election of a fountain of truth for lack of a better term. There is not a single institution that can check facts, that would be accepted as reliable by either side, The FBI is now under doubt as both a Hillary apologist and an anti-hillary mixer. Government stats and figures are regularly regarded with cynicism. The police account can no longer be trusted. People even believe a spoof report that Snopes was arrested for corruption. Stolen personal emails provided by Wikileaks are the seemingly the only reliable source of truth on many matters. So here it is - our personalised news feeds allow us the luxury of personalised truth.

This is even more acute in local politics, where really the internet could be a force for openness and information. But rather than provide local citizens with as much information as possible, putting everything on the web for citizens to discuss, the information is tightly controlled and discussion managed often in the name of ‘privacy’ or to avoid ‘it getting too personal’.

The personal is political was a slogan from the 70’s wave of Feminism - encouraging women to see issues that seem very personal, such as reproductive rights, marriage, and work-life balance within the family as being a part of the subject matter of politics. As Hillary Clinton said in Bejing - women’s rights are human rights. The phrase puts the treatment of women at the centre instead of in the margin of the political realm.  But the counter to this politicisation of the personal is to personalise the political.  Each of the candidates is now presented as personally liable, for their criminal behavior, Clinton for misplacing publicly owned classified emails on a privately owned server, and Trump for rape and financial corruption including the public censure of his private university so that if they fail not only will they not be President, but perhaps also because of such scrutiny, go to jail.

This is really what this election is all about - as the election of a woman to President  turns out to be such as significant challenge to patriarchy that they have to throw everything they have into the cannons. At the root of the patriarchal system is a public-private dichotomy that enforces male power over the public realm - which has been eroded by feminism to the point where we can no longer make sense of what is properly public or private, but not yet fully redefined in a way that we can make sense of a world with ever changing demands on privacy and publicity . All our scandals are focused on this problem - what is private and should be secret and what is personal but should be public? And if a former President's wife can be president, and you see your wife as personal property then hasn’t he usurped the public power into his own personal realm?

Their solution is literally to make politics personal, from talking about Megyn Kelly’s period, to the GOP candidates comparing the size of their genitals in a national debate (sic). That is why 'bus gate' is the most important story - and one the doesn't go away - and is kept in view even by those for whom it triggers the worst memories of their own personal torture. And this is what it comes down to as this Republican governor probably didn’t realise the significance of his vulgarity -  but he said it - indeed this is Trump against vagina. And that is what this election has become - an epic battle over whether women are equal players in the public realm, citizens in the republic - or useful objects to be admired and sometimes grabbed for personal gratification.

And so whatever happens on Tuesday - some healing is desperately needed. And that will have to include a public discussion of a new and inclusive division between public and private, personal and political.

Wish us luck.

Feeling the Bern

I was really quite surprised myself. I'm not sure quite how I got to be knocking on doors and asking voters to support Bernie Sanders in the primary. It was the day before the last date to register to vote in California and I answered a plea for supporters to help register people to vote. That sounded good as I had already helped everyone in my row at the Citizenship Ceremony.  But when I got there they started 'training me' for canvassing.

I have to say canvassing when you are almost 50 is quite different from when you are in your 20s'. There no clipboard now, no stacks of voter lists to carry - its all on an app just for that. So if you see canvassers looking like they're walking and texting - now you know why. And then also there are no bathrooms and my bladder is not 23 any more. 

I did my whole list though. The trainer seemed surprised.  Like she didn't expect people to really follow through.  It wasn't as hard as it seemed because they were all out. Every single house. Yes all of them on a Sunday late morning. Funny thing was, it must be a really safe neighborhood because their windows were open, the music or TV blaring, their cars in the drive and their shoes on the door mat. But ring and knock, a few 'hello?'s Nothing. So I recorded them 'not at home'. 'Refused' seemed too harsh. 'Uninterested' wasn't an option in the app. Twelve people were 'at home' and ten of them told me that they were enthusiastic Bernie supporters, had been to a rally, they didn't need a flyer or a button they were all set. One lady told me 'We are Hillary people'. I chose not to argue since she wasn't on my list (only a male name at the same address) so not registered as a Democratic or independent voter.

So based on my experience, in a small neighborhood in North Redondo, Bernie is set for a landslide. Yeah!

They wanted me to go out again today. 'The kids have too many activities' I fibbed. 'What is the point?' I thought. I wasn't changing any minds. Of course that is not what canvassing is about. But I really wasn't collecting meaningful data either. The only thing I was doing was showing people that someone else that they don't know is supporting Sanders enough to give up their Sunday and cares enough about their neighborhood to do it there. California so rarely gets any presidential campaigning that all you have to do to get their vote is turn up to campaign. If you're a Democrat.

I also really didn't like the trainer. A generation X wippersnapper from Washington State. She kept going on about millennials and Gen X and Gen Y (what generation am I anyway? Gen BG - Before generations) and oh she knew all about everything. Her tip for dealing with Hillary supporters was to remind them that it was a secret ballot and no-one would know that they actually voted for Hillary. She went on and on about the reasons Republicans hate Hillary being the same and us.

This got to me probably because I don't hate Hillary. Actually, I like Hillary. I am already excited about having a women president. I just like Sander's policies better. I wanted to say to her its not about personalities, its about policies. In the beginning that was what the Sanders campaign was all about. Taking the high road. Now its gone. Lost in the quagmire of the primary battleground. And the reasons that the Republican's hate Hillary are not the same as hers. Its not because she's a Neo-Liberal hawk backed by Wall Street. Its because she's a woman. But hmm don't judge a candidate on their supporters.

And then there was the other voter. The independent. She was in her yard in a bikini and excited to talk about the election. She was listed as an independent and told me she hadn't decided yet so here was my chance to sway someone's opinion. I could see that she had worked hard all her life and partied some too. She was proud of being an independent. I went with education and told her that Sanders wanted to make college free for everyone. She told me that her nieces had gone to college and it was a waste of time as they were just partying all the time. Her big concern was immigration. Uh oh. She told me that she had grown up in a Latino neighborhood (that wasn't quite how she put it) and went on for a while about riding around in cars with Mexican kids. At this point I am just wondering what the best way is to leave without being impolite. But she asked me outright - 'what does Bernie Sanders think about immigration and  the whole refugee thing?' And then it came to me what I should do.

It occurred to me that I could mention that the Hillary campaign have made a big point of Sanders voting against the last big immigration reform bill to protect American jobs. That would sound good to her, right? And I shouldn't mention that Sanders said he did it because the bill was going to set up a second class of worker leaving immigrant laborers on less than minimum wages and was really an attempt to exploit cheap labor. If I was really a campaigner. But I couldn't do that. I just wished her good luck with her decision.

Maybe - as I think you all suspected for a long time, I really like talking about politics much more than doing it.

So what will happen next? On Tuesday we have the last round of primaries, including California. It's exciting for me going to vote for the very first time in America. And its exciting for California that for once our primary counts. Except it doesn't. The media are planning to declare Clinton nominated when the New Jersey Primary closes based on the exit poll. Three hours before Californians even finish voting. Even if Sanders gets a landslide its kind of daunting to think how many people will not bother to vote on their way home from work when Clinton has already 'won'. Clinton has already changed her focus to Trump and the General Election. The burning question now is what is she willing to do to achieve the impossible and turn Sander's supporters (and trainers) into hers?

Rational it isn't

Sorry not to have posted. Really nothing much has changed. Same old, same old. Except that I can vote now. And its looking increasingly like a vote in the California primary in the 33rd district will actually matter which is remarkable.

Tonight the media will be reporting a Sanders loss. He is not doing so well in the east coast urban states. This will be followed by more pressure from the media and the Clinton campaign (sometimes you wonder if that isn't the same thing) for him to stand down, just as Hillary did in 2008 when Obama was winning everything. Not.

But Sanders has not lost yet. Certainly if you do not take Super-delegates into account, this is still very open. And California might count, I heard someone say 'for the first time since Bobby Kennedy'. But lets not think about what happened there.  

Tonight will be important also for Trump. If he wins big in Pennsylvania, he will claim it is all over. Pennsylvania has 48 sort of non-super super delegates who have pledged to go with who wins the popular vote, but they don't have to stick to that.  

And then there will also be complaints from the losers about people not being able to vote, because they are black,  haven't got ID, because they were unregistered by a computer, because they are independents, because they registered to vote for the Independent Party by mistake, because they were old or busy and couldn't stand in line forever.  And there will be people saying its unfair because the rules for choosing delegates favored one side or the other, or because of super delegates or the uncommitted GOP delegates who are not super delegates but are exactly the same. In all there have been a lot of questions about the process, which is all good - we should question the process but remember we are choosing the candidate for a party - so naturally each party has its own rules. Its just a bit bizarre in the US where in most states, the state runs the election for the party. What America lacks perhaps that Europe is accustomed to is a separation between party and state!

An open primary system such as they now have in California for US senators is far more democratic and really what people think the system is - it effectively creates a 2nd Ballot AV system like the French Presidential election. But that is not what we have. Because that would be so rational.

One of the claims about democracy is that it creates a rational result but actually collective rationality is a bit of a mathematical challenge. For picking a single office holder or option we have something termed the Condorcet Winner, after the Marquis de Condorcet that came up with this method of voting. The Condorcet winner is the option that beats all the other options in voting pairs. But there is not always a winner. You can have a situation, like rock paper scissors, where each beats the other - this seems to us irrational. How can a community prefer p to q, q to r and yet prefer r to p? It is the collectivization of rational choice that is having a hard time here.

The pollsters here have got really into these Condorcet style opinion polls pitting the candidates against each other in pairs and asking who would you vote for in a general election.  Looking at Clinton, who narrowly beats Sanders in polls for the Democratic nomination, Clinton clearly beats Trump no problem, and Cruz. But if the GOP were acting rationally they would nominate Kasich who ACTUALLY beats Clinton. So is Kasich the Condorcet winner? Certainly the GOP's best chance is to nominate him (like that's going to happen!)

Funny thing is - look at Sander's pairings. He beats Trump, Cruz and Kasich and is in fact the Condorcet winner (well except that he doesn't beat Clinton). The whole process fails the Condorcet Criterion for rational collective choice...and there is no Condorcet winner.

But it is interesting that Sanders beats everyone except Clinton, bizarre even. Now you also have to take into account his lack of media coverage. And what's more Sanders is doing well in places that actually vote democrat - does it matter so much that Clinton does well in the South where the majority will vote Republican? Perhaps the clue is in looking at the issues - Sanders is actually closest to the majority of Americans on issues in (notoriously unreliable) opinion polls. Sanders is, if you like, the voice of America (unheard). And yet Kasich and Sanders are the least likely to get elected.

But opinion polls only tell us how people were thinking when the poll was taken. We still have a long time to go and this campaign is going to change drastically very soon. After the conventions there will have to be some coalition building (how at this point that will happen is really fascinating to watch) in both parties and there may also be an independent or third party candidate. For the more they disqualify each other the more impossible unity becomes. My next post might have been 'reasons to vote for Hillary but I am running low.'

Some numbers

Michigan was a great win for Bernie Sanders, giving his supporters a new wind but already since South Carolina and Nevada there has been a sense that while still awesome in every way, the Sanders campaign can't possibly win. Of course that is where they started so nothing much is lost.

So let's see the numbers that say Bernie is doomed. Firstly the Delegates. Sanders has won in Michigan, Maine, Colorado, Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma and Vermont. That's nine states compared to Clinton's 13: Mississippi, Alaska, Georgia, Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Nevada, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, American Samoa and Arkansas. What really matters though is how many delegates you get from each vote. The delegates are awarded proportionately according to share of the vote. But very populous states like Texas have a lot of delegates to share while tiny places like Vermont don't.  Clinton got 147 delegates in Texas with 65% of the vote while in Vermont, Sanders got 16 delegates with 86% of the vote.

So the current standing is 766 delegates for Clinton and 549 for Sanders, with 2736 left to be won. From that point of view it would seem to still be in play. But then of course there are the super delegates. These are people who are important in the Democrat party, officials and politicians and basically a lot of cronys, who get a vote at the convention. Many of them have made an endorsement already, 472 for Clinton and 24 for Sanders, so many commentators are adding the super delegates to the pledged delegates. But endorsements are not pledges. All 714 super delegates are still free to vote how they like in the Convention (and they will vote for the most likely person to give them a job in the administration).

So really its not over yet. The establishment view is that South Carolina and Nevada showed that Sanders could not win the African American or the Latino vote. But Michigan (lots of African Americans). Even when Sanders had said the stupid thing about white people not knowing what its like to be poor. Even when Clinton had taken time off from New Hampshire to go to Flint, she lost Michigan. 'Its the economy stupid!' So we'll see now what happens in Florida.  I think maybe its going to be a North - South thing. But I am working on 'reasons to support Clinton' in the back of my mind.

How about the Republicans? Its like watching a train wreck really. At least this week after the dirty 'hands' talk in the last debate there has been some first responders arriving to see if there is anything they can do to save the Grand Old Party. But it is still very very sick.

Unfortunately the GOP does not have any super delegates - that would be too easy! Drumpf has 485, Cruz has 359, Rubio has 151, Kasick 54 and Carson 8. Carson is out but it sounds like he will endorse Drumpf soon, possibly looking for VP.  There are 1030 delegates still to be allocated. So Drumpf is still outnumbered by all the rest if they could be put together.

I do hope that Rubio does Ok in Florida, his home state - for the Republicans its a 'winner takes all' state so he really has to win. It is a closed primary meaning that only registered Republicans can vote - no independents. If Rubio and Kasick can stay in, there are still options for a 'brokered convention'. That is when the leadership all make a backroom deal (you can picture it with the cigars and bunny girls etc) and the delegates switch their vote to find a candidate 'for unity'.  But I don't think that can happen if there are only two candidates left - it will look too undemocratic if the loser wins. For it to work Drumpf has to have less than 50%.  Of course Drumpf will run as an independent. We all know that he will but that will just split the Republican vote. That is how the Republican party will break up and it will be very interesting to watch for several decades to see what emerges from the debris.

But if they have to rally around Cruz to stop Drumpf - well from my point of view he's actually worse. Cruz is much more dangerous and apparently hated by anyone who has ever worked with him. I would rather have Drumpf vs Clinton and hope that the anti-Drumpf Republicans would either vote for Clinton or not vote at all. Bloombnerg has said he is out as an independent.

Its hard to understand why the corporate interests wouldn't prefer Clinton to Trump - maybe in the end they will -  but the Republican activists really hate Clinton with the same vehemence that they hate Obama. It doesn't make any rational sense, you would go crazy trying to understand it. They believe all the stuff about Benghazi and the emails. But they can't really explain how it can be so bad. For so many Sander's supporters she is so 'Republican lite' you would think that she would be the perfect candidate to stop Drumpf. This is where the incoherence of the Republican no-idea-ology throws its spanner into the works, making the whole thing unpredictable. Hopefully they will just all be too confused to vote.

Trump vs Cruz

I spent most of the week wondering which was better - or at least which would result in the least evil: President Trump or President Cruz. So first of all you know that even for me to be thinking this way, we are in a very bad place.

Surprisingly the answer is Trump. He is a fascist, bearing resemblance to Mussolini. Hopefully he is just Berlusconi, a fascist contained. I do believe even now in the constitution. I believe it is robust enough, even if there is a still a vacancy on the court, to prevent most of his malign policies. The exception would be the Wall, which he is now very committed to as ridiculous as it is. But I think he is egotistical enough to be subject to manipulation by flattery at least enough to serve the big corporate interests and avoid a war with Mexico.

Cruz however is not manipulable. He is not a team player. Everyone who has worked with him hates him. He is entirely and unapologetically self-seeking, dishonest and obsessively ideological. He also believes he is on a mission from God. He does not believe in the same constitution that most of us were even taught about. He does not believe for example that the constitution protects the separation of church and state. Given his direct connection to God's will, this is extremely dangerous for non-Christians like me.

But after Christie declared for Trump yesterday, presumably in a bid for VP, I think it is clear finally this is it. Trump will win the nomination. The craziness is over let the new craziness begin. Its so crazy that I find myself agreeing with Lindsay Graham!

I liked Christie. Before Bridge-gate. I liked when he hugged Obama because he got him disaster money after Hurricane Sandy. I liked him because he seemed authentic, practical and moderate. Conservatives are at their best when they are pragmatic. But Bridge-gate showed him to be a bully...or his staff at least.  Do you know what that is? Basically his staff wanted to coerce the Mayor of Fort Lee into supporting him as Governor and closed down the toll plazas on the George Washington Bridge. No-one could get in or out of New York becasue Christie was having a toddler tantrum. Sorry I mean his staff were. He didn't know anything about it.

This endorsement for Trump is pure pragmatism, but without value. Trump is not a conservative. He is a a radical fascist. When he says he will make America great again there is no version of America before that matches his vision of 'white' greatness to which to return the clock.

After tonight's performance in South Carolina, the Democrat ticket also seems to be in 'game over'.  We always new it was a problem for Sanders to win the black vote, which is older, activist and loyal to the Clinton machine. They both worked incredibly hard the last month to convince us that they were the successor to Obama, but in the end the Democratic voters of SC went with the successor to the Clinton presidency.

I know - we should wait for Super Tuesday. In just a couple of days 13 states will vote and it will be clear who is going to be nominated. The rest of us will vote later but it probably won't matter. (I have to be registered by May 23 in order to vote in the June Primary. My citizenship interview is on March 22.)

But its going to be Clinton vs Trump.

So just a few questions left:
1. Will Bloomberg stand as an independent, splitting the vote three ways and allowing Trump to win with 34%?
2. Will the monied interests favour the safety of Clinton over Trumps unpredictability?
3. Will Republicans of any hue (Rubio, Cruz and Bush) detest Clinton so much, and believe so greatly in the evidence of the emails as proof of her corruption, that they will vote for Trump over Clinton?
4. Who will be the VP's?
5. Will the Sanders supporters rally around Clinton to protect against Trump?

What I have to do now is smother my Sanders excitement and try to muster some support for Clinton (I liked her in 2008!!!) But it is a challenge. Maybe that's why we need this lull between Super Tuesday and the Convention, so that you have time to forget Bernie and get excited about Hillary. Its a challenge. But the alternative is unthinkable: Trump or Cruz.

But I don't think Bernie will go quietly. He will make some noise about Super-delegates and big corporate funding in the Democrat party. Do you know what this is? - I suspect you are going to hear all about it now for about 4 months!

It's President's day and everyone is talking about a dead judge.

I really wanted to talk about race and misogyny in the campaign and the corruption of the National Democratic party but the death of Scalia has completely changed the whole ball game.

On Saturday we heard that Justice Antonin Scalia had died in his sleep while on a quail hunting trip in Texas. He was really into hunting. We still don't really know why he died - we are just told natural causes and that no autopsy is necessary. I would not be surprised if he had been ill, as he is said to have been this brilliant mind, but in the last story we heard about him he didn't seem so sharp.

About a month ago, liberals were all shocked about Scalia's line of questioning in oral arguments in a case about affirmative action in university admissions, even to the extent of publishing transcript of his words. Normally the process of the Supreme Court, while public, is not published because what is important is the judges' written decision which was not yet available. Scalia's questioning seemed so racist, suggesting that African Americans were not up to attending prestigious universities, but were actually based on some research submitted to the court which was sympathetic to affirmative action but showing that it often didn't work in terms of putting minority groups into positions of power, and that the kind of college education needed to be considered - but prestige was not part of story. Scalia mangled the line of argument in a way that makes you wonder what happened to this sharp mind that we are all hearing about in the obituaries.

This already seemed like a seismically significant election, a paradigm shifting, era defining election but Scalia's death ups the stakes considerably, now that control of all three branches of government are up for grabs. Its not just math(s) - Scalia was one of five conservative judges sharing the court with four liberal judges, but he was also a leader, often the author of conservative Originalist decisions or dissents.

Scalia was famous for his view that you have to read the original constitution textually rather than constructively. He refused to see it as a living set of principles that could develop with our society and adapt to new social situations and new attitudes and technology. So because the founders in 1791 had no intention of legalising same-sex marriage there was no way a judge could find that in the constitution. It is just a text not a set of universal values. Except when it came to gun control because surely no one in 1791 really intended citizens to have a right to own a semi-automatic machine gun?

So now we need a new judge and whether Obama gets to appoint someone or we have to wait for the next president, its likely to be someone more liberal than Scalia. Even if the Republican's win the election, its difficult to imagine that they can find a judge as conservative as Scalia!

So now we have a chance to overturn Citizen's United, the court case that gives corporations citizenship in political donations, union rights can be protected and even perhaps the majority can democratically turn around the obscene protection of gun sales. Many of the cases coming up will be pitting the religious liberty of businesses against women's ownership of their bodies and marriage equality so the ninth judge will be the ultimate referee in the culture wars.

As you can imagine they are already fighting over who gets to pick the new judge. The Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell almost immediately said they wouldn't confirm anyone that Obama put forward, and Obama says he's going to make an appointment anyway. The Republicans have some theory that there is a precedent not to appoint a supreme court judge during an election, a precedent that doesn't seem to be born out by history and the Democrats are all of course becoming Originalists and reading the constitution textually and not finding any lame ducks in the text.

Its telling that the Republicans want to stall. They must actually think that they are going to win! If as the polls suggest the Democrats win the presidency and pull in the senate on his or her coattails, they can appoint a seriously liberal, nay even a progressive, judge. Even Obama himself! Who actually isn't that progressive when it comes to constitutional law but certainly is a liberal. Whereas if Obama appoints now he has to choose a moderate who can be confirmed by a Republican senate. So their stalling is very very interesting. Or ridiculously optimistic, I'm not sure which.

But its hard to see how they can win this way. They are already perceived as the 'Do nothing Congress' and despised for it, and now they are going to leave a Supreme Court vacancy for 11 months. As for the debate on Saturday evening - the candidates looked like five year old boys yelling 'liar' at each other and 'my dad's bigger than your dad' and making up precedents that didn't exist. It was amazing drama, must be good for TV ratings, but even the republican pundits on CNN were shaking their heads and saying this was not a good look for the party.  Pitted in contrast with all the tributes to Scalia from people who disagreed with him on the law but got along with him and counted his as a friend.

Maybe we can get back to Hillary and Bernie desperately trying to convince South Carolina that they are the proper successor to the first African American president. This upcoming primary will be a big test for Bernie who we are told does not have support among black voters, and Clinton is trying to present this as his being a 'single issue candidate' (the single issue being campaign finance and the rigged economy) while she looks at the wider context of social inequality including race and gender. In reality she is stuck n the old Democratic politics of the 90's putting together a rainbow coalition of disenfranchised minorities as if their oppression was only contingently related. I have to admit that Clinton did well in the last debate. Bernie chose FDR and Churchill as his foreign policy role models (cringe) and Clinton chose Mandela and Obama, simultaneously presenting herself as 21st century and woke. But the trouble is how will her uncritical adulation of Obama play in the Nevada caucus where Latino voters might quite rightly be irritated by Obama's unprecedented number of deportations. And they could have fixed that if his Executive Orders weren't stuck in the Supreme Court.
Other news: I saw my first bumper sticker yesterday, showing that the election has finally arrived in Los Angles and it was for Bernie (or that only Bernie Anglenos are willing to risk their car's aesthetic with a bumper sticker!)

New Hampshire feeling the Bern

So tomorrow is the New Hampshire primary and Bernie Sanders is expected to win it. He was supposed to have no chance in Iowa and came out even so tomorrows result might very well be absolutely awesome. So here's all about primaries, all about New Hampshire and all about Bernie.

A primary like a caucus is just part of the process each party has of nominating a candidate for the presidential election in November. Each state has its own rules and each party has its own rules, but what is unique to the US is that the primaries are organised by public authorities in the same way as elections rather than the parties themselves. In some states anyone can choose to vote in whichever primary they want and sometimes who you can vote for depends on the preference that you state when you register to vote. You can register for a party, or as an independent or decline to state. So in some places there are also Libertarian party candidates that you can nominate and in just few districts also Green party, so there really is very little protection against the kind of Entryism that was happening in the recent Labour Party election but that does not seem to be a worry. Only the Green party are telling their supporters that if they vote for Bernie in the Democratic primary they can't then stand for office for the green party at any level. (Yes expect an HOOOGE collaspe in the New England green party vote...from tiny to tinier).

The point of all this nomination process is to collect delegates committed to voting for you at the party convention in July (in Philadelphia for the Democrats and Cleveland for the GOP). So between now and then all the states get to vote in their own way. There has been a lot of wrangling especially in the 2012 election about changing who goes first, but on the whole the experts and the media agree that while we need a new plan that its good to have two small states first as a kind of  bellweather and it allows candidates with less money to do relatively well because campaigning in a small state is cheaper. Of course as bellweathers go Iowa and New Hampshire are about as useful as a piece of seaweed in the desert because they are both very rural and not in tune with the metropolitan culture where all the votes really are. "New York" values goes down well in Iowa and early enough for everyone to have forgotten the phrase by June.

So in terms of numbers of delegates at the convention New Hampshire ought to be of marginal importance but the media pay so much attention to it and the candidates do all their campaigning there because it is believed that American like winners. Americans vote aspirationally, and losing, even coming second in a primary makes you a loser and who would aspire to be a loser? So the whole underdog thing that Brits like so much doesn't work here - unless your second name is Clinton. Famously in 1992 Bill Clinton was way behind in Iowa and in the polls in New Hampshire. The Genifer Flowers story broke about him having an affair and he and Hillary went on TV resulting in a surge to second place in the New Hampshire primary, a surge that carried them all the way into the White House. Hillary also in 2008 lost to Barack Obama in the Iowa caucus and was visibly shaken by the result (yes she cried but in a good way because it made her seem more human), and then she won in New Hampshire...but her comeback was not enough to counter the Barack Obama Yes We Can "you have done what the cynics said we couldn't do" narrative.

Bernie Sanders is expected to win tomorrow in New Hampshire and the Clinton campaign are dismissing this as because he 'comes from' the next state (He actually comes from New York but Vermont is is political home). Actually there is more to it than that: its because he has much greater name recognition in New England and because some of his differences with Clinton that come from his being senator of Vermont (such as his hesitancy on gun control and environmental responsibility) play really well in New Hampshire as a rural state.

I am surprised actually that British people haven't gotten much of a clue about Bernie Sanders. Somehow the international media only like to report about the marginal crazies in US politics on the right wing side. Not that he is marginal or crazy at all but the media here would like to portray him that way.

Bernie Sanders is old - although actually Clinton who is just a few years younger would also be the oldest president ever elected. He has been in politics for ever. Eight years as Mayor of Burlington in Vermont and then 16 years as a representative for Vermont in the House, and since 2008 he's been Senator for Vermont. As a politician he's a hard worker, he sits on loads of committees, he sponsors legislation and and works really hard to make laws better for working Americans. He does what he can to work with a other politicians and perhaps the best reason for him not to be president is that they will miss him in Congress.

He hasn't always been a Democrat by party affiliation. He has usually run as an Independent but voted with democrats in Congress. He identifies as a 'democratic socialist' which he describes as striving for something like Scandinavian social democracy. Of course the 'socialist' tag is very controversial here where it is not associated with the great traditions of the British Labour Party or with the French economic success of Mitterand's  Parti socialiste but with Marxism and the communist planned economy of the Soviet bloc. Some people just hear 'Stalin'. But they weren't going to vote Democrat anyway.

He is a true radical - he was arrested in 1963 at a demonstration in Chicago - but actually as Mayor of Burlington he was actually quite pro -business and pro-development, even in one case going against the unions to support business. He is widely credited with running an economically successful city. Interesting that it turns out that radical socialists like Red Ken can be quite good mayors. What's more is that experience as mayor even of a small city is probably the best practice for the presidency because of the day to day nature of executive politics and their direct face to face access to stake holders. Like Ben Barber says - if Mayor's ruled the world...they would actually solve problems.

Maybe what seems a little crazy is why is he running for President?  To begin with there was a strong feeling in Democrat circles that Hilary should not be crowned (or coronated as they say here) but that the primary process is an important part of honing out the campaign before you get to dealing with the Republicans. More than anything the Republicans started with 18 candidates which is a lot of people throwing money and soundbites at the media and without someone to campaign against Clinton would not get a word in edgewise.  Secondly I think Sanders as a campaign from the left draws Clinton away from the center that she will have to occupy to win the election but might not be a good place to govern from. Part of the frustration on the left with Obama is his incessant insistence on trying to govern with bipartisan support which he was NEVER going to get. The orthodoxy from the 80's that you can only win by occupying the center simply allows the GOP who refuses to play the game to draw the entire political field to the right and the Sanders campaign counterbalances this and, like Obama's 2008 campaign, enthuses activists who really are not that interested in campaigning from center right. So even if Clinton comes out as the candidate, the Sanders' campaign has done a great job of showing that free education, campaign finance reform, environmental responsibility and income equality are policies that can garner a great deal of support.

The problem with the primary campaign is that it forces candidates to attack their own potential party nominees, who they will later have to support in a General Election just months away. In Sanders' case they even seem to be attacking the Democratic Party infrastructure that seems weighted against him but will have to put all its resources into to electing him if he wins the nomination. Sanders and Clinton have both worked really hard on avoiding negative campaigning and the usual bickering showing the Democratic debate to be so much more civil and substantive than the GOP. But now it looks like Sanders actually has a chance, the attack dogs are at least being taken out for a walk on a leach. The issue that has sparked outrage is campaign finance. While Sanders has been careful to only talk about his policies and not to knock Clinton he has been pointing out how much money she gets from Wall street. The Clinton campaign is trying to present this as a vicious and unfair attack. And the Sanders campaign is coming right back at your with Elizabeth Warren (oh if only she was running) keeping it real.

In truth Sanders may not have a super pac and may have raised an awesome amount of individual contributions but he has been spending lots of money that has come from major labor unions and other left thinking campaign groups. Of course in the primary, Clinton can't suggest there is anything wrong with getting union money (especially not in New Hampshire) but in the General Election this will be presented as 'special interest money'.

On the Republican side Trump is expected to win in New Hampshire and all eyes will be on who gets second, third and fourth place. The entire country is hoping that the candidates have heard the expression "Its win or go home" because they seriously need to winnow out the field and find a candidate that can rally an "anybody but Trump" vote. And also because the most entertaining meme of the process so far has been Stephen Colbert's Late Show bit "Hungry for Power Games" which he does every time someone drops out, although he did Jim Gillmore who didn't actually drop out but ought to and we are still waiting for him to do Santorum. So Wednesday night at 11.30 we will all be waiting for the next tribute to fall.

Hope you can watch the Colbert clip in the UK.

Education, Education, Education

Famously the 1992 election was all about the economy (I never call people stupid). This one is actually all about education, more specifically the crisis in higher education, although no-one except Bernie Sanders seems to have figured that out yet. Sanders' campaign has focused on college towns trying to get those millennials who are then going to buzz about him on social media. His number one policy - the one that gets cheers and incredulity and even laughter is, wait for it...FREE college! He wants to make state and community college free for everyone (just like Scandinavia and many other places). He is going to pay for it by putting a tax on Wall Street speculation - OK now we are laughing - but he's really serious. Apparently, he can't win but he is making a fair crack at it.

Education is the most significant difference between Sanders and Clinton. Yes they differ on healthcare, but who can really blame her for not wanting to go down that road again, and sort of on guns but not really in principle - Sanders does not think restrictions on gun sales are unconscionable - and of course the differ on Wall St but that is just part of the same thing. 

But in addressing the crisis in higher education the difference is huge. Hooge, Sanders would say, in almost the same accent as Trump. Clinton says she wants to make college more affordable (yawn they have been saying that for years and its just getting more expensive) but on the PRINCIPLE of free education she asks if we really want to pay for Trump's kids to go to college? 

And Yes actually I do because that is why this election is really about education. Because it turns out that the Trump supporters are mostly people who did not get to go to college or finish college. I want to pay for his kids and him and his supporters to go but only if I can get some assurance about the quality of education they are going to have - not some business degree that will teach them how to avoid paying their debts by declaring bankruptcy willy nilly all over the shop - but a degree that might include some classes in ethics or philosophy, a bit of constitutional history or at least allow them to recognize a snake oil salesman in full pitch. If this stat is not an indication that education is a public good I don't know what is?

So what's the problem? - Americans have always paid for college and they have some of the world's best colleges and one of the highest rates of college education in the world right?

But the cost of college has increased by over 1000% in thirty years. You still have a very high number of high school graduates going to college (about 68%) but half of them drop out before they finish. Its because it costs too much: According to the College Board, the average cost of tuition and fees for the 2015–2016 school year was $32,405 at private colleges, $9,410 for state residents at public colleges (but that's an average - a UC college about $14,000), and $23,893 for out-of-state residents attending public universities. Its impossible. Unsustainable. Its just inconceivable that it could be worth the money!

So a lot of people are not getting to go to college or they go, spend lots of money and then don't even get a degree. And all the people with degrees are taking all the jobs that people without degrees used to do. Now that would make you angry. But its easier to think your job is being taken by immigrants than by overqualified graduates.

This is why people are so disillusioned with the American dream because it is supposed to be that if you work hard you can succeed but now all that happens is that you work hard and you end up with a huge debt you are never going to pay off and you have to pay stupid government interest rates and you can't even declare bankruptcy like Mr Trump does.

What is most dangerous is that the education they are paying huge sums for is not what it was. It might be said that what is driving up the cost of education is that the colleges are hiring the best and the brightest from all over the world, and certainly private US colleges pay better than anyone in Europe (ha!) but the colleges are cutting costs at the same time as driving up fees, and hiring adjuncts to teach destroying the whole idea of a university as an academic community that can further human knowledge. 

There is an immense snobbery about education - about which college you go to that drives the fake meritocracy - and what you are buying is not education but entrance to a team playing in a national success league based on the image of your college. You do two years at a community college and then transfer to UCLA and you only have to pay the big bucks for the last two years. But you are still a UC graduate. Studies show that graduating from an elite college is not the key to success - only getting admitted! suggesting for all those high fees the schools really don't add value.

So its not surprising if the sensible people are starting to question the whole idea of higher education, Like Warren Buffet saying you should invest the money instead and Bloomberg recommending training as a plumber.

Anyway that's my 2 cents worth. The New Hampshire primary is on Tuesday so I'll explain why a primary is different from a caucus and why Bernie Sanders is going to win in New Hampshire. Soon.

So my old friend Ceri wants me to explain this mess...

that passes for an election here. I am probably not qualified, firstly because I can't even vote and secondly because I am a bit of a psephology geek and like all geeks struggle to find the border between fascinating and tedious. Thirdly I really don't think the Presidential election is important. Of course I understand that everyone back in Britain is fascinated by the political theater and no doubt the shenanigans are highly amusing but they imagine that this is serious business here. But in all honesty I don't think the presidency is that important to people's everyday lives even in the US. 

I think what makes a difference here is state politics, and local politics and I wish international news (or even national US news) would focus on theses issues sometimes. Washington really doesn't matter that much except maybe the supreme court. After that comes congress and then the presidency and even then the White House has so little power - its more about moral leadership and of course foreign policy. So in a sense who gets elected is as important to the rest of the world as it is to Americans, except you don't have to make up your mind and choose who to vote for.

I was hoping I would get to do just that. Having lived in California for 10 years, I filled out my naturalization form and sent it in hoping to get citizenship in time to vote. My husband who sent it in at the same time has already completed his interview and his ceremony and I am still stuck on "application in process." So here I am very probably a non-voting observer. Question is what needs explaining? The first thing is: isn't this a weird election?

Yes it is. All US Presidential elections are unpredictable and surprising things happen but this one has a bizarreness to it that is freaking out the media but actually engaging American people, particularly the millennials. 

There is a mood across the country that is disillusioned with the political status quo that is drawing support towards candidates that seem to be 'authentic'. The biggest problem for the media is that Hillary Clinton, who they were ready to crown, doesn't do 'authentic'. Perhaps more than a mood - perhaps even a national crisis of identity.

Normally the mood wouldn't matter much - but, here come the numbers, demographers and psephologists are tracking the RAE - the Rising American Electorate which is unmarried women, people of color and millennials. Not only are they increasing in number but they are also increasingly participating in the process. Have a look at the sweet millennials arguing it out at the Iowa Caucus! This is what democracy is supposed to look like, um.

The other change is the money thing. It has been a common place since television was invented really that the way to win the US election was to show lots of expensive TV ads and so the person who could raise the most money and show the most ads would win the election. (Of course legally the person doesn't raise or spend the money - a superpac that supports them does and its 'really out of the candidate's control'. The effect is of course corrupting of the news media (who's stations need the ad revenue) and of the candidates trying to raise huge sums of money. 

No one can ever really change this system because to support campaign finance you would need to be elected without being beholden to the financiers. Two candidates are doing just that. Bernie Sanders has no Super-pac, and is accepting only donations from individuals. The average donation is $27. He has raised a lot of money but its minuscule compared to what is usually needed. But he is still able to get his word out mostly through social media which costs very little. The problem for Sanders has been not getting much more than a tiny soundbite on national TV or print news. Unless its something about how remarkable he's doing for a loser. Trump is going the other way - he does have some (white supremacist)Super-pacs supporting him but mostly he doesn't have to raise money because he is getting all the publicity he needs from the media obsession with him. Until now he hasn't paid for media - now he is blitzing Iowa and New Hampshire but its not the usual campaign orthodoxy. He doesn't even need travel money - he misses the debate and they talk for two weeks about his absence. He could stay at home and do this. The voting consultants are baffled. Frank Luntz tried every strategy the Republican party could use on his focus group and NOTHING could stop him. 

The Iowa Caucus is important only because it is the start of the real race after a long long phoney war. Bernie Sanders won morally because he made the media show his whole speech and he was able to state all his amazing fabulous policies without it cutting off to show trump doing something idiotic. Cruz was expected to win Iowa because of his evangelical background so no surprise there but the media had to find a way of making it about Trump and they enjoyed cruzifying him. He will rise again on February 9 in New Hampshire. The winner from the GOP side was certainly Marco Rubio. The problem on the Republican side is basically that there are too many candidates and everyone knows it but no one wants to give way. Now Rubio can try to present himself as the establishment Republican candidate - the safe bet for those who vote Republican to keep their taxes low and their investments safe but aren't motivated by all the crazy anti-immigrant, anti-women, anti-gay stuff. But is he strong enough to put a sensible choice coalition together? Because we all know that those moderate Republicans might vote for Hillary rather than Trump or Cruz. And usually that would win it - because that's where the money is. But 2016 is weird.