Serving the Trump administration has given US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo a spotlight of his own, but many have speculated he could be considering a bid for the US Senate. Senator Pat Roberts, from Pompeo’s home state of Kansas, is retiring after having held the seat for 24 years. For the Republican Party, Roberts’ exit leaves the door open for a Democratic challenger for what has historically been an incredibly safe seat. 

Although Pompeo has been adamant about continuing to serve under Trump in Washington, his party (Pompeo previously served as a Republican representative) may need him to return to his roots. The 2020 election is already shaping up to be a pivotal year for the GOP after they badly lost the House of Representatives in the 2018 midterm elections. The Republican contingent of the Senate currently holds a six-seat edge over the Democrats, but many are predicting that could change after four incumbents including Roberts announced they would not seek reelection. 

Kobach, The Massively-imperfect Candidate

In Kansas, the situation is even more dire as the leading Republican candidate going into the primaries is an individual called Kris Kobach. While serving as the Kansas Secretary of State, Kobach supported controversial policies such as strict voter ID laws and a Muslim registry. In 2017, he resigned his position to run for governor, easily winning the Republican nomination. Kobach lost the election, however, to his Democratic opponent.

Kobach carries an enormous amount of baggage with him into the 2020 election. He has repeatedly marred his career with controversy, ethical complaints, and questionable election oversight. An in-depth analysis of his strengths yields few highlights. Even his appointment to Trump’s Commission on Election Integrity generated touchy court battles. Kobach effectively served as head of the commission, which was decommissioned a mere six months after its creation. 

A pattern of behavior such as Kobach’s creates legitimate concerns for the Republican Party ahead of the 2020 election. If Kobach manages to become the nominee, which is incredibly likely given his already established name recognition, Kansas could elect its first Democratic senator since 1932. Roberts’ seat itself has not been filled by a Democrat in over 100 years. Kansas is typically a Republican stronghold, to say the least.

Baggage-Free Pompeo Could Save The Kansas Seat For Republicans

Pompeo could enter the race to replace Kobach and quickly shoot to the top in the Republican primary. He is massively well-liked in Kansas and—unlike Kobach—brings no heavy baggage with him. Also unlike Kobach, Pompeo has managed to survive in Washington for longer than six months.

Both Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are supportive of the idea if they deem the situation critical enough.

“If he thought that there was a chance of losing that seat, I think he would do that and he would win in a landslide because they love him in Kansas,” Trump said recently in an interview on “Fox & Friends,” adding  “Mike would win easily in Kansas. Great state. And it’s a Trump state. He’d win easily.”

McConnell has pushed Pompeo even harder, perhaps because he is losing a solid Republican in Roberts and would like someone to fill his spot who he can rely on. Pompeo is certainly that party-line guy, aligning with the Republican Party at every opportunity. McConnell has provided Trump with poll numbers forecasting gloom in Kansas as a way of convincing him that Pompeo is their man to save the senate seat. 

What Does Pompeo Have To Say?

For his part, Pompeo has done little except deny that he will run. 

“I’ve watched my life take turns that one would never have expected. But it’s not something I want to do,” Pompeo said in a Fox News interview. “I want to stay here and continue to perform the mission that I’m serving President Trump and I hope doing a good term for the American people as well.”

However, on Dec. 27 he altered his website, MikePompeo.com, to direct users to his personal Twitter account, which was recently created. The change may be nothing more than cleaning up relics from his days serving as representative, but its timing naturally generated a buzz.

Pompeo understandably enjoys the gig he has now, but what happens if Trump loses in 2020? Where does that leave him? For a man loyal to his party, there is a certain argument to be made that sacrificing his post for the bigger picture may necessitate his run for senate. One thing is for certain: Kobach as a candidate is not an assured victory even in Kansas.

L'articolo Pompeo’s Senate Run May be Necessary to Save Seat For Republicans proviene da InsideOver.

Many Americans were shocked at the results of the 2016 presidential election. This included President-elect Donald Trump. But perhaps the most befuddled Americans were the pollsters and data collectors who used their results to repeatedly say that Hilary Clinton was all but ensured to become the first female American president.

Americans are fascinated, and increasingly reliant, on the stories that poll results purport to tell. Unfortunately, the stories they tell can often be misleading, at best – or just fiction, at worst.

The first known poll dates back to the 1824 presidential election. That particular poll was conducted in “taverns, militia offices and at public meetings” and then published in the Harrisburg Pennsylvanian on 24 July 1824. The results showed Andrew Jackson leading John Quincy Adams in the race for president. With Jackson going on to win the election, this new methodology of taking polls became popular. 

By the 20th century, little had changed. That is until 1936 when George Gallup created modern polling. During that year’s presidential campaign, Gallup’s main competitor, industry leader The Literary Digest used a 2.3 million postcard campaign to predict the 1936 presidential contest between Republican Alf Landon and Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt. Ignoring the Republican bias of this postcard polling, The Literary Digest predicted that Alf Landon was destined to be elected president in 1936.

Gallup selected a smaller but more demographically representative sample of citizens. As a result of this broader selection of people Gallup’s poll showed a different result. By 1937, both Alf Landon and The Literary Digest would become just a footnote in history. George Gallup’s methodology of surveying public opinion through broader and smaller samples became the industry norm as well as the industry leader for decades.

The ensuing years have seen an increasing reliance on polling results. Journalists, television news, businesses, politicians and special interest groups are just some that now rely on polling to shape their practices. Polls have shaped product marketing, news stories, movie and television narratives, elections from high schools to presidents and guide the legalisation of long illegal recreational drugs like marijuana.

The modern leader in polling today is considered to be the non-profit Pew Research Center. In 2012, Pew made themselves subject to a poll. What they found was that “fewer than one in 10 Americans contacted for a Pew survey bothered to respond.” 

A good question to ask is are polls therefore reliable gauges of the American consensus?

There are two primary types of polling, “scientific” and “unscientific.” Scientific polls can accurately reflect and describe public opinion (Gallup, Pew Research) whereas unscientific polls simply report what people reply (Buzzfeed, Facebook). This is not to say that polls on the internet can’t be scientific. However, it’s important to note that, according to Pew Research, only about 10% of Americans use the internet.

For example, if you consider current polling in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. Polling aggregator Real Clear Politics provides a lengthy and robust look at various pollsters and their results (scientific). That site shows Joe Biden having a sizable if decreasing, lead. Conversely, if you look at a recent poll by news aggregator Daily Kos, it shows Elizabeth Warren with a commanding lead over all candidates (unscientific).

Currently, Biden’s lead sits at +/- 9% over the second-place Warren. That percentage difference accounts for the 10% internet usage difference. As time becomes more of a cherished resource, Americans have become more reliant on the information that polls provide. This could then have someone wondering which polls to believe. Without doing a cursory look at the data, and methodology inherent in the poll, they can be egregiously misleading.

But if you take a brief pause and look into the poll results, there are a series of questions worth considering. Just thinking about five basic questions can help you have a clearer understanding of the poll you are looking at:  

Who did the poll?

The easiest and most basic question. Was it an academic institution, a polling firm, political campaign or some other entity or person? Any poll worth examining will notate who did the poll. If that basic information isn’t transparent or is actively withheld, it’s safe to say it’s not a reliable poll. 

Who paid for the poll? 

Polls are conducted for very specific reasons. With that in mind, they’re also not free to execute. Knowing who paid for it can help tell you what these pollsters and polls are considering to be important. Businesses’ may take a poll to test a new marketing campaign, a special interest group may want to take the temperature of the public on a topic or a politician may want to better understand where they stand in the run-up to election day.

However, with both politicians or special interest polls, knowing who paid for the poll will help determine what the objective of the poll was. A political candidate or special interest group may frame questions in such a way as to bias the answers.

For example, a poll asking Americans to cut foreign aid spending from the budget may first result in a hair raising negative reaction because Americans believe foreign aid to be over 26% of the budget. A closer look reveals something different. According to Oxfam, foreign aid accounts for less than 1% of the American budget. In this hypothetical poll, if more accurate information was involved in the polling preamble, it may yield a different result. 

How many people were interviewed?

As George Gallup proved in 1936, more is not necessarily better with polling. A poll’s purpose is to provide estimated outcomes and if all things are equal, the more people interviewed the smaller the margin of error. Although, in America, and elsewhere in the world, things are never equal. Considering that, it’s safe to say that a smaller more diverse representation will furnish more accurate, or representative, data. 

How were the people chosen?

Using a random, or probability sample is the foundation of scientific polling. This foundation states that when provided the opportunity to select people in a target population it would then ensure the results would more properly reflect that population if randomly gathered.

In other words, selecting people at random will result in more representative information (presuming there is no bias in the phrasing of the questions). This is the reason that 1,600 American adults can reflect the opinions of  327 million Americans with only a limited margin of error.

What region and what group does it represent?

This is critical in political polls. In the lead up to big elections, where roughly 60% of Americans vote. In the less substantial primaries or pre-election polls, only about  25% show up to vote. Since it’s these less substantial polls that can influence a vote in the larger, more impactful, elections it’s imperative to know from what sample the poll is drawn from.

That is to say that polling results derived from only veterinarians in Texas will not, in any way, reflect the view of all Americans because not all Americans are veterinarians. To lessen any confusion, misrepresentation or fabrication, especially in political polls, look for wording like “registered voters”, “likely voters” or “among veterinarians” (or applicable group). Such distinctions are important to understanding all polling but are particularly critical for political polls.

For better or worse, over the past 195 years, polling has embedded itself into American life. As time becomes more valuable and attention spans become shorter, Americans are relying on polls to help them in their decision making. Pausing to consider basic questions can help better understand what exactly the information is showing.

Polling is no longer just informative, it has proven, culminating in the election of Donald Trump in 2016, that it can have profound sociological and political consequences. Bestowing one person, group or entity with such influence and power should give pause.

In and of themselves, polls are informative tools and at their very best, they are transparent with their data and would reflective of the population or constituency they are serving.

However, at their very worst, polls will be misunderstood and misinterpreted and their inherent margin of error could lead to catastrophic influence in many aspects of American life.  

L'articolo The American Way: The Story of Polling proviene da InsideOver.

While Donald Trump’s candidacy as the Republican 2020 nominee had been a foregone conclusion, internal challengers have emerged. Even though the odds are stacked against them, the damage candidates could cause to Trump’s presidential campaign cannot be overstated. After all, primaries have been a death sentence for sitting presidents.

Last week, former White House Communications Director, Anthony Scaramucci, publicly opined his repentance for supporting the Commander in Chief. In his expostulation on National TV, Scaramucci urged Republicans to challenge Trump for the presidential nomination in a primary. This is a tall order, considering the fact that only one elected president amongst forty-four predecessors, President Pierce in 1852, was not granted his party’s nomination.

But Scaramucci’s proposition had been gaining traction amongst establishment Republicans for some time. What Scaramucci did not allude to, or perhaps was not cognizant of, is the fact that one Republican had already declared his candidacy. A second one entered the race yesterday.

Former Governor of Massachusetts, Bill Weld, initiated an exploratory committee in February, and has since officially announced his candidacy. Yesterday, former Congressmen and controversial talk show host Joe Walsh declared his desire to oust Trump. Other potential candidates such as former Ohio Governor Kasich, former Congressman Mark Sanford and even 2012 hopeful Mitt Romney are names that continue to circulate through Washington’s political grapevine.

How genuine these primary coquets are is difficult to quantify at this point. A primary provides a candidate with a national stage and thereby makes a bid particularly attractive for candidates who may be considered mid – or low – profile politicians. Hidden agendas are, therefore, not outside the realms of possibility.

Those who have either officially declared a challenge or are still contemplating a bid share one common trait: earnest resentment. Not only for Trump but for the ideological rift that the Republican Party has witnessed under his presidency. And while the GOP has had its fair share of multi-facetted fractions (e.g. Tea Party, Neoconservatives, the Christian right), the Trump presidency has transformed the GOP into a two-fraction party. On the one side, a major populist Trump wing, on the other the remains of what used to be the establishment Republicans. The latter appears to have seen enough and seeks to regain control over the party – with perhaps impeccable timing.

Meanwhile, the president continues to command an imperviously loyal base, but has nonetheless alienated many Republican voters. It resonates in current polls. These indicate mediocre approval ratings in key states such as Texas (41%), Pennsylvania (42%), Michigan (42%) and Florida (43%). Trump’s national approval rating of 44% may also lead to increased trepidation in conservative circles and raises the question of whether the 2020 election can be won with Donald Trump as the candidate.

Despite low ratings, however, the status quo implies that Trump will almost certainly obtain the nominee, as his approval rating with Republicans is at almost 90%. History has shown that a rating of 75% or less is required if a challenge is supposed to warrant any kind of feasibility. However, a successful primary is no guarantee for a general election win. Primaries for incumbents, traditionally, have correlated with the contrary.

In the past fifty years, three sitting presidents have faced a primary challenge. President Ford was challenged by then-Governor of California, Ronald Reagan, in 1976. Three years later, President Carter was challenged by Senator Ted Kennedy. The late George H.W. Bush faced Pat Buchanan in 1992. All incumbents won the primary and secured the party’s nominee. However, the internal competition yielded a rather unpleasant side-effect: all three lost the following general election.

The reason is simple. In a primary, rifts within the party are being exposed. In turn, the sitting president is portrayed as being weak, seemingly incapable of orchestrating even his party around the presidential agenda. This is never a promising sales pitch for a general election.

Thus, a plausible challenge needs to be founded on Trump’s shortcoming. A lacklustre track record could jeopardise the party’s chances in a general election. If a candidate was able to make a coherent case for this occurrence, Republican support for Trump could decrease. Ironically, Trump himself might become the prosecution’s finest witness. After all, he has been asking to be judged on the economy. Consequently, if the indications of a looming recession turn out to be accurate, the floodgates for a challenger are suddenly wide open, and a potential disaster in the general elections almost inevitable.

Nonetheless, a Trump primary win remains more probable than not. The connotations that an internal challenge carries are serious, however. Much will depend on the challenger’s pedigree and economic developments. Either way, the president’s main adversaries may no longer be Democrats, but members of his own party.

L'articolo Why Republicans Could Cost Trump the Presidency proviene da InsideOver.

Exclusive interview to the Indian American specialist in international relations. In 2008 he was named one of Esquire’s “75 Most Influential People of the 21st Century”

Parag Khanna is a leading global strategy advisor, world traveler, and best-selling author. He has published many important books that have been translated into more than twenty languages. We have talked, in exclusive with him, about the most important current affairs and topics, with a view to the future, starting from his latest book, “The Future is Asian”.

In your latest book “The Future is Asian” you illustrate Asia’s growth and its increasingly important role in the world of the near future. Do you think the time has come for the emancipation from Chinese hegemony for the whole continent?

“There is no existing Chinese dominion over Asia, in a sense that there is a lot of people talking about some inevitable Chinese regional hegemony over Asia, but that is yet to be proven. It’s an hypothesis, it’s something that people talk about as if it was already a reality, but it’s not. So, we have to be clear that there is not just a global shift from unipolarity to multipolarity: there is also a shift in Asia towards multipolarity and that’s the central nature of my argument”.

Do you believe that Asia can increase its importance, acquiring a more central role in the new multipolar world?

“There is no question that, in this standing, Asia’s rise is a big part of the reason why the world is becoming more multipolar. In the first place, it’s not only the rise of China, but it’s the continued role of Japan and the rise of india, there are many factors that are driving global multipolarity. We began to talk about the return of multipolarity in the 1970s, based on the rise of Japan and the consolidation of the European Union: so, it’s something that structurally and economically predates the collapse of the Soviet Union”.

In this panorama, what can be the role of the European Union, called to decide on its future and on what it wants to become, mired between internal contrasts and a process of a greater integration of the institutions?

“The European Union is already playing a substantial part in the global system, developing and nurturing their own position, becoming more independent of the United States, playing a greater role in the world economy, in terms of trade and reserves. UE is providing more than a single role: stabilising peripheral regions if it can, absorbing the migrants as it is and as a leading investor and creditor to many regions. Therefore, I think the question you’re asking me is whether Europe’s playing its role on the world stage together, as a singular entity, or it’s doing it as the sum total of national powers. And the answer is both”.

Can the wave of populism and sovereignty that is invading the continent hinder or slow the growth of the European Union?
“It depends, I think that there are issues where national sovereignty has always been central to Europe’a action, and obviously migration has been one of them. There has been a trend towards free mobility for Europeans in Europe, but there has never been a cohesive migration policy for non Europeans in Europe and that is still the case. The biggest question is whether Europe can move from a monetary union to also having a banking and fiscal union, and whether it can have a more diplomatic and military union. And these are the most significant indicators among we can measure whether Europe is becoming together. I think that progress will be incremental, or not happen at all in some of these areas, but I think that it will materialize”.

Will Brexit represent an obstacle for this aggregation process in the EU?

“I don’t think that Great Britain has ever considered itself as part of this deep institutional integration of the monetary fiscal banking union. It has always considered itself, as first and foremost, an independent power, so the fact that the UK plans to leave the EU is not, in many ways a big loss. It appears to be just statistical loss, in a sense that the European Union is losing a statistical amount of GDP attributed to its collected membership; but obviously, by trading, selling and investing with the EU, Britain remains interdependent with them in many ways.
But also from a geopolitical standpoint, many forms, if not all, of the security cooperation between the UK and the EU will continue. I think that the actual membership in the European Union is something that is a bit overload and certainly does more damage to the UK then to Europe and probably, in the end, will make London less important then it used to, be because many of the resources and technical institutions, like trade, that were offshore to the United Kingdom will be restored to the EU. This will certainly push Europe towards integration, because in many ways the Great Britain was trying to hinder that process”.

In the United States there’s a lot of talk about the next presidential election of 2020: which future do you see for the country, after Donald Trump?

“We don’t know if we are entering in a period after Trump because we don’t know what will happen in the election. At this point, it’s probably safe to say that he will be re-elected, but this could change tomorrow if he is impeached or something like that. I think the issue is Trumpism rather then Trump, or rather than partisanship, as it predates Donald Trump. Will we still have a hyper-partisan federal political system in the US, dominated by two parties with insufficient reform of the electoral college and campaign finance regulation and other features that hinder and are creating a sort of national consense?
The real question is: can the United States have national consensus on immigration, climate change or foreign policy or infrastructure of healthcare? These are the 5 most important topics. Can the us have a national consensus on these issues, after the next elections, regardless of who is the president? The answer is no, because, even if you do have a Democrat elected as president and it could be that a positive step towards consensus, but then you need action, and action takes a long time to implement in a very large country. So, I think that for the foreseeable future many other countries, regions and powers will continue to hedge the US role and to focus on building their own capabilities and other alliances and partnership, rather than depending on the US. And, again, this a process that has been underway for about 20 years”.

Which part can play Africa in the multipolar world that you are describing?

“Africa is not particularly relevant: it’s a resource providing continent. Africa is a net recipient: it provides resources for the world, but it receives more then it gives in terms of investment and so on; it’s still a good importer, even if receives a lot of goods. Africa will not be a leader, also because it won’t be an industrial leader: it provides resources or services, mostly commodities, and it will never industrialise, because of the pace of labour automation through technology. The Asian countries were able to use low cost labour to industrialist, draw investment and become great powers, but that cycle is disrupted for Africa because none will move their manufacturing to Africa because it’s much cheaper to have robots doing it. This global cycle of using a young population as a labour force in order to industrialise and modernise has worked in different environments, but it’s something of a circuit that moves around from low cost region to low cost region. And when one region becomes expensive, the supply changes to other low cost regions: but that circuit doesn’t involve Africa, because of automation. You can blame robots for stagnating the African industrialisation”.

What was your opinion on the Russiagate and the Russian funds received by Lega party in Italy? Do you believe there may be a real danger that Putin will influence the elections, in Europe and in the US?

“To be honest, I appreciate that there is an interference and a meddling in general from the weaponisation of the social media during elections. However, I think that people have been too quick with charging Russia with Trump’s victory. When they asked me how did this could happen, my answer is not Facebook, my answer is not Russia: my answer is that the United States haven’t had significant trade adjustment assistance for 45 years and their degree of frustration and marginalisation is very high. The origin of the fail policy to compensate technological innovation and outsourcing, those failures go back to 1960s actually! It’s very easy to blame outsiders, which is something Europeans and Americans are very good at, but it doesn’t mean its true”.

L'articolo Parag Khanna and the multipolar world: “Trump to get re-elected. Brexit will help UE” proviene da InsideOver.

There is no doubt that since becoming US President, Donald Trump has transformed the Republicans. Since he started his campaign to become his party’s candidate for the 2016 presidential election, he has shifted the Republicans’ rhetoric towards immigration and Chinese tariffs on US products. His message resonated with his supporters who helped secure his victory three years ago. In 2016, BBC News reported that Trump was popular among non-college-educated white men, receiving seven in 10 votes from that demographic group, and six in 10 votes from non-college-educated white women. This helped him win the swing states of Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa and Michigan.

Yet he has not only shifted the Republicans’ policy stances on certain issues, but he has also changed the way his party is funded. With fundraising under way for 2020 among both parties, Trump is receiving an overwhelming amount of donations from his supporters. The Republican Party has long been criticised by their opponents as the party of big money and big donors, but a Fox News analysis has shattered this image.

The news channel discovered that 61 per cent of money raised directly by the Trump campaign this election originated from small donors (donations under $200). In 2016, 65 per cent of the Republican’s donations for that year’s election were under $200. Campaign finance analysts, like Alex Baumgart, individual contributions researcher at the Center of Responsive Politics, said the Democrats normally receive a substantial amount of small donations, but Trump’s ‘populist edge’ has changed that dynamic.

Conservative activists suggest Trump has changed the Republican Party in general. Michael Johns, a co-founder of the Tea Party movement and a former White House speechwriter to George H.W. Bush, told Fox News the party is vastly different to what it was five years ago. He added that an emphasis on secure borders and fairer trade have reflected that shift. The President has succeeded in broadening his party’s appeal to voters they could not reach in 2008 and 2012 because he has been bold enough to talk about immigration and China, and he will need to concentrate on these issues if he is to secure a 2020 victory.

Vox reports that Trump might not be able to depend upon the Electoral College to secure victory next time. He has disapproval ratings of 54 percent in swing states like Iowa and Michigan, 52 per cent in Pennsylvania, 50 per cent in Ohio and 48 per cent in Florida. Nonetheless, opinion polls cannot be trusted. They predicted both Bush and the current President would lose in 2004 and 2016 respectively, and they were proven wrong on both occasions. But polls can still be useful to measure a change in attitudes among electors before an election, and currently they suggest the Republican’s hard-line stances are working.

For example, Axios found that a focus group they spoke to last month in Michigan (a state the President won in 2016) claimed Trump is handling the immigration crisis ‘professionally and responsibly’. A CNN poll in July also discovered that 74 per cent of people believe there is a border crisis. An Economist/YouGov poll shows that 74 per cent of Republicans view illegal border crossings as a criminal matter, while 80 per cent of them support a border wall. With China, Bloomberg reports that 74 per cent of Republicans approved of his imposition of Chinese tariffs. Considering Reagan succeeded in transforming the Republican Party into a party of free trade, Trump has now changed it into one that espouses fairer trade whilst being tough on immigration.

When leaving office, George W. Bush remarked that he may be the last ‘true’ Republican president. That is inaccurate. If anything, Trump wants to broaden the party’s appeal to attract more support by being tougher on the issues they believe in, like immigration and trade. The President’s ability to attract small donations from his supporters and his growing popularity in the polls for the policies his administration is focusing on shows he has a chance of winning in 2020. Yet that depends on whether he can maintain his concentration on the areas that secured his 2016 victory.

L'articolo Trump’s small-dollar contributions show he has changed the Republicans proviene da InsideOver.

The race amongst Democrats for the presidential nominee has begun, with Joe Biden being the current frontrunner. As such, Biden has returned to the political arena. An arena, that magnifies mistakes and enables scrutiny by the competition and pundits alike. While Biden has been in public service for the majority of his life, he has also gained a reputation for blunders. It is a weakness, that should not be the primary concern, as the democratic party is not looking for perfection, but the ability to mobilise former Trump voters as well as a heavily left-leaning democratic base. Joe Biden has the talents to tackle this conundrum.

When Biden entered the democratic race on April 25th, he took the immediate role as the party’s favourite to obtain the nomination. It did not come as a surprise. There is a certain degree of bonus and nostalgia, Biden carries. A bonus, for an almost fifty-year long career in national politics. Nostalgia, for having been Vice President to the most popular Democratic President of modern times – Barack Obama. Biden has seen it all. Thirty-six years in the Senate, representing Delaware, and having earned a reputation as someone, who has shown a proclivity to facilitate legislation in a bipartisan approach. He is an embodiment of a politician and has the experience many others of his competitors are lacking. Most importantly, however, Biden is a moderate candidate. And as such he can appeal to blue-collar voters.

It remains the incumbrance for 2020: Win back blue-collar workers Hillary Clinton did not reach in 2016, particularly in and around the Rust Belt. The race here is wide open. Obama won here in 2012 while Trump won big parts in 2016. Many of these are Swing States, not bound by ideology but by a traditionally opportune and open ear for the right candidate and his message. Biden’s current main competitors Bernie Sanders and Elisabeth Warren are unlikely to make their marks in these states. The message of universal healthcare (read: socialism), open borders and climate change does surprisingly not resonate with a factory worker in Michigan or farmer in Ohio the same way it might with wealthier individuals in metropolitan areas. This hypothesis was last put to the test and verified during last year’s Midterm Elections. Here, the majority of congressional seats in the Rust Belt area, obtained by Democrats, went to candidates with a moderate agenda, not the hard left.

It furthermore verifies the idea that the election of 2016 was not won by Donald Trump. It was lost by Hillary Clinton. Perceived as somewhat out of touch and as part of the elites that had caused the downfall of working-class America, Clinton did not obtain the necessary votes in relevant states. In some cases, such as Wisconsin, she famously did not even campaign. Calling Trump supporters “deplorable” did not help the cause either. However, three years later, the failed Clinton bid has provided Biden with a blueprint for victory. None surprisingly, Biden made his main message clear: Blue-collar America built the country. And it not only deserves respect but the upmost support.

The message has been received and Biden is posing a serious threat to the White House. According to latest polls, Biden is currently leading Trump in Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina and even Texas – traditionally a Republican stronghold. Nationally, Biden is beating Trump by 49% to 39%. However, a certain degree of caution when evaluating polls this early is certainly warranted. After all, Clinton led Trump by 12% – one month later Trump would win the presidency.

And while Democrats have not even made it to the primaries yet, Biden’s momentum has not gone unnoticed – on both sides of the aisle. As a result, his fellow competitors have been attacking Biden on his political track record. Meanwhile, the right is not too amused either. Whole segments dedicated to Biden can be witnessed in all its glory on Fox News shows such as Hannity and Tucker Carlson. It is an almost daily character assassination that ranges from labelling Biden incompetent to calling him “sleepy/creepy Uncle Joe”. And in some way, this may be even more telling than the polls. The notion of Biden the bumbling old man, as opposed to the strong leader, may not be completely unwarranted. Over the years, Biden made his fair share of blunders and Freudian slips. Needless to say: there will be more to come. But unlike in previous years, one feels that lack of rhetorical genius may not be the deciding factor in a campaign against Donald Trump. After all, what has emanated out of the Oval Office since 2016 cannot be labelled as Shakespearian either.

To maintain the aforementioned momentum, Biden must avoid one pitfall in particular: The anti- Donald Trump campaign. While many people may happily vote for any presidential candidate not named Donald Trump, Biden has to be cautious with the narrative so many in the Democratic party have been telling – including himself. In this narrative, America had been almost perfect prior to Trump. No division, no hate, endless prosperity. It is a false narrative. A political fairy tale and a prime example of intellectual dishonesty. For Biden to be successful, he needs to find the holy grail of running on his message, not succumb to the false democratic narrative. If Biden was to secure the nomination, finding an adequate running mate would be the first crucial decision. A Biden-Harris ticket seems to be the most viable and promising option and would provide his presidential campaign with a significant range for voters e.g. moderate to left, minorities and women.

In the meantime, one must not get lost in reoccurring blunders Biden has displayed. Voters are not looking for a rhetorical genius, nor someone perfect, but a leader. A leader, who can heal big parts of the republic and introduce unity to all those who have experienced increased division under President Trump. Someone who not only addresses but solves the issues blue-collar America has been facing. The coming months will tell whether Biden is the man for the job. As of now, he remains the only one.

L'articolo Joe Biden – The Right Man On The Left proviene da InsideOver.

The battle between generations is as old as time itself. Each generation blames the one before it and is suspect of the one after it. Right now, the generational battle being waged, real or imagined, is between baby boomers and millennials. Numbering 76 million and 73 million respectively, baby boomers are typically defined as those born between 1944-1964 and millennials, between 1980-1994.

The two Democratic presidential front-runners, Joe Biden, and Bernie Sanders, both fall a little north of the baby boomer demographic. But both are best identified by it. While the other Democratic candidates run the spectrum from baby boomer to Generation X to millennials, only one of its candidates has the fervent support of millennials – the oldest candidate in the race, Bernie Sanders.

Assigning a group of people to an identity based on the year they were born is both arbitrary and narrow-minded. These labels can then be weaponized to fuel conflict when, in fact, none may be present. So, exactly how a 77-year-old man has managed to capture the almost undivided attention of millennials has been confounding pundits since he was the Democratic runner-up in 2016. But in digging a little deeper, it becomes much less perplexing.

Where the Democratic front-runner Joe Biden is currently succeeding with his promise to “restore the soul” of the country. Like a chiropractor doing an adjustment on your back, Biden desires to move the country back to where it was. Like a chiropractor, it may make you feel better but it won’t correct the problem.

If Biden is a chiropractor, Sanders is a surgeon.

Where Bernie Sanders is succeeding, as he did in 2016, is by acknowledging that America wasn’t that great before and that real change is needed. Sanders is the only Democratic candidate who has built his idea of change to be in tune with young people. Sanders has a clear picture of who the next generation of Democrats will be, and it’s not baby boomers or Generation X.

Over the past thirty years, wealthy Americans have added to their wealth. However, those Americans not as fortunate, by birth or luck, have slipped into “negative wealth.” Meaning that the value of their debts exceeds the value of their wealth.

An appeal of Sanders is his zeal in going after the top 1% of wealthy Americans. As he has pointed out in his stump speech, it’s three people who own as much wealth as the bottom half of Americans. To define that as anything other than inequality is to not understand the definition of the word.

Inequality is a priority for many Sanders supporters. And while millennials are witnessing and feeling the most inequality, it’s not their only concern. It’s a trio of other issues that have their primary attention, universal health care, student loan debt, and climate change.

It’s no secret that healthcare for the average person in America is abominable, at best. According to eHealthinsurance, coverage for an individual can run around 325 dollars a month, with an average annual deductible of about $4,400. At its worst, health insurance is non-existent.

Not having health insurance is terrifying for anyone, let alone someone who graduates college with 32 thousand dollars in student loan debt (the average amount of debt for graduates in 2019). With the average student loan repayment being around 400 dollars a month, a young person just beginning their life can be left to make a daunting decision.

As most student loans begin repayment after six-months, a young person just starting out can be left deciding whether to pay the loan or pay for insurance. Ignoring either is far from ideal, but only one can turn around and wreak havoc on your financial future if you ignore it.

The student loan market was small before 2000, just about 200 million dollars. By 2018, it had ballooned to 1.4 trillion dollars. A large part of Bernie Sanders’ appeal to younger voters is that he recognizes that having to decide between paying for health insurance and re-paying a student loan is absurd. Asking someone to make that choice is setting them up for a lifetime of failure.

Bernie Sanders is also a firm believer in the climate crisis, as are most millennials. In fact, in a recent tweet, Sanders referred to President Trump as an “idiot” for believing that climate change is a hoax. Like Sanders, many millennials believe that climate change is anything but a hoax. In fact, they believe that the wealth of previous generations was accumulated at the cost of the environment. A Pew poll recently revealed that 65% of millennials believe that there is evidence for human-caused climate change, compared to 47% of boomers.

Millennials, like Sanders, recognize that time is not on his generation’s side to ameliorate the climate crisis. It’s on them. In fact, that’s one of the things that Bernie Sanders has been exceptional at, recognizing that the change comes from the bottom up.

Sanders consistency in his political beliefs is both a criticism and a strength. It’s also unparalleled. His critics will say that he’s been saying the same thing for years. It’s a fair criticism, because he has been.

It can best be said that his career in politics is centered around democratic socialism. Now, the word “socialism” breeds fear in America. But it’s important to distinguish what Sanders means by “democratic socialism.” While he does call for reform on Wall Street, his belief has more to do with tax-funded social benefits rather than social ownership of production.

To deny Sanders’ career-spanning political commitment to forming a system that helps all and its appeal to a generation that has seen their government become co-opted by capitalism and politicians repeatedly shifting beliefs, like a Harry Potter character shifts shapes, would be naive.

Sanders recognizes that millennials have profound fear about sky-rocketing health care costs and the feeling that they owe fealty to the banks and financial institutions, as a result of their student loans. Accordingly, Sanders wants to break those shackles by providing substantial student loan forgiveness and providing universal health care. And as a firm believer in the science, and reality, of climate change, these issues aren’t political points for Bernie Sanders. For him, these are critical to the future of America.

The reason that much is made of this baby boomer versus millennial tension is that in a US-type of democracy, the number of people in a group is a big part of its electoral power. But only if they vote. The uphill struggle that Sanders faces is not in getting millennials to believe in him, it’s getting them to vote.

Cynics will say that millennials are only looking for free handouts and won’t show up to vote. The former is just cynical scrum and the latter was true in 2016. Only half of the eligible millennials voted in 2016, compared to ⅔ of the older demographic. However, in 2016, it could be argued millennials didn’t vote because their candidate, Sanders, was sidelined by the Democratic party.

However, that changed in the mid-term elections of 2018, as millennials nearly doubled their voting from 22% to 42%.

Having a candidate stand up for ideas that they believe in and are committed to is a recent development in American politics. Having grown up in an era of war, corporate malfeasance, the rising cost of education and healthcare, it’s no surprise that Sanders appeals to younger voters.

Bernie Sanders’ appeal transcends generations. His unwavering commitment to make the necessary changes for the future, both individually and systemically, is what pulls younger voters into his orbit.

L'articolo Why Bernie Sanders Appeals to Millennials proviene da InsideOver.

It’s November 8, 2016, and celebrations are already underway at Hillary Clinton’s election night party in Manhattan. Earlier in the evening, the New York Times reported Clinton had an 85 percent chance of winning. Supporters gathered under the glass ceiling of the Javits Center, waiting for their candidate to shatter the symbolic Glass Ceiling for women in politics. However, the only thing that would be shattered that night were their hopes.

Nearly three years after the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, the world is still reeling from what will perhaps go down as the most shocking political upset in American history, if not the history of democracy. On November 8, 2016, billionaire businessman and political outsider Donald Trump became President-elect of the United States, defying nearly every poll, pundit, and political prediction.

Well-known pundits, both Democrat and Republican, indicated Hillary Clinton was a clear favorite, a shoe-in for the presidency, even up to until a few hours before the results. In October 2016, poll expert Sam Wang even tweeted that he would eat a bug if Trump got over 240 electoral votes. The consensus in the media was so strong, a Trump victory seemed laughable. Moreover, developments in the months leading up to the election– including allegations of sexual assault, entanglements with a porn star, and the release of a 2005 tape in which Trump brags about grabbing women by their private parts– signaled his campaign was doomed.

Nevertheless, as election night wore on, blue states on the electoral map were slowly but surely replaced by a wave of red. Defying the polls, Trump won key states in which he had never been ahead, securing the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency. Overall, Trump got 306 electoral votes (and poll expert Sam Wang ate a bug on national television).

The mood at the Javits Center turned so grave, it would have made a state funeral look like a state fair. Clinton supporters appeared shell-shocked. People sobbed on television, college classes were cancelled, and a pending apocalypse was predicted, if not all but expected. Amidst the shock and sheer surprise of the election, many wondered how the polls could have been so wrong.

So, why were the polls so misleading? On election night, the national polls put Clinton at a 52% to 53% chance of winning the two-party vote. She ended up winning the popular vote by a margin of about 2 percent, meaning the error in the national polls was not significant. However, Trump’s unexpected success in flipping the key battleground states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Florida– all won by Obama in 2012— gave him the majority of Electoral College votes needed to win the presidency.

A quick refresher: The Electoral College, the system by which the U.S. President is elected, was devised by America’s Founding Fathers to serve as a check on direct democracy and increase the power of small states, encouraging candidates to appeal to voters outside of large cities. The candidate who wins the majority of votes in a state generally wins all of the states’ electoral votes (winner-takes-all), even if he or she only won by a slim margin.

The main predictive failure in the 2016 Presidential Election was that most polling at the state-level consistently underestimated Trump’s support in the key battleground states. 206 counties, many located in the Rust Belt, unexpectedly flipped from voting for Obama in 2012 to Trump in 2016.

“National polls were pretty good in the 2016 presidential election, but state-level polling was fairly poor,” writes prominent statistician Nate Silver on his site, FiveThirtyEight. The fact that the national polls were “pretty good” is significantly secondary to the fact that state-level polls were “fairly poor,” since the U.S. President is not elected based on the national popular vote. So, what explains pollsters’ underestimation of Trump’s support in these key states?

One hypothesis that has been put forth to explain the discrepancy is the silent Trump vote, or the “shy Trump supporter” phenomenon, which polls would not have reflected. According to this hypothesis, social desirability bias (in this case, hesitance to express favor for an unpopular candidate) caused some Trump supporters to conceal their vote preference from pollsters. According to some scholars and pollsters, however, there is data to suggest that the “shy Trump voter” phenomenon was not in play.

“Trump outperformed the polls the most in states such as North Dakota and West Virginia where we assume respondents would’ve had little embarrassment in declaring their support for him, while he did no better than the polls’ predictions in solidly Democratic states,” write Andrew Gelman and Julia Azari in a paper published by Columbia University. Nate Silver presents the same argument in his article, “‘Shy Voters Probably Aren’t Why the Polls Missed Trump.”

However, these observations are not conclusive, as they don’t consider other factors, such as the discouraged-voter-effect, that could have come into play in solidly blue or red states, where political minorities tend to believe their vote won’t count much.

Even if voters did not intentionally mislead pollsters, which is very plausible, there is another development that substantiates the “shy voter” hypothesis. Two weeks before the election, the five key swing states that were predicted wins for Clinton– Pennsylvania, Florida, Michigan, Wisconsin, and North Carolina– recorded a historically high percentage of voters who said they were either undecided or would vote for a 3rd-Party candidate.

According to FiveThirtyEight’s national polling average, the number of voters that polled as undecided or voting for a third-party candidate was much higher in 2016 than in recent elections:  In 2016, 12.5% of voters polled as Undecided/Other, compared to 3.1%, 3.4%, and 3.7% in 2012, 2008, and 2004, respectively.

“Third-party voters often have a weak commitment to their candidates and can be picked off by one of the major party candidates,” writes Silver, who assumed Clinton would win most of those Undecided/Other votes. Instead, they mostly went to Trump in all five states and pushed him over the edge in the Electoral College vote.

Can we assume that the increase in “Undecided/Others” voters was a result of the “shy Trump voter” phenomenon? There is no way to know for sure, but it is certainly plausible. It’s also possible that the anti-Trump sentiment fueled by the media contributed to low response rates, or survey-shyness, among Trump supporters. This would also explain why Trump’s supporters were under-polled in virtually every poll in the five key states.

“When there is good news about a candidate, his or her supporters are more likely to respond to polls,” write Gelman and Azari. “The final polls were off by about 2 percentage points, suggesting that, even at the end, Trump supporters were responding at a lower rate than Clinton supporters, most notably in certain key swing states.” Moreover, the numbers didn’t need to be significant to significantly skew the polls and change the election.

Now, let’s look at some previsions for 2020. According to state-by-state Gallup polls released in February 2019, Trump’s approval ratings in the key states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan– which largely accounted for his victory in 2016– are not strong. 42% in these states approve of the job Trump is doing, and in all three, a majority disapprove. Already, a new poll has come out indicating that Trump is trailing behind Democratic candidate Joe Biden in the key battleground state of Pennsylvania.

However, if some form of the non-response bias was at play in 2016, we can assume it will be at play in 2020. In swing states, silent supporters matter. They only need to exist in small numbers to make a significant difference in the polls and at the ballot box, as we so shockingly learned.

There is also a second, perhaps more prevalent, kind of silent supporter. This isn’t just the supporter who is silent in the polls, but the supporter who is silent in daily life and in the public dialogue. A May 2019 Gallup poll reveals that Trump’s approval rating has hit 46%, the highest since his first month in office. Though that is relatively low when compared with the averages of other presidents, it’s high for Trump, and it is 2 percent higher than Obama’s was at the same point in his presidency. Meanwhile, the mainstream media is still rife with disapproval, and in cities like Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco, expressing support for any of Trump’s policies is taboo, if not entirely socially prohibited.

A study conducted by Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center reports that the tone of Trump’s news coverage during his first 100 days in office was 80 percent negative and 20 percent positive. According to Pew Research, news stories about Trump were only 5 percent positive in 2017, compared with 42 percent positive for Obama in 2009.

“In the press and in the academy, Trump is almost uniformly recognized as a catastrophe, the worst president in history,” writes David Graham in The Atlantic. “Trump’s flaws have been so extensively cataloged that it’s easy to lose sight of his strengths as a politician… [He] possesses an unequaled instinct for connecting with voters and exploiting their grievances.”

Many of these grievances are economic in nature. Civic life is not as flourishing as it was in the days when Tocqueville wrote of democracy in America. When it comes to politics, people care mostly about their own interests. Economic well-being is usually top of mind. And Trump certainly has a booming economy on his side, with strong job growth across the board and an increase in US GDP. A recent CNN poll reported that 71 percent of Americans view the U.S. economy as “very good” or “somewhat good,” higher than has been measured since 2001.

“Despite the fact that Trump is a largely incompetent clown, Democrats should not be overly confident or sanguine that they can beat him,” Dan Pfeiffer, a top aide to former President Barack Obama, told Politico. “He is a slight favorite to win. But he barely won last time and it took a Black Swan series of events to make that happen.”

The idea that it was merely a Black Swan series of events that led to Trump’s victory is a dangerous one. We need to remember that even though Trump was opposed as dangerous, uncouth, and overall unfit for the presidency by almost everyone in the establishment– including most of his Republican primary opponents at some point, many conservative intellectuals, and nearly the entire media– almost half of voters chose to go with him anyway.

While Trump’s victory has been largely dismissed as a fluke, the result of an unpopular democratic candidate, a racist outlash, and even Russian interference, some of the issues he tapped into deserve consideration. Trump sent Americans a message that resonated with them, a message that his Republican counterparts could not deliver for fear of being ostracized. The three main issues that catapulted him to the presidency– opposition to the establishment elite, trade, and illegal immigration– are not going away any time soon. Moreover, Trump has been dogged in pursuing his key campaign promises, even when they seem to undermine his popularity with establishment Republicans and the nation at large.

To allow for a flourishing, civic society we need to be able to have balanced conversations about important issues that affect Americans on all sides of the political, economic, and social spectrum. Criticism of our president is necessary, and often warranted. The problem is not that there is criticism of Trump or his character. The problem is that some of the legitimate issues he seized on are contemporaneously thrown under the shade of the “terrible Trump” umbrella, so that honest conversation about them is virtually impossible. This blocks civic dialogue, instills hatred on both sides, and causes the silent supporters to grow even more silent.

Donald Trump might not win easily in 2020. In fact, he might not win at all. But if he does, it is likely that the silent supporters– those not reflected in the polls, the media, or on the streets— will take him over the edge, yet again. As long as we can’t openly and civilly discuss important economic and social issues, we’re going to have silent supporters and loud surprises.

L'articolo Trump’s Silent Supporters: Real, Shy, and Maybe Triumphant (Again) proviene da InsideOver.