Monthly Archives: November 2012

Do you know what you’re voting for?

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http://youtu.be/ShdiYQ1EHvA

Why you voting? Well if you are an Obama supporter, you know. The Romney ad is full of appeal to abstract rights and responsibilities. It is an appeal to what is best in America. And why does Obama want you to vote for him? For “revenge”. That is a word that was not plucked out of the air as it came to mind. That is a word that has emerged in focus groups and has been market tested in all the demographics that matter. If you think of the sentiment as repulsive and disgusting, well that’s your business. But Mitt Romney is now spreading the very message that Obama wants voters to hear.

The Obama campaign is not aimed at the high minded and those who love America and what it stands for. It is aimed at a very different group entirely. The resentful and the envious. The anti-American haters of which there are many born and bred in the United States. The education system is dominated by the left who fill their students with anti-market and anti-capitalist rhetoric as do their newspapers and the media in general. And then there are those who care nothing at all about the deficit. They want that flow of benefits to continue without stop. Romney won’t provide it or even try. Obama will try and might even succeed.

This is Obama’s latest ad. It runs for more than two minutes so much cost an absolute fortune to run, but run it they are. It won’t change your vote but you are not the target.

Who is the ad aimed at? Why does this ad and talking about revenge work? I take you back to Peggy Noonan in the context of a post I put together almost a year ago.

Yet for all that Obama is still the favourite to win in November. I have been astonished at the ability of the Obama administration to manipulate the electorate almost at will. I have quoted the following passage from Peggy Noonan before and will have reason to do so no doubt from now till November. Put everything Obama does and has done into the context of this kind of analytical ability:

The other day a Republican political veteran forwarded me a hiring notice from the Obama 2012 campaign. It read like politics as done by Martians. The ‘Analytics Department’ is looking for ‘predictive Modeling/Data Mining’ specialists to join the campaign’s ‘multi-disciplinary team of statisticians,’ which will use ‘predictive modeling’ to anticipate the behavior of the electorate. ‘We will analyze millions of interactions a day, learning from terabytes of historical data, running thousands of experiments, to inform campaign strategy and critical decisions.’

There are people who want revenge and there are people who want government benefits and there are people who hate everything America stands for. That is the Obama coalition and who is to say it is not now the 50,1%.

It’s still the economy, stupid

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It was Clint Eastwood the other day who reminded us what this election is about and that is the economy and the insane levels of debt that will not be stopped without a change of administration. This is what he said on Hannity:

The debt situation is going to kill us. We are going to go over a fiscal cliff, and when it happens, we’re going to be all very surprised.

To some extent Sandy has allowed the electorate to take its eye off the ball but perhaps it has been Benghazi as well. The economy has been the crucial issue so talking about anything else at all, no matter how discrediting to Obama in some sense it might be, doesn’t put the focus where it needs to be. Romney in No Apology got it just right but whether enough actually care is the first issue:

The fact that both parties have come to accept deficits and eer-higher levels of public debt is deeply troubling. There are times when deficit spending may be an appropriate bride to finance a national emergency or to stimulate a depressed economy, but it should not be a permanent part of the budget. Almost half our public debt is financed by foreign entities, a circumstance that puts our currency at risk, threatens our annual budget, and makes our productive enterprises vulnerable to foreign ownership. Like most Americans, I recognise the need for government spending, but I cannot fathom the argument that it’s fine to spend more than we earn year after year. Passing an ever-increasing debt to our children is not just bad policy, it is morally wrong.

The second issue is the 47%. These are the proportion of the voting population who are invisible to us. This is a description of who they are but I fear even this is a quite sanitised version of the actual reality:

Obama’s hate-the-rich rhetoric does resonate with a minority — the losers, the ungrateful, the lazy, and the entitlement-junkies who showed up at the Occupy Wall Street protests. Think about that, folks: these arrogant idiots have the audacity to demand that government confiscate the profits from entrepreneurs (risk-takers) to redistribute to them. And they call that ‘fairness.’ The day a majority of Americans side with such lowlife scum is the day we cease being a great nation.

He’s right, and that day could be as soon as Tuesday next week.

Good bankers are great benefactors

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I am writing a book on why economists need to study the history of economics which is due at the publisher on New Year’s Eve. It has certainly kept me busy, but it has also kept me vastly entertained. Whenever I listen to the shallow maunderings of economists educated from some Samuelson clone, I can only laugh. But to the point at hand. In doing this research, I have been reading Arthur Latham Perry’s Political Economy, the 19th edition (!) published in 1887. He has a section on money and banking that is as long as some entire texts. Chapter XI deals with credit and there, in the summary (p 460), is this:

Good bankers are great benefactors

As it happens this is something I believe myself but the likelihood of such a sentiment appearing in an economics book today must be vanishingly low. I’m not even entirely sure that someone taking a course in economics that bypassed monetary theory would end up being guided through much in the way of a discussion of credit markets, their operation and their value. There is also this from that same chapter, which I am certain is not taught any more. And with this we have an overlap between economics and morals.

Here the vexed question arises, how far has one generation the right to throw upon succeeding ones the burdens of national debt? The true answer is, that it has a very limited right indeed. The opposite doctrine tacitly implies succeeding generations will have no occasion for extraordinary expenses of their own, and therefore may rightfully be made to contribute to the extraordinary expenses of this generation. But it is pure assumption to take for granted that the next generation will not have, of some kind or other, as much occasion for an extrordinary effort in the way of defence or of improvement as the present generation has had. It is an illusion to estimate what has now to be done as of much more importance than what will have to be done. Therefore to throw our burden forward on another generation that may have its own peculiar effort to make, just as great and just as imperatively called for, is an unwarranted procedure. (Perry 1887: 458-59)

If he could only see us now, bankrupting the future and laying waste to our potential. Economics was once part of the moral sciences. It is now for the most part a handbook for bureaucratic control and socialist predation.

Four more days

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Well I can hope. But it is not entirely unrealistic. The following chart is a demographic breakdown from The Washington Post of all places that shows voting patterns by group. In not one instance has there been an increase and in some the difference is huge. The 56% loss of Republicans is the largest group defection but if there are still 39% who are voting for Obama but call themselves Republicans then I am not entirely sure what being a Repubican can mean to them. I know there’s still Ohio and I know that Intrade never gets it wrong, but there are reasons to hope, and these are some of them.

Both pictures from Instapundit

Political decadence

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I assumed that those BBC polls showing massive support worldwide for Obama over Mitt Romney are due to ignorance, the absence of any real dogs in the fight for most of those surveyed and the role of the media which is not quite capable of keeping the truth about Romney from breaking out in America but which has kept the world completely in the dark why Romney should be supported by at least half the American population. All those racist crackers, or something, but there can be no really sensible reason which is why we here in Australia have the Obama advantage over Romney at an astonishing 68% to 7%.

But there is another way of looking at it which is that those responding to the survey questionnaire understand perfectly well what the difference between the two is but even so prefer Obama to Romney. And if that’s the case, then things are really in a political mess just about everywhere and the only hope is that America does elect Mitt Romney who will start the process of reform, first in America and then everywhere else as he stops paying their defence bills for a start.

The European decadence as reflected in their preference for Obama has been raised in a quite interesting article by Michael Ledeen. He calls his article “Letter to My European Friends” which is really just cover for what he means, “You Europeans are a Bunch of Fools”.

The American Revolution was a great thing, and Americans were right to abandon authoritarian Europe for the possibility of creating a free country across the ocean. Anyone who truly values liberty, has to see that Obama is a threat. He wants to turn the United States into a version of Europe: big, meddlesome government, constantly higher levels of taxation and intrusive regulation of almost everything, combined with a deliberate and systematic weakening of military power and a foreign policy that shrinks from decisive action against freedom’s enemies.

That’s you, sadly. So it’s understandable that you’d favor Obama (although the numbers—reminiscent of plebiscites rather than normal elections—are ridiculous). It’s yet another sign of the decadence of Europe

Ledeen continues with a discussion of how far Europe has fallen:

The Europe I loved, and still love, is increasingly a theme park. It’s fun to visit, but it’s no longer a source of creative inspiration. Europeans seem to me to have abdicated their liberties to their governments, provided that the governments provide them with an easy life, replete with free medical care, plenty of vacations, and no international obligations. Surely you know that very few of your tax euros go towards your defense. We have been paying that bill for decades, and our soldiers and military power have been protecting you.

So don’t be surprised—but you should be very concerned—that we are increasingly looking across the Pacific. It’s no accident that the most brilliant and talented Americans are increasingly Asians, not Europeans.

We don’t want to follow your example. And your landslide support of Obama—who has done terrible damage to America—confirms my pessimism about your future.

Australia is not as far gone as Europe but we are getting there. This is going to be a pivotal election next year in Australia as well. The aim of the left is to create power for themselves by causing dependency in others. They are ruining this country by pretending to make it better by softening the edges and making things fairer. Anyone who believes that our Prime Minister cares about anyone but herself is a deluded fool, but there are plenty of those around and the more she can buy the fewer of the rest of us there will be. And not only will we not get the security and the basic living standards these socialist thieves pretend to provide we will be all the worse for it. But there are always a proportion who will take their chances that the handouts will keep coming. Our only hope is that the proportion has not yet reached 50%, but if the Labor Party has anything to do with it, we will get there as quickly as it is humanly possible.

Why the polls are wrong

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Weirdest election ever in trying to tip the winner. Even the idea that anyone with an ounce of sense could consider voting for Obama is beyond me. The 47%, sure, but the other 53%? Anyway, for you fans of the American election out there, here’s your chance to clean up on Intrade:

1. Republicans Can’t Wait to Vote: First off, there’s no question Republicans are much more energized to vote than they were in 2008 — a year in which Republicans were demoralized and stayed home. The energy that saw Republicans make sweeping gains everywhere in the 2010 midterms hasn’t diminished. If anything, the energy to send Obama home with his ObamaCare has increased. But that’s instinct talking, not numbers. So here are some numbers…

2. Romney’s Winning Independents: Numbers pollsters can’t tweak or weight (without committing outright fraud) all that looks great for Republicans. Romney is winning Independents by close to double digits (Obama won Indies by 8 points in ’08), he’s winning more Democrats than Obama is Republicans; Romney’s also closed the gender gap to a place where Republicans have won national elections before.

3. Romney Beats Obama On Favorability: According to the Real Clear Politics poll of polls, Romney beats Obama in favorability.

4. Polls Show Republicans Will Turn Out In Record Numbers: Thanks to a mammoth 9,000 person likely voter poll, we can have confidence that the 2012 electorate will look even more Republican than it did in 2004:

In 2008, 54% of likely voters identified as Democrat or lean Democrat. 42% of likely voters identified as GOP or lean GOP. In other words, the electorate, including independents who lean towards a particular party, was D+12. This year, however, the Democrat advantage has disappeared. 49% of likely voters today identify as GOP or lean GOP. Just 46% of likely voters are or lean towards the Democrats. This is a 15-point swing towards the GOP from 2008 to an outright +3 advantage for the GOP. By comparison, in 2004, when Bush won reelection, the electorate was evenly split, with each party getting support from 48% of likely voters.

The difference between a D+3 and R+3 electorate is the difference between a Romney win and a Romney landslide.

5. Romney Is Doing Well With Early Voting: Early voting also shows gains for Romney. Contrary to CorruptMedia spin, where data is available, Romney’s over-performing with early voters in a number of crucial swings states. Two polls (Pew and Gallup) also show Romney beating Obama in early voting by a seven-point margin.

6. Polls Show Republicans Are More Enthusiastic: Finally, and this is what’s most ironic, some of the same polls (like yesterday’s from Quinnipiac) that predict Obama will enjoy a huge D+5 or better turnout advantage also show that Republicans beat Democrats on the question of intensity by double digits.

Riddle me that.

7. Romney Has a Fantastic Ground Game: As far as ground game, there’s no question Obama has a sophisticated operation, but even Chuck Todd admits Romney’s ground game is better than the one Karl Rove employed in 2004 that allowed Bush to win 2004 while losing Independents. Furthermore, polls that look objectively at ground game metrics show no advantage for Obama.

8. Motive: Let’s also look at the pollsters’ motivations. All Gallup and Rasmussen do is poll; that’s how they make their living. They have to get it right, and right now both show Romney up nationally and Rasmussen shows him up in enough states to win the electoral college. Many of the pollsters showing Obama in a stronger position are tied to universities and media outlets. They have an agenda above and beyond getting it right, and polling is merely a side business.

But what I liked most of all was his conclusion:

Regardless, we’ll know for certain on Election Day when Virginia closes at 7pm. If it’s close or Obama wins, we’re in for a long night.

But if Romney wins Virginia by 5 points or more, we all need to tune to MSNBC the ABC and enjoy the show.

It will be over soon

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Don’t worry. There are only five more days to go and then we return to regular service. I appreciate there may be one or two of you less interested in the single most important American election in our lifetimes but after their 6th of November (our 7th) we will again concentrate a bit more on the domestic side. My aim, should things come out right, is to live blog from the inauguration on Sunday 20 January 2013 but between 6/11 (or 11/6 if you’re American) and 20/i/13 it will be back to Julia, Wayne, Keynesian economics and everything else that may come to our attention.