Profiles in Cowardice

John F. Kennedy's book, "Profiles in Courage" ghostwritten by Ted Sorensen, describes acts of political bravery by eight US senators. A much shorter sequel, "Profiles in Cowardice",  is today overdue. Shorter it may be, but with a great many more entries; only a handful of sitting Republican senators have spoken publicly in defense of democracy and against its ongoing subversion by the current, but soon to be legally evicted, occupant of the White House. The vast majority have either pretended not to hear the question or, bless your heart Lindsey, come out in full-throated defense of Trump's ludicrous and unfounded claims of election fraud. 

While "Profiles in Cowardice" will have nearly 50 entries, each will be short and sweet: "Senator <X> was too afraid for their own political future to call out Donald Trump's gangster-style intimidation of election officials and his attempts to subvert the election".  

Courage is doing the right things when it is personally disadvantageous. Cowardice is doing the wrong thing when is is personally convenient.  Congratulations GOP; a party that once stood for values higher than oneself is now the party of "me first and f*** y'all".  

Rights and obligations

 

A argument in the Senate between Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Dan Sullivan (R-AK) illustrates how people weigh the rights and obligations. Brown asked Sullivan to wear a mask while in the chamber; Sullivan refused. 

Sullivan, as have many Trump supporters was likely asserting his right not to be inconvenienced. He is correct that there is no statue that compels him to wear a mask and that he is therefore in his right to refuse a request to do so. Similarly, Mitch McConnell is correct when he asserts that Donald Trump is within his legal rights to explore all available avenues to try to turn the election in his favor. 

But often rights and obligations are in opposition. Sullivan's assertion of his right comes at the expense of his moral obligation to protect others. Similarly, Trump's assertion of his right to challenge the outcome of the election in court comes at the expense of his moral obligation not to undermine faith in the cornerstone of democracy, the electoral process. 

Acting within your rights does not mean you are doing the right thing.         

Concession stand

Trump's resolute stance on not conceding the election he has just lost is not about seeking a fair counting of the votes; and it's not just about salving his bruised ego; its a political tactic that is a step towards another run in 2024. 

Were he to concede, his supporters might interpret that as admission of defeat and might simply move on with their lives. By not conceding, he he maintains the fiction, so important to his supporters, that he is still a "winner".  That in turn allows him to continue play the grievance card that he was unfairly treated and they, like him, are the "oppressed minority" whose voices weren't heard. That will help the keep money rolling in to pay down both his campaign, and likely his personal, debts, as well as beginning to build a war-chest for his next run. (So much, by the way, for a self-funded campaign). And it will keep them on the boil until the next election.   

Put another way, his refusal to concede presages another run for the presidency (God help us all).

Hammer time

Lewis Hamilton, now a 7-time world champion, clinched the 2020 F1 title in spectacular fashion yesterday. One of the few rain-soaked events this season, it was a race full of surprises. 

Despite starting from 6th on the grid, Hamilton showed what the combination of extraordinary skill, deep experience and determination can accomplish. Having made up 3 places by the third corner, Hamilton drove a perfect race in truly terrible conditions; a newly surfaced, smooth track, rain and cold weather. Getting tires and brakes to optimal operating temperatures was a challenge. Bottas span out six times; he was one of many.    

What made the race particularly fascinating was the question of when (or if ) to change tires. Hamilton had been driving for more than half the race on his second set of intermediate wet weather tires ("inters"). By lap 60 they were getting very worn with most of the tread gone; they were almost slicks. As the track dried out the advantage of changing to dry weather super-soft ties, said to be about 5 seconds a lap, became less and less attractive as the opportunity to make up the pit stop delta, probably about 25 seconds, diminished; but  interestingly the 5-seconds a lap advantage of super-softs vs. inters was for new inters, not worn ones, so that gap was probably much smaller. At the close of the race Hamilton's tires were up to temperature and he was able to get the extra grip in the dry that came from having almost slick tires; and that made the difference. So when the team called him to pit, just in case there was rain, he decided instead to stay out and as a result finished a one-stop race an astounding 30 seconds ahead of second place Sergio Perez. That's quite a way to clinch a 7th world title.

  

Bitter ending

One can imagine that Trump is angry at the repudiation of his four years in the White House, losing his reelection bid when Republicans generally did better than two years ago. It was billed as a referendum on his first term and a clear majority of voters, a 3.4% margin,  delivered a decisive "no thank-you" to four more years.

But Trump's refusal to face reality it will make his defeat bitter not only for him but for everyone else; it will lead his supporters to recent Biden's occupancy of the Oval Office; and though he may leave the White House, he will never leave the stage, making Biden't job all the harder and a Republican Congress less likely to depart from the McConnell doctrine and reach compromises with the Dems; and last, it will cause Dems to be rightly fearful that Harris, as heir apparent to the top job, will face Trump in the 2024 election, a context that will inevitably come down to race and gender.   

Not a bitter ending, but a bitterly divided country for years to come; that will be Trump's legacy.   

Transition trivia

Assuming at some point, Trump does admit defeat, at least to himself, several not very important questions arise. First will he ever admit publicly that he lost?  That's an easy one: of course not; his fragile ego could not cope with having to admit he was not the all-conquering hero of his minds eye. 

Next, the letter: it is common practice for the outgoing occupants of the Oval Office to write a letter with sage words of advice for their successor. Will Trump write one for Biden? That's harder. On the one hand he thinks he's so much smarter than everyone else that he might jump at the opportunity to tell Biden what a great job he'd done under the pretext of offering advice. Of course he wouldn't give Biden any useful advice as that might help Biden do a better job than he had and that would make him look bad. That fact that a monkey with a stick would have done a better job is not something Trump is likely to consider.  On the other hand, he might just be so petulant as to not want to conform to any of the usual niceties; I wouldn't be surprised if he nicked stuff from the Oval Office on his way out. So on balance I'd say no letter.    

Finally, were Trump to write a such a letter, would Biden read it? I think the answer to that one is yes. Biden, in contrast to his predecessor, doesn't take every opportunity to belittle his opponents and most of those around him. And politically he'd want to try to mend the rift that Trump has created so making a show of trashing the letter (as Pelosi did after one of Trump's State of the Union addresses to Congress) would not help case (not is it his style). 

A new normal

 

It has been noted, here as well, that after covid we may not return to normal but to a new normal. The discontinuity that has opened the door to a re-writing of the rules of the game, the emergence of a new paradigm in Tushman and Anderson's words, is covid. But there has been another societal-level discontinuity; Trump.  Yes, Trump was as much a product of social undercurrents in some parts of the country as the cause, but there is no doubt he was a catalyst that has caused a reaction that has changed the nature of the compound we think of as societal norms. Trump has dismantled long held beliefs in the importance of those norms and what new norms emerge is yet to be determined. 

Covid has bought on an era of ferment in the ways we live our lives; but we are also in an era of ferment for our values that Trump set in motion. Trumpism is the culmination of tides that have their root in the financial crisis and the Tea party, in shifting demographics, in the propensity for America to see its problems first and foremost through the lens of race, and the fragmentation and balkanization of information with cable and AM radio and more recently social media platforms. The Great American Experiment survived Trump, but history will record that it has been forever changed as a result of his term in office. 

Tracy Chapman has changed little in 30 years

Last night's musical guest on Late Night with Seth Meyer was Tracy Chapman. 

I have her first two albums, release in the late 1980s. I hadn't listened to them in a very long time, partly because even though they are beautiful and poignant they are, frankly, really depressing.

Her performance of "Talkin' bout a revolution" on Seth Meyer's show was stark (just Chapman with an acoustic guitar) and powerful. He voice has lost nothing in the 30 odd years since she recorded the album.  

I found myself deeply deeply moved this morning listening to her after so long, like being reunited with an old friend; and, tragically, the song is as relevant today as it was 30 years ago.       

The Joker's strategy

"Introduce A Little Anarchy, Upset The Established Order, And Everything Becomes Chaos". 

Trump and his GOP enablers have clearly taken a leaf from The Joker's book. If you throw enough mud at the wall some of it will drop into the gears and gum up the works. 

That's the strategy: file one trivial groundless suit after another until the system no longer functions. Then argue that since the system is stalled get the GOP controlled legislatures step in to "fix" the problem by appointing a slate of electors to the electoral college who will vote for Trump. 

That's how the will of the people is subverted; that's where we are today. It's cynical, unethical and dangerous. But it's how bad things have gotten.  

We are living in "interesting" times (supposedly, a Chinese curse).

"Better to be a dog in times of tranquility than a human in times of chaos" (an actual Chinese saying).

A simple model

Using data from Nate Silver's FiveThirdEight project, I built a simple model to estimate the likelihood of the outcome of the election. I probably should not has wasted the morning doing it but... 

It uses the 'presidential_poll_averages_2020.csv' data file, assumes a uniform distribution of error in the polling data of plus or minus 15%, and runs the experiment one hundred thousand times. The polls are discounted for age with more recent polls being weighted more heavily. 

The results are: Donald Trump wins 3.4% of the time, Joseph R. Biden Jr. 96.6% of the time. 

To get results comparable to Silver's latest projection (a 90% Biden win) would mean setting the margin of error in the polls to 25%, which seems rather large. 

Since Silver's model and mine both predict a Biden victory, there is no obvious way to say, ex-post, which was better... other than running the election itself hundred thousand times and comparing the distribution of outcomes to the predictions. What a terrible prospect! One election like this is quite enough.