Assignment From Above: The Most Optimistic Case Possible For Blue

Pollyanna Delivers For The Democrats

As of late November, 2016:

1. The odds against a recount victory in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania?  Maybe 99%.

2. So, best case, realistic scenario, given Trump's our 45th president:

    a. the ruckus raised against Trumpish floundering, now, will turn into a huge, bellowing roar by 2018

    b. this'll sweep out the House, leaving Democrats with a way to stymie the worst of Republican instincts

    c. it'll also bring Democrats back into governors' mansions in states that are currently gerrymandered, setting up a more equitable drawing of House districts after the 2020 census

    d. the signature "You're fired!" line will be uttered repeatedly as Trump tries to right his ship of state, buffeted by the aforesaid Trumpish floundering

    e. since the President-elect started by appointing hard-line right-wingers, his firings will likely target the Neanderthal, astro-turf crowd, with future appointments being more competent middle-roaders

3. Contrast that with a Hillary Clinton presidency--still preferable mind you--that would've been severely constrained by a Republican House and Senate.  In fact, rather than drowning in a red tide in 2018 (the Senate class of 2012 being mainly blue), Democrats might be able to hold their most vulnerable seats, after all.

4. The optimistic case for 2017 and 2018, prior to the brakes being applied in November '18, would be for obvious ineptitude that did little damage to individual Americans: a sequence of petty blunders that generate so intense a brouhaha that even low information voters flee the wreckage.

5. Then, in 2020, the limp, unpopular president would take the Republican party down with him, as four years of disaster are left, curbside.  With House, Senate and presidency now blue, and re-districting having reversed most of the Republican advantage of 2010-2020, the Democratic party would be in fine fettle.

Recount And Relax

Always Take A Second Look

The case for always double-checking election results is easily made: once we conduct audits, for all elections, more expensive recounts won't be necessary because hacks will be discovered.  And if hacking won't work, it won't be done.

Sure, if an election is close, we'll occasionally have to conduct a full recount, but in 99% or perhaps 98% of cases, a simple, statistically relevant audit that samples the paper ballots in question will do.

Okay, you say, but is there really a likelihood of hacking that we need to address?  Can't we just trust election results?

No, we can't trust, and yes, there really is a likelihood.  There are some very deep dives on this subject that you can find by googling "hacking election threat" or something similar.  Here's the much shorter version:

* voting machines that do not use re-countable paper ballots should be replaced

* even if a tabulating machine that is fed paper ballots is not connected to the internet, it can be infected with malware when the state installs the paper ballot template prior to an election

* thus, an entire state's voting tabulators, or just a few, could be instructed to change every 30th vote, or to undercount when reporting the result, or whatever the hacker is aiming for

It's Simple

The Surprising, Mundane What-Happened-In-'16, Explained

Along with just about every other political observer, I thought Hillary Clinton was heading for victory.  And as soon as that eventuality was upended, the theories to explain it were many and usually involved charts.

If you ask me, the explanation is simple:

1.  There were 10-15% undecided voters as late as a week before the election.

2.  The momentum at that point was moving in Trump's favor.  There were the Russian hacks dribbling out of Wikileaks involving past minor embarrassments, as well as other irritants.  But the big blow came from the FBI, which announced that new e-mails had been found that could possibly implicate Clinton after all--though of course they didn't.

3.  The undecided voters were looking for a reason to vote one way or another.

Who are these undecided voters?  Probably "low-information" voters who don't have terribly strong opinions one way or another.  They likely don't live in urban areas where residents are forced to interact with people unlike themselves, and where views rarely go unchallenged.  They're also likely to have an average, or less-than-average educational background, so that unrealistic campaign promises are more easily believed in.

Now add in the finding that Americans wanted 'change' in '16.  Sure, there are many unemployed and under-employed, mainly blue-collar workers, who voted for Trump.  Except, the fact that Republicans have thwarted reasonable fixes to the nation's problems over the past eight years means they are the cause of the problem, not the solution.  But, to many out in the rural areas of the country who don't care all that much about reading the newspaper, let alone seeking out different opinions, all that matters is that a change is needed.