Faulty Election Analysis

In a recent Wall Street Journal column, Daniel Henninger, editor and regular columnist, repeated the 2020 election analysis that has now become generally accepted. To paraphrase Jane Austen, If President Trump had only behaved in "a more gentleman like manner," he would not have turned off so many voters and lost the election.

To put it in the words of a friend of mine, President Trump was a “turn-off, a narcissistic, demeaning bully,” as well as an egotistical BS artist. To give my friend credit, he voted for Trump, because he believed the alternative was even worse.

Other acquaintances went even further and regarded Trump with dislike bordering on overt hatred. I know devout Catholics, who like millions of others, disliked him so much that they voted for Joe Biden despite his avowed intention to repeal the ban on taxpayer funded abortions. For them, it was not a question of policy. Trump was evil incarnate.

However, if President Trump’s personality turned off so many voters in 2020, how did he manage to get over 10 Million more votes than he did in 2016? In 2020 his 74 Million votes set a record for an incumbent President.

How did he win easy victories in Florida and Ohio, states that were very close in 2016? Polls (who can believe them anymore?) showed those states in play in 2020 but President Trump won easily. In Ohio he gained over 300000 more votes, a 10% increase over 2016. In Florida his vote total was a Million more than it was in 2016, a gain of over 18%. Polls showed even Texas close in 2020 but Trump won going away. He increased his 2016 vote total there by 1.2 million votes, a whopping 20% gain. Are suburban housewives different in Ohio, Florida, and Texas?

Even in blue state bastions like California and New York, President Trump increased his vote count over 2016. Although he was overwhelmed in California, his vote total increased by 1.5 Million votes, a 25% increase over 2016. In New York over 300000 more voters turned out for him in 2020, a 13% increase.

Even in the battleground states that ultimately decided the election, President Trump had double digit increases in vote count from 2016. In Pennsylvania, where he lost by less than 12000 votes, his total was up by 12%. In Georgia he was up by 15% and in Wisconsin by 13%. In Arizona, which he lost by only 10000 votes, his vote total increased by over 400000, an incredible 25% over 2016.Those four key states cast over 18 Million votes, and Trump lost by a total of only 123000 votes.

Ultimately, I believe that President Trump lost the election not because he was nasty but because he was too nice to be an American politician. He did not understand just how ruthless and unprincipled you have to be to play the game.

During his term he named three Justices to the Supreme Court, but none were relatives, friends, cronies, or political operatives, a departure from the normal practice, especially among blue state Governors.

When it came to an Attorney General, he did not choose a relative as JFK did, or a political attack dog as President Obama did. He chose Judge Sessions who blindsided him by recusing himself from the Russia collusion affair. Then, he chose the highly respected William Barr whose vaunted integrity kept him from investigating the Biden family financial dealings in the Ukraine and China during an election year. After the election, Barr regretted that he would not have four more years to continue cleaning up the Justice department.

Speaking about the Justice department, things are getting back to normal. One of the first things President Biden did in office was to fire every assistant attorney general no matter what they were working on, or how qualified they were. Jobs had to be found for Democratic supporters who will never cross the President, or plot against him like officials did in the early days of the Trump administration. There will be no Rod Rosenstein in the Biden administration who will call for an independent council to investigate anything.

In his famous political treatise, The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli claimed that it is better for a ruler to be feared than loved. Among his opponents, who actually feared President Trump? Certainly, Democrats from Nancy Pelosi on down never did. They could say and do the most outrageous things with no repercussions.

For example, the Trump administration granted a multi-billion-dollar contract to Connecticut’s Electric Boat company despite incessant criticism of the President by the state’s two Senators. Actually, local politicians took credit for the huge boost to the state’s economy, but neither they nor the Connecticut media gave the President any credit.

Throughout his tenure, the media incessantly criticized the President and even disrespected him to his face in his many press conferences, both formal and informal. People did not like the way President Trump behaved in his press conferences when he fought back against what appeared to be a pack of raging hounds. But now, things are back to normal. In two months President Biden has not held one press conference. Despite a fawning press, we are back to the canned teleprompter days of President Obama. If there ever is a press conference, the Biden administration has instructed reporters to submit questions in advance, a normal way for those in authority to ensure they look good.

I disagree with columnists like those at the Wall Street Journal whose personal dislike of President Trump obscured their judgment. One even admitted that she voted for a dead man rather than vote for either candidate. President Trump did not lose the election, the Democrats won it. How they won it, with the most lackluster candidate in memory, is a story that remains to be told.

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Irish Heritage

 

                                           

Practically everyone must know that the great migration of the Irish to America took place after the terrible potato famine of the mid-nineteenth century. However, even before that disaster the Irish had been the subject of persecution going back to the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century when King Henry VIII seized control of the English church. 

The Irish were longtime enemies of the English and when Henry, who considered himself King of Ireland as well as England, attacked their thousand-year-old faith the enmity only grew worse. Later, Henry’s daughter Elizabeth tried unsuccessfully to subdue the Irish Catholics throughout her reign. After the Puritan revolution in England in the mid-seventeenth century, Oliver Cromwell brutally suppressed Irish resistance. By the end of the century William and Mary, after driving Mary’s Catholic father James from the English throne, delivered another devastating blow to the Irish at the battle of the Boyne.

The almost perpetual Irish resistance led the English and their Protestant friends in Ireland to pass penal laws that had the effect of depriving most Irish Catholics of all their rights including the right to their own confiscated properties. 

Many Irish left their homeland for good in the century before the great famine. They were sometimes called the “wild geese” and many of them made a name for themselves in Europe. In the nineteenth century the ruling family in Serbia was the Obrenovich family, heirs no doubt of some Irish O’Brien. Years ago, Ed Obradovich played linebacker for the Chicago Bears. His family must have come from central Europe but there must have been a Brady ancestor. I recall meeting a Polish American priest whose name, Okonski, must have derived from O’Conner. John Konecny, a long ago squash buddy, looked as Irish as Paddy's pig.

When the Irish came to America, they didn’t starve because of the availability of jobs and land. Nevertheless, despite separation of Church and State in America, the Irish were still objects of prejudice and discrimination primarily because of their Catholicism. I recall an American historian saying that the most long lasting and abiding prejudice in America was directed not against Jews or Blacks but against Catholics. That assertion may be disputed by some but the KKK was so called because its hatred was directed against Koons, Kikes, and Katholics.

Just because national or ethnic groups have been victimized by prejudice and discrimination does not mean that they themselves cannot practice such behavior when given the opportunity. Growing up in New York City in the 40s and 50s I vividly recall that only Irish need apply for membership in the City’s Transit Workers Union. I have never forgotten the resentment of my mother-in-law when her Italian parents were told by an Irish priest that they did not belong in predominately Irish St. John’s church and that they should attend the Italian church in town. 

Still, the success of the Irish in America means that we all are in their debt. I would just like to give a few personal examples. I was born and raised in the Woodside section of Queens, a neighborhood after WW2 made up largely of the descendants of Irish and Italian immigrants.  My best friend was my cousin Pete whose father’s ancestry was Irish and German. Pete’s father, my Uncle Pete, was a New York City policeman who always seemed all Irish to me, and so did my cousin even though his mother was Italian. My next best friend was Dermot (Dermie) Woods whose family was very Irish. Both of Dermie’s older brothers had served in the Navy during the war.

St. Mary Help of Christians, my parochial elementary school, matched the ethnic make up of Woodside. There were some Italian kids in my class, but the majority was Irish. I still remember Richie Moylan, John Regan, Tom Fay, Charley Dunphy, and top student Pat Ryan who would go on to become a Jesuit priest and get a doctorate from Harvard in Islamic studies. His father was a saloon keeper. 

Most of the nuns were of Irish ancestry. They were of the order of St. Dominic and their formidable black and white habits helped them keep almost perfect order in classes sometimes numbering over 50 students. Only years later did I come to find out that many of them were barely out of their teens and still attending college.

It seemed natural for me to follow cousin Pete to Power Memorial high school in Manhattan. Power was a Catholic school for boys run by the Irish Christian Brothers whose most famous graduate would be Lou Alcindor, who would later call himself Kareem Abdul Jabbar. I still remember some of the Irish brothers with great affection and respect. There was Brother Hehir, my first home room teacher, a saintly innocent man who was the butt of innumerable pranks and jokes by us “dirty little stinkers.” No one fooled around with wise old Brother Gleason, however. He was the Latin teacher with a passionate love of ancient Rome. Only years later did I discover that it was the Irish who had saved Western Civilization during the Dark Ages when monks in the mold of Brother Gleason preserved and later revived the lore and wisdom of antiquity. Finally, I remember Brother Conefrey who ran our honors class and exposed us modern barbarians to the wonders of English literature. 

Monastery Iona*

For some reason that still remains unclear to me I went to college at Fordham University, a famed Jesuit school in the Bronx. The Jesuits had been founded in the sixteenth century by Ignatius of Loyola, a young soldier from the Basque country in what is now northwestern Spain, but the Jesuit fathers at Fordham seemed to be largely of Irish ancestry. Nevertheless, in 1957 they taught and revered an old curriculum based on a model devised during the Renaissance. We studied Western philosophy, theology, history (eight credits in medieval history were required), rhetoric, literature, and language under scholars named O’ Sullivan, O’Callaghan, Mc Nally, Walsh and Clark. 

Three cheers for the Irish on this St. Patrick’s Day. 

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* Iona photo courtesy of David Orme.

Democratic Cover Ups

 

Democratic politicians and their media allies complain about conspiracy theorists, but when they use cover ups to prevent themselves from looking bad, they just add fuel to the fire. Here are some examples.

 

Capitol Hill Cover Up

 Despite claims by Democrat politicians and media allies, none of the protestors who stormed the Capitol on January 6 were  armed. The only shots fired were by a Capitol policeman who shot an unarmed woman in the back while she was attempting to enter the building through a window.

No protests or memorials have resulted from the death of this female protestor. No charges of police brutality or misuse of deadly force have been levied. The circumstances of her death have been ignored. Imagine the furor that would have resulted last summer if a protestor had been shot in Portland or Minneapolis.

This woman’s death was one of four that have been linked to the storming of the Capitol. Three DC police officers died after the riot. Two committed suicide shortly after,  but for unexplained reasons. 

According to initial news reports, the third died as a result of a vicious attack. Initial reports claimed that he was bludgeoned to death with a fire extinguisher. This report originally appeared in the NY Times, and then was repeated by a number of politicians and media sources.  Subsequently, the Times retracted the story and it now appears that the police officer was not injured during the melee but died of a stroke although the medical examiners report has still not been issued.

Nevertheless, he was given a hero’s memorial in the Capitol attended by prominent Democratic politicians. 

Democratic politicians blamed President Trump for inciting the riot and launched an unsuccessful impeachment even though he was no longer in office. Strangely, when the President’s attorneys sought to call witnesses  during the impeachment trial, the proceedings were quickly brought to a close. Why?

Was it because the person actually responsible for the security of the Capitol building was none other than Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House of Representatives? Ensuring the security of the Capitol and its grounds is one of the duties of her office. Reports now say that the security preparations were badly bungled despite advance warnings.

Governor Cuomo Cover-Up

Last year I nominated Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York for inclusion in The Weekly Bystander’s Hall of Shame not because of the high Covid death toll in his state but because he had the nerve to blame President Trump for the national death toll despite the fact that the President had quickly responded to Cuomo’s desperate calls for help last Spring. Cuomo did not take advantage of the assistance but chose to attack the President and in the process become a pandemic hero because of his press conferences. 

Now, it transpires that Cuomo conspired to withhold and suppress the death toll figures in New York  for fear of looking bad. His administration even went so far as to withhold important data from the national government, a potential criminal offence that will probably never be prosecuted by the Biden administration.

Subsequently, Cuomo has been charged with inappropriate sexual conduct by former female staffers, and those charges have taken over the headlines. But the nursing home deaths in New York and the subsequent cover up are much more serious offenses.

Biden Cover-Up: Hidin’ Biden

A recent book about the 2020 election corroborates what everyone knew. The fact that candidate Joe Biden conducted his campaign from his basement was not so much due to fear of the coronavirus, but due to the fear that Biden would look bad in public appearances. 

Since taking office almost two months ago, it is obvious that his handlers are determined to keep President Biden in seclusion in the White House. So far, the new President has not addressed Congress, and has not held one press conference. On the few occasions when he has spoken publicly, he has stumbled badly. On one occasion, he tried to consult a note card but then couldn’t remember where he put it, a senior lapse to which most old men are prone. Recently, at a White House ceremony, he couldn’t remember the name of his Secretary of Defense who was standing right beside him.

Maybe the hiding of candidate Biden was not illegal or fraudulent, but it was and still is a cover up to hide the obvious fact that at 78 our new President suffers from old age. In 2020 we had a choice between a man, who despite his flaws, was willing to take on all challengers, and a mouse hiding in the basement. We chose the mouse. 

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Minimum Wage Issues

 

Liberals and other left-wingers will always appear more popular than Conservatives or right-wingers. It is easy for them to pose as champions of humanity, especially the poor and the “marginalized.” They are soft-hearted on so many issues in contrast to hard-hearted conservatives. One of these popular issues is the minimum wage.

 

How could anyone be against doubling the national minimum wage from a meager $7.25 an hour to $15.00 an hour? How can anyone be expected to live on $7.25 an hour or about $14000 per year? Certainly, no one could support a family on such an income.

 

Increasing the minimum wage is so popular that Democrats from President Biden on down will use the issue like a sledgehammer to beat down Republican opposition. A liberal columnist in my local newspaper devoted his last column to berating small business owners for opposing the increase in the minimum wage even though Connecticut’s minimum is well above the average. He went so far as to tell these employers to go out of business if they could not afford to give their employees a 50% increase from $10 to $15 an hour. Did it occur to him that if these employers went out of business, their employees would have no income?

 

That made me smile because a couple of years ago, I sent an article to that paper for publication. The editor accepted it but told me that the paper could not afford to pay me for it. I guess the minimum wage at his paper was Zero. A few years ago, I did get paid for a submission to the Wall Street Journal, a profit-making news organization with a conservative editorial bent.  

 

It will do no good for economists or journalists to point out that increases in the minimum wage will cause many low-income employees to lose their jobs, and find that their wage has been reduced to zero. 

 

Nor will it do any good to point out that most people who earn the minimum wage are not just living on the minimum. Often the minimum wage earner is not the sole support of a family. Often, their wages are supplemented by employee benefits or government subsidies and tax credits. Today, an article in the Wall St. Journal estimated that these benefits could amount to over $40000 per year. Any such arguments will be drowned by placard waving protestors.

 

I would like to urge liberals and progressive supporters who support increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour to practice it themselves. Instead of asking business owners to cut into their profits, university professors can reduce their salaries in order to increase the wages of the miserably underpaid “adjunct” instructors or graduate assistants that universities hire to save money. Even university student activists could voluntarily pay increased fees in order to raise the salaries of the cafeteria ladies and janitors. 

 

A few years ago, my wife’s cousin told me about the problem that her home cleaning business was facing in Martha’s Vineyard, the toney retreat of wealthy liberals like ex-President Obama. In her business she complied with all the various government rules and regulations but found that she was losing customers to immigrant labor that did not comply with such things as workers’ comp or minimum wage. Apparently, liberals can be soft-hearted when it comes to other people’s money, but hard-hearted when it comes to their own.

 

 

Of course, all of the above would be met with the greatest resistance. When progressives call for increases in the minimum wage, they always expect and want someone else to bear the cost. The professors and the students can be excused for their innocence, but the unions have a baser reason for supporting increasing the minimum wage.

 

Suppose you were running a small business and you hired a high school or college student to do basic office work like filing papers. Suppose you even started the student at $10 an hour, more than the current minimum. You might have other employees in the office making $20 an hour. What would these employees think if you had to raise the student’s pay to $15 an hour? Wouldn’t you have to raise their pay to $30 an hour because the work they were doing was twice as valuable as the student’s?

 

Actually, this is the reason why unions are big supporters of increases in the minimum wage. Union employees all earn more than the minimum wage but every time the minimum is raised, they insist on, and usually get, corresponding increases in their own pay scales. They could care less about people who are actually earning the minimum wage. They even care little about their own members who are at the bottom of the wage scale. Rather than cut their own pay or benefits, they will normally acquiesce in the layoff of younger, recently hired union members when times get tough. 

 

The best cure for low wages is full or high employment. Before the pandemic hit, the number of unemployed has dropped to record levels. Moreover, the level of part-time employment had also declined as increasing numbers of part-time workers found full-time jobs. In the first three years of the Trump administration there was  a scarcity of workers that inevitably led to higher wages for all. Job mobility, not minimum wage laws, leads to higher income.

Ironically, what liberals give with one hand they usually take away with the other. The almost $2 Trillion Covid spending bill provides a good example. Where is the government getting the money to dole out? It is already trillions in debt. It must either borrow more money or print more paper. The stimulus checks we get are like Monopoly money, and they will buy less and less.

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