Recent Items

2:00PM Water Cooler Columbus Day 2016

Posted on by

By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

Readers, since this is a holiday, I’m going to publish an abbreviated Water Cooler, updating the election polling, with a second look at paths to victory in the Electoral College. –lambert

2016

Days until: 29

Here are the RealClearPolitics polling averages from last week, compared to this week.

This week: 10/10/2016 Last week: 10/3/2016
rcp rcp

As you can see, Clinton picked up a couple of points in the national polls, bringing her more in line with her “natural” four-point advantage. She also picked up points in the state polls, both no doubt based on Trump’s Access Hollywood hot mike debacle. Whether Trump’s strength will continue to erode, and the effects of the debate, are at this point unknown.

Now let’s return to the fun Times interactive, “The 1,024 Ways Clinton or Trump Can Win the Election”; it shows the “paths to victory” in tree form. Try it yourself! [New York Times]. Here’s some data I put together to play with in the form of a table of swing states:

Swing State Leader Polling Margin SoS Party A.G. Party Electoral Votes
OH C 0.5 R R 18
NV T 1.4 R R 6
FL C 2.4 R R 29
CO C 7.3 R R 9
NC C 2.6 D D 15
IA T 3.7 R D 6
NH T 6.0 D D 4
WI C 6.3 D R 10
VA C 7.0 D D 13
PA C 8.6 D D 20

Legend: Leader and polling margin from RealClearPolitics. SoS’s party from WikiPedia. A.G’s party from Ballotpedia.

The table is sorted by SoS’s party (Secretary of State), and then by margin within SoS. [I blundered and gave election enforcement to the AG, when in fact it’s the SoS. So I added the SoS column (leaving the AG column in place, in case of litigation). Interestingly, despite my selection of bad data for input, the result is almost the same when the inputs are good: The only state that shifts position is WI, whose SoS is a Democrat. I’m still going to give WI to the Republicans, if only for the sake of the argument, on the assumption that Republican voter suppression efforts will be as effective as they have been in the past. Obviously, I shouldn’t have tried to do serious work so soon after processing a Presidential debate. My bad. –lambert]

Using the Times interactive, if we simply plug in the values from Polling Margin column, Clinton wins decisively, after picking up OH, FL, and WI.

However, if we assume that the SoS’s control of the electoral machinery could give Trump the win in low margin states*, then we initially give Trump OH, NV, and FL, after which the Times interactive shows that Clinton has only 17 paths to victory, and Trump 45. We give WI to Trump, despite the polls, because of Scott Walker, [the significant Republican voter suppression effort, and] the Republican A.G. At that point, Trump can win with PA. Na ga happen; we give PA to Clinton. NC becomes decisive. NC has a Democrat SoS, but there is also an active Republican voter suppression effort going on in that state. If Trump wins NC, he wins.

Of course, this is just light-hearted punditry, and not serious analysis. Nevertheless, it’s still a horse-race. If Trump, against all the odds-making of the political class, eats into Clinton’s lead in the coming weak, it’s even more of a horse race. (I also don’t mean to imply that Democrats wouldn’t use their own institutional advantages, as the Clinton campaign/DNC did in the primaries, but from the margins in the states the Democrats are winning with Democrat SoS’s, they won’t need to, NC being the exception).

* A nice example of “the party decides.” Also, I’m assuming that all the state SoS’s play the same role and have the same powers. That might not be the case. [Not changing this. Ballot access is a thicket of state-by-state exceptions and general weirdness. That’s one reason ballot access is hard! While at a high level SoS’s run the election apparatus, details matter, and I don’t have time to do exhaustive research.]

* * *

Readers, feel free to contact me with (a) links, and even better (b) sources I should curate regularly, and (c) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi are deemed to be honorary plants! See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. And here’s today’s plant:

ground_cover

Masterful use of ground cover at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens!

Readers, yellow waders don’t come cheap. Please use the dropdown to choose your contribution, and then click the hat! Your tip will be welcome today, and indeed any day. Water Cooler will not exist without your continued help.

Donate

Readers, I am behind in answering contact form mail. I will catch up soon, beginning now!

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

This entry was posted in Guest Post, Water Cooler on by .

About Lambert Strether

Readers, I have had a correspondent characterize my views as realistic cynical. Let me briefly explain them. I believe in universal programs that provide concrete material benefits, especially to the working class. Medicare for All is the prime example, but tuition-free college and a Post Office Bank also fall under this heading. So do a Jobs Guarantee and a Debt Jubilee. Clearly, neither liberal Democrats nor conservative Republicans can deliver on such programs, because the two are different flavors of neoliberalism (“Because markets”). I don’t much care about the “ism” that delivers the benefits, although whichever one does have to put common humanity first, as opposed to markets. Could be a second FDR saving capitalism, democratic socialism leashing and collaring it, or communism razing it. I don’t much care, as long as the benefits are delivered. To me, the key issue — and this is why Medicare for All is always first with me — is the tens of thousands of excess “deaths from despair,” as described by the Case-Deaton study, and other recent studies. That enormous body count makes Medicare for All, at the very least, a moral and strategic imperative. And that level of suffering and organic damage makes the concerns of identity politics — even the worthy fight to help the refugees Bush, Obama, and Clinton’s wars created — bright shiny objects by comparison. Hence my frustration with the news flow — currently in my view the swirling intersection of two, separate Shock Doctrine campaigns, one by the Administration, and the other by out-of-power liberals and their allies in the State and in the press — a news flow that constantly forces me to focus on matters that I regard as of secondary importance to the excess deaths. What kind of political economy is it that halts or even reverses the increases in life expectancy that civilized societies have achieved? I am also very hopeful that the continuing destruction of both party establishments will open the space for voices supporting programs similar to those I have listed; let’s call such voices “the left.” Volatility creates opportunity, especially if the Democrat establishment, which puts markets first and opposes all such programs, isn’t allowed to get back into the saddle. Eyes on the prize! I love the tactical level, and secretly love even the horse race, since I’ve been blogging about it daily for fourteen years, but everything I write has this perspective at the back of it.

Subscribe to Post Comments
126 comments

  1. Roger Smith

    DNC cronies bullying (that is the Democrat buzzword right?) Rep.Tulsi Gabbard for deciding to support Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary. Dated February 29th, 2016

    “For you to endorse a man who has spent almost 40 years in public office with very few accomplishments, doesn’t fall in line with what we previously thought of you. Hillary Clinton will be our party’s nominee and you standing on ceremony to support the sinking Bernie Sanders ship is disrespectful to Hillary Clinton.”

    “You have called both myself and Michael Kives before about helping your campaign raise money, we no longer trust your judgement so will not be raising money for your campaign.”

    2. Pat

      I sort of enjoy the typo in Podesta’s intro to the forward, if not the sentiment aka gloating that a couple of CAA agents decided to punish Gabbard for supporting the better candidate. I mean they are clearly a couple of pigs.

    3. reslez

      More wikileaks, some interesting detail on Hill’s emails I hadn’t run across before:

      why the “twisted truth” (not my words) on why – with the two problematic areas being (a) emails to bill (when they were to bill’s staff) and (b) i only used one device — BB, when 2 weeks earlier, it was an iphone, BB and ipad. As Ann and I discussed, hopefully that’s a timing issue and whilst in state, she only used one. :)

      While we all know of the occasional use of personal email addresses for business, none of my friends circle can understand how it was viewed as ok/secure/appropriate to use a private server for secure documents AND why further Hillary took it upon herself to review them and delete documents without providing anyone outside her circle a chance to weigh in. It smacks of acting above the law and it smacks of the type of thing I’ve either gotten discovery sanctions for, fired people for, etc.

      My emphasis

      From Erika Rottenberg (former Linked In General Counsel)
      To Stephanie Hannon (CTO of Hillary For America), Ann O’Leary (senior policy advisor)
      CC Lindsay Roitman
      Fwded to Podesta

      https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/4099

      1. Pavel

        That sums up the Clintons right there:

        It smacks of acting above the law

        I’ve been browsing through #PodestaEmails2 and jeezus, there are some pretty incriminating docs there. Of course the MSM are doing their best to ignore them, but it looks like a real firestorm to me.

                1. polecat

                  Well …that’s because it IS dirty …. dirty rotten lies !

                  ‘All the things that come out of the mud …..’

    4. rich

      financially squeeze those not with status quo…

      guess they object to woman patriots that want to serve “all the people”??…..telling

    5. different clue

      Is this enough to enrage Gabbard into reaching out to other dissed-democrats to form a Movement to Defeat the Hillarrhoid Scum?

    6. Cry Shop

      Tee Hee, seems Clinton’s minions don’t even care, like anyone else, to follow the blurb after the signature. and circulated the hell out of that email Not that it means anything legally, but at least morally it should:

      This e-mail and any files transmitted with it are intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If the reader of this e-mail is not the intended recipient or the employee or agent responsible for delivering the message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any use dissemination, forwarding, printing or copying of this e-mail is strictly prohibited.

    7. jrs

      I don’t think Darnell Strom is actually with the DNC, so I don’t think it is at all accurate to describe him as a DNC crony or that the DNC refuses to raise money for Tulsi (I’m not saying they do or not, just that has nothing to do with this email, it seems to me).

      So who is Darnell Strom? He seems to be a PR flack heavily involved in Clinton initiatives. So duh the news is Clinton suck up is a Clinton suck up. Now he comes across as a real condescending jerk here, what an @hole! But I’m not sure that has any larger significance, beyond, wow is this guy a jerk.

      1. aab

        No, he’s bigger than that. He’s an agent at CAA, which used to sit atop the entertainment industry, and still has a lot of power. He used to work directly for Bill Clinton and the Foundation. There aren’t that many places you can go to raise campaign money. He may not have been speaking officially for the Clintons, but that’s not how this works. He threatened Gabbard that Hollywood was now closed to her. She would have known his close position to the Clintons. Because all these people form a tight web of connections, even without official confirmation of his threat from Clintonland, it would have been very hard for her to get around him to raise money from the entertainment industry. This was a real and serious threat. The Clintons are a crime family. Threats and intimidation are how they roll.

  2. geoff

    I don’t know what the deal is with that NYT electoral chart (formating?), but the far right column showing the states’ electoral votes is all wrong: OH has 18, not 8, and FL has 29, not 9.

    2. sleepy

      I live in Iowa and am surprised a bit by Trump’s strength here given the fact that Iowa has gone republican only once since 1984, voting for Bush in 2004. Iowa has dozens of small towns/cities that have been devastated by the loss of manufacturing jobs, but so do most states hereabouts. My take is that Iowans’ dislike of Hillary goes back to their support of Obama in the nasty 2008 caucuses (Hillary placed 3rd to Obama’s 1st) and reflected in Sanders tie with Hillary in this year’s caucus. She just doesn’t resonate with Iowa voters and has spent enough time here campaigning for Iowans to register their disgust.

      Of course the msm attributes it to Iowa being a white state with a lower than average college cohort (the kids all leave after they get their education)

    1. Pat

      Possibly, it will be interesting to see if the Clinton camp is going to use this, and if so how Bill will be protected. Could be a case of Mutually Assured Destruction.

      1. Kim Kaufman

        Don’t think Clinton can use this:

        The One Percent
        The Billionaire Pedophile Who Could Bring Down Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton

        “Trump’s supporters have long wondered whether he’d use billionaire sicko Jeffrey Epstein as ammo against the Clintons—until a lurid new lawsuit accused The Donald of raping one of Epstein’s girls himself.”

        http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/06/30/the-billionaire-pedophile-who-could-bring-down-donald-trump-and-hillary-clinton.html

        There’s plenty other stuff if you google “Jeff Epstein” and “Bill Clinton”

        It’s all pretty vile but not at all surprising for what these overage, entitled “stars” do behind the scenes. I never got a chance to respond to Yves’ comment to my comment about Schwarzenegger a few days ago. Three women came forward to accuse him of groping (or whatever – I, mercifully, forget the details now). Arnold, with Maria standing dutifully by his side, publicly apologized and it all went away. My contention is that: 1) there were many, many more women who didn’t come forward (the threat of never working again in Hollywood is very real – Arnold was represented by one of the most powerful and nastiest law firms) and 2) it all disappeared quickly from the media because Arnold was able to buy off and intimidate the media. But the stories I read in alternate media at the time were pretty awful. I can only imagine the lewd bragging Arnold did behind the scenes. Don’t forget that Arnold was screwing the nanny and sired a child with her while the nanny was living under the same roof as him and Maria. “The rich are different than you and I.”

        1. pretzelattack

          one woman said she was raped by arnold and other weightlifters at some gym they frequented, iirc.

    2. Yves Smith

      I saw that case long before the latest round of accusations and don’t regard it as credible. That’s a very old case and the fact that she filed it not just way after the incident but way after she became an adult is really sus. How is a 13 year old sex prisoner of Jerry Epstein, who has no access to media whatsoever, going to know who she is having sex with? He certainly didn’t say, “Hi, I’m Donald Trump, pleased to screw you.”

      Trump didn’t become a well-known face outside NYC (and even in NYC, only to readers of New York Magazine, which loved to pillory him) until the Apprentice aired, in 2004. By then he looked different by virtue of age if nothing else.

      It’s horrible for her to have been abused this way, but it is hard to think she can identify targets so long after the fact when she would not have known who they were at the time. Even ID from lineups by witnesses to crimes within a day or two have a pretty high error rate.

  4. Heliopause

    “Nevertheless, it’s still a horse-race.”

    I really don’t think so. The first debate plus HotMicGate have taken a huge toll on Trump, who is now down as much as 14 in recent national polls. The steady stream of email and other leaks will perhaps erode her lead somewhat, but it will take a truly gargantuan revelation to flip the race completely.

    Trump is seen as not only vulgar and disgusting but also a clown who is bumbling his way through this whole process. HRC is seen as a liar and corrupt, but garden variety for a politician. It’s an awful choice for both the country and the world, but I think the “swing” voters will opt for corrupt but competent (that’s not my opinion but what I think the general perception is) over the reality show clown.

    There are a couple of wild cards. Wikileaks is continuing to release material that would be extremely damaging if Trump wasn’t the sole focus of the MSM. And several of the Clintons’ assault victims are publicly reiterating and standing by their stories. Since the MSM has already had decades to take these accusations seriously and has yet to do so I wouldn’t hold my breath for their doing it this time around, in fact it will most likely be spun as an unfair smear of the Clintons.

    One thing to keep in mind is that even though the Clintons are almost certainly headed back to the White House the GOP leadership in the House of Representatives already has a couple of years head start in litigating some of these issues against them. She’s going to be spending a lot more time fending off investigations than advancing any putative agenda. She won’t be able to do much of anything except launch unilateral executive military actions, which she was going to do anyway.

    1. Lambert Strether Post author

      I like the RCP numbers because they’re averages of all polls. I don’t really see much point to following individual polls, especially this year. We’ll see how it all shakes out this week, whether the political class is trying to talk itself into something, or whether something’s actually happening. (I would like to know about non-college white women.)

      Sure, there are a lot of imponderables, many of which you list. That wasn’t the point of the post, however, which was to point to the potential role of Republican attorneys general.

      1. NotTimothyGeithner

        I believe RCP deconstructs and uses the raw data of all the polls to produce a new number.. They don’t simply average them in the style of CNN’s old poll of polls.

        It’s why they are more accurate, a larger sample size. The major issue is still the modeling.

        I believe the best polls are the flagship poll produced by a college in an individual state even with smaller sample sizes. I don’t know if every state has one, but in Virginia, Roanoke College (not Sabato or more accurately Sabato’s lackey*) nails every election in the Commonwealth. They do the work themselves and don’t contract out to a call center. If they are receiving push back, they reflect that push back. Signs don’t vote or change minds, but they reflect an attitude they might find on the phone.

        *The better Sabato does is directly correlated to how much control over his crystal ball his lackey has.

      2. Heliopause

        Sure, an AG can monkey with the process, as we saw in Florida 2000, but that was a razor thin race, and unless something dramatically changes this one isn’t going to be close. RCP is currently Clinton +5.8 (2-way), +5.1 (4-way), Pollster +6.3, and those numbers haven’t yet fully priced in the fallout from the hot mic, they’ll probably get worse before they get better. I just don’t see him climbing out of this hole unless there is a truly startling revelation.

        1. jgordon

          Neither is good, but if Americans would rather have a known criminal for president over a braggart then America deserves to go down the drain.

          The only problem is that America could down all life on earth with it under the criminal.

      3. Ché Pasa

        Potential role of R AGs? Eh? I could be mistaken, but most of them aren’t on the Trump Juggernaut, are they?

        Given that Mrs. Clinton is basically running as the favored Establishment Republican candidate, if there were to be any AG jiggery-pokery, it would more be in favor of Herself rather than… DT.

        You might want to probe the Secs of State to see where they stand. Plenty of them seem to be working to curb the D vote as much as possible without triggering inconvenient DoJ investigations, but I don’t know that that’s actually in Trump’s favor — on the assumption that the R vote has been effectively split already. It’s more for the benefit of downballot Rs.

        Nah, I don’t think it’s a horserace any more. But it is still Hillary’s to lose.

      4. different clue

        If Republican Attorneys General decide to “play a role”, wouldn’t they decide to play it on Hillary’s behalf? Wouldn’t they do their part to sink Trump the way institutional Democrats did all they could to sink McGovern in the McGovern v. Nixon election?

            1. aab

              I believe it’s been confirmed he’s a big Clinton donor.

              I spent a lot of today angry, so I’m not going to do the search myself, but there are articles out there with data analysis showing that counties that use voting machines from TWO different voting machine companies whose CEOs donated to Clinton showed a consistent clear Clinton advantage in the primaries that were more than the polling and more than the counties without those machines. Correlation is not causation, but it was certainly eye-opening.

              I haven’t bothered to check that deeply, but alt-right media is claiming there’s proof that a Republican establishment insider, Dan Senor, leaked the Trump “pussy” tape. I’ve been saying (here, even) for months that the issue isn’t going to be R states vs. D states. It’s going to be Koch-owned R AGs vs…well, who, exactly? What swing states WON’T be rigged in favor of Hillary, at this point? The only thing I can imagine keeping that from happening is that Ryan and the others that tried to throw Trump overboard got booed by voters this weekend. The Kochs and Clintons can’t hired all those pols if they get voted out.

              Can they?

    2. cocomaan

      the “swing” voters will opt for corrupt but competent (that’s not my opinion but what I think the general perception is) over the reality show clown.

      The question is whether they show up. I have a feeling there will be a lot of empty polling places out of complete disgust.

      1. MyLessThanPrimeBeef

        If they are in the dying demographic group, they will most likely reject competently-corrupt.

        Competently corrupt means dying sooner and more painfully.

      3. NotTimothyGeithner

        Forgetting to vote. Many voters have to be dragged to the polls, or they simply won’t vote. The 50 state strategy wasn’t just about running in every district but driving everyone in blue areas put to vote. One issue is people in very partisan areas will simply not be bothered to vote because “they know no one who voted for Nixon” so they don’t need to bother.

        This is why I thought Obama was a superior choice over Hillary in 2008 given some of his questionable friends (Holy Joe Lieberman).

        It doesn’t even have to be disgust just apathy. Kerry and Gore would easily be President if they focused on registering voters instead of worrying about how windsurfing would be portrayed and elevating Joe Lieberman.

        People with senate races would provide the best insight to how things are going on the ground.

  5. Monist Lisa

    More evidence Larry Summers is in recovery from autistsm-spectrum economics?

    Concretely, this means rejecting austerity economics in favour of investment economics. At a time when markets are pointing to the problem over the next generation as being inadequate rather than excessive inflation, central bankers need to spur demand and co-operate with governments.

    Enhancing infrastructure investment in the public and private sector should be a fiscal policy priority.

    3. hunkerdown

      You bourgeoisie had better can the autism insults or you’ll find yourself in a world you no longer understand because your “inferiors” told you to take a long walk off a short pier.

      It is perfectly economically rational for any one of us to go medieval on you, every bit as much as it is for a Black man to cap you for using the N-bomb. Get over yourself. Now.

    4. Otis B Driftwood

      Well, even if his lips are moving and the words seem to be coming out right, should Summers get anywhere close to implementation (God forbid), he’ll screw it up or corrupt it catastrophically.

      It’s what he does. Fails upward and sideways and diagonally.

      He is the model of failure of an entire generation.

        1. Jay M

          He is the model of failure of an entire generation.

          Millienarian Gilbert & Sullivan acolyte write the opera

  6. RabidGandhi

    In today’s language lesson we will learn how to say “There Is No Alternative” in Portuguese:

    Temer: Não Temos Um Plano B

    Brazilian President Michel Temer said on Monday he was confident a proposal to cap public spending would be approved in Congress, and acknowledged he had no alternative to avert a fiscal crisis threatening to further sink Latin America’s biggest economy.

    The Brazilian lower house voted 255-9 to amend the 1988 constitution to freeze government spending for 20 years. Last month, Temer (who is ineligible to run for the presidency for 8 years) publicly admitted that he and his highly unpopular colleagues impeached Dilma Rousseff not for corruption as claimed, but rather for her refusal to agree to their plan for fiscal austerity.

    So essentially, Brazillians have categorically rejected austerity in every election since 2002, but it will now be imposed upon them nonetheless by a governement that no one elected, because “Não Temos Um Plano B”.

  7. bob k

    i’m pretty sure trump is trying to throw this election given his middle-finger-up attitude to HRC, the Rep leadership and the debate. it’s clear to me he has no choice but to do what he’s doing otherwise he loses his base. he’s hoping for the closest possible defeat so he can say “we was robbed.” it’s all about building his brand for a right wing radio/tv show guaranteed to have a natural audience.

    1. Roger Smith

      I am not so sure of that. I would like to know why Clinton was calling him before the primaries. Regardless, it would be the greatest thing if you are right and if he, being an anti-democratic force like the rest of the establishment, “lost” to the people who elect him anyways. At least we can say Democracy won in the end, which is the most you’d be able to say about this election.

    2. Yves Smith

      He didn’t look like someone trying to lose last night. And given how badly the R establishment wanted him out after the sex tapes broke, he could have extracted a huge price from them for a dignified exit.

    3. Phil

      Bingo! Trump has *always* been about receiving as much narcissistic supply as possible – clinically speaking, he’s a classic egomaniacal narcissist. Narcissists, even egomanial narcissists *require* the adulation of others; it’s called “narcissistic supply”. The pool of water that Narcissus gazes into represents narcissistic supply.

      Trump is a *deeply* wounded person who, without the advantage of wealth, would have just been another schlub. I don’t even believe that he got through Wharton without underground assistance on exams and papers. Some time ago (can’t find the link), Trump was unable to define “net present value” when queried about it by an interviewer. Does that sound like someone who graduated Wharton?

      Returning to my point: Trump *requires* adulation. The irony about narcissistic supply (NS) for someone as famous as Trump is that once his kind of narcissist tastes massive amount of NS, they must maintain that level of supply, because it is ONLY NS that defines the entire interior being of a pure narcissist.

      So, as long as Trump can rile up a crowd, and as long as he can continue to rationalize (in spite of polls showing a decline) that “the people still love me” (heck, we ALL lie to ourselves, from time-to-time), he will continue to do what he’s doing.

      Really, Trump is a is pathetic (in the true sense of the word) as he is revolting. I can’t stand the man, but there is something in his face, in unguarded moments, that gives away great, wounded vulnerability.

      Remember, when a narcissist is threatened with the loss of NS, they panic; they become desperate; they strike out – sometimes with great fury, because they are *literally* fighting for *who they are*. When a narcissist loses NS, they can disintegrate to point where there is complete and total breakdown. they can cover up the beginnings of that breakdown by any number of actions – rage, threats, pleas that don’t diminish the self, blaming others, etc.

      Trump is the stuff that tragedies are made of; he’s not exceptional as great narcissists go, except for the latent capacity to have him running a country that is barely managing to hold on to all the fraying puppeteer strings that it has in the past controlled with ease.

      We live in interesting times.

  8. diptherio

    Read now before it goes behind the paywall:

    Curricular Cop-Out on Co-ops: Business Schools Ignore a Key Form of Enterprise ~Chronicle of Higher Education

    If what they say about millennials is true — that we are not satisfied merely to do well but also want to do good — then Annie McShiras represents her generation admirably. While studying in southern Mexico and Argentina, she saw factories managed democratically by the people who worked in them, and upon graduation she set out to support that kind of enterprise in the United States.

    She joined alternative-economy working groups at Occupy Wall Street, through which she helped open a print shop owned by its workers. She got a job with the Working World, a nonprofit organization that finances and advises worker cooperatives. In many of the co-ops she encountered, she perceived a lack of knowledge about the planning and marketing they needed to be competitive. And so, in order to be a more effective doer of good in the world, she decided to go to business school.

    “I started looking into programs that at least had some understanding of alternative models,” McShiras says — programs that used terms like “sustainability” and “social justice” on their websites. She found a few she liked and accepted a scholarship to her first choice, Mills College, in Oakland, Calif. But soon after arriving, she noticed that whenever the conversation in class turned to cooperative business or managing resources democratically, she was doing more teaching than learning. After the first semester, she dropped out. “I felt like I wasn’t actually getting the expertise around shared ownership and cooperative economic thinking I wanted,” she says. Now she’s back to learning by doing, having found a job at a credit union.

      1. diptherio

        Pretty much. Time intensive, I’ve got IRL projects brewing, and I ran out of harddrive space….I keep thinking about doing another, though, so you never know.

    2. Arizona Slim

      She needs to be talking to this organization:

      https://www.nasco.coop/

      Good outfit. I worked for them in the 1970s and am proud to say that I am still a co-oper. As in, shopping at a food co-op and keeping the money in a credit union.

      1. diptherio

        Oh, I’m pretty sure Annie knows about NASCO. They’re well known in the co-op world. Cool that you worked for them back in the ’70s!

  9. Jim Haygood

    Today the tech-oriented Nasdaq 100 index set a marginal new high, two points above its old Sep 22nd record.

    All of the Fab Five (Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Facebook and Amazon) were up, with Apple reaching a new 2016 high.

    Have you hugged your smart phone today?

  10. Oregoncharles

    ” I’m assuming that all the state A.G.’s play the same role and have the same powers. That might not be the case.”
    Not in Oregon, and I thought it was the S.O.S. that usually controlled election machinery. It is in Oregon, Ohio, and Florida. The AG would come in if there’s legal action, like someone suing the SOS or going to court for a recount.

    1. Dougen Hadaka

      In California, it was the pro-Hillary Secretary of State who was said to be responsible for the electoral hijinx that gave the CA primary to Hillary.

    2. Yves Smith

      You are correct and Lambert is not, and I don’t know why he wrote that, since I’ve told him more than once that the Secretaries of State control elections.

      1. Oregoncharles

        Thanks for the confirmation. We all have our moments.

        His analysis could be done again based on SOS’s; they were very important in Ohio and Florida, and Oregon had one that was operating in a visibly partisan manner. Oddly enough, his political career ended after that.

  12. barefoot charley

    The Gray Lady suggests Chelsea is winning a power struggle:

    http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2016/10/10/us/politics/ap-us-campaign-2016-clinton-podesta-emails.html?_r=0

    Zero Hedge quotes the meat of the problem, Podesta’s fear that Chelsea’s nosing around in Clinton’s recently privatized pal Doug Band’s influence peddling could blow stink up on everyone:

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-10-10/mother-daughter-podesta-email-reveals-spoiled-brat-chelsea-almost-caused-foundation-

    Chelsea seems well-motivated in all this–earlier she wrote her parents from Haiti that NGOs, including their own, weren’t helping anyone, and that the UN’s squalid peacekeeping camp had introduced cholera to the country, with disastrous consequences that the UN denied up and down. Poor kid obviously didn’t learn much about politics from her parents . . .

    1. polecat

      ‘Poor kid’ ….. ??

      Hardly ! …… She’s just another special elite snowflake who walks on rose petals …..

      and believe me …. she’s learning the ropes of how to obfuscate, cheat, and steal … just like mommy and daddy have done their entire adult lives !!

      I have no sympathy for her, or them, what so ever ..

      1. Jim Haygood

        Chelsea speaks:

        “It is frustrating, because who wants to grow up and follow their parents?” admits Chelsea.

        “I’ve tried really hard to care about things that were very different from my parents. I was curious if I could care about [money] on some fundamental level, and I couldn’t.

        “That wasn’t the metric of success that I wanted in my life. I’ve talked about this to my friends who are doctors and whose parents are doctors, or who are lawyers and their parents are lawyers. It’s a funny thing to realize I feel called to this work both as a daughter—proudly as a daughter—and also as someone who believes that I have contributions to make.”

        https://www.fastcompany.com/3028155/chelsea-clinton-makes-her-move

        Sounds just like her mom at that age — full of herself and her faux idealism.

        Such lofty thoughts ring truer in a $10 million Manhattan apartment. :-)

        1. OIFVet

          My dad got in trouble during communist times for daring to ask the director of his plant how come some families only produced directors, while other families only produced working stiffs. Aristocracy thrives under any ideological system, as Chelsea and her friends demonstrate.

          1. aab

            Or get a graduate degree in public health and then pretend in a speech for the benefit of her mother’s career that that single payer healthcare would strip millions of their health care access.

            Or take enormous amounts of money from NBC to do a job she had no talent for, no interest in, and had not prepared for in any way.

            The list of disgusting* things she has done that no one forced her to do would be pretty long.

            * That’s probably somewhat bombastic for things like the NBC gig, but I’m pretty mad today. Maria Shriver last night thought it was appropriate to sanctimoniously claim that she was horrified to think her children might meet a bully like Donald Trump someday. Bear in mind that several of her ex-husband’s victims stepped right up when he ran for office. Actual women who he had abused. So I’m pretty sure Trump wouldn’t shock her kids. Michael Moore, of all people, was Twitter storming today about how Hillary is a good Christian woman who forgave her husband his infidelities, and various media figures called Bill’s victims tramps. Ok, then.

        3. Optomader

          yes that remains an incredibly Freudian quote. She never has needed to have any concern about money, thats the thing. Leave that concern to those that dont have any!

          At some level she is another casualty of her parents. I cant even imagine the level of rationalization it must take to associate with them.
          One day in a moment of self awareness she may go catatonic. She is one of those people that should probably not ever take a hallucinogen. I would expect there would be some pretty dark reflections.

      2. Otis B Driftwood

        I’d rather give her the benefit of the doubt. Despite being born just a few feet from home plate, I don’t envy the rather steep hill she has to climb to join the rest of us in the human race. Imagine how it must have felt for her last night to sit next to D.O.D. in the same audience with (just a few of, I’m sure) the women he abused, humiliated and ruined.

        But yeah, as she reprises her role as first daughter, she’ll either go this way or that. She could actually turn her life into something heroic, but that requires … heroism. Either she has this, or she doesn’t. And either way, for the rest of us life goes on.

        1. mad as hell

          I am betting she doesn’t. Marrying a hedge fund broker and buying 10 million apartment is not a path to be doing corporal works of mercy. I am not expecting her to be walking down any poverty corridors unless there’s a vote to be got or poor pocket to be picked.

        2. Dave

          Chelsea looked fat-faced and sickly, hardly like the wife of a hedge fund mensch.
          Is there something wrong with her? Or, is she pregnant again?

          1. aab

            She had a baby not that long ago, and she’s just not that attractive to begin with.

            She’s not the wife of a hedge fundie. Her parents bought her a husband, and then bought him a hedge fund (Goldman staked him), which he promptly ran into the ground. Neither one of them has succeeded independently of the crime syndicate.

        3. hidflect

          You mean while she’s pulling down a cool $900,000 p.a. managing the Foundation? Oh, the misery!

      1. Skippy

        Root is an offensive Australian slang verb meaning “have sexual intercourse with”. Announcing to an Australian that you “are a cheerleader, so you don’t see many football games because you are in the stands rooting” will give a misleading impression about your devotion to the team. 2.Feb 29, 2016

        https://sites.google.com/site/oshearobertp/publications/words-americans-should-avoid-saying-to-australasians

        Disheveled Marsupial…. now its in your brain…. muhhahahah

        1. RabidGandhi

          Sorry! Sometimes my English is not the best. I just wanted to say ironically they are in favour of Manning instead of C. Clinton.

          Poor attempt at humour :(

          1. Skippy

            Chortle…. its not English its Straya (ozzie – ozzy)… so yes I thought it was funny – NYT rooting for Manning….

    1. allan

      From CAP’s mission statement:

      As progressives, we believe America should be a land of boundless opportunity, where people can climb the ladder of economic mobility.

      One $12/hour rung at a time.

      Why don’t they just drop the pretense and merge with AEI or Mercatus?

    2. ProNewerDeal

      another sign HClinton & her hackeys (hack lackeys) are hardcore members of the Real #BasketOfDeplorables

  14. David Carl Grimes

    Why is the electorate seemingly more concerned with someone who is antagonistic towards certain women than someone whose policies are antagonistic to whole nations and regions. Why aren’t the Wikileaks email revelations getting more traction or generating more outrage?

    1. OpenThePodBayDoorsHAL

      Um do you think the fact that Pravda CNN is extolling the virtues of the One Party Candidate nonstop has anything to do with it?

      1. pretzelattack

        oh i thought the post was pravda and the nyt izvestia. but then there’s the guardian and cnn and the rest of the sad industry.

      2. ProNewerDeal

        True. BigMedia is barely covering the Wikileaks story. My summary is that HClinton has a fake “public position” & a genuine private position, that is pro-Grand Ripoff SS & MC cuts, & pro-TPP. It should be a huge story, in that it calls as questionable any of HClinton’s stated policies, & given that Sanders repeatedly made the Wall $treet transcripts a major issue in the Primaries.

        It takes a USian with intellectual curiosity, some free time, & enough critical thinking to go to one of the few internet sources like nakedcapitalism or SecularTalk that actually will cover the Wikileaks story honestly. IMHO sadly this is a small minority of the US eligible voter population.

        BTW for Sanders to maintain my respect, he needs to “make news” in BigMedia by saying something like “my support of HClinton is contingent on her ‘public position’ the approves the 2016 D party platform, which is anti-TPP & anti-SS & MC cuts. If HClinton is elected & signs the TPP or SS/MC cuts, she will be strongly primary challenged in 2020, & I will not support her if the Rs ever impeach her”

        1. Dougen Hadaka

          ….one of the few internet sources like nakedcapitalism or SecularTalk….

          Don’t forget Mike Norman Economics. He supports MMT as well.

        2. vidimi

          it’s funny (or not) but there’s absolutely nothing on the email leaks on the guardian’s website.

          i suspect that, in a few months, when their readership is lost, they’ll have a heart-felt mea culpa examining where it was they went wrong

    2. sleepy

      If nothing else, the I’m-with-her whole hog approach of the media to this election should put the lie to the notion that we have anything resembling a functioning press.

      Just one example–I listened to some Clinton operative on msnbc radio today who was giving his weaselly spin on Hillary’s private position v. public position statement and who said that it was only a few sentences out of an entire speech and needed to be viewed in context. Chuck Todd, I think it was, never made note of the fact that there is no context to those statements since the speeches have not and will not be released. There is no available context and Chuck just muttered uh huh and let it pass.

      Additionally, the blind adherence by the press to Hillary’s spin that Trump would put her in jail amounts to a dictatorship ignores the fact that previous to that statement Trump had said he would push for a special prosecutor. IOW, a completely legalized, judicially approved criminal investigation.

      1. Susan C

        I agree about the press becoming so bought over by Hillary. Watched some speech Trump was giving a month or so ago and he talked about Iraq as I recall and the press totally spun it into some different meaning altogether. Funny thing was the next day Trump was giving another speech which I also happened to see and made mention of what he said the day before and what the press turned his comment into – from that point on I became very leery of believing anything they tell me. I too was amazed that almost immediately last night the press began reporting that Trump was talking to a dictatorship by saying he wanted her in jail when in fact that was completely taken out of context as well (as you mentioned above).

        I think the press has become very scary with all the power it has to twist the truth or what has been said as easily and quickly as they do. They must be very frightened by Trump.

        1. kimsarah

          All you need to do is take a look at who owns the “press.” The whores they hire are too scared to lose their jobs or blinded by ambition.

    3. armchair

      Wake up! Trump has the credibility of a bankrupt steak salesman. Trump is just as much a product of the system as Clinton is. Anyone starting a sentence with, “Trump should . . .,” needs to stop. Forget it, he is crazy, so there is no need to imagine Trump changing a thing. Crazy don’t listen.

  15. ewmayer

    Sitting in the local WiFi-enabled java joint, happened to notice outside on the patio there is a group of a half-dozen students from the community college across the street, talking with an older fellow (my table-neighbor informs me he is a Jill Stein campaign operative). The students have a large cardboard sign propped up next to them, with the following wording:

    [large] DE ANZA POLITICAL REVOLUTION

    [much smaller subtitle, app. added later] (formerly De Anza students for Bernie Sanders)

        1. Jim Haygood

          King of the [peace] doves … or Queen of the flies?

          This symbolism is more real than people think.

          Nature is not deceived.

  17. allan

    States struggle with rising Medicaid drug costs [The Hill]

    As prescription drug prices continue to rise, states are struggling to find ways to cover the costs to Medicaid, which could mean unwelcome changes for beneficiaries and health plans.

    States have implemented policies to prevent spending exorbitant amounts of money on drugs, but as prices continue to rise, experts said some hard decisions will have to be made. States can use tactics like preferred drug lists, prior authorization, and even comparative effectiveness reviews, but those may not be enough if recent pricing trends continue. States could dramatically scale back benefits by doubling down on policies that limit medications or cut reimbursements to health plans. …

    hard decisions. Because you can’t bend a cost curve omelette without breaking some Rx eggs.

    Anyway, Zeke Emanuel says that we shouldn’t want to live past 75, so who needs meds.

  20. Cry Shop

    A holiday to celebrate a true bastard.

    Chris Columbus, a man of his time,
    Slaughtered Arawak natives to further his kind and they state of mind,
    And their take on the divine, allowed them to be so inclined
    To send ships with guns,
    Filled with men with swords so filled with the love of the Lord,
    That they do whatever’s necessary, for their position!
    Death is the decision, when they on a mission!
    Death is the decision, when they on a mission!
    What we talkin’ ’bout? IMPERIALISM!

  21. John k

    PA…
    PA could be the swing state. Slightly more dems voted in the primary than reps, but of these 44% voted Bernie. What will the reps do? Most will show up, and even though neocons will go for her, that’s a small number… Most hate her, will hold their nose and vote trump.
    On the dem side, what will Bernie’s do? Split 3 ways… Maybe 1/2 for her, 1/6 3rd party, 1/6 trump, 1/6 stay home?
    If so, he wins easy, even if weather is good. If it rains in philly and dems stay home…
    Plus, polls missing millennials on cells…

    Granted he’s a terrible candidate since the primary, but IMO he does want to win… Bringing those four women, and saying he’d jail her, means he’s burnt whatever bridges were left. And sure to fire up all the anti-clintons in both parties.

    1. Jim Haygood

      Used to have a business customer in NE Pennsylvania, north of Scranton.

      On the first day of day of deer season, they had to close the factory. Because nobody was there.

      Are those guys gonna vote for Hillary? In a word … NO.

  22. Jay M

    It’s like drug prices just increase because you know gas is more expensive and running labs that are outsourced to cheaper provinces increase cost, you know, everybody knows

  23. allan

    A Monday evening Stumpf dump, courtesy of Vice News:

    A Wells Fargo bank manager tried to warn the head of the company’s regional banking unit of an improperly created customer account in January 2006, five years earlier than the bank has said its board first learned of abuses at its branches. …

    Dennis Hambek, a former branch manager in West Yakima, Washington, sent a certified letter in January 2006 to Carrie Tolstedt, then Wells Fargo’s head of regional banking, outlining unethical “gaming” activity at area branches. In 2007, Tolstedt was made the company’s head of community banking, the division where many of the unethical practices occurred. …

Comments are closed.