The Evolutionary Political Tree

 

With all the money and people the Democrats can tap for professional wordsmithing, why is it that their top candidates, and now President, can’t stop pissing off the very people they need to vote for them? Between Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden (who have a combined cumulative public speaking experience you could measure not in years but geologic eras), these leaders of their party have given Republicans verbal fodder to last a generation or, in more familiar terms, as long as the Neanderthals were our ancestors.

Just yesterday President Joe accused the governors of Texas and Mississippi of “Neanderthal thinking” when they announced lifting almost all Covid restrictions in their states. Not since Hillary’s line about Trump supporters being a “basket of deplorables” have the Democrats given the opposition the gift that keeps on giving. To this day conservative media uses “deplorables” as shorthand for elites who look down on working class masses with only high school educations. The very people who used to vote for Democrats. The same people Hillary mocked were all too happy to put that deplorable name on t-shirts and parade around in their own form of mockery all the way to the 2016 voting booths. Even in 2020 it was a cry at the Trump rallies, and short of 50,000 votes (legal and otherwise) across three states it would have propelled the Donald to another four years in the White House.

More importantly, Joe’s words reinforce, at many levels, the difference between elites and deplorables/Neanderthals. Not two weeks ago Texas went very Middle Ages electric, which is to say the power grid went off for a variety of reasons. After the lights went back on, Texas Governor Abbott could have pulled an Andrew Cuomo—that is deny, call it politics, and then go back to business as usual. But Abbott was front and center: the system failed and the legislature will come up with a remedy. There was no blaming green energy, shared power grids, or other DC salon discussion points—just plain talk that here is what happened and here is how we are going to fix it.

A bigger question for Joe is, do you really want to give Texas Republicans more ammunition? The state is poised to gain several congressional seats, all of which are redistricted by the Republican-controlled state legislature. I’m sure somebody in an Austin conference room already has a map out with labels “Neanderthal District-1, Neanderthal District-2, Neanderthal District-3…” And let’s not forget Florida, who I guess would be merely prehistoric on Joe’s Covid fighting scale. They will gain congressional seats from failed states such as New York, and I’m guessing they aren’t inclined to hand out goodies to the Democrats either. But in Texas, where Democrats have made significant inroads during recent statewide elections, do you really need to start off every campaign stop by distancing yourself from the leader of your party? When you are measuring victory by thin slices of the electoral college, I wouldn’t start by insulting the very places where you are trying to flip votes. Even Andrew Cuomo on Wednesday said he disagreed with opening up states, but didn’t go down the route of evolutionary name calling.

There are no perfect, or even very good, answers about what restrictions have worked, especially in light of destroying “non-essential” livelihoods, wiping out a year and a half of schooling, and, as the courts keep ruling, breaking the limits of governmental authority. It’s been a fairly poor experiment, and now some states are taking bold action, especially in light of the vaccine rollout. It’s the philosophy, right down party lines, as Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves put it, “’It was never to prevent all possible spread of Covid-19, it was always about protecting the integrity of our healthcare system.’” That question will not get answered here.

Say what you will about Neanderthals, but they weren’t too shabby making and using tools and their cave drawings could hang in any modern gallery wall, especially compared to some of today’s art. And maybe Joe was just having a grumpy old man day that people weren’t staying off his mask wearing front lawn. But what distinguishes our species from others is our large brain compared to our body size, a brain that remembers things on election day. And a brain that can create some great t-shirts, t-shirts I can’t wait to see on the campaign trail.

© 2021 Alexander W. Stephens, All Rights Reserved.

Excelsior, Ever Lower

 

As a side hustle over the years, I’ve been a photographer at many philanthropic and political galas. It’s not my favorite work, but the pay is usually OK and if you do a good enough job, they invite you back the next year—a little like a work annuity. So it was in the early 2000’s when I was covering the annual fundraiser for a prominent local environmental group. It’s a gig I had done before, and many of the same folks were there from previous years. There’s a kind of code at these events when it comes to pictures, with photographers keeping an eye out for celebs willing to have their photos taken with civilians (those who pay to go to these things). With a subtle nod of the head, the celeb smiles and extends their arm around the civilian, and I click away.

Thus I thought nothing of it when I saw a politician, who not-so-secretly was about to launch a statewide campaign, talking with a civilian. They seemed to know each other in a vague way, so I naturally asked if they wanted a picture. The civilian, we’ll call him Bob, stood up straight, adjusted his tie, and flashed a grin across his face, and the politician…looked at me. It wasn’t a blank look, but a highly unresponsive one. He turned to the civilian and simply deadpanned, “Oh Bob wouldn’t want a picture with me” and then calmly walked away. It was hardly the usual behavior of a an out-of-office politician gearing up for a major campaign, and both Bob and I were just plain confused by the whole thing. Then again, the politician in question was Andrew Cuomo.

In the Donald Trump model of life, any news, meaning any mention of your name, is good news. Accusations of obstructing justice and illicit female relationships were swatted away like contestants on an Apprentice episode. For Andrew Cuomo, the same accusations these past few weeks have been a political nightmare, and there has been nowhere for him to simply walk away.

Perhaps it’s all genetic. Cuomo’s dad Mario, the former New York Governor, was known to be just as thin-skinned and as much of a bully to the Albany press as Andrew. He’d call a reporter at eight in the morning to complain about some petty umbrage he took to a recent article. Now complaining to, and about, reporters is an ancient political art, but calling them only a few hours after they got to bed was considered a hostile act. But even Mario had to compromise, given that Republicans controlled the State Senate and significant parts of upstate and Long Island. For Andrew, political opposition has been wiped out across the state and he has steamrolled his way to absolute control. Of course the last steamroller in Albany, Governor Eliot Spitzer, had his own control issues, namely with prostitutes, and it cost him his job.

Perhaps Andrew Cuomo thinks this will all blow over. This is the same Governor who managed to shut down the state’s Moreland commission on government corruption when the investigation started to knock on his door and that of his supporters. A few minor characters went to jail, but somehow Cuomo managed to bully and bluster his way out of the whole affair.

But then there are the women.

First was senior aide Melissa DeRosa admitting, like John Dean at the Watergate hearings, that the Cuomo administration had deliberately obstructed a Department of Justice investigation into the deaths of thousands of nursing home residents. And while Biden’s DOJ announced they would open their own investigation, nobody can figure out why it will be in the Eastern District of New York, some 150 miles away from Albany, when staff from the Northern District of New York could walk two blocks to Cuomo’s office at the state Capitol building. One gets the sense this will be as successful as a 2019 health inspection at the Wuhan wet market.

But now there are more women kissing (albeit non-consensually) and telling. Two former staffers have accused Cuomo of sexual harassment, and just as I am typing this sentence a third woman has come forward recounting Cuomo copping and unwanted feel. At first Cuomo forcefully denied anything happened, sounding much like Trump in his own, weird Cuomo-esque accent. But a funny thing happened—all of a sudden Cuomo’s story is now one of being playful, adding a little humor to the serious business of government work, lightening the mood. Denials now have a different storyline, which is to say it’s not a denial.

Yet Cuomo still is grasping to whatever power he has. Instead of acquiescing to the obvious, Cuomo suggested that he appoint his own special investigator about these allegations. As a sign of his diminished standing, the entire Capital laughed that idea away and the State Attorney General will grant a private attorney, with full subpoena power, authority to investigate the matter.

There are two things I’m sure about. First, Cuomo will fight all of this to the bitter, bitter, end. His chances of higher office, heck a fourth and final term as Governor, have melted away like the winter’s snow. He has nothing to lose and may just try to run out the clock, hoping his well-practiced skills of obstruction and deceit will work one more time. We’ll see how that all goes. And the second thing—just don’t ask to take a picture with him.

© 2021 Alexander W. Stephens, All Rights Reserved.

Irregular

 

A January ritual was for my mom to drag my brother and I down to Bloomingdale’s to hit the annual white sales (now a woke police non-compliant name). The only obstacle between us and a great deal was my dad’s one, immovable rule—the sheets on the bed at home could be any color, as long as it was white. This ran into the other immovable truth—white sheets never went on sale. Mom would politely ask the sales clerk about what white sheets might be on sale, and the clerk would politely shake their head that none were on sale, but “are you familiar with irregulars?”

Irregular sheets weren’t from some oddball company but ever so slightly not perfect—some finished stitching might not be exact or a hem was not quite at the right angle. Whatever the case, the manufacturer chose to sell them at a substantial discount rather than trash it and eat the entire cost. And so like your friendly bartender who remembers that they have a secret stash of your favorite whiskey, the sales clerk would reach to the back of the top shelf and produce these “irregulars.” Nobody was the wiser, the store made money, and my dad slept just fine. With tomorrow’s inauguration, I have that same feeling—I want to think that everything is right, but I need an expert to show me that what went wrong isn’t ruining the whole thing.

I’m no stolen election ranter, but there’s plenty out there that needs a better explanation, not just for the facts but to help put the nation at ease. This is a distinctly different time from 2000 where we were entertained by the site of a couple of civil servants with magnifying glasses trying to determine the veracity of a hanging chad. It was focused, out in the open, and at least somebody could come to a consensus. And while the Democrats could never seem to shake off the fact that George W. Bush won (weren’t all those polls saying Gore would dominate?), Congress got legislation passed to fund modernization of voting infrastructure. Of course Congress never seemed to get around to updating the Post Office so that they could get the ballots on time to that updated voting infrastructure, but change in Washington is not a rapid thing.

Unlike Joe Biden writing his own speeches, I’m happy to give appropriate credit to Scott Johnston of The Naked Dollar column for laying out the idea of a national election investigative commission. We’ve used this kind of vehicle before, and I think the 9/11 Commission serves as great standard. We all knew that, before the terrorist attacks, the CIA and FBI were legally prohibited from sharing intelligence. It was only after open hearings and a comprehensive report that we all found out the utter dysfunction between the intelligence agencies. More troubling was the utter lack of creative thinking going on throughout the government, that somehow 20 men with penknives and a few hours of flight school training killed more people than at Pearl Harbor. The upshot was a complete rethinking of internal and external security as well as refocusing how we view threats across the world.

Of course there are plenty of 9/11 conspiracists out there who will never be satisfied. So be it—they probably find puppy pictures and warm spring days a sign of mind control. But there is too much video out there of poll watchers being denied rightful access, ballots procured from under desks, at least one confirmed case of results flipped, and other questionable activities to be ignored. Add to that a mix of administrative fiats married with judicial ascension to change otherwise infallible state voter laws and you have the recipe for years of voter dissatisfaction. After the election the courts dismissed most of Trump’s lawsuits for lack of standing, which I leave to the lawyers to sort out. But it gives Congress a chance to put evidence under the brightest TV lights their hearing rooms can shine, to dig deep, and to call witnesses and make them squirm to justify their actions.

Most of the action would focus on states that Democrats run or in areas of their local control. The mistake for the Democrats would be to call this a partisan witch hunt as their excuse not to have hearings. In the end much of what we will find out will probably be that inept government employees chose the exactly wrong time to be inept—during a close election (wait, wasn’t Biden supposed to win by 11 points?) under the watch of grainy security cameras. Unless there was some 1960 Kennedy-in-Illinois action going on, the Democrats would have the upper hand every time the Republicans cry foul in the future. It’s my firm belief that the naked truth will clear the air and restore some, if not most, of the faith in our voting system. But takeover power has a way of clouding long-term judgement, and thin majorities find a way to slip into the minority in the oddest of ways, leaving only vengeance and more mistrust.

So tonight I’ll go to sleep more annoyed that we are in perpetual and inexplicable lock down than with Biden’s inauguration tomorrow. And while my wife and I have a comfortable bed with high-quality sheets, something tells me my rest will be a little bit…irregular.

© 2021 Alexander W. Stephens, All Rights Reserved.

The Untweeting

 

Well The Donald is now “permanently” banned from Twitter, and Apple and Google have quickly followed suit in banning some alternate social media apps from their respective stores. Many see this as some great moral victory, although for what greater good is unstated. I see it as a dangerous, short-sighted move that is going to backfire, but not in the ways many people think.

While I spend (too much) time on Facebook, I don’t have a Twitter account as anything worthwhile on Twitter finds its way into mainstream media, which is more an indictment on lazy reporting. But it wasn’t until two Christmases ago that I really understood the power of Twitter. At our neighbors’ holiday party, an investment banker admitted that he had no social media account and didn’t really pay attention to any of it.

Except for Twitter. This, he admitted, was the first thing he read getting out of bed.

Why, of all things, Twitter? As he explained, “I need to know what the President said first thing in the morning. It’s what the markets are following.” And there, in all its naked power, was why Twitter mattered, and how it had gotten completely out of control. It was also a story I had heard nearly 30 years ago when many of Big Tech’s employees were infants or not even born.

The story was in Michael Lewis’ Liar’s Poker, his book about Wall Street powerhouse Salomon Brothers. One particular hazing ritual was to ask the trainee class to quote the morning’s LIBOR rate. New to the industry, there was silence primarily because nobody knew what LIBOR was, and the few who did had no inkling as to why it was so critical first thing in the morning. Yelling and ranting at Marine drill sergeant levels ensued, and suffice it to say the mistake was never made again. And while the method may have been extreme, the message was clear: LIBOR was what the markets were following, and so you need to follow LIBOR.

Twitter, then, has reached the level where it is LIBOR of communication, and the problem is that those who run the company are in way over their heads. While “permanent” in the digital world is almost an oxymoron, banning Trump is the great public step in social media’s taking sides in the political debate. This won’t end well for the tech companies, primarily because they are utterly unable to take responsibility for any of their actions. In the case of Mark Zuckerberg, big tech is literally unblinking when they say their business is for the public good. To which I remind everyone that there are two options in life: clean up your act or the government will do it for you, and the latter is never the better choice.

Somewhere in Silicon Valley there’s a happy place where if the Democrats run everything, their businesses will be protected. By the paper width of a few ballots, some of questionable veracity, they got their way for now. And I wouldn’t bank on now lasting that long, and when it ends, the loss of Section 230 protections, among others, will be devastating. The bigger loss will be in talent and vision. At what point will the best and the brightest in engineering start looking elsewhere for unicorn paychecks? The point when it stops being engineering and starts to be a social movement, like banning a prominent public official. It’s the point where you are no longer what the employment market follows first thing in the morning.

What happens next? If I had to guess the finance folks at Twitter will take a long look at how banning Trump, and the loss of his followers, will affect the bottom line. You’ll know how that analysis went if Trump is reinstated because he “has agreed to reform his behavior” or some such nicety in the press release. But don’t look to Salomon Brothers or LIBOR for answers either. A few years after Liar’s Poker came out Salomon became embroiled in a scandal where they fixed the price of government bonds. The government does not look kindly at that, and Salomon was swiftly absorbed into another bank. And the paramount LIBOR? The banks colluded to fix that rate for years and it had to move to another exchange before it will be decommissioned in the next few years. Nothing may be forever, but for Jack Dorsey he might remember that Myspace was the dominant, unbreakable leader with money pouring in and talent beating down its doors. That is until it was gone in less time than it takes to type 280 characters.

© 2021 Alexander W. Stephens, All Rights Reserved.

Against The Odds

 

The New Year gavels in another session of New York’s legislature, and one thing is clear: the search for money to plug the state’s gaping deficit is first, second, and third on the agenda. Once again a Cuomo is looking to gambling to raise significant amounts of money, and once again it looks like a Cuomo will botch the whole affair.

Gambling (in the form of table games and slot machines) had long been forbidden by the State’s constitution, with then-Governor Mario Cuomo managing to push the envelope a bit by working with upstate Indian tribes to build casinos on reservation land. Never heard much about them? Not really surprising—the gaming offered tepid rewards, the locations were hard to get to, and there were no arenas for concerts.

Son Andrew managed to get through changes in the state’s constitution (an impressive feat) to legalize, in limited quantities, real casino gaming. The result? The highest grossing tables in the country lie not off the glitz of the Vegas strip but off the ass end of Aqueduct Raceway, home to an otherwise despondent horse track and even more despondent bettors. Before Covid, the only thing limiting growth there was the physical footprint of casino’s walls.

But then the sports book took everything over.

In what might be the only contribution from former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, his administration sued, and won, for the right to operate sports books outside of Nevada. Long the sole domain of Vegas, the most successful sports book in the country is now at the ass end of Meadowlands race track, home to the most despondent form of horse racing, the trotters, and across from Met Life stadium, home of the even more despondent Jets and Giants. But in all of this there is one great lesson: the tri-state area has money to bet and has shown an unbridled willingness to put its money on the table. Could there be one more, great leap?

Absolutely—your phone.

Online sports betting is now the last great gambling frontier in New York, and the Governor is enthusiastic about it. Almost. His position about the current proposal is, “That makes a lot of money for casinos, but it makes minimal money for the state. I’m not here to make casinos a lot of money, I’m here to raise funds for the state. So, we have a different model for sports betting.” This was the same model that drove the local Off Track Betting (where even I would go to put down the occasion wager on a Belmont Stakes race) out of business because the state taxed it so much that it was the only bookie that couldn’t make a profit. Even in blue New York City there was no political appetite to subsidize this government fiasco.

Some might see this as a great metaphor for Democrats vs. Republicans, that corporate profits are such a bad thing that they have to be taxed into the ground until the very business ceases to exist. Others might see the socialized medicine analogy that only government knows what is right for its people. What everyone sees, and the numbers bear it out, is some $500 million a year in tax revenue for New York State. How Cuomo thinks he is going to rake in this kind of money without the private sector working hard to make the very money he is going to tax is unclear. There’s no over/under on whether it would work given that it flies in the face of any viable business model.

Nobody should be under the illusion that New York’s economic salvation will come from DraftKings ringing on their phones. And let me be very clear that I recognize gambling, particularly the sports book, and especially a phone app, can destroy a person’s life with a few swipes. But there is a way for casinos to make money, the state to gain robust revenue, and, not incidentally, decimate the illegal bookmaking market. I’m just not betting the Governor will know how to do it.

© 2021 Alexander W. Stephens, All Rights Reserved.

A Voter’s Best Friend

In all that has been 2020, there was nice bit of comic relief during the end of the presidential campaign. In what I thought was a Saturday Night Live digital short, a series of black-and-white images of past presidents (and former VP Biden) with their dogs proceeded across the screen, with a final image of President Trump noticeably without a canine companion. The message: you can’t elect a president who doesn’t have a dog. It turns out that this gem was actually produced by a group called “Dog Lovers for Joe.” And while the impact upon the electorate was no doubt minimal, there was a significant upside compared to other efforts: it didn’t cost much to put together.

Now there’s no separating money from politics. But I am concerned that we are now at a point where people are spending mind-numbing sums to achieve nothing. For this particular election cycle, running for the US Senate has been a center of negative return on investment. Let’s look at a few particularly egregious examples:

• Amy McGrath raised some $84 million to lose to Mitch McConnell by nearly 20 points. For a few grand she could have printed posters at Kinko’s, done just as well, and used the rest to send every American household a bottle of Kentucky bourbon.
• In Iowa, Theresa Greenfield raised $50 million to lose by a relatively modest 6 points to Joni Ernst. Still, do you need that much to lose outside of a pollster’s margin of error?
• Sara Gideon raised $70 million to lose to Susan Collins by 9%. Outside of a whopping spending spree at L.L. Bean, I’m not sure how you spend that much money in Maine.
• And then there is Jamie Harrison’s $100 million blow out for a 10 point loss to Lindsey Graham. At $91 a head, he could have bought nearly a year of Netflix for each of his 1.1 million voters and saved South Carolina a lot of agitation.

This, and it’s hard to fathom, was all chump change compared to this cycle’s pint-sized king of failure, Mike Bloomberg. What he lacked in charisma, voter connection, or political ability he made up for in profligate spending. Going for the highest office in the land cost him around $1 billion (yes, a big old “B”). Throw in the $100 million he tossed around in Florida to defeat Trump and it comes up to the GDP of a fair chunk of the Caribbean. Put in a more tangible way, a squadron of F-35 fighters runs about $1.2 billion. Tax, title, and guided missiles are extra, but in this league you could shake out the spare change in the couch cushions and make up the difference.

And while I make fun of these spectacular, Democratic Party, failures, it raises a serious question: how can smart people who presumably understand how to spend money wisely can be so very, very bad at their political jobs. Some of it lies in the ego of any ambitious politician in thinking that they, and only they, can slay incumbent giants. Some goes to sloppy polling that gives candidates a false sense of having a chance. And sure, TV advertising is expensive, except in markets like Iowa, Kentucky, South Carolina, and Maine. But I fear, and really mean fear, that a political-industrial complex of advisers, consultants, election law experts, and production specialists has made the whole process about them, not the candidates. This election Pentagon has an expense for everything, a cut to take on top of that expense, and multiples to prove a point.

And now there is the matter of two run-off elections in Georgia to control the US Senate. I’m guessing each of the four candidates will spend $100 million each as a base price, not the ceiling. Perhaps the future holds that some people will resist the temptation to run merely because they can throw money around, chances be damned. Perhaps not. But one thing is true: this whole process has gone to the dogs.

© 2020 Alexander W. Stephens, All Rights Reserved.

Put A Stamp On It

 

Utterly reckless.

Completely stupid.

What were you thinking?

Suffice it to say there were even more comments whose language would not be appropriate in this family forum. And these were from my friends.

You would think I was advocating a Bangkok brothel tour without condoms. And while I did touch something young, sleek, and thin, I feel the risk was highly overrated. Last week I put my absentee ballot in the mail.

Much has been said about mail-in balloting, and most of it poorly informed. My local congressional primary was the subject of intense scrutiny, sometimes making national news. It even got a quick mention during the first presidential debate, if you were able to hear above the din of either candidate. Some of the envelopes for returning absentee ballots were business reply mail which, as it turns out, doesn’t get postmarked. This wouldn’t be a problem if one of the key factors was making sure the envelope was postmarked by Election Day. Litigation ensued and a wise judge allowed the ballots to be counted as long as they were in by the final prescribed day after the primary.

Problem solved, right? Wrong.

Turns out the biggest problem with ballots that were disqualified was that the voters did not sign the internal return envelope. That’s right, people couldn’t follow directions.

There was universal hemming and hawing, but nobody should have been surprised. The areas from where the challenger was strongest had a younger demographic, a group that may never have mailed a bill payment in their life. They wouldn’t know to read the instructions because they are so used to swiping and tapping. The incumbent’s base skewed older and probably to this day writes their account numbers on their checks before carefully sealing the payment envelope and gently placing it in the mailbox. Even if all the challenger’s votes had counted, it probably would not have been enough, but it’s a lesson I’m not sure the rest of the nation fully understands.

So was I scared of COVID at my polling place? Hardly. I may very well be out of town on Election Day and am scrupulous about keeping a perfect voting record. The top line is no contest in New York, but there is a very competitive local assembly race that could be decided by just a few votes. Plus who am I to pass on an opportunity to avoid having the government waste my time?

New York only recently discarded its Eisenhower-era pull lever voting machines with bubble scanners. The problem isn’t the new technology but the fact the poll workers probably voted in an Eisenhower election. So when the scanners go down, there isn’t a lot of expertise to fix the problem. It wouldn’t be so bad because any 12 year-old could reboot the system in a couple of minutes, but since 12 year-olds can’t vote, there aren’t many around to help. What should be a quick exercise goes on for hours.

So I began my absentee journey online, in a fit of surprisingly easy clicks that let me apply for a ballot. A few days later the paper arrived and I filled it in and made sure I signed the internal envelope. The one with the big, bold box on it that says “You must sign here.” The one that is easy to read and follow its directions. I could follow all the steps of my ballot’s journey on the Board of Elections’ website, from application, to ballot mailing, to when the Post Office got my returned ballot, to when the Board of Elections received it. There was more detail than an Amazon delivery, which could be an interesting idea for next year—order your overpriced, organic apples from Whole Foods and Jeff Bezos will deliver your absentee ballot as well.

There was one, old-fashion thing I did before putting my ballot in the mail. Pulling out my hyper-accurate kitchen scale, I weighed the envelope. The reading came in at exactly one ounce, only one stamp needed. But then I thought long and hard, and put on a second stamp in case something was slightly off and it all went wrong. What in the world would my friends say then?

© 2020 Alexander W. Stephens, All Rights Reserved.