The party controlling the White House nearly always loses seats in the House and Senate in midterm elections. Reporters and pundits spend inordinate amounts of time and ink/pixels on stories built on that premise because
- the thesis is true most of the time and requires no research on the reporter or pundit's part
- it allows the reporter or pundit to demonstrate how knowing / jaded they are, again without doing any actual work
- for a more adventurous reporter, it sets up an easy secondary theme of "beating expectations" followed by the inevitable crashing back to earth story when expectations aren't beaten
- the copy practically writes itself
That's exactly where things stand in 2022.
In summer 2022, anger over the Dobbs decision ending federal protection for abortion access and a sudden surge of legislative wins by the Biden Administration after an anemic start led many liberal outlets to run stories hinting (hoping?) that the normal midterm trend could be avoided. Now as hidden conservative leaning independents who normally seem reluctant to publicly profess support for MAGA type alternatives get closer to election day, those tailwinds seem to have vanished and all reporting has shifted from the "surprise" dynamic on to the "told you so" dynamic.
That's horse race reporting at its worst. Republicans likely to win (yawn...), oh wait, the Dems might retain control in both, oh wait, maybe just the Senate, oh nope, looks like Republicans will take control of the House and Senate after all. SURPRISE. Meanwhile, the media has failed to report that the horse race being described is being run on a track bearing no resemblence to prior horse races and the jockeys and their owners have vastly different definitions of a "win" which has nothing to do with satisfying the spectators in the stands.
A better understanding of the true stakes for 2022 requires a mental model of the competing political parties which try to react to issues facing the country for their own preservation and sustenance. Since American politics has been distorted into a false two-party duopoly subsequently entrenched at the federal and state level by parliamentary rules that cripple the ability of any alternate parties to coexist, current dynamics lend themselves to being viewed as a one-dimensional tug of war on a football field.
Decades ago, most Americans viewed the political landscape like this:
- Democratic policies left of the 50, with ideas all over but predominately centered somewhere between the 30 and 35 yard lines
- Republican policies right of the 50, with ideas all over but predominately centered somewhere between the 30 and 35 yard lines
- policy debates and resulting legislation and judicial rulings generally landing in the middle ground between the 40 yard lines
- Democratic voter preferences distributed primarily towards the 35 but tailing off towards the extreme left goal line
- Republican voter preferences distributed primarily towards the 35 but tailing off towards the extreme right goal line
- independent voter preferences distributed evenly between the 45 and 45 in the middle, swinging either way year to year, issue by issue
The playing field in 2022 is VASTLY different:
- Democratic policies shifted net right, still spread evenly between 30L and 35R, partly to try to coopt winning voting trends in financial / social policies
- Republican policies shifted right and unevenly spread, concentrated towards more extreme policies closer to the goal line than midfield
- policy debates and resulting legislation shifted from midfield to a range somewhere between the 30R to 35R yard lines
- a reduced number of consistent Democratic voters, with tailing off numbers preferring policies at the goal line extreme
- a reduced number of consistent Republican voters, with INCREASING numbers preferring policies at the goal line extreme
- a growing number of independent voters, likely turned off by more extreme Republican proposals while unwilling to trust Democrats to fend off those policies without enacting more liberal policies undesired by voters with older country-club, non-evangelical Republican preferences
What are the consequences of these shifts in politicians, policies and voters? None of them are good.
Democracy
There are 106 Republican members of the US House who signed an amicus brief sent to the US Supreme Court on December 10, 2020 which reflects the most arrogant, anti-democratic stance ever taken regarding elections and fifty one constitutions -- THE Constitution of the United States of America and the Constitutions of all fifty states. The brief was submitted as an effort to grease the mental skids in the USSC regarding the cases Donald Trump and his clown circus legal team were bringing in multiple states in support of a concept of "legislative control" of all aspects of the "electoral process" controlling the final selection of a President.
The amicus brief argued that ANYTHING regarding a state's final submission of electors could ONLY be controlled by the state legislature. A state's submission CANNOT be affected by elected officials (even Governors or Secretaries of State). Only the function within each legislature that controls the state's final slate of electors can affect the "electoral" process. By their bizarre interpretation of their bizarre theory, that means any states that changed voting eligibility rules, changed mail-in balloting rules, changed drop-off balloting sites, etc. via directives from a Governor, Secretary of State or county level elected official or appointee made those electoral choices invalid.
Unsurprisingly, these fraudulent objections were only being raised in states Trump lost. No objections were filed in states won by Trump. More disturbingly, by filing this amicus brief, this group of Republicans were arguing that individuals OUTSIDE a state who held no elected or appointed role WITHIN a state DO HAVE the right to interfere with that state's voting process and trigger a committee within the legislature to ALTER a state's result from the choice made by the voters to a choice made by a committee which -- due to gerrymandering -- likely will NOT remotely reflect the actual preferences of ALL voters throughout the state.
Presumably, all of these 106 Republican House members are running for re-election because they are all in safe seats. More importantly, this thinking is polluting state races for Secretary of State and Attorney General roles -- roles which will come immediately to the fore the next time this ploy is attempted. And until Trump and all of the members of his legal team that pursued these efforts through the courts are criminally punished, others WILL try this ploy again in future Presidential elections.
What effect is the authoritarian posturing of the Republican Part having on America?
Prior to the January 6 insurrection, then-acting Georgia Senator Kelly Loeffler publicly called for the Republican Secretary of State for Georgia, Brad Raffensperger, to resign, citing bogus claims of fraud being pushed by Trump's legal team and co-conspirators. Loeffler's request was purely a ploy to curry favor with extremist Republicans prior to the January 5 runoff election between her and now-Senator Ralph Warnock. Immediately after her call for Raffensperger to resign, threatening texts, voice messages and emails began arriving not only for Raffensperger but his wife and family members and election officials across the state.
On October 19, 2022, a 25 year old Pennsylvania man named Robert Vargo was indicted by a US grand jury for threating to kill Bernie Thompson -- chair of the January 6 Committee investigating the Trump-led insurrection -- as well as his family and President Joe Biden.
On October 20, 2022, Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs referred a set of complaints from Maricopa Country involving voters being intimidated while dropping off ballots at designated boxes by persons touting weapons, wearing camouflage and masks hiding their faces. Recall that Maricopa County is the largest county by far in Arizona and suffered decades of imfamy from the actions of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, noted for financial fraud, discriminatory policing and civil rights abuses against immigrants and citizens alike.
In general, appointed election officials and volunteers across the country have been verbally accosted in person or on the phone, even receiving death threats. The Washington Post reported that election supervisors in 10 of 17 counties in Nevada have quit, been forced out or announced their resignation. And this is even happening in bright red communities where Republican candidates already win by landslide margins or may even run unopposed. This behavior is clearly not driven by any actual statistically valid chance of an election being lost due to errors (legitimate or fraudulently injected) throwing a razor thin race. This is sheer, paranoid insanity with an industrial-strength stupidity chaser.
Amid this environment, there are people running for offices directly managing elections who espouse the fraudulent election claims for 2020 and / or advocate for policies which weaken transparency around balloting and counting processes and destroy voting rights protections now abandoned by Federal courts due to recent Supreme Court rulings.
Water and Energy
It is quite likely that the two most important warning signs of impending calamity facing the United States are the water levels in Lake Mead behind Hoover Dam and Lake Powell behind Glen Canyon Dam. Mead was last full in 1983, Powell in 1999. Both are now around twenty five percent full, posing two IMMEDIATE problems. Both lakes are near "dead pool" levels where reservoir levels are not high enough to drive turbines for electricity, posing IMMEDIATE risk to residential and commercial energy users in Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona and California. Specifically, Glen Canyon is designed with 1320 megawatts of generation capacity (11.56 billion kW annually) but due to low water levels, is only generating about 5.0 billion kW annually, about 43% of maximum capacity. Hoover Dam is designed with 2080 megawatts of capacity (18.2 billion kW annually) but is only generating about 4.5 billion kW annually, about 25% of capacity.
If dead pool levels are reached, that production must be replaced by natural gas, coal, or solar, nearly instantaneously -- that's about 1084 megawatts needed.. Between 2012 and 2020, the US added 35,302 megawatts of gas generation capacity and 891,383 megawatts of capacity derived from wind, solar, biomass, etc. Those rates imply that it may be possible to absorb that draw of 1084 megawatts but that may trigger other stresses on the grid that require planning and engineering before the need becomes critical for tens of millions of people. Despite the urgency and the impact beyond the five Colorado River Basin states, no race anywhere in the country is addressing issues related to utility regulation on pricing and grid operations required for "dead pool" survival, even though those measures could be required WITHIN A YEAR.
If both reservoirs reach "dead pool" status, that obviously means water volumes released downstream will be drastically curtailed, crippling availability for residential users and vast stretches of farmland growing a third of vegetables sold in the US and seventy five percent of fruits and nuts. Again, no race in the country is addressing the status of water rights debates underway between the five states and the Department of Interior. Nor is any race addressing prioritizations that should be made about residential versus farm use or prioritization of water for different crops. Should limited reservoir water really be allocated to almond crops that require twenty three gallons per ounce of final product? A study from 2015 by the California Department of Water Resources found annual water consumption for almond production amounted to 3.4 billion cubic meters. In the same period, water consumption of all residential users in Los Angeles was 0.85 billion cubic meters.
Economics
The general Republican "shift alt-right" on policies and the concentration of those policies in the goal line area boils down to a doubling down on three key failed solutions to every problem -- lower taxes, reduced constraints on business and draconian cuts to spending on social programs such as healthcare, welfare and public works.
US debt currently totals $24.8 trillion dollars and the yearly interest payments on that debt amount to roughly $502 billion, which is eight percent of the yearly $6.271 trillion budget. That debt load is being carried by an economy creating $19.9 trillion of goods and services.
https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/federal-spending/#causes-and-surplusesHow do world markets react when politicians keep trying the same solutions while citizens and economic output and productivity suffer? The United Kingdom serves as a useful real-life thought exercise. Conservatives have controlled Parliament since 2016 and between 2016 and October 2022, the party has burned through four Prime Ministers -- David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss -- and is attempting to select a fifth to avoid calling an early general election which would likely remove their majority in Parliament. Since 2016, the UK economy SHRUNK three years in a row, had a slight increase in 2019, tanked 10.94% due to COVID in 2020 and rebounded 16 percent in 2021.
During that time, Conservative leaders did nothing to rein in abuses in the financial sector that have made London a haven for money laundering for Russian oligarchs. Conservatives continued proposing tax reductions and failed to appreciate the stresses from the longer term trend in anemic UK grown dating back to 2006 prior to the 2008 worldwide financial meltdown. Those stresses and frustrations became associated (fairly or unfairly) with EU membership, leading to an exit vote which created further economic disruption and efficiencies. Most recently, Liz Truss famously failed to outlast a head of lettuce in her stint as Prime Minister due to her reckless economic plan which called for MORE tax cuts without matching spending reductions. Within HOURS, world financial markets voted with their proverbial feet, tanking the value of the pound, spiking UK interest rates and raising mortgage / credit card payments for UK families by hundreds per month. Needlessly.
In America, Republican House leader Kevin McCarthy is promising to resume hostage tactics over periodic renewals in the debt ceiling, threatening government shutdowns if drastic spending cuts are not applied to social programs in exchange for permitting increased borrowing to cover existing debts. How much could one needless drama over debt ceiling renewal cost Americans? America currently has $31.2 trillion in cumulative debt and pays $400 billion yearly in interest, reflecting an average interest rate for the bonds for that debt around 1.2% -- due to artificially suppressed interest rates dating back to the 2008 financial meltdown. However, all NEW yearly deficits generate new borrowing at prevailing interest rates. When the government is running $1.0 trillion dollar deficits, each 1% increase in interest rates costs $10 billion dollars minimum in extra interest expenses. (NOTE: current estimates reflect $38 billion, likely reflecting some of the longer term $31.2 trillion is also floating on short-term bonds.) Thus, any needless theatre in managing ongoing authorizations to pay interest expenses for programs Congress already enacted has the potential to spook markets and increase borrowing costs between $10 and $38 billion per temper tantrum. That's just the cost to the federal government. Interest rate spikes also immediately impact credit cards, adjustable mortgages, etc. for individuals as well.
Russia / China
The world has watched Vladimir Putin attack and sustain a war on Ukraine for eight months, causing roughly 7.7 million citizens to flee the country, adding to refugee strains already causing economic and political problems across Europe. Over the eight months, Russian leaders have ordered attacks on population centers and established tactics for dealing with civilians that both constitute war crimes on a massive scale. Russia has even held workers at the largest nuclear power plant in Eastern Europe hostage while lobbing artillery fire around the plant, risking not only electrical grid failures but Chernobyl scale nuclear catastrophe. As of October, it appears as though Russian troops are abandoning positions around Kherson and conducting "mass evacuations" of the Ukrainian civilians there while simultaneously preparing to bomb a dam upstream of Kherson and 80 other communities, both to further cripple Ukrainian electric supply and to wipe all of those communities off the map.
In spite of the horrors seen so far, the state of the war boils down to these points:
- Ukraine has used western weapons with extreme efficacy to destroy Russian forces
- Russia has not been able to reach air superiority to protect its supply lines, triggering massive losses of troops and equipment before every reaching any traditional front
- the readiness of Russian equipment that DOES make it to a front makes it clear internal corruption siphoned off vast sums of money intended to maintain readiness, leaving traditional capabilities impaired to laughable levels
- Russia has had to widen conscription, triggering vastly larger political risks against Putin's control
- Russia's performance to date has demonstrated the country is no longer a true military or economic superpower, only an impotent has-been with dangerous nuclear weapons
- No American troops have been required or even requested
It's possible to encapsulate everything Americans need to understand about the importance of policies related to China into one acronym -- TSMC. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company is a chip fabricator in Taiwan which is the sole source for many of the most widely used chips used as computer CPUs, phone / tablet processors, engine control units for cars and trucks, etc. Manufacturers all over the world are still kicking themselves for scrambling the chip supply chain by evolving it to boil down to a single supplier (dumb), then cancelling sustaining orders for highly commoditized units (dumber) allowing surges in demand in other sectors to take up capacity, only to renew demand for existing chips which cannot be had until backlogs for different chips clear and a new equilibrium is reached.
If the impact was limited to the latest iPhone or GoPro camera, chip shortages wouldn't be so dangerous. Unfortunately, the same chip manufacturing capacity is required to keep pace with orders for chips used in advanced weapons systems, including those being rapidly consumed in Ukraine out of US and NATO stocks. At some point, those weapons have to be replaced, requiring new chips. New systems are being developed requiring new designs that should not be restricted to manufacturing in a single facility that might fall under direct control of China to choke off supply or steal intellectual property behind the designs.
Are world chip supplies at risk? Risks of continued or widened chip shortages are not confined to events involving global pandemics or catastrophic weather and earthquakes. Risks are also driven by how Chinese President Xi Jinping reads the game board. Jinping's control over the Chinese Communist Party was strengthened in meetings concluded October 22, 2022 and China adopted a more militant written stance regarding Taiwan, stating an aim to "Resolutely oppose and contain Taiwan independence." China has been tightening control over Honk Kong for several years, presumably as a dry run on tactics to use if a more militant approach to Taiwan is adopted. At least some realpolitik junkies have been hypothesizing that China has also been watching the world's response to Putin's attempt at annexing Ukraine as an indicator about how much effort might be exerted by the West to protect Taiwan. Taiwanese leaders actually view TSMC status as global single-point-of-failure as thier mutually assured destruction ace in the hole, knowing the world economy would collapse if TSMC operations are materially curtailed or zeroed due to political strife.
The Republican reaction to these conditions is bluntly INSANE. It is absolutely clear that the Ukraine conflict is contributing to Putin's downfall in a manner as minimally impactful to American citizens as could be wished for, and burning through Russia's conventional fighting machinery like Sherman through Atlanta. It is fairly obvious that China is looking at Putin's military losses and crippling economic impacts and likely becoming less eager to consider a takeover in Taiwan. Despite these obvious signs, numerous zombie-Republicans including Kevin McCarthy are publicly stating that American funding for weapons and support of Ukraine will be curtailed if Republicans win control of the House and Senate. Any reduction in aid to Ukraine would provide immediate military relief to a regime committing war crimes and provide precisely the wrong signal to both Russia and China about America's resolve to protect our democratic and economic interests.
American voters are not seeing coverage addressing the current situation in these terms. Voters are being fed the normal horse race coverage with a chaser of "pocketbook" issues about high gas prices, rising interest rates and shortages of new cars. There are worse fates awaiting the country than $4.79 gas and 8% inflation if voters fail to step back from the line of scrimmage and look at the entire field and the position of both teams. They could be sitting in the dark without running water waiting for news from America's latest war in Europe. Will the voters figure this out?
We'll know in two weeks.
WTH
