The big news over the past few of years has been the rise of voter ID laws and many other efforts designed to make voting harder than it already is. This is being done almost exclusively by conservatives. I don’t doubt the sincerity of conservative voters; they’ve been manipulated for years into thinking that if only voting were fair then Ted Cruz would be President for Life. It’s the conservative elites who have pushed this disingenuous narrative that voter fraud is a problem that must be fixed.

Think about it in the opposite way. If there is a legal voter who is stopped from voting, this is what I will call institutional voter fraud. Voting, as it is construed by most people, is a right. It isn’t something that one should have to earn. On the right, people are concerned about votes being “canceled out” by fraudulent votes, but there is no concern about votes being canceled out by them simply not being allowed. This is where the pathetic number of actual fraudulent votes is important: to stop a handful of cases of voter fraud, we create a hundred or thousand times as many cases of institutional voter fraud. That is what the voter ID campaigns are: a form of (currently legal) voter fraud.

Even as conservatives have been working to stop democracy, there are places where work is being done to expand voting rights. The Brennan Center for Justice puts out a Voting Laws Roundup each year with the good and bad news. And it isn’t all blue states either. For example, Louisiana recently passed a law that would allow 16- and 17-year-olds to pre-register to vote when they apply for driver’s licenses. And Oklahoma expanded access to absentee ballots to people living on tribal lands. But as usual, the only red state doing anything big was Utah, which established a “pilot program for election day registration.”

I’m very pleased that my home state of California has been on the leading edge of this, and we made a massive step forward over the weekend. The Los Angeles Times reported, Governor Brown Approves Automatic Voter Registration for Californians. It isn’t perfect. It is tied to the state DMV. When people get or renew a driver’s license, they will automatically be registered to vote. But given this is California, that is the vast majority of people. The system doesn’t require people to register, of course. They may opt-out if they wish. But the default will be to register them. This will result in up to 7 million more people registered to vote. The system will not be fully operational until June 2016.

I wonder about my own commitment to democracy. If I were a conservative, would I say what I hear so many conservatives say, “I don’t want people to vote unless they are well informed like me!”? I’d like to think that I would be in favor of democracy regardless. But I recall when I was a libertarian being fairly disinterested in voter turnout. Regardless, I think that most people in America do believe in democracy. And like so many things in US politics, the distinction between the left and the right is clear: the left believes in people voting and the right does not.

Brian Beutler was definitely right, The Adults Take the Stage in the Democratic Debate. I’m a Sanders supporter, but not enough to want to see any of the candidates attacking each other. So I didn’t like seeing that. But in an absolute sense, there was very little of it. And it was all substantive. Overall, I thought it was a great debate.

I agreed with Lincoln Chafee when he said that he hadn’t changed — it was the Republican Party that had changed. He’s right. I’m constantly amazed at the people who stay in the Republican Party, even though it has clearly gone on tilt. I welcome former Republicans into the Democratic Party — often they are more liberal than long time Democrats.

Speaking of long time Democrats, what’s up with Jim Webb? After Chafee made his statement about the Republican Party, Webb implied the same thing about the Democratic Party: that somehow he was the guy who represented the tradition of the Democratic Party. How can anyone seriously think that?! But if the purpose of the debate was to mention Vietnam and veteran the most times, Webb won!

Martin O’Malley had a strong debate. I don’t think he answered the question about his “lock ’em up” policies, but otherwise, he was good. And his final statement was the best of any of them. Was it enough to move him in the polls? I doubt it. And it certainly wasn’t enough to move me. If he becomes the nominee, I’ll support him. But he doesn’t shine when it comes to my issues — economics.

Clinton and Sanders did about as well I expected them to. Clinton came off as serious and competent. But she also lacked a great deal of passion for the most part. Sanders was full of passion — especially on economic issues. And he’s absolutely right. At the same time, he came off a bit scattered and, frankly, old. Still, I will be donating some money to his campaign tomorrow.

Overall, I think the Democratic Party did itself proud. We don’t have to be embarrassed by our candidates. Even the worst of them is better than the best that the Republicans have to offer: Marco Rubio. It was a good night. But will the American people notice? I doubt it.

As I was looking for something to write about for today’s anniversary post, I came upon a mention of a massive one day murder of Gypsies at Auschwitz. I didn’t write about it, because it turned out that the date was wrong. It turned out that on 1 August 1944, the entire population of the “gypsy camp” was murdered — some 4,000 adults and children. It’s staggering to think about, although looking at some of the pictures of the victims, it was probably the most humane thing the camp personnel ever did to them.

I don’t bring this up to point out yet again just how awful the Nazis were. But after all these years, I find myself still trying to understand the Nazis. I don’t think the Germans are different than any other people. Certainly there are problems with its culture, but it isn’t any different in this way than any other culture. And I largely think that the vast majority of the German people were also victims of Nazism — even while they were culpable. So what makes people respond to a call for genocide with a shrug as they pick up a pitchfork?

Several years ago, I had a really uncomfortable experience. I was head of software development at this startup. And we had hired five Romanian programmers. They worked in Romanian, and I set up our system in such a way that they could work with the hardware remotely. I was totally against hiring them, but it was forced on me. Still, I found that it worked remarkably well. For one thing, the programmers were fantastic. But a couple of times we flew the Romanian team leader here to work directly with me.

He was a brilliant young man — and very nice. You absolutely couldn’t ask for a better person to work with. But one day, he asked me the most peculiar question, “Do you think Americans wouldn’t think so lowly of Romania if it weren’t for the Gypsies?” I was shocked by this blatantly racist question. But despite how I appear online, in real life, I’m very much a placater. I might be different today, but then, I was not interested in finding out why this young man thought so lowly of this particular ethnic group. So I gently told him that the only thing any Americans were likely to know about Romania were Nadia Comăneci and Dracula. And that was the end of that conversation.

I assume that my Romanian colleague had about as much direct direct experience with the Gypsies as I did. Even at the time, I immediately thought of African Americans: an underclass deprived of opportunities and then shamed for their lack of success compared to the “white” class that is given every advantage. In fact, not long before that, I had had a conversation with some young immigrants to America who were asking me the same kinds of questions with regard to blacks. They are valid questions that deserved answers, and I think I did a decent job with them.

The problem we have is not with the questions, but with the assumptions that many if not most people have: those who are struggling in our society are simply worse people. The specifics of who “those people” are don’t matter. I’m sure that few Americans could tell the difference between Gypsies and the non-Gypsies in Romania. We humans create more or less random groups that we put great significance into. It is the source of our greatest strength in that it is what binds us together. But the dark side is that we become exclusive, and it really isn’t necessary; there are more than enough non-human things that might kill us.

In the end, I suppose I’m not that surprised that the Nazis happened. It’s more surprising that we don’t see more of it. But I do think that we are getting better; we are more inclusive than we have ever been. But looking around at America, it is clear that we have a very long way to go.

Photo by Adam Jones adamjones.freeservers.com

Probably my favorite conservative, Bruce Bartlett wrote a very interesting article over at The Financial Times, Is the Fed Being Goaded Into Raising Rates Too Soon? As I’ve talked about a fair amount here, there is no economic reason for the Federal Reserve to even be discussing raising interest rates. And it seems so bizarre that I once thought I had missed something, so I asked Dean Baker, and he backed me up. There really isn’t anything behind it. So the question that Bartlett has raised is why.

He isn’t the first. Paul Krugman spent about a month recently obsessing over the question. And his conclusion was that the Fed is understandably closely tied to the banking community — in fact, 5 of its 12 members are appointed from the banks. And bankers make less money when interest rates are low. So the Fed is pushed by these “reasonable” and “objective” people who think that interest rates should go up. There is much to this theory, and I’m sure it is going on to one extent or another.

Bartlett offers the other side of this, which is basically that the Republican Party has gone insane. He noted three of the more thoughtful Republicans — John Taylor, Martin Feldstein, and Alan Greenspan — all argued that the Federal Reserve was going to cause inflation to go up in 2009. This, of course, goes against what conservatives of the Milton Friedman variety have always said. The liberals wanted fiscal stimulus (because, let’s fact it, it is the most direct way to address recessions) and conservatives wanted monetary stimulus. But in 2009, suddenly that was all wrong. The right thing to do was what we did during the Great Depression: nothing. Or even better: cut both government spending and the the flow of cash.

Apparently, the Republican Party itself has gotten so insane that even Ben Bernanke has decided that he is no longer a Republican. And really: how could any scientist who wants to be taken seriously continue to associate with the modern Republican Party. That’s especially true of economists, who show themselves to be complete hacks like Greg Mankiw who is for Keynesian stimulus as long as a Republican is in the White House. Of course, much of the blame has to be laid on the economics profession itself. Mankiw should have been shunned from the profession. But let’s face it, selling out is one of the big perks of becoming a successful economist.

Bartlett never got around to discussing just why the Republicans turned into such idiots on this issue. It’s certainly not, as Bernanke claims, that “the crisis had helped to radicalize large parts of the Republican Party.” They weren’t radicalized until a Democrat became president. Bartlett understands this, he finished his article with an allusion to what is really going on, “Had the Fed followed their advice earlier, the economy would undoubtedly be in worse shape — good for Republican electoral prospects, but bad for everyone else.” And that’s what is all about. The Republicans are traitors. They don’t care about the country in the least. This is why we constantly have to worry about them crashing the economy: they care more about their political aspirations than they care about the good of the country. They are reactionaries who think that it may be necessary to destroy the country in order to save it.

There is no theory that underlies what they are doing. This is just power for power’s sake. It’s tempting to think that they will be reasonable once they get into power. But I think all the rational Republicans have been chased away. The inmates really are running the asylum. And we could end up with a Republican president who thinks that we don’t have to worry about breaching the debt ceiling because he can just cut spending. This is the final act of the GOP — and maybe the country.

Last week, Jonathan Chait made a good observation, Hillary Clinton Is Reliving Al Gore’s Nightmare. But I think he is missing the true story here. He thinks that Hillary Clinton and Gore are suffering from residual guilt due to Bill Clinton. He dates Gore’s problems to the 1997 “fundraising for the White House” scandal as the beginning of Al Gore’s problems. But is that true? Was the knock against Gore that he wasn’t trustworthy? Not as I remember it. I remember the supposed problem being that he was “wooden” and had a tendency to exaggerate — not that his tenure in the White House would be scandal plagued.

After the 2000 election, there was lots of Washington journalist navel gazing. Had they given Bush a pass? Had they made stories out of literally nothing to tarnish Al Gore? Had they treated the campaign like it were an election for prom queen rather than president? The answer to all of these questions was yes. Remember Margaret Carlson’s statement, “Gore elicited in us the childish urge to poke a stick in the eye of the smarty-pants”? A lot of people made fun of her about that because they saw that this was exactly the mentality of reporters who were shaping what Americans thought of the two men competing to be president.

So I fully accept Chait’s contention that Hillary Clinton is in Al Gore’s position — just not that it has anything to do with Bill Clinton or anything else. The press has just decided on a narrative for Clinton and it just so happens to be the same narrative they decided for Gore: she’s not authentic. It’s a wonderful narrative for them because it is meaningless. In the context of a politician, what does it mean? I’m a big supporter of Bernie Sanders, but I haven’t missed the fact that his hair is always combed now. This is politics: it is about shaping perceptions of reality.

But let us not forget this: Gore won the election. Electoral College or no, he won. In a democracy, Al Gore would have been president. In fact, relative to my election model, he actually did slightly better than he should have. So I don’t especially worry that the Washington reporters are childish when they aren’t being totally useless. The American people are smarter than that. But certainly it doesn’t help to have all these fraternity and sorority rejects live out their fantasies of what it’s like to be part of the “in crowd” or the “mean girls.”

Clinton and every other Democrat is currently losing to the top Republican candidates in poll match-ups. Even Ben Carson is beating Clinton. But that’s because people know who Clinton is and they don’t know who Carson is. Thus, like young people in love, they assume anything they don’t know must just be perfect. Over time, when the actual election is under way, people will learn about the Republican candidate (who will absolutely, positively not be Ben Carson). And they will make the same decision they always make: the one based upon the economy.

So, does this mean that the political reporting about the presidential campaign is useless? Yes. There’s no need to beat around the bush. I so wish there were a law against political polling this early in the campaign. It provides literally no information. At this time in the 2000 campaign, Bush was beating Gore by 15 percentage points: 54% to 39%. Currently, Clinton is neck and neck with Jeb Bush. And that too means absolutely nothing — just like all the mainstream “reporting.”

See also: The “Clinton Malfeasance” Conspiracy Theory.