There are no more open toss-up districts. So I’m going to discuss some of the juicer campaigns. We have incumbents to talk about! So off we go to Frank’s current stomping grounds and my home state: California. So I am going to look at an almost certain Democratic pick-up, California District 25, and then the promising District 10.

California has a top two primary system. This creates some interesting general election contests. While this system was sold as a way to increase voter turn out, it doesn’t. It was supposed to make politics less partisan, it hasn’t. In fact, in a general sense, Top-Two Primary System Hasn’t Worked as Proponents Promised.

California District 25 (CA-25)

I start with the most vulnerable incumbent — Representative Steve Knight. Knight is known for his being conservative but not too conservative. Oh, and telling off his constituents after realizing that Congress-critters don’t have total power over the US government. He also has a fairly dismal record of working well with others, but at least he shows up for work.

He is facing challenger Bryan Caforio, an attorney originally from Los Angeles. Caforio seems to have one main flaw: he is new to the district. Otherwise he doesn’t seem capable of putting a single foot wrong. The Democrats have been active in getting voter registration figures up. This California District went from a 14,000 deficit (PDF) to a 5,000 advantage (PDF).

Caforio is stapling Trump all over Knight who keeps trying to duck questions about his party’s presidential nominee. Back in June, Caforio polled 6 percentage points down. A month later, he polled 8 points ahead of Knight in California District 25.

This means that this race is probably already over, even though no ballots have dropped. It should be an easy pick-up for the Democrats.

California District 10 (CA-10)

The current serving Representative in California District 10 is Republican Jeff Denham. He has been around since 2010, when he got the dubious distinction of getting dishonorable mention in CREW’s Most Corrupt Report. Otherwise, he has been a fairly conservative politician who works somewhat well with others. Outside of that he hasn’t done much to distinguish himself or make himself look bad.

He is facing, for the second time, a Democrat by the name of Michael Eggman. This is where sometimes looking stuff up on candidates will yield bizarre results. Michael Eggman is something of a stereotypical California dad. Well, he has had frosted tips. Regardless, he is definitely bringing up Trump.

There has been one poll done in the race by Anzalone Liszt Grove Research. It was done back in July and found Eggman losing by 7 percentage points. However, Eggman had little name recognition at that time. What’s more, the fundamentals of this California district are distinctly Democratic — 7 point advantage for a generic Democrat versus a generic Republican. Eggman’s problem is getting his name out there. And since he has less than a million dollars on hand, that might be difficult.

This may be a keep for the Republicans but hey, frosted tips can do wonders for a man!

The polls continue to look better and better for Donald Trump. FiveThirtyEight’s “polls plus” analysis now give him a 30% chance of winning the presidency. This would be a catastrophe for the country. And I say that not because he is a bigot and a buffoon. I say it because if elected, he will be just like any other Republican. The truth is that I believe this presidential race will be like any other one: a Democrat versus a Republican. And so what we really need to do is look at the fundamentals. And that’s why today’s jobs report is important.

Today’s report is slightly bad. The economy added 151,000 jobs, this is a bit less than expected. The unemployment rate stayed flat at 4.9 percent. Since my very simple model of the presidency only takes this number into account, it isn’t good news. Whereas last month, Clinton had roughly the advantage that her husband had against Bush in 1992, she now has the advantage that Al Gore had in 2000. The trend is not good, but certainly it is better to have the economic fundamentals on your side than to not.

Does It Matter That Trump Is a Terrible Candidate?

Now it is true that Donald Trump is a terrible presidential candidate. I don’t mean that in an ideological sense. I mean simply that he isn’t good at the nuts and bolts of campaigning. But I really wonder if that matters. And I’ve wondered that for a very long time. While virtually every liberal I know is outraged about Citizens United and money in campaigns, I’m really not. It is clear to me that money soils politics indirectly because politicians believe that they need it and so govern in ways they wouldn’t normally. What happens usually is that business interests see that a candidate is going to win, so they flood them with cash they don’t need in order to curry favor.

It’s quite clear why Trump’s polling looks better: Clinton has been getting a lot of bad press recently. And this will change over time. But it does seem that there is nothing that the Clinton or Trump campaigns themselves do that has much of an effect on the numbers. The only reason I’m not freaking out and making plans to move to Uruguay is that I think the baseline for Trump is low and that the economy will remain stable through election day.

The Jobs Report Won’t Change Next Month

It would not surprise me in the least if the next jobs report has the same 4.9 percent unemployment rate. There will also be a jobs report right before the election, but my model disregards it. Anyway, I won’t be surprised if it too is 4.9 percent. It’s funny that this seems to be the new normal. Of course, it isn’t helped by the Federal Reserve. The top two people at the Fed seem to look for any opportunity to tell everyone that they really, really, really want to raise interest rates. And this always has the same effect of freaking out the business community and constraining the economy.

And what does this jobs report tell us about the current state of the economy and if the Fed should really be worried about inflation? Well, Dean Baker noted a few things that are interesting. First, although the employment-to-population rate was unchanged, it was down 0.2 percentage points for prime age workers. And it is still 2.5 percentage points below its pre-recession level. There was an increase of over a hundred thousand people working part-time involuntarily. The total number of hours worked is down. And wages are not accelerating. So where is the potential inflation?!

The Fed Won’t Screw Us — Yet

The one good thing is that this jobs report does not give the Fed any excuse for raising rates before the presidential election. And that’s good news for the country, because any Republican president would be terrible just on the basis of the Supreme Court. But you can depend upon the Fed to screw the American worker just as soon as they can possibly justify it.

I’m a great admirer of Adolph Reed. And I generally agree with him. Unlike most of the people I read on the left, I don’t read him contingently. What I mean by that is that he is roughly as “liberal” as I am. People like Paul Krugman are allies because our country is so out of whack. But if the country does take a solid turn to the left, I will be more and more at odds with Krugman in a way that I won’t be with Reed. So I was pleased to see him write, Vote for the Lying Neoliberal Warmonger: It’s Important. He means, of course, Hillary Clinton.

Now, I actually don’t have much bad to say about Clinton in the same way that I don’t have much bad to say about Obama. Neither people are truly in my political camp. But they are both like Krugman: in the modern American context, they are allies. Also, in Clinton’s case, I think most of this narrative about her not being honest is due to the right-wing campaign against the Clintons in the 1990s. I don’t find her any more corrupt than any other politician of her stature.

Adolph Reed on 1930s Germany

But there was one thing in Adolph Reed’s article that really struck me. He was talking about how the Communists refused to support the Social Democrats in Germany in the early 1930s. And their leader, Ernst Thällman, famously said, “After Hitler, our turn.” Reed wrote, “His point was that a Nazi victory would expose them as fraudulent with no program for the working class.” Of course, that didn’t happen. Thällman underestimated the ruthlessness of Hitler and the Nazis. Reed goes on to discuss this. You should read his whole article, it is typically brilliant.

I’d like to talk about this in the context of our political system. I am one of those people who thinks that our democracy is stronger than Donald Trump. But I hear a lot of “Bernie or Bust” types claiming that Trump would be such a horrible president that he would only serve one term — if that. And then we would have a wonderful future where everyone is fairies and elves and you can have all the cotton candy you like. This is a total misreading of how politics works in the United States.

How a Trump Presidency Will Go

I think if Trump were elected, it would be Ronald Reagan 2.0. At first, the economy would tank. People would flip out. But then, they’d notice that Trump hadn’t actually started World War III. And the economy would recover. By 2020, Trump would win re-election easily. And by the time he left office in 2024, the country would be in ruin. But by then, the laws of the country would be much worse.

The lower classes would pay a far higher percentage of the taxes than they now do. There would be virtually nothing left of the social safety net. And the federal courts — most especially the Supreme Court — would be so conservatives — that it would be almost impossible to fix the country if a liberal Democrat were elected president with a Democratic House and 70 members of the Senate.

This Is Important

People who believe this “Trump will be such a catastrophe that everyone will see it” nonsense don’t understand how things work in this country. There ain’t gonna be a revolution. The same rich people who are in charge now will be in charge then, but the rest of us will be poorer with far less power to do anything about it. And that’s the best we can hope for. With all the voter disenfranchisement that the Republicans will enact, it could be many election cycles before anyone anywhere near liberal is in the White House.

Adolph Reed is right: this is important. Super important.

I’ve known a lot of people from a broad array of backgrounds. They range from people living on the street to people with millions of dollars. (I’ve had no experience with the super rich.) And something I hear a lot from the people who have done fairly well economically is that they succeeded, so anyone could do it. Note: I am not just talking about the millionaires. I hear this kind of comment from people just scraping by in the lower middle class. Anyone who has overcome adversity can make the same claim. But this is a demonstration of something very dangerous: the skewed sample fallacy.

Let me make it personal for a moment. Although I had the great advantage of having parents who were interested in the life of the mind, I also suffered badly from dyslexia. As a result, I had a very hard time learning to read and write. And this was at a time when people didn’t think much about dyslexia. Normally, I would have just been written off as simply stupid, if it hadn’t been for my prodigious gift for math. So it would be easy for me to dismiss the failures as others, “I could barely read into my teens yet I became a writer!” Blah, blah, blah! Shut that man up!

Sample Size: One

This is what I mean by the skewed sample fallacy. And in this case, the sample size is one: me (or you). In my case, my lack of literary skills eventually made me embarrassed. And this led to my becoming fascinated with the language. But that was just me. I think a more natural response is to avoid it. And if not that, embracing it wouldn’t assure success. (Note: I’m only a good writer relative to my environment; every day I learn something that makes me embarrassed about something I wrote yesterday.)

On a personal level, the skewed sample fallacy is fine. It’s great that people feel good about themselves. It’s on the social level that it is pernicious. This is because it is society’s winners who set the rules. And every one of them thinks that their wealth and power are due to their own wonderfulness. As the football coach Barry Switzer said, “Some people are born on third base and go through life thinking they hit a triple.”

But even if they were born with every disadvantage and managed to make it to the top of our economic pecking order, nothing changes. In fact, I generally find such people the biggest abusers of the skewed sample fallacy. They do, at least, have strong evidence that bad circumstances can be overcome.

Social Policy Based on Skewed Sample Fallacy

Everywhere I look in society, I see evidence that our social policies are based on millions of individuals’ one little skewed sample fallacy. Look at Bill Gates. To him, all poor children need are good schools. After all, some desperately poor children have been put into special educational programs and become great successes. But is that how we are to set policy?

Certainly many conservatives think this very thing. After the 2012 election, Avik Roy made the ridiculous argument that we liberals had equality of opportunity all wrong. Basically, he claimed, equality of opportunity means not having any laws against the poor. So as long as there is no law stopping a malnourished child who misses the first five years of school is legally allowed, they still have an equal opportunity to make good as Donald Trump’s kids.

What I’d like to see is society’s “winners” understand that they don’t define the world. Policy based on their own experiences is rarely good policy. They usually have advantages that they don’t see. And so they need to see that just because they rose and others did not is not an indication that they are better and others are worse. And I make that plea first and most forcefully to myself.

Irving Kristol famously said, “A neoconservative is a liberal who has been mugged by reality.” Given the fantasy merchants that later neoconservatives would be, the line is ironic. I’ve often heard a similar line, “A conservative is a liberal who got mugged.” And there is something to that. Think: Christopher Hitchens. But mostly, that’s hogwash. I think that if you look at the fine grain — not the overall ideology — a liberal is a conservative who’s been mugged. Let’s consider three such conservatives who suddenly found a taste for liberal policy: Steve Scalise, Bill Cassidy, and John Fleming.

All of these Congressmen are from Louisiana. And they all rightly want the federal government to do something about the flooding in Louisiana. They also all voted against the Superstorm Sandy relief package. Now before anyone starts yelling that they had reasons for voting against the Sandy bill, this is always the case. No politician ever says, “I’m cutting food stamps because I hate poor children.” They always have reasons. In 2013, Steve Scalise was all for helping Hurricane Sandy victims, as long as it was offset (a new conservative requirement as long as a Democrat was President).

They Have Their (Fake) Reasons

Usually, it is something along the lines of, “I’d love to vote for this bill, if only…” And then the bill is changed for them. And suddenly there is a new reason, “I’d love to vote for this bill, if only this other thing…” This happened again and again while trying to pass Obamacare. Countless things were added and cut to the bill for the sake of this or that Republican. And in the end, not a single one voted for it. Politicians lie. Conservative politicians especially. It’s hard to say what you mean when you really do want to cut food stamps because you hate poor children.

Anyway, getting back to the three Louisiana stooges: is it hypocrisy? Maybe and maybe not. I’m not much interested since we are all hypocrites to one extent or aother. My interest in how it is that these staunch and “principled” conservatives find themselves in favor of liberal policy. In the article I linked to above, Michael Hiltzik wrote, “They’re all likely exemplars of another Washington truism: fiscal responsibility is great, until it’s your own district that’s getting fiscally hammered.”

When Empathy Is Forced on a Conservative

But it isn’t all about politics. This is a very personal thing. I remember decades ago, Sam Donaldson talking about how Ronald Reagan had heard about some little girl suffering from a disease. So the president sent a check for an enormous amount of money to her parents. At the same time, he was savaging aid to millions of other boys and girls. If Reagan saw the suffering, it affected him. If he didn’t, well, he didn’t care. He could justify his actions as being for the greater good. And so on.

I wrote about a crystal clear example of this three years ago, Rob Portman Affected By Gay Bigotry. Before that, Portman was publicly in favor of employers being able to fire employees because they were gay. But then he found out that his son was gay. And suddenly it was, “Rob Portman: Defender of LGBT Rights!” Of course, that hasn’t turned Portman into a liberal; he just has a liberal carve-out because of his son. This is like the Cheneys’ carve-out because of their daughter.

Steve Scalise Can See Clearly Now!

So sure: Steve Scalise, Bill Cassidy, and John Fleming are doubtless just looking out for their jobs. But it is also likely true that on this one issue they are liberal. People they know have been hurt. It’s not like people from New Jersey and New York who might as well be Nazi zombies for all they care. But the people of Louisiana are, well, people! I’ll bet they’ve even met people who have lost their homes.

The point of all this is that conservatism — at least the radical form practiced here in the United States — is based on limited empathy. We know, for example, that people who live in low crime areas are much more punitive than those in high crime areas when asked what kind of punishment a wrong-doer should receive. I believe this is because people in high crime areas can contextualize crime. They don’t think that just because someone steals or even murders that they are animals — just out to harm with no redeeming qualities.

So it isn’t surprising that the most potent force behind American conservatism is racism. If all America were Sarah Palin’s vaunted “real America,” I’m sure conservatives would be like they are in other advanced economies: in favor of things like universal healthcare. But we don’t live in that world. So we have bigots like Steve Scalise to stop all those Others from being treated like humans. Now maybe if his son or daughter lived in New York during Hurricane Sandy, he would have been for relief in 2012. But instead, he’s had to wait until now.

There are two races I will talk about for Wisconsin. Wisconsin District 08 is a toss up. The other, well, isn’t; but it’s pretty to think so.

Wisconsin District 01 (WI-01)

In Wisconsin District 01, we find the current Speaker of House: the over-hyped “wonk” of Paul Ryan. He is running against a gentleman named Ryan Solen. He is a former Iraq war vet who served in the Army as a medic and is now a computer systems analyst for SC Johnson.

Solen has an incredibly difficult uphill battle if he is going to be the first person to unseat a Speaker since 1994. Generally, Speakers don’t lose their districts for the fairly obvious reason that they are gerrymandered for them. However that doesn’t mean a particularly large wave year wouldn’t sweep anyone — including a Speaker of the House — out of office.

Speaker Ryan has a large war chest and the seat is considered safely Republican. At the same time, Ryan only managed to get 55% in the last presidential year election. This cycle has Democrats and a lot of independents wanting to vote against Trump and they may vote just as much against Ryan to punish him for not being tougher on keeping Trump under control. Of all of the Congressional candidates, I think Speaker Ryan is the one most visibly connected with Trump and that is going to seriously hurt him.

The Numbers

People who are better at this than I am with the whole math thing have determined that if Trump gets less than 45% of the votes in the district, it is apparently time for the incumbent to be terrified.

8/8: So, if Trump’s <45% in Nov in a CD, that spells trouble for any GOP’er. Especially if they have failed to define their opponent

— Robert Blizzard (@robertblizzard) August 16, 2016

At the beginning of the month, Clinton was up 15 percentage point on Trump and she may very well still be that high or around ten points more than Trump since Wisconsin is considered a very safe Democratic state. But there aren’t any real polls for the individual districts at this point and unfortunately Ryan Solen isn’t a sparkly enough media figure to get a great deal of attention.

Solen is however doing most of the right things by defining his opponent by the person at the top of the ticket and demanding a debate. I have jokingly pointed out that there should be the slogan of #PickTheBetterRyan for this race, but like usual, no one listens to me.

It will likely stay safe for Paul Ryan but things could change.

Wisconsin District 08 (WI-08)

Wisconsin District 08 is getting a lot of the attention because it is a possible pick up for the Democrats. It is an open seat because the Republican incumbent is retiring at the end of this term. In 2008, it went for Obama, but switched to Romney in 2012. It also was a 2006 Democratic wave pick up that was lost in 2010. So Wisconsin District 08 could go either way.

It also has generated a lot of buzz because of the two candidates running. Tom Nelson is the Democrat and he is an Outagamie County executive who has been talked up for someone to possibly run for governor. In 2010 he ran against Tom Barrett for the Lt Governorship. He actually came really close for such a Republican wave year — losing by only by six points. So he knows how to campaign and do so effectively.

The Republican is Mike Gallagher. He won a surprise upset over an experienced politico in the primary. A former Marine, he was a foreign policy analyst for both the Senate’s Committee on Foreign Relations and Scott Walker’s failed presidential bid. He has been vigorously campaigning and has tried to distance himself from Trump. But he did admit he will be voting for the Republican standard-bearer.

A Tough District

Wisconsin District 08 is going to be a tough race. Since I don’t live in that area, I can’t speak to which one will be more effective at getting out the vote and winning. Tom Nelson is a guy who has incredibly deep ties to the district and he ran unopposed so he was able to spend all of his time working the general election voters. The Republican primary, on the other hand, was fairly brutal and left Gallagher with the moniker of DC Mike. Just the same, it also provided him with higher name recognition.

I do think since this is a blue wave year, it is probably going to go to Nelson.