Unexplained List: Felix

10) Trent Lott
9) Trent Easton
8) Trent Fernandez
7) Trent from Angel One
6) Trent (filmmaker)
5) Trent Dilfer
4) Trent (Birkenstocks?)
3) Trent Lane
2) Trent Reznor
1) Trent Maddock

Numbers Time: Election Results 2020

In 2016, I was quick to post something because there was a reason. The results were confusing, and I wanted to address a false narrative. This election was a lot more straight forward. One candidate clearly won, and there weren’t any serious third party candidates. Don’t let the numbers fool you, though. Looking forward to 2024, I want to look backwards to 2016. We have a President doing things I would consider unambiguously unpresidential, and he lost re-election big time. But it’s a lot more complicated than that.

State by state, the president actually made some serious gains. If you’re a Democrat, even this landslide election isn't great news. If you think Americans will fight against the rise of a dictator, this isn’t great news. If you’re like me, the moment they called Pennsylvania, a massive weight lifted from your shoulders. I don’t want to take that away from anyone, but the fight is far from over. Step one is admitting the problem. Here are a few things you may not know:

Blue States are Getting More Red

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Unexplained Numbers Time in Brief: Lists

 The following is just simply everything I love all rolled into one: presidents, numbers, and lists.

1) Eisenhower: 899
2) Clinton: 749
3) Wilson: 712
4) Obama: 697
5) HW Bush: 594
6) McKinley: 563
7) W Bush: 557

1) Reagan (1984) 525
2) FDR (1936) 523
3) Nixon (1972) 520
4) Reagan (1980) 489
5) LBJ (1964) 486
6) FDR (1932) 449
7) Eisenhower (1956) 457
8) FDR (1940) 449
9) Hoover (1928) 444
10) Eisenhower (1952) 442
11) Wilson (1912) 435
12) FDR (1944) 432
13) HW Bush (1988) 426
14) Harding (1920) 404
15) Coolidge (1924) 382
16) Clinton (1996) 379
17) Clinton (1992) 365
18) Obama (2008) 365
19) TR (1904) 336
20) Obama (2012) 332
21) Taft (1908) 321
22) Biden (2020) 306

Incumbent Losers in Brief

The year is 1789. A group of rich, white land owners are gathering together to enact the first of many flawed democratic traditions. Given two votes each, electors chose a guy born in Scotland, some Georgia farmer, and some guy named James Armstrong. More importantly, every single one of them used their other vote on George Washington. Eleven years later (1800), the same fucked up process came one Hamilton arm twist away from putting Aaron Burr in the White House, but more importantly, it was the first time an incumbent, John Adams, had lost re-election.

Adams’ Federalist Party had crumbled, leaving Jefferson’s proto-Republicans in charge through the most stable time in US Political history, ending when John Quincy Adams became president despite clearly losing the election. Andrew Jackson led a four year charge against him until, 28 years after his father’s defeat (1828), JQ became the second Adams and second incumbent to lose re-election.

Only 12 years later, after Jackson spent eight years destroying the economy, an economic panic tanked his successor’s re-election chances, and in 1840 Martin Van Buren lost to a rich drunk the people mistook for a poor drunk.
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Numbers Time: A Glimmer is Still Hope

Here we are again. Around this time four years ago, I decided to stop focusing on the insane partisan divide, even within my own party, and focus solely on math. We are now faced with two questions going into the back half of this way-too-long primary season:

1) Will Joe Biden earn 1,991 pledged delegates to win on the first ballot? (superdelegates are a completely different topic, and i won't be getting into them again)

2) Does Bernie Sanders have a chance to win?

In most years, the first question wouldn't even come up. When two candidates are winning delegates, all they need is more than half. This year, though, five other candidates won 168 delegates. That's a lot more than the normal handful, and definitely enough to result in neither the top two candidates breaking the barrier.

Currently standing at 1,180 delegates, Biden needs 811 delegates to cross the threshold. As of the time I'm writing this, 2,233 delegates have been apportioned, meaning 1,749 are still in play, and Biden needs only 46% of them. For reference, Biden has been averaging 46% of delegates per race, 50% if you exclude states where he won no delegates, 52% since Super Tuesday.

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2020 Super Tuesday in Brief

In 2016, the entire election was completely messed up by California being last. Super Tuesday used to mean something. It was an all or nothing day that put an end to a primary cycle that could go on way too long. There's an argument to be made that it cheapens all the other primaries, but big picture, that kind of chaos hurt the race. It makes a two-candidate race a bad thing. It makes the fractured time longer and the healing time shorter.

In 2020, it's a completely different story. With this many candidates, Super Tuesday could end the race in one day, or blow the thing wide open. For those not happy with either of the current front runners, Super Tuesday is a point of hope. There are 1,357 delegates up for grabs in one day. That means the less than 20 delegate lead the front runners currently hold could be wiped out completely. For all intents and purposes, the race begins or ends on March 3. Any candidate could win California, Texas, and North Carolina; lose all the others; and still win the day. Or the current front runners could continue to win big, and everyone else drops out.

California	415		Massachusetts	91		Alabama	52		Maine	24
Texas	228		Minnesota	75		Oklahoma	37		Vermont	16
North Carolina	110		Colorado	67		Arkansas	31		Dems. Abroad	13
Virginia	99		Tennessee	64		Utah	29		Am. Samoa	8

This means everyone is still in it, even Tulsi. It's going to get contentious for a while. Everyone believes their candidate is the best hope, and a lot of people believe the other candidates are total betrayals of Democratic values. The thing is, we can't all decide what Democratic values are. That's what it means to be Democrats. We don't get in lock step. We don't all just blindly agree. We are a coalition of ideas. As such, I refuse to call any of these candidates evil. I refuse to call any of them dangerous. I refuse to call any of them secret Republicans. That is just partisan nonsense. This is a pros and cons of every candidate, trying very hard to be neutral, but knowing I'm not going to be.

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Research, Shut the Fuck Up, Vote

According to Eli Attie, former Al Gore speech writer and The West Wing writer,

"...Democrats generally come from a more iconoclastic, less monolithic tradition. On one I hand, I find it frustrating, and it's why we tend to get less done. On the other hand, liberals believe in independent thought, which also means we believe in Thought. It's why we think climate change is real because scientists, you know, have done science."

I've been saying a far less articulate version of this since Obama's healthcare plans got watered down to the ACA. Republicans say "no" and all get in line. But Democrats are all about "yes," but once you say "yes," the question is, "Whose 'yes' are we going to prioritize?" It's why the left right now is fractured to the point of Civil War. We're still stuck in an ideological war over 2016, instead of moving on from it. I'm guilty of it too.

One side says going further left will energize voters. The other side says going too far left will alienate swing votes. Guess what? If you're reading this, you don't fucking know which is true. (unless you happen to have an advanced degree in Political Science, in which case, why the fuck are you reading this? Unless you're Graham. I know why Graham is reading this. Hi, Graham.)

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2020 Candidates In Brief

EDIT 1/14/20: Six months later, it's a completely different field, so I'm giving this list a makeover.

Not Just Old White Men

Elizabeth Warren, Senator-MA: The clear best choice for now. She has a plan for everything. She has ideas, but against this incumbent, will her low-key demeanor be a plus or a minus? Will people see her and her ideas and see a leader, or just a collection of great policies? EDIT 1/14/20: A part of me wants to believe that the smartest person in the room will win. But another part of me watches a candidate who isn't really impressing me as a politician. I worry about her facing off against the president.

Amy Klobuchar, Senator: Maybe if she wasn’t the only boring candidate, she’d be worth listening to. But she’s like the fifth most popular boring candidate. Good on her for tearing apart Brett Kavanaugh. We thank you for your service. EDIT 1/14/20: With most of the other women out, Klobuchar might be able to pull off the old Kamala gamble, to lay low and stay in the pack until it's time to make her move. If we're going to go with a middle of the road, mostly boring candidate, can it at least be a woman? More importantly, she might be the best option now to stand on the stage with the president and tear him down.

Pete Buttigieg, Mayor-IN: Make no mistake, the mayor of a city of 100,000 people is in no way qualified to run the country. But it’s 2019, and I said the same thing about a one-term Senator in 2008. Pete’s young, he’s exciting, he’s white.

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Losers in Brief: Losing Our Damn Minds

(part 13 of 12, bonus entry)

Since 1789, 117 men and 2 women have won at least one electoral vote. Of that group, 71 never became President or Vice President. Of them, 31 were a bunch of ambitious losers who tried for the most powerful office in the country and failed. The other 40, you’ll have to read to find out. These are their stories.

Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton (Former Secretary of State, Democrat-IL) Lost to Trump-2016

Clinton had been in the national public eye since her husband ran for president 24 years before. She spent eight years in the White House advising the president. She parlayed her visibility into a successful New York Senate run. After six years serving her state, championing Democratic causes and leading in the Senate after 9/11, the people of her state re-elected her, knowing she intended to run for president two years later. After losing the 2008 primary, she was appointed Secretary of State, where she earned international respect as our chief diplomat. To recap, that's 8 years in an elected office of the legislative branch and 12 years in appointed and unappointed positions in the executive branch. Combined with a JD from Yale, she is basically the walking embodiment of all three branches of the federal government.

So why’d she lose? People fucking HATE her. It's almost absurd, the level of hate, unless you happen to also hate her, in which case is seems perfectly rational. During the election, I tried to refer to her as an expert in foreign policy, and I was told her foreign policy experience doesn't count because Secretary of State isn't an elected office. WHAT!?!?!?!? Obama had Wall Street folks in his cabinet, but apparently getting paid to give speeches made her more corrupt than every other politician who are also getting paid to give speeches to Wall Street. Not to mention her opponent was literally a Wall Street guy, so why the fuck does it matter? It matters because people fucking HATE her.

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Numbers Time: I Made a Map!

Oh, this map. It's a thing of beauty. By the way, if you ever want me to write an insanely nerdy blog post, casually mention something to me over dinner, and apparently I will run with it. This time it was a conversation about apportionment of electoral votes. We Californians have a bit of a sore spot about the electoral college. Does Wyoming really deserve three whole electoral votes when their population is less than Milwaukee? Milwaukee doesn't get three of their own electors. Los Angeles County has more people than all but nine states, but we don't get 82 Senators.

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A Flawed Mathematical Model That Makes Sense

I think a lot of people believe they have a balanced view of the world. Our perceptions, however, are always based on our surroundings, not some immeasurable objective truth.

If all your friends read Breitbart, you really do think everyone thinks Obama was a racist and Maxine Waters is insane. You reference it the way we reference a Simpsons episode, without context, as though everyone is in on the joke. In the same way, if all your friends supported Bernie, you think Hillary was the wrong candidate, and she tanked the election, and you think her supporters need to "wake up." It's the same way, if all your friends are Hillary supporters, you think Bernie cut her legs out from under her in the primary, and weakened her going into the general, and his supporters need to shut the fuck up because their lack of support is why she lost. You think these things because you believe, based on your friends, that you are in the majority.

Recently, in the throws of a really (I mean really) petty pissing match with a total stranger on Facebook, I stumbled into a thought experiment I can't let go. It starts with this premise:

Sixty-four million people voted for our current president. Are they all stupid? Yes, dear reader (assuming you exist), this is going to be a fair and balanced approach to politics.

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Sigh, I Ranked the Presidents, Again

C-SPAN did a whole new list ranking the presidents and everyone is freaking out that Obama is #12. He's amazing! Wow! Obama is the best president ever! Keep in mind, guys, this list is the Make America Great Again of lists, with an insane bias for the middle of the 20th Century. Eisenhower is #5, higher than Jefferson. Sorry, no. Reagan is top 10? Nixon is higher than Garfield, who died having not be-smirched the office he swore to uphold nor ruined the presidency even to this day?

On the other hand, it's always good to update lists. I'm pretty compulsive. Updating lists keeps me from flipping out at old people who drive 40 in the fast lane (you have four other lanes, you fucking asshole). During the election, I talked to a lot of people about the symbolism of a president, and it gave me a new appreciation for the less concrete aspects of the job. On the flip side,  I have been thinking a lot about Jackson in the age of Trump. Maybe it's maturity that made me finally realize changing the entire political landscape and ushering in a new era in American government doesn't matter much when you've committed genocide.

I still hold to the spirit of the original list, that the actions of a president must be viewed through neutral political eyes. We don't have enough perspective to know the consequences of Reaganomics or Obamacare.

So I laid out my list and compared it to the C-SPAN list to see how different they were. Below is my old list, in comparison to the C-SPAN list. The numbers reflect my position in relation to theirs (Jefferson +3 means I rated him 3 slots higher. Zero means same, and there are some random zeroes in here)

The Old List
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Numbers Time: No Gloating

I've been darting between stages of grief in the last day or so. I wore all black and retreated into a hoodie while triple checking election returns and wondering how the electoral college could flip the result. So I've got Depression and Bargaining covered.

Today, I'm just pissed.

We all have to take responsibility for what happened Tuesday. All of us. Starting with me. I have been saying for months that she was going to lose. History was against her. Not because she's establishment or weak, but because Obama was too liberal, and the country tends not to like that much. I got called cynical and pessimistic for saying it wasn't a lock. But also, I've been a total asshole to a lot of people about it. That's on me. I don't know how to have this conversation. Armed with years of reading, both in school and for fun, I could see something no one else saw, and I wasn't very good at articulating it. When faced with people too rosey or people who thought it was perfectly acceptable to vote for Stein or Johnson, I got nasty and dismissive. As a result, I fed into everything they were already feeling about elitists looking down on them.

I think everyone needs to do the same. Everyone.

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Elections in Brief: Top 10 Third Party Candidates

I'm tired of hearing about people talking about voting for Jill Stein or Gary Johnson. Not because I disagree with them but because most of them have no idea what voting for a third party candidate means (if this isn't you, don't get offended, it's not about you then). I'd venture a guess none of them have ever heard of Eugene Debs, the most tenacious third party candidate in US History. Do they know anything about historical third parties or their role in American politics? Or why we don't have any small, strong parties today? Instead of mocking these ignoramuses (ignoramii?) , it's time to get educated.

I'm not just going to lecture here about the dangers of third party presidential candidates. Ralph Nader arguably turned the results of the 2000 election. As a result, people who want to vote for a third party candidate keep having to hear about the futility of that decision. Nader won only 2.74% of the vote and received no electoral votes, but he still tipped the election toward the candidate most ideologically opposed to himself, George W. Bush. Is this always the result? With the two parties controlling the entire political process, is there hope for third-party candidates? Here's a list of the top 10 most successful third-party candidates, by success in both electoral votes and percentage of popular vote. Nader doesn't even rank on this list, and he tipped an election.

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Elections in Brief: Non-Incumbent Elections & Hillary Clinton

The election of 2016 is unprecedented, and not just because Hillary Clinton is the first woman to be a major party's candidate. If she wins, she will have accomplished something no Democrat has done since 1856. Let me explain.

Since 1788, we have held 56 elections (2016 will be 57). Of those 56, 24 have not included an incumbent president as a candidate, like this go-round. Before 1828, the whole electoral system was very different. That all changed in 1828 when the Democrats won the White House for the first time, so for the purposes of this exercise, we will start there and just lob off the first ten elections. That's 46 elections, 20 of which did not include an incumbent.

Of those 20, Democrats have only won 7, and of those 7, only 2 follow a Democrat president.

Following a Democrat President  Year   President  Followed By   1836   Jackson  Van Buren  1848  Polk  Taylor  1856  Pierce  Buchanan  1860  Buchanan  Lincoln  1868  A. Johnson (VP)   Grant  1896  Cleveland  McKinley  1920  Wilson  Harding  1952  Truman  Eisenhower  1968  L. Johnson  Nixon  2000  B. Clinton  W. Bush

Following a Republican President  Year   President  Followed By   1844   Tyler (VP)  Polk  1852  Fillmore (VP)   Pierce  1876  Grant  Hayes  1880  Hayes  Garfield  1884  Arthur (VP)  Cleveland  1908  T. Roosevelt  Taft  1928  Coolidge  Hoover  1960  Eisenhower  Kennedy  1988  Reagan  H.W. Bush  2008  W. Bush  Obama

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Numbers Time: It's Over, For Real

This week, I got called out for the bias in my mathematical models. I won't deny it. As much as I tried to sell these ideas as objective mathematical fact, I've seen others taking up the FeelTheMath mantle and turned the numbers around to Sanders. The truth is everyone has a bias, and there is no such thing as objective reporting. As an amateur with no training, especially, I don't know how to write objectively, or even how to begin as such. My only goal is to wade into politics without getting into petty arguments over my conclusions. That's why I chose math. Only someone who cares enough to do this much math would argue with me.

In private, I've had several fruitful conversations, and as the primary winds to a close, I will try to fold some of those thoughts in here.

The Media Anointed Hillary From Day One

The media has played a huge role in this election. A good friend of mine has been pushing this narrative on me for months now, and while I have argued him tooth and nail, he has helped me notice a few things. The DNC stated they didn't want the media to report Superdelegates with primary results, since they're non-binding until the convention. So why do most media outlets report them?
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Numbers Time: White Knucklin'

You guys, how about Kentucky! That was utter insanity. I'm at work, working on a piece where every time I make a change, it takes 30 seconds to a minute to render before I can review the change. That meant starting at about 4:45 until I left work, I could, every few minutes, refresh the CNN election tracker. And oh my God!

At 4:50, Sanders was ahead by 800 votes with 50% reporting. 800 votes! By 5:00, it was 330 votes, with 61% reporting. 5:02, 120 votes! THEN at fucking 5:03, Clinton was ahead by only 90! At about 5:30, Clinton was ahead by about 2,000, then 4,000. At 5:56, Sanders was ahead by only 200 votes! Then 200 became 2,000 with about 81% reporting, and just a few minutes later CLINTON was up by 2,500, with 95% reporting.

Even right now, with the election called for Clinton, they are only separated by less than 2,000 votes! That's crazy. That's more people than caucused in Guam!

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Numbers Time: Just the Math, Ma'am

Bernie's big win in West Virginia still doesn't change much. As per usual, we'll get to that, but first let's talk about California. The basic concept of Bernie's chances to win come from the idea that despite big losses and middling wins, Bernie can win if he has a blow out in California. While yes, that is technically right, let's explore that.

In 2008, Hillary won California with 2.6 million votes, to Obama's 2.1 million votes. She won by about 500,000 votes. To put that into context, let's compare it to the largest margins of this election. Hillary won Texas by 440,000 votes and netted 72 delegates. She won Florida by 540,000 and netted 68 delegates. She won Georgia by 330,000 votes and netted 44 delegates. Unfortunately, there is no analogous data on Bernie's side. His two biggest wins were in caucus states, and the numbers don't translate. So we have to define, based on available data, a landslide that actually seems within the realm of possibility caps around 600,000. In California, a 600,000 vote lead is only 56.3% of the vote.

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Numbers Time: Hoosier Daddy?

Hopefully, this one will be quick, as my basic point is Indiana changes nothing. If this is the first of these you're reading, go back and read a few, as I'm not going to re-state my methodology. We're going to do a compare/contrast with before and after Indiana.

Last week, I wrote based on a guesstimate of Bernie being behind by 285. Over the course of the week, that number fluctuated a bit around 287, but even being off by a few delegates, my point still stands. Bernie only won 5 more delegates than Hillary in Indiana.

So...

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Numbers Time: Superdelegates

Bernie Sanders himself has decided to chime in on my series "Shit People Actually Believe." In a press conference, here covered by the New York Times, Bernie talks about the fairness of Superdelegates. He makes some good points. In states where he wins in a landslide, Superdelegates should take that into account when they decide whom to vote for. If the idea in our country is to give people the biggest voice possible, Superdelegates would be the antithesis to that. They only prove the point when they totally ignore state-wide election results.

Where Bernie loses me, however, is when he equates Superdelegates to some possibility of a contested convention. I've already covered how that's not going to happen, but this press conference confuses me even further. His whole point is Superdelegates should reflect the will of the people, so I don't understand how a contested convention would even make sense.

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