Muslims for Trump – And then there's Bernie, w/ a note from Nate Silver [flip the switch]

Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution, I noticed something funny over red lentils:

Earlier this week I was sitting in one of my favorite local Bangladeshi restaurants, enjoying the red lentils. For whatever reason, when the talk switched to politics, the Bangladeshis on the adjacent table switched to English. Five of them were debating heatedly, and with considerable sophistication, whether Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton was the better candidate. From their dress, language, and accents, there was strong evidence they all were Muslim and recent arrivals to this country. I didn’t come away with the feeling that a majority of them would vote for Trump, but not one of them seemed completely sold on Hillary Clinton as the superior choice. At that moment I wondered what was going on.

From Omar Kamel, in Aeon, "I’m Arab and Many of Us Are Glad That Trump Won" –

There’s a bit of fatality involved here to be sure, and a deep level of cynicism. Many of us feel that if America could not choose the best option, then it deserved the worst. Also, there’s a harsh desire for rough truth, rather than hypocritical garnish. In a sense, most Americans are Trump, but many of them like to think of themselves as closer in character to who Clinton (falsely) claims to be; liberal, democratic, leftist, humane, charitable, kind. There are some who faced the facts honestly, and admitted that, for all intents and purposes, Clinton was a criminal and a manipulator, who plays ball with the worst human rights offenders on the planet (Saudi Arabia and Israel, for example) and relies on their financial and political support, that she, when promising to continue Obama’s legacy, is in fact, promising to kill another 4,000 innocent Pakistanis by drone strikes in an illegal attempt to murder untried ‘terrorists’. That this is a woman for whom Madeline Albright is a role model, and Kissinger is an icon, a woman who started out Republican before swapping sides and acting as though she were a Democrat, most likely because she realized that, as a woman, she could go farther as a Democrat. This is a liar who claims to have been dodging sniper fire in a foreign land when she was being greeted with flowers. [...] We do not think Trump is any better, but we think a Trump victory would force the USA to admit to what it has become, and would allow other countries around the world to react appropriately now that the cover has been blown.

Sanders on Trump:

BURLINGTON, Vt., Nov. 9 – U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) issued the following statement Wednesday after Donald Trump was elected president of the United States:

“Donald Trump tapped into the anger of a declining middle class that is sick and tired of establishment economics, establishment politics and the establishment media. People are tired of working longer hours for lower wages, of seeing decent paying jobs go to China and other low-wage countries, of billionaires not paying any federal income taxes and of not being able to afford a college education for their kids - all while the very rich become much richer.

“To the degree that Mr. Trump is serious about pursuing policies that improve the lives of working families in this country, I and other progressives are prepared to work with him. To the degree that he pursues racist, sexist, xenophobic and anti-environment policies, we will vigorously oppose him.”

Nate Silver has an interesting article,What A Difference 2 Percentage Points Makes. He notes, after all, that the two parties spun very different narratives, but each claiming to have the voice of the people while their opponent was flat-out mistaken. And does in the context of arguing that interpreting the polls is a tricky business.

But to a first approximation, people are probably giving the polls a little bit too much blame. National polls will eventually miss the popular vote by about 2 percentage points, which is right in line with the historical average (and, actually, a bit better than national polls did in 2012). State polls had considerably more problems, underestimating Clinton’s complete collapse of support among white voters without college degrees but also underestimating her support in states that have large Hispanic populations, such as New Mexico.

Given how challenging it is to conduct polls nowadays, however, people shouldn’t have been expecting pinpoint accuracy. The question is how robust Clinton’s lead was to even a small polling error. Our finding, consistently, was that it was not very robust because of the challenges Clinton faced in the Electoral College, especially in the Midwest, and therefore our model gave a much better chance to Trump than other forecasts did.

He concludes with this observation:

But that’s not very important. What’s important is that Trump was elected president. Just remember that the same country that elected Donald J. Trump is the one that elected Barack Hussein Obama four years ago. In a winner-take-all system, 2 percentage points can make all the difference in the world.

Yes, the same population, but a very different configuration.

I'm one of those who thinks the SYSTEM needs shaking up. I liked Bernie for the win. Given the choice I had, however, I voted 'safely', shall we say. Still, I wonder if there isn't lemonade to be made of this garish orange-haired lemon. After all, the belief that the system needs shaking up generally implies that the believer gets to do the shaking up on their own terms. Perhaps that's an illusion, that there's no such thing as the 'ideal' shake-up. The people who did vote for Trump, after all, don't know what he's going to do. Trump himself doesn't know. Yes, the Supreme Court will go strongly conservative. Maybe he'll actually deep six the Department of Education. These are not good things. But he's said he wants to unite the country. Just what does that mean, concretely? He doesn't know, we don't know. Would Hillary have been a better uniter? We don't know.

Trump wants to be admired. OK. He's President. But when all the votes are tallied, he likely won't get the popular vote. That is, in popular terms, he's still a LOSER. Publically, of course, he'll stake the win. Privately, maybe the loser thing will bug him at 3AM. What'll he do to become a winner? Here's what Tyler Cowen thinks:

If there is any common theme to my predictions, it stems from Trump’s history in franchising his name and putting relatively little capital into many of his business deals. I think his natural instinct will be to look for some quick symbolic victories to satisfy supporters, and then pursue mass popularity with a lot of government benefits, debt and free-lunch thinking. I don’t think the Trump presidency will be recognizable as traditionally conservative or right-wing.

Potayto, potahto. 
Uniter, divider. 
Game on.