Looking Back, And Forward

This has been one weird year. I’m not even going to try writing any kind of comprehensive year-end roundup, mainly because I would hardly know where to begin. The election of Donald Trump as the 45^th President obviously sticks in everyone’s mind, both because it is still so fresh and because it is perhaps the event that will most directly affect us personally over the next few years. But there were others: Republicans holding the Senate, against all odds; Brexit; the reemergence of Anthony Weiner and the role he played in sinking the Clinton campaign…

And we don’t even have to get into politics to find the craziness of the year. The Cavs’ NBA victory in the spring; the Cubs’ first World Series title in over a century; the robberies, green pools, and smashed records that were the Rio Olympics…

And there were many notable deaths this year, seemingly even more than in recent years. Two that stood out for me, from two very different worlds, were Associate Justice Antonin Scalia and Carrie Fisher. RIP.

This is perhaps the first year that can also be used as an adjective. As in, “that’s so crazy” can now be written as simply, “that’s so 2016.”

This was also, obviously, a big year for The Conservatory. We launched in June as a political site without any name recognition or outside support—but fortunately at a time when demand for outside political analysis and opinion was near an all-time high. Now, six months later, the site is growing, slowly but surely. Thank you to everyone who takes just a few minutes out of their day to read an article or click on a link.

The new year promises to be a big one in terms of politics, and by extension a big one for The Conservatory. I hope to continue offering the same kind of quality articles and opinion pieces on political news of all sorts, as well as potentially increasing the number of culture-related columns. But the site will remain, first and foremost, a home for conservative thought and divergent opinions. I hope you’ll continue on that journey with us.

Happy New Year.

Changes Since 1992: California

Following Donald Trump’s victory, the dominant media narrative on the two major parties has quickly gone from “Republicans are nearing extinction” to “Democrats are no longer a national party,” and understandably so. Just about the only thing we heard in all election coverage of the past four years, from the end of the 2012 campaign until last month, was how Republicans were facing demographic ruin. The minority, Democratic coalition was ascendant. The GOP must embrace identity politics or be washed away by ever-growing numbers of liberal Hispanic voters.

Now, of course, the demographic focus is all on how the Democrats have abandoned the white working class. But just as those voters were wrongly ignored during the Obama years, it would be a mistake to think that just because Republicans won this election, changing demographics are no longer an issue for them and vital swing states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin will ultimately trend in their direction. Many states are trending red, as I’ve written about over the past month, but states are also trending blue, far more dramatically than Virginia.

Many people forget that California, the home of both Nancy Pelosi and Ronald Reagan, was once a Republican stronghold. And many of those who remember this fact, don’t realize that the state was still widely competitive for Republicans, even conservative ones, as recently as 2000. The transformation of California from conservative stronghold to battleground state to liberal bastion should be a warning that, just as Democrats ignored the white working class at their peril, Republicans ignore Hispanics and other minorities at theirs.

Although California has voted for the Democratic presidential nominee in every election since 1992, it is an interesting fact that before 2008, the nominee consistently won by less than thirteen points—and that margin was falling:

1992	1996	2000	2004	2008	2012	2016
Clinton +13.4	Clinton +12.9	Gore +11.6	Kerry +10.0	Obama +24.0	Obama +21.0	Clinton +28.8

These were all still convincing victories, to be sure. But the trend in favor of Republicans, post-Obama, is intriguing. And for comparison’s sake, Kerry’s ten-point margin in 2004 is almost identical to Bush’s concurrent 9.8% margin in… Arkansas.

Statewide races paint an even more interesting picture. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein have served as California’s two U.S. Senators since 1992 (Feinstein won in a special election that year, and won her first full term in 1994). Both have been would I would term fairly generic liberal Democrats, so one would expect them to regularly win California by fairly wide margins. And indeed, they have generally won reelection handily, but there have also been interesting exceptions.

In 1992, Feinstein won her Senate seat by more than sixteen points, but Boxer won by less than five points. Two years later, when Feinstein was up for election to her first full term, she won by less than two points. And in 1998, Boxer won by ten points.

That year marked the last time either faced a truly competitive reelection fight until 2010, when Boxer won another term (against Republican nominee Carly Fiorina) by just 9.6 points. This year, Boxer retired, and under California’s new “top-two”, all-party primary voting system, two Democrats advanced to the general election—Rep. Loretta Sanchez and state Attorney General Kamala Harris, who won by a twenty-five point margin.

But no electoral analysis of California would be complete without looking at attorney general and gubernatorial elections, and that’s where things really start getting interesting. Several times since 1992, California has seen competitive, high-profile races in which a Republican has either won or come close to winning—most recently in 2010, when Kamala Harris was elected Attorney General by just two-tenths of a point.

California Gubernatorial Elections, 1994-2014:
1994	1998	2002	2006	2010	2014
Wilson +14.9	Davis +19.6	Davis +5.0	Schwarzenegger +16.9	Brown +11.4	Brown +18.8

California Attorney General Elections, 1994-2014:
1994	1998	2002	2006	2010	2014
Lungren +14.4	Lockyer +9.1	Lockyer +11.0	Brown +18.2	Harris +0.2	Harris +13

Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger also won a special election for governor in 2003, by a margin of 17.1%.

This is where Democratic dominion of California begins to look much less permanent. Schwarzenegger’s candidacy was obviously a special case; there were many voters who would presumably have voted for a generic Democrat over a Republican, but the possibility of having the Terminator as governor was just too good to resist. But some of the other recent Democratic margins are shockingly low (looking at you, Kamala Harris), and every single Democratic victory over the last twenty years has significantly underperformed the margin we’ve come to expect from Democrat presidential candidates in the state. Obviously, a governor who enters office with a five-point margin of victory is just as powerful as one who enters in a landslide. But only one will be looking over his shoulder as reelection looms, and seek to reach out to independents and Republicans accordingly, at the risk of upsetting his own party.

Overall, however, and particularly at the presidential level, California is a warning that in politics, nothing is eternal—and today, Democrats in Arkansas and Republicans in California find themselves in almost identical positions. Neither state is permanently out of reach for the minority party, but they will have to fight for every inch of what they once took for granted. New coalitions will have to be formed, new outreach efforts aggressively pursued, and new strategies tested, because just as the current electoral map began to take shape in 1992, so to could the winner of the 2032 presidential election be decided by actions taken by the California Republican Party in 2017.

Movie Review: Rogue One

Spoilers ahead

Yesterday I was finally able to see the latest Star Wars movie, Rogue One. I’ll go into more detail below, but it would be dishonest to start with anything other than this advice: If you haven’t seen it, go now. You’re missing out.

The movie is the first standalone in the Star Wars universe, not connected with the core, episodic storyline or the Skywalker story, and there are a number of differences that make it feel unlike any other movie in the franchise. There is no opening crawl. The music was not composed by John Williams, and therefore was oddly forgettable for a franchise that has some of the most iconic music in cinema history. And, most importantly, this was the first movie in which a Skywalker was not among the main characters (though more than one make appearances over the course of the movie).

The movie is, in a sense, one about the forgotten men and women of the Star Wars universe, ironic coming so close coming after an election season that was all about the “forgotten man” in the end. The Jedi and the Force are mentioned often, but this movie is about the soldiers, the ordinary people who struggle against the Empire.

It is also darker and more gritty than the average Star Wars movie, and more adult oriented (though not a gore-fest by any means). Death is constant, even more than in regular Star Wars movies—if you’ve seen it already, you know what I mean. And even seemingly clear-cut sides—the good Rebels versus the evil Empire—become less fairy-tale, more real life. A good example comes early in the movie. In the scene which first introduces one of the main Rebel characters, we see him shoot a Rebel informant in the back, in order to allow the main character to more easily escape pursuing stormtroopers. With seemingly no remorse. The action serves to make the character’s later evolution more compelling, but again, this is supposed to be one of the good guys.

As far as the plot, I largely agreed with many of the other reviews around the Internet. The movie starts out slowly but begins to hit its stride about midway through, and the last twenty minutes…wow. There’s plenty for casual viewers and Star Wars fans alike to enjoy, and for all of the cameos sprinkled throughout the film, it rarely feels forced. This is the bridge between the prequels and the original trilogy that has been desperately needed.

Overall, the tone and theme are welcome additions to a universe that might often seem narrow and familiar, making it richer and more layered. If Disney is going to stick to their plan of making one Star Wars movie a year, it will have to try different things. And if Rogue One—and The Force Awakens before it—are signs of things to come, then the future of Star Wars has never looked brighter.

Trump's Cabinet: The Christmas Gift That Keeps On Giving

Trump’s Cabinet is almost complete, with only the nominations for Secretaries of Agriculture and Veteran’s Affairs, as of this writing, left to announce. And what a Cabinet it’s shaping up to be.

My original intention was to write something every time Trump announced a new Cabinet nomination, discussing the good and the bad, but this quickly became unrealistic for one primary reason—there are just so many good choices that people would quickly get tired of me repeating lines about how great they all were. And I would get tired of repeating them. But now, near the end of the process, seems an opportune time to say: This is one great Cabinet.

Jeff Sessions at the Justice Department. Rick Perry at Energy. Mike Pompeo at the CIA. Nikki Haley at the U.N., and Betsy DeVos at Education. Mick Mulvaney as OMB head. This is the sort of Cabinet I would have expected from a Cruz or Rubio administration, but I never dared hope for even one of these picks from Donald Trump, the man who says Planned Parenthood does “wonderful things” and that “[he] alone can fix” America’s problems. (Well, Jeff Sessions was likely to get his choice of top jobs after his hearty support in the primary. But certainly not Perry, he who said Trump was a “cancer on conservatism”, or Haley, who implicitly criticized Trump in her State of the Union response and endorsed two of his primary opponents.)

To be sure, most of these appointments are going to be a double-edged sword for conservatives. With the exception of DeVos and Perry, many of Trump’s appointees will be leaving current elected offices, so while the Justice Department gains a leader dedicated to proper enforcement of the law, the Senate will lose a powerful voice for oversight and against the expansion of government. The U.S. will gain a strong, unapologetic voice on the world stage, but South Carolina will lose a talented, reforming governor. And the OMB will gain a dedicated fiscal hawk, but the U.S. House will lose one of the fiercest defenders of fiscal sanity and crusaders against wasteful spending. Not every new vacancy will be filled by someone as dedicated to conservative, constitutional ideals as their predecessor.

And not every Trump pick is equally good. Wilbur Ross as Commerce Secretary is troubling, and while Rex Tillerson may be a good man at heart, he should be opposed to lead the State Department. I haven’t failed to notice that the announcements of many of Trump’s worse picks have been paired with, or closely followed by, better ones (Tillerson for State and Perry for Energy were announced at about the same time, for example). It remains to be seen which members of the Cabinet Trump will value and listen to the most.

But overall, the incoming Cabinet will be much stronger in constitutional principle than anything I dared dream during the campaign, or on November 8^th. Well done, Mr. President-elect. And a very Merry Christmas to the Constitution.

Merry Christmas

Sunday marks another year since the birth of Jesus Christ. It is a remarkable story, one that transcends political affiliation and race and national origin and, yes, religion. Even the most avowed atheist must admit, if he’s being honest, that it is remarkable how the birth and life of one man, a carpenter’s son in an oppressed, far-flung corner of the Roman Empire, could so dramatically shape the course of human history.

Like Thanksgiving, Easter, and the Fourth of July, Sunday is a day to spend with friends and family. To come together, give thanks for the year that was, and look forward to the blessings that the new year will bring. And to forgive and heal after a campaign season that drove rifts into even the most apolitical of families.

But above all, don’t forget why we celebrate Christmas, why it is a time for gift-giving and hot chocolate and fat elves in red suits. Because more than two thousand years ago, in the cold and loneliness of the outskirts of Bethlehem, three magi came to honor the newborn King, with gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

It may be a cliché, but that doesn’t make it any less true: Don’t forget the reason for the season.

Come 2019, Republicans Could Be Looking at a Filibuster-Proof Majority

After the way my 2016 predictions went, I’m in no hurry to begin making predictions about 2018. But that being said, Senate Republicans could be looking at a majority of upwards of sixty seats—a number never-before achieved by the GOP in the chamber, rarely achieved by the Democrats, and one which would allow Republican bills and nominees alike to pass easily against unified Democratic opposition.

Five Democrats will be up for reelection in states Donald Trump won by double digits. Another is in a state (Ohio) Trump won by a solid single-digit margin. And another seven are in states Trump either won narrowly (such as Florida and Pennsylvania) or lost narrowly (Virginia).

By comparison, only two Republican senators are in states even remotely competitive—Dean Heller in Nevada and Jeff Flake in Arizona. Both, as of right now, are reasonably popular in their states. Trump won Arizona narrowly, and lost Nevada by only a couple of points.

None of this is to say that Republicans will definitely gain the eight seats necessary to have a filibuster-proof majority when the 116^th Congress convenes. Republicans typically do better in midterm elections, but the incumbent President’s party also usually suffers—as we saw in 2010 and 2014. It is also far to know which Senators, from both parties, are running for reelection. Defending an open seat is usually much harder than defending an incumbent with high name recognition and legislative accomplishments. And, circumstances could change dramatically over the next two years, making Republican seats in Tennessee, Texas, or Utah unexpectedly come into play. In 2012, Republicans were certain of picking up seats in Missouri and North Dakota, and both stayed blue in the end.

But, given what we know now, GOP gains of some sort are likely, with two or three seats being the conservative estimate. That much I feel confident predicting (though not which two or three seats will flip.) And if the next two years are successful, and Trump voters feel validated, then the Senate could become a bastion of one-party rule seen only rarely in its history.

Whether that’s a good thing, regardless of the party in charge, is a discussion for another day.

The Final Results of the 2016 Presidential Election Are In

The results are in: Donald Trump has officially been elected as the 45^th President of the United States.

On Election Day, according to state laws governing the awarding of electoral votes based on the results of the popular vote, Trump won 306 votes, and Hillary Clinton won 232. The margin was virtually unchanged yesterday; Trump took 304, and Clinton, 227. Two pledged Trump electors from Texas went rogue, one voting for John Kasich and the other for Ron Paul. (So the Libertarian Party will still end up with an electoral vote, despite Gary Johnson's failure to make a splash.) Meanwhile, five Clinton electors across the country voted for several other people, including Bernie Sanders, Colin Powell, and Faith Spotted Eagle (an American Indian activist involved in the Dakota Access pipeline fight).

Amusingly, for all the talk of Republican electors voting for someone other than Trump, Clinton actually lost more votes to faithless electors. And it could have been even worse for her—another three pledged Clinton electors in Minnesota, Maine, and Colorado attempted to vote for someone else (Sanders in Maine and Minnesota, and Kasich in Colorado) but had their votes invalidated due to state laws binding electors to the results of the statewide popular vote.

Some unexpected names also received electoral votes for Vice President: Carly Fiorina, Susan Collins, Maria Cantwell, and Winona LaDuke (the Green Party’s 2000 VP nominee).

Seven rogue electors may be well short of the thirty-seven that would have been needed to actually change the results of the election, but it’s still hard to count the ways in which this was historic:

·         Most number of faithless electors in a single election, beating the previous record of six, set in 1808.

·         Most people to receive at least one electoral vote for president in a single election.

·         First time the Green Party has received an electoral vote for President or Vice President (Winona LaDuke).

·         First time faithless electors voted for a candidate from the other major party (the three Democrats in Washington State who voted for Colin Powell).

·         And Faith Spotted Eagle now has a place in history, going from completely unknown activist to one of only two women (along with Hillary Clinton) to have won Electoral College votes for President.

Odd footnotes to a crazy year.

And presumably, now that Trump has officially been elected President, liberals will forget their brief infatuation with the power of the Electoral College and “Hamilton electors” and go back to decrying it as a relic of slavery.

Today, The 45th President Will Be Elected

Today, members of the Electoral College will gather in state capitals across the country, cast their ballots for President and Vice-President, and officially bring the 2016 presidential election to a close. Until today, Donald Trump has been only the effective President-elect, having clinched the requisite number of states and pledged electoral votes. After today, presumably, he will become the President-elect as recognized under the Constitution, not just in effect but in legal, constitutional fact.

There have been some well-publicized, though ultimately fruitless, attempts to declare various state laws binding electors to the results of the vote unconstitutional. Many of the attempts—at least publicly—have been made by Democratic electors, rather than the Republican electors pledged to Trump who would have to switch their allegiance for the election to be thrown to the House of Representatives. (Of course, we have no way of knowing what private discussions may have gone on between those Republican electors.)

Comparing this attempt to “free the electors”, to the summertime movement to “free the delegates” at the RNC to vote their conscience, is a natural contrast to make. But the circumstances are much different. Then, Trump was a candidate, the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party who had a history of liberal policy positions, troublesome statements about a multitude of groups, and every expectation of losing to Hillary Clinton come November. Conservatives and Republicans alike had every reason to oppose his official nomination.

Now, that history remains the same, but he has been elected President by more than 60 million people, and deserves both a chance to prove himself and some measure of respect. In addition, state laws and party rules governing the binding of political party delegates to certain candidates were and are legally suspect. But the Constitution, which does not address party politics, clearly says that states may award electoral votes as they see fit, including by binding electors to the results of the statewide vote.

And, even assuming that thirty-seven electors pledged to Trump switch their votes today—unlikely, to say the least—all this would achieve would be to force the House to make the final decision, in early January. Republicans hold a majority of state delegations, and many have been comforted by Trump’s recent Cabinet picks. One way or another, Donald Trump will be the 45^th President.

These efforts add yet more drama to the election season many thought was over, and turn what is normally a boring, formal affair into a drama worthy of House of Cards. A fitting way to close out the year.

Policy Spotlight: Space Exploration

When you ask voters of all parties and ideologies for a list of the policy areas most important to them, chances are that “space exploration” won’t make the cut. National security, the economy, jobs—all common answers. But even climate change, which regularly gets scorn for how few people in the general population rate it as a top concern, at least gets listed in surveys. To my knowledge, space policy isn’t so lucky; respondents naming that option will likely have their answer lumped into the category of “other”.

But people should care. Space exploration, and the various complications involved, may not be immediate concerns like the unemployment rate or GDP growth, but they are issues looming on the horizon. Meteors of the kind that wiped out the dinosaurs are an ever-present danger, and could easily wipe out humanity. The Yellowstone supervolcano, too, could erupt at any time, and the explosion, though it might not wipe out all human life on the planet, would put a major damper on things, especially here in North America. Statistically, every year humanity spends concentrated on a single planet, the risk of some kind of species-ending event increases exponentially.

So space exploration is far more than simply a luxury for scientists and those who want to build their vacation home on Mars. Our survival may someday depend on it. And while I wouldn’t prioritize funding for space elevators over modernizing the aging Navy fleet, I would consider both to be in the national interest and of high priority (generally speaking).

Which brings us to the appropriate level of government involvement in space exploration. The natural conservative response to space policy should be obvious: Little if any direct government involvement or subsidies, with innovations and explorations led by private enterprises, and the success or failure of those attempts determined by the free market. And that strategy is, overall, a good one. But there is a role for the federal government to play, especially at this early stage.

The current status of the space program exhibits the importance of both the privatization of some key functions of space travel, as well as some government involvement, at least in a limited capacity. SpaceX is the most famous company currently involved in the private space exploration business, and its successes and failures offer opportunities for both innovation and the rise of alternative companies, should SpaceX continue to struggle with explosions and malfunctions of its rockets on the launchpad.

But those same difficulties also prove that, for now, the government has an active role to play—NASA, since the retirement of the Space Shuttle program and the cancellation of its successor program Constellation, has had to rely entirely on Russia to transport astronauts, as well as for most missions to resupply the space station. This, obviously, is both risky and embarrassing for the nation that was the first to land a man on the moon.

Space exploration and development is such a gigantic undertaking that government missions, as well as grants to private companies, are almost essential to begin the process if we are ever to establish any sort of colony on the Moon or Mars, let alone leave the Solar System. Such projects are far beyond what even the largest space-related companies could achieve by themselves.

The level of government support could, indeed should, be gradually scaled back as technologies and the ability of private entities to venture into space improve (as well as profitability—the simple fact is that such research & development would only cost many companies money, and therefore most have little incentive to proceed). And by refocusing NASA’s mission on space exploration and study specifically, and away from liberal objects of interest such as climate change, such an investment need not be as dramatic and costly as it sounds.

Space exploration is in both the national strategic interest (location of resources) and in the interest of humanity as a whole. But the current U.S. space policy has stagnated and degraded to the point where we can no longer even send an astronaut into Earth orbit without help from the Russians. Something has to change, and fast.

Changes Since 1992: Virginia

So far, I’ve looked at changes in voter trends over time in three states, Arkansas, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. All three have, over the last twenty years, moved toward Republicans to some degree—Arkansas and West Virginia dramatically so, and Wisconsin at a much slower rate, voting Republican this year for the first time in a presidential election since 1984. But analyses of these three states don’t paint an accurate picture of the nation as a whole, because just as the white working class votes increasingly Republican, so too proceeds the solidification of minority voters behind the Democratic Party.

This opposite phenomenon, coupled with the Democrats’ increased reliance on urban professionals can be seen in Virginia, which has now broken with the rest of the South in voting Democrat in the last three presidential elections. Virginia was actually, decades ago, a trendsetter in voting Republican when much of the South was still avowedly true. Now, the opposite is occurring.

This shift began quite recently; though the Democratic ticket performed quite well in 1992 and 1996, its status as an all-Southern ticket (Clinton from Arkansas, and Gore from Tennessee) undoubtedly helped matters. And still, both George H. W. Bush and Bob Dole managed to carry the state even while losing convincingly across the country.

1992	1996	2000	2004	2008	2012	2016
Bush +4.4	Dole +1.9	Bush +8.1	Bush +8.2	Obama +6.3	Obama +3.0	Clinton +4.9

Obama’s margins in 2008 and 2012 closely mirrored his national margin of victory. But Hillary Clinton won the state by five points this year, even as she lost the Electoral College nationally and won the national popular vote by a little under two points.

Obviously, there is a huge caveat to the 2016 results—Clinton’s selection of Virginia Senator, and former Governor, Tim Kaine as her running mate. Nearly all national elections work this way—the home state results of the presidential and vice-presidential nominees can be skewed for an election cycle, and then return to a regular pattern the following cycle when home-state advantages disappear. But it should also be noted that Clinton was leading Trump in Virginia state polls by a substantial margin even before the announcement of her VP pick, and Obama also won the last two elections in the state by solid margins, despite having no similar advantage.

Meanwhile, election results from other state races are somewhat of a mixed bag. Control of the Congressional delegation has seesawed back and forth since 1992, with Republicans currently holding a 7-4 majority. Democrats control both U.S. Senate seats, although Mark Warner barely retained his seat in 2014 by a much closer than expected 0.8%. Gubernatorial results have also varied wildly, from  back-to-back, double-digit Republican wins in the 1990’s, to five-point Democratic victories during the Bush years, to Bob McDonnell’s 17-point margin, his subsequent fall following an ethics investigation, and Democrat Terry McAuliffe’s 2013 win. And in the state legislature, the state Senate is almost evenly split, though Republicans have a commanding advantage in the House of Representatives.

Overall, Virginia, like Wisconsin, is narrowly balanced. Neither party can yet afford to take the state for granted on any level. But while Wisconsin might now be considered a red-leaning purple state (to strain the political color metaphors), Virginia could now be classified as a blue-leaning purple state. A state where Republicans can still excel, especially at the state level, but Democrats, even liberals, are slowly in ascendance. Where the white working class of the Appalachians and center-state area is still a political force to be reckoned with, but are slowly being outnumbered by the urban and liberal suburban voters of Richmond and the D.C. outskirts. And Virginia Republicans will be forced to reckon with that fact even more in future elections, if the state is to remain competitive in the long run.

Secretary of State: Trump Skips Two Experienced Diplomats, Picks Russia-Loving CEO

Trump has made some excellent choices for his Cabinet so far. Nikki Haley for U.N. Ambassador? Awesome. Betsy DeVos for Education Secretary? Superb. James Mattis for Defense Secretary? Stellar. And just this week, word came that he will choose former Texas governor Rick Perry as Energy Secretary, another great choice to flesh out an already qualified and conservative circle of advisers.

And then, just as we’re all becoming slightly giddy at just how well the new Cabinet is shaping up, Trump goes and picks ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson to lead the State Department.

In short, Tillerson is a bad choice and should be denied Senate confirmation. Bad for conservatives, who were hoping for a full-spectrum constitutional conservative and instead get a man who supports a carbon tax and whose company has given money to Planned Parenthood. And bad for America, who needs someone who will boldly stand for American interests and human rights around the world, and will instead be offered someone who was awarded the Russian Order of Friendship and opposes Western sanctions over the invasion of Crimea.

And by getting the nomination, Tillerson beat out both Mitt Romney and John Bolton, two men who would have been trusted to deal forcefully with both Russia and other American adversaries around the world.

Several Republican senators have already hinted that they will oppose Tillerson during Senate confirmation proceedings. The Left, too, will almost certainly oppose him based on his resume as a “Big Oil CEO”, but this is one of the rare instances where the goals of Right and Left are the same, despite their differing reasons.

Rex Tillerson should get a fair hearing in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, once the nomination is made official, as should all presidential nominees. But in the end, he should never be allowed inside the State Department in any official capacity.

There Are Many Ways to Reform the Electoral College Without Repealing It

So much ink, both digital and otherwise, has been spilled since the election debating the merits of the Electoral College that I won’t bother rehashing old arguments here, beyond simply stating that I believe the institution is an ingenious way of furthering the goals of federalism, separation of powers, and the equality of all people and states that are at the very heart of the Constitution. But what I do want to do is briefly make the case that, for all the liberals’ talk of repealing the Electoral College, there are a number of ways to reform the system without violating either the Constitution itself or the Framers’ original intent.

It’s first worth looking at the relevant sections of the Constitution that establish the Electoral College. Article II, Section 1, Clause 2:

“Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a  Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.” (Emphasis added.)

And Article II, Section 1, Clause 4:

“The Congress may determine the Time of chusing [sic] the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States.”

The key is that every single state has the discretion, under the Constitution, to award electoral votes in whatever way that state sees fit. The complaints from liberals today (other than whining that the system is racist and Hillary won the popular vote) seems to be that in nearly all of the major swing states, Trump won by only a point or less, and yet won all of the electoral votes from those states. For instance, Trump won Pennsylvania by just over one percentage point—and yet won all twenty of the state’s votes in the Electoral College.

But there’s no requirement that states use a winner-take-all system. Nebraska and Maine are currently the only two states that don’t, awarding two votes to the statewide winner, and an additional vote to the winner of each of their Congressional districts (Nebraska split its votes in 2008, giving one vote from the Second District to Barack Obama, and Maine similarly gave one vote to Donald Trump this year). Republicans proposed that very system for Pennsylvania several years ago, back when the state was still considered an integral part of the “Blue Wall”, but Democrats quickly shot it down.

Or if that system isn’t to liberals liking, they could try a different kind of proportional system, where the number of electors a candidate wins in a given state directly relates to the percentage of the vote they receive in that state. This is a favored method of awarding delegates in both parties’ presidential primaries—for example, in the Iowa Republican caucuses, Ted Cruz won narrowly and received eight delegates. Donald Trump and Marco Rubio were close behind, and each earned seven delegates, and so on down to Jeb Bush’s one delegate. What’s to stop the adoption of a similar system for the general election?

The only real limits to the methods of reforming the Electoral College are the Constitution (states can’t restrict voting to just men or just women) and imagination. And there are a multitude of potential changes that could be made that I haven’t discussed here and are just waiting for their time to shine (although I imagine that the party currently pushing for a national popular vote would not embrace the notion of state legislatures selecting electors without any public vote at all, although that too is both allowed under the Constitution and has historical precedent).

I personally am a fan of the current winner-take-all system. As I said, it strengthens federalism, makes campaigning logistically easier, and gives focus to more local issues that otherwise wouldn’t receive a great deal of attention (think ethanol in Iowa). But states are the laboratories of democracy. Be creative! There are plenty of options to reform the Electoral College without blowing up the whole Constitution.

Was 2016 A Realigning Election?

First, a primer: A realigning election, generally speaking, is one in which the country as a whole seems to dramatically shift in its political leanings. The media often talks about wave elections, where one party or another does significantly well across the board in certain years—as Democrats did in 2008, and Republicans did in 2010 and 2014. A realigning election is more significant than even that—an election that rewrites the electoral map, sees party coalitions change, and ushers in a new era of politics as it is generally understood. The 1860 election, which saw the election of Abraham Lincoln, the rise of the Republican Party, and ultimately the beginning of the Civil War, is generally considered to be such an election. The election of 1932, which heralded FDR’s election as President and the rebirth of the Democrats as the major liberal party in America, is another.

Sean Trende, a skeptic of the realignment theory, laid out what are generally considered to be the major hallmarks of realigning or critical elections, in his 2012 book The Lost Majority: “sharp and durable” voter changes; the emergence of new issues; spiking voter turnout; turmoil at conventions; and a strong third-party showing. The 2016 election indisputably had most, if not all, of these factors:

·         “Sharp and durable” voter changes: The relationship between working-class white voters and the Democratic Party has been increasingly strained for years, if not decades, but this year the tensions finally broke into the open, flipping three states (Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan) that had been reliably blue at the presidential level since the 1980’s. Working-class whites are to Democrats now what Hispanics were to Republicans following the 2012 election. The changes in party coalitions this year, and the resultant changes in the electoral map, were sharp; only time will tell if they become durable.

·         Emergence of new issues: In 2016, trade became an important campaign issue for the first time since at least the 1990’s. Immigration was even more important, becoming perhaps the biggest defining issue in a campaign dominated by personal attacks. The traditional major issues of national campaigns, national security and the economy, meanwhile played no major, defining role for the first time in years.

·         Spiking voter turnout: This factor is less impressive. Turnout was down slightly from 2012 (from 54.9% to 54.6% of eligible voters), and overall was the lowest since 2000, presumably because of the nasty and seemingly never-ending campaign.

·         Turmoil at conventions: Um, yes. Trende argues that since the rise of the national primary process, and the concurrent decline in importance of the conventions themselves, extended primary battles are the best modern way to measure this factor. Either way, 2016 had it all: convention drama and brutal primary fights on both the Republican and Democratic sides.

·         Strong third-party showing: There was no single groundbreaking third-party candidacy, as in the mold of Ross Perot or George Wallace, but the third-party vote was far from dormant, as I discussed here. One third-party candidate got 20% of the vote in Utah, and had a very realistic chance at winning the state outright. Two others combined for almost six million votes between them, although neither came close to winning almost a single state. Polling showed that had a strong independent or third-party candidacy emerged, that person would have been a legitimate threat to win, no small feat in modern American politics. I would argue that these respectable showings from several less-than stellar third-party presidential candidates underline what could have been, if a single, stronger candidate had decided to take the plunge, and the failure of third parties to make more of an impact hinges more on the personal decisions of a very select group of people than on the political climate of the country as a whole.

By my estimate, the 2016 elections satisfy at least three, and possibly four, of the five main criteria for determining pivotal realigning elections. The question then becomes whether one believes in the overarching realignment theory, a subject much too broad for this post. But I find many of the arguments in favor of it compelling, if some proponents of the theory to go somewhat overboard in their attempts to ram every national election into a narrow framework of cycles and “deviating elections”. And if one accepts the overall theory, then the evidence seems clear that we have just witnessed such a realigning election.