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Severe Outflow by R. Edwards

Gasoline Prices: A Layered Issue

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Oil prices: it’s not just Ukraine, nor “big bad oil companies”.  Not is it even mere supply and demand.  I’ve seen a lot of people on social media (including friends) fall for some fantastic fallacies and pop-appeal “malarkey” offered by politicians and celebrities, that are wildly ignorant of economic fundamentals as applied to the crude-oil markets.

First and foremost, oil is a predictive market — strongly futures-influenced.  You can call it “speculative” if you want, but you’d be misrepresenting things; “speculation” implies guessing without basis, and therefore is as worthless a term as calling weather forecasts “speculation”.  Both can be wrong, and often are to varying extents, but are still well-educated predictions by experts in their fields, and are near the mark more often than way off it. Unexpected spikes and falls happen due to unexpected and/or severe events, whether geopolitical (invasions, etc.), mechanical (major-refinery failure) or natural (tsunami, northern Gulf hurricane, protracted deep freeze or heat wave).

Because oil prices are rooted significantly in futures, current and recent Federal government policy (yes, that includes executive orders as well as things Congress threatens to do, much less actually passes) absolutely influences prices. Yes, canceling pipelines and imposing moratoria on new leases and drilling don’t change the current supply. Each does, however, threaten to curtail future supply. Again, prices are based on futures. Then when a major producer (USA) isn’t producing to its capacity, that dwindles current supply and prices, as well as raises futures. An obvious solution, purely economically, is: produce more!

Overlay these factors, along with other global supply threats like a war involving a huge and boycotted oil producer (Russia), and we get what we see.  Throw in ambient price inflation due to unrestrained money printing (watch this this slightly over 1-hour lecture by Milton Friedman for a full explanation), and the resultant devaluing of the money relative to goods and services, and that adds to the problem.  In turn, rising fuel costs add to inflation, and it becomes a sort of slow-motion death spiral. Hence, the Fed steps in and raises interest rates, which historically curtails inflation over the span of months to years, but harms the Federal budget through higher interest payments on our incomprehensibly enormous national debt.

Oil companies aren’t innocent here, but not for the reasons you may think. All companies have the right to make a profit; otherwise they go bankrupt and fail shareholders (including many Americans’ 401Ks and pension plans). Blaming profiteering or price gouging by oil companies is populist bullshit!  Utter economic quackery, and most of the politicians who say this know it…they’re just pandering for votes from the mass ignoranti.  Nothing more.

Oil companies can profit off low prices at high volume, just as off high prices at lower volume.  Instead, where they went wrong was in their experts’ inability to foretell supply (and supply-chain) problems and adjust accordingly beforehand, including through greater refining and production capacity.  Part of that is their fault through lack of foresight and poor planning. Penny-wise, pound-foolish!  But a lot of it is not.

What is one reason refining and production are slow to move? Wait for it…governmental regulation (a.k.a. interference). Every unfunded governmental mandate adds to the cost of doing business, no matter your business. It just does. This is fact. You experience this when you spend lots of time (time is money!) doing your taxes, which is mandated, or buying software to help you. Business owners see this in many more ways.

Magnify that by hundreds of thousands of regulations — federal, state, and local — baked into the cost of extracting and producing petroleum-based products of all kinds, including gasoline. Compliance corporately is a huge drag on cost, additively.  Indirect attacks, such as regulating banks that lend to the oil industry, further add cost.  [Look up “Biden Administration Restricts Leasing for Overseas Fossil Fuel“, which of course the Sierra Club loves.  I presume none of them ever have been poor and needed to drive a petroleum-powered vehicle to work.].

It’s fair to argue what regulations are needed and what aren’t, but the fact is, they *add cost* regardless.  Take a look just at biofuel mandates, for example.  Threats of still more regulation, prohibitions, and actual executive orders, drive up futures.  Futures heavily move current prices.  Therefore, the oft-seen mantra, “Presidents don’t influence prices” is garbage.  They absolutely, positively do.  While the Biden “I did that!” sticker you see on gas pumps isn’t completely true, it has some merit.

It’s irrational how people who support one party’s candidate or the other subscribe wholesale to whatever that candidate spouts off.  Whither independent thinking?  Those who claim Biden policies have nothing to do with inflation as a whole, or of fuel in particular, have turned off a key part of their brains.  Same with those who ignored Trump’s straight-up factual lies on other topics.  Yet these men were both pretty honest about what they were going to do, and they did it.

Biden fulfilled promises that have direct and short-fused influence on petroleum inflation.  If you like that, it shows either your ignorance of basic ECON 101 concepts, or reveals a pampered, soft, privileged status of not being poor enough, and being hurt enough, by inflation to change your mind.  I was in a poor household, in the ’70s to early ’80s oil crises, and can testify the effects are real even to renters, on prices of basic needed goods, electricity, and so forth, as well as rent itself.

Stop falling for and repeating political lies because you voted for the liar — of either party.  It hurts your own credibility in argument.  To wit, the current administration’s turn from “Putin’s fault” to “price-gouging oil companies”, for the very same event, has been remarkable.  Both excuses are way, way overplayed, with only a partial, lower-order speck of truth in the case of Putin.  It’s just a distraction and diversion to take your attention from the tangible effects on futures (thus on current prices) of this administration’s executive orders and this Congress’ statements and bills directed at future availability.

Finally you can say we should get off oil.  Fine.  Over decades, I agree.  I think we should too, and in America, go all in on lowest-carbon, highest-efficiency, smallest-imprint, least-waste-volume  nuclear energy long term.  Others claim renewables someday, somehow, will be a steady and dependable source.  Whatever.  That’s then.  This is now.  Until we can, and do, we are dependent on fossil fuels, especially for transportation and lubricants — like it or not.  High prices in all those drive up costs for all goods and services, and hurts the poor the most.

Perhaps, just perhaps, that’s by design.  After all, even if not deliberate, the more people in poverty, the more dependent they are on central governmental authority.  And by extension, the easier they are to control.  We are clearly headed for a digital (therefore trackable by centrally controlled AI) currency.  Do some critical thinking about that as well.  When you do, current events make more sense, including what China is doing with their mass tracking and “social credit” tyranny.  I’ll leave the specifics of that exercise to you, to the extent it can be applied here.

Finally I’ll finish with a quote from a recent President’s State of the Union address.  How I wish the same claim honestly could be made today.

“Nowhere is the promise of innovation greater than in American-made energy.  Over the last three years, we’ve opened millions of new acres for oil and gas exploration, and tonight, I’m directing my Administration to open more than 75 percent of our potential offshore oil and gas resources.  Right now, right now American oil production is the highest that it’s been in eight years.  That’s right – eight years.  Not only that – last year, we relied less on foreign oil than in any of the past sixteen years.” — Barack H. Obama

Independent, Mixed Assessment of Trump Presidency

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Now that some weeks have passed, and some emotions have cooled, from the tumult surrounding the wild ending of the Donald Trump presidency, I’ll offer an assessment of the short but eventful four-year period. This comes from someone who, as a registered Republican voter with ardent libertarian leanings (but not a member of the Republican Party!), was strongly outspoken against their nomination of him for the office. As such, I voted Libertarian at the top of the ticket in 2016 and 2020, being duly repulsed by both Trump’s egregious incompetence and immorality, and by the horridly corrupt, truly toxic policies and radical-left extremism of the Democrat Party.

For background, I saw the possible Trump nomination coming 10 months before the election and staunchly opposed it then. Here are some things I said about him before the 2016 election, on this BLOG:

Trump is not a true conservative, in any way, shape or form, but instead an opportunistic, bellicose, vague, frighteningly ignorant celebrity pretending to be a meaningful presidential candidate. He is better-suited for a pro-wrestling charade or “reality show” than any sort of serious public office.

On every issue he “discusses”, at least one of the other candidates has a more thoughtful, detailed, specific idea. His foreign-policy naivete, on a different end of the spectrum, is nearly as egregiously lacking as Obama’s.

On the fiscal front, Trump is precisely the embodiment of the wealthy oligarchy the Tea Party ideal is supposed to mistrust…all while posing as some sort of “outsider” in your best interests. How can he help to pull our country out of crippling debt when he acts as bankrupted his own businesses?

On the moral front, Trump’s behavior has been nothing short of deplorable. His bullying, threatening attitude is well-known and even legendary. Trump’s exaggerations and brazen dishonesty alone should disqualify him (as Hillary’s lies upon lies upon lies should disqualify her too, in fairness). … The guy has opened and operated giant gambling casinos (and tried to open others before lying about it), has had suspicious dealings with mobsters, has had three trophy-wife marriages and at least one adulterous affair, and has contributed money to known adulterers, and other sexual deviants, and subsidized to the tune of millions those who advocate the murder of unborn babies (many Democrats).

With regard to conservative principles, surely heavy monetary support for Democrats for years isn’t part of the ideal. He only draws upon the Bible and Christianity when convenient. He panders to shortsighted, flavor-of-the-moment, celebrity-obsessed foamers with ten-second attention spans.

Whatever Trump is promising, his dishonest track record means he cannot be trusted to deliver. Fellow conservatives, wake up! Get away from the Kool-Aid. Stop this Trump nonsense before you damage the cause for decades.

I don’t hate to say, “I told you so,” and I do say it with brutal honesty and straight at you. But it wasn’t all bad, contrary to the shrill whines of the hyperpartisan left, nor the “greatest ever”, contrary to the worst MAGA foamers.

The Trump presidency was so eventful on so many fronts that it would be a Herculean task just to comment on it all. More happened (especially domestically), in the least time, on the most fronts than any other four years of an administration. It’s just too much. Instead I’ll touch on some highlights and lowlights. I’m fully aware that many events are not covered here.

THE GOOD:

Four months in, I had this to say in another, otherwise unflattering essay (among several I did on the topic of Trump before and since the election):

I Told You So, Now Trump Must Go

“The only substantial things he has done right were to choose Neil Gorsuch for the Supreme Court and James Mattis for Defense Secretary.”

His most positive and enduring governmental legacy likely will be those three quite solid and highly qualified, if unspectacular, Supreme Court picks — Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Barrett. I am most grateful, for they tilt the high court in favor of a generally conservative (though not as much as I’d like), somewhat Constitutionally beholden slant that will be needed as a bulwark against the coming invasion of radical-left-related cases of First, Second, Fourth, Fifth, Tenth, and Fourteenth Amendment violations sure to flood into the court from challenged to new left-wing edicts, much like illegal aliens in the Dems’ open-borders vote pander.

I say “somewhat” because I see no evidence that these three are as originalist as Clarence Thomas or Samuel Alito, or the late, great Antonin Scalia. Gorsuch probably comes the closest to being dependable in that regard. In a Supreme Court where these appointments have flipped John Roberts into a squishy, spineless centrist, however, the conservative shift is a massive, massive plus, and much-appreciated bit of good for this republic, for Constitutional freedoms, and ultimately, for the lives of unborn babies herein. I’ll include here the confirmation of over 200 federal judges as well, who will rise through the court ranks with solid impact for generations to come.

The Abraham Accord was a truly monumental foreign-policy victory for the U.S. and the world — an unparalleled and unprecedented deal of cooperation and friendship between Israel, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates. Morocco, Oman and Sudan since have normalized ties with Israel. This in total may be the greatest U.S. foreign-policy accomplishment of any kind since Reagan stared down the Soviet menace and drove them to ultimate breakup, and arguably may be our most unlikely and astounding foreign-policy feat since the Marshall Plan. If carried out, can serve as a model for Mideast peace and economic and technological cooperation for all time. I cannot understate the potential here. Now will the parties involved fulfill it?

Jerusalem has been the nexus of Judean (Jewish) cultural and spiritual identity since David made it the capital of his kingdom in 1003 BC. As the native people of the area, the Jews deserve to have their rightful capital formally recognized. It’s a sad testament to our leadership’s craven cowardice (both parties) that this didn’t come about until 6 February 2017. Recall that during the 1992 presidential-election cycle, Bill Clinton said that his administration would “support Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel” — didn’t happen. G.W. Bush criticized Clinton for that in 2000 — and did nothing about it after becoming President. Obama in 2008, as a candidate, referred to Jerusalem as the “capital of Israel” — and failed to follow through. That’s 24 years of broken promises and lost opportunity, for no good reason whatsoever.

The U.S. Embassy was ordered moved to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv also, and reopened in May 2018. Though the majority of American Jewish organizations supported the recognition and embassy move, the gaggle of spineless and meddlesome globalists on the U.S. Security Council disapproved by a ratio of 14/15, which further validates the administration’s decision in my book. Here’s a glass raised to Trump for following through on that promise, at least.

The factually Wuhan-originated coronavirus pandemic was an awful thing worldwide, and remains so, having killed millions. That this happened on his watch was a monumental stroke of misfortune in a presidency already bogged down by other troubles (many of his own making). The Chinese Communist Party ultimately bears full moral responsibility for this disaster and its worldwide carnage. Here, Trump’s handling of it was a mixed bag, but here’s the good: Operation Warp Speed, that enabled science to give us tens of millions of lifesaving and innovative mRNA vaccines in record-setting time, with FDA emergency-use authorization. This part of the pandemic response will have a long-lasting, positive legacy in medical science and more importantly, lives saved. See below for the flip side.

Trump signed a bill into law to lower personal income taxes until 2025, cut the corporate tax rate to 21%, increase child tax credits, and raise the “death tax” estate exemption to $11.2 million. I’d personally prefer to see personal income taxes disappear altogether, replaced by a simple flat tax, but in the net, anything that lowers the tax burden on the People is a good thing. Debt reduction should start by limiting government, not gouging the People.

THE BAD:

Well, I mentioned Mattis being a great pick. Trump ran the guy off, insultingly. He did so with several other well-qualified picks that he made. It’s a testament to Trump’s wholly unsuitable personality and demeanor for the office that he would make these selections, tout how wonderful they are, then trash them upon slightest hint they weren’t going to be his sycophants. What man of dignity, what diplomatic leader of the free world, behaves that way? The cabinet was a veritable revolving door throughout his presidency, too many to mention, and that’s ridiculous.

I value honesty and integrity above all else as a personal attribute. I’ll hang out with a brutally honest asshole any day before I would want to be around a lying nice guy. Trump has been the worst of both: dishonest, and an asshole. I cannot even begin to count the hundreds upon hundreds of untruthful things he spoke and tweeted throughout his presidency. His continual rain of lies and factually wrong statements were so numerous as to make us numb to them, and were decidedly unbecoming a leader at any level. All of us should have seen it coming too. It was readily apparent to me. In fact, those times he did tell the truth, that was quite remarkable. If this petulant bonehead just mustered the self-control for one thing — stay off Twitter — he might have won re-election by a decent margin. But no. He had to make it all about “me, myself and I”.

The Trump administration’s handling of the pandemic, outside Operation Warp Speed, was slow, horridly messaged, and a truly bungled endeavor. His lack of both humility and scientific understanding cost him hugely here, and the mixed messaging (e.g., “Don’t wear masks”, “wear masks”, “wear two masks”) from officials like Fauci were decidedly unhelpful. So was his own personal example, with his public and private expressions differing, until and even during when he contracted the disease himself, much to some of the Left’s glee. Notably, he could have, and failed to, shut down all air traffic from China the very moment intelligence informed him of a new, nasty virus spreading there. That would have slowed the spread and bought more time for understanding and better treatment.

Every expert at crisis-management communications will testify that mixed messaging, ambiguity, and lack of direct, honest leadership, will lead to chaos and confusion. No surprise: it did. We needed a strong, dignified, serious President who would guide us through the crisis with science-based, consistent, crystal-clear messaging, and that simply did not happen.

Trump utterly bailed on his campaign promise to eliminate the national debt in eight years. Instead, when he left office, it had exploded to $27.75 trillion, the highest ever, with the highest ratio to GDP since shortly after World War II. He showed himself to be just another big-spending Republican, signing massive spending bills before the pandemic. What an onerous failure!

The 22 December 2018 government shutdown, after Trump threw a toddler-sandbox hissyfit over the Mexican border wall, resulted in 380,000 government employees furloughed and 420,000 more (including storm forecasters) working without pay. The Congressional Budget Office estimated a permanent loss of $3 billion to the U.S. economy from that needless and childish tantrum. I supported strict border restrictions — and still do — but that was not the way to gain them.

Trump played kissyface with an unstable, megalomaniacal North Korean dictator, with three meetings and no tangible result favorable to the U.S.

He lost both the popular and electoral votes in the 2020 election, but continued to claim victory, falsely. Despite armies of lawyers and PR people involved, he also never was able to substantiate claims of vote fraud at massive enough levels to change the election (though we all know from many documented instances across multiple elections, that the Left’s claims that voter fraud doesn’t happen are themselves grotesque lies). In doing so, he caused an eruption of sociopolitical chaos that was so outrageous as to defy ready description, and led to what’s next.

Not long after, I had a lot more to say about the capitol rioting during congressional election certification, and won’t belabor that here. Suffice to say, that ugly episode in American history marked the low point of the entire Trump Administration, right at the end, and now that a couple months have passed, I’m confident that it’s not just recency bias to say so.

Although he did not literally incite the riot, and did (belatedly) tell the hooligans to “go home with love & in peace,” he said and did far too little to both prevent and stop the lawlessness. Trump — portrayed as a “law and order” kind of guy, simply failed at it here, badly. The supposed tough guy got soft and complacent. He should have rained the full, all-out force of Capitol Police and all other available law enforcement down on the thugs who busted into the building; instead the cops weirdly stood down, and let rioters waltz right into the Capitol before the violence began. It was a bizarre and semi-anarchical event, farthest from stern law and order. Regardless of whatever else happened, this awkward (at best) and grossly negligent (at worst) handling of the Capitol invasion forever will serve as an indelible stain on the Trump legacy.

NET RESULT:

Now, through the lends of passing weeks, and though I would have pronounced it a slight net negative anyway, that final event at the Capitol, and his abject weakness in dealing with it, ratchets his four years from “poor” to “bad”, straight into the “solid negative” category. I rank Trump’s a tie for worst Presidency of my lifetime, right alongside Carter’s and a notch worse than Obama’s and Nixon’s. [Ronald Reagan’s was, by far, the best.] Donald Trump’s presidency did yield some good things, which the delusional secular cult of “Woke” radicalism would either oppose or never admit, but it was a net setback for our nation, contrary to what the delusional MAGA-herd lemmings would say. This presidency, as I feared, set the noble cause of conservatism back decades, wrecked the Republican Party, and carved deep wounds in our national cohesion (the latter a shared blame with the extreme-left Woke Cult).

It took the scandals and excesses of Obama to beget Trump, and indeed, Obama shares a nontrivial share of responsibility for awful policies and arrogant, insulting statements (by him…”Clinging to guns or religion” and “You didn’t build that!” and Hillary…”basket of deplorables”!) that elicited the Trump-populist backlash. No wonder the mood was ripe for taking advantage by a loudmouthed, neonationalist, populist blowhard. Yes, Obama shares some blame for Trump, and that’s a bitter pill the Left needs to swallow. [Here’s more I wrote between the 2016 election and Presidential changeover on how that all went down.]

Election 2016, Part 1: Trump Wins. How?

In the very same vein, the backlash to Trump begets what’s shaping up to be a Biden administration that is hapless and senile at the top, and dangerously, subversively radical (but in am underhandedly corportatist, neoliberal, passive-aggressive way) beneath. These wild, reactionary electoral backlashes are bad for our nation, not just in terms of governance, but divisiveness and discord. To a similar extent as four years before, the prior administration will shoulder some blame for bringing about the reactionary lunacy of the next.

In one of the BLOG posts linked above, I wrote: “Worse, Trump is going to hand our government over to the radical-leftist, tax-loving, debt-growing, social-engineering, Constitution-hating, moral-anarchist freakazoids, on a shiny silver platter, for decades to come…”. I hope that’s wrong, though I’ve been right about most else regarding this era. We have four years of the left’s parasitic feeding frenzy against the People to experience anyway, at a minimum. Thanks a freaking lot, Trump, you sorry loser.

Will we ever again elect a united and not a divider, a morally and ethically upstanding, intelligent force of dignity, with steady, strong and trustworthy leadership, to that office? Or will these continue to be the contests between cults of personality to which elections have devolved since 2008?

Election 2016, Part 1: Trump Wins. How?

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Folks have been asking for my thoughts on this election, probably anticipating thundering hammers of prosaic smack talk or “I told you so!” gloating. If that’s what you expect, you are going to be disappointed, so stop here and go chew happily on some caramel candy. If you expected fast reaction “insta-punditry” catering to ten-second attention spans, it already is obvious by the passed time of thoughtful reflection that your wish will not come true. However, I respect the intellect of my audience, and unlike some disturbingly melodramatic Hillary supporters I’ve seen, I have confidence you can cope with some temporal delay to process this mess in a more deliberate manner.

Issues this weighty don’t deserve an “insta-pundit”, and if you have read anything of the sort, flush it down the toilet, because no such elaboration can be delivered with credibility of analysis, nor careful consideration to the forces at work here. Hell, even after over a week, there is far too much to examine to do this situation justice. “Insta-punditry” is for shallow, simpleminded fools. Read this slowly: it takes time.

Now, some time has passed — probably still not enough. Here is what I have digested and processed so far, standing off to the side of the partisanship this cycle, and observing the foolishness foisted by both sides.

First, “President-elect Trump”. Damn, that sounds bizarre, even after over a week to get accustomed. I didn’t think it was possible. I believed that his awful campaigning and oratorical abilities, and the shameless selling out of most media for the Clintons, combined with the usual small but potentially meaningful number of voting improprieties, would ensure her victory, if by narrow margins. I was dead wrong. I take no pride in the other things I said that have come true, while also fully admitting I did not anticipate this result. As noted above, I thought the Clintons and their machine, combined with The Donald’s own disturbingly self-immolation tendencies, would halt his best effort to grab the working-class votes in key states, thereby inflicting upon us her brand of banana-republic rule.

Wrong. [Take note: when I am wrong, I damn-well admit it!] Instead we’ll get Trump’s own brand of banana-republic tomfoolery, which has begun in his highly disappointing selection of fringe nutjobs, Washington political insiders, and Wall Street oligarchs — the very people he seemed to oppose throughout the process. Trump is betraying you already, fellow conservatives who voted for him, and don’t say I did not warn you of this. He is not conservative, and has no integrity.

There was no self-interest on being right about him. I couldn’t stand the idea of a Clinton II presidency either, for reasons that I won’t elaborate more than briefly below, as they are now moot. The thought of Trump in the White House, while marginally better in some ways such as the higher probability of a conservative Supreme Court for many years beyond the coming presidential term, was (and remains) frightening for the sake of safety from both nuclear war and Big Brother intrusion into private lives. Plus, the guy has behaved in reprehensibly irresponsible and immoral ways.

As I’ve promised for months, and firmly held through the voting process, I voted third-party at the top of the ticket (for the first time in my life!), then true to form, the most conservative candidates at every position on down. In summary, I selected neither Hillary Clinton nor Donald Trump due to:

  1. The Clintons’ inconsistency with issues, inattention to national debt and domestic spying, untrustworthiness, dishonesty, corruption, blind ambition, ruthlessness, cunning, cold-bloodedness, corporate globalism, audience-pandering, inauthenticity, greed, pretension, grossly insulting words toward segments of opponents (more below), willingness to stomp on whomever they could to gain power, and overall personal immorality and lack of professional ethics.
  2. Trump’s inconsistency with issues, inattention to national debt and domestic spying, untrustworthiness, dishonesty, corruption, blind ambition, ruthlessness, impulsiveness, carnival-barking idiocy, lack of even temperament, incoherence, impracticality, greed, pretension, grossly insulting words toward segments of society, willingness to stomp on whomever he could to gain power, and overall personal immorality and lack of professional ethics.

Wow, they really weren’t all that different after all, were they? No wonder they were the two most unpopular candidates in history in several polls. Personally, I found both candidates so repugnant, so loathsome, so bereft of personal and professional morals and integrity, that to pick either was thoroughly unconscionable.

Yet Trump somehow came across to just barely enough people, in just the right states to get Electoral College advantage, as being a little less evil than Hillary, a little more sympathetic to the commoner. That was important, or as he would say, “bigly” and “yuge”. What else happened?

I won’t waste time to explore a thousand speculative avenues here, because the answer logically is straightforward and should be clear to anyone paying attention. Bottom line: Trump won the Electoral College by flipping Rust Belt industrial states that went for Obama four years prior. In short, he somehow turned a lot of Obama voters into Trump voters.

Or did Obama himself turn his own voters into Trump voters through his own actions and failings? Valid question! Think about that.

This table from NPR reveals the game changer, in stark numbers:

THOSE WITHOUT A COLLEGE DEGREE IN INDUSTRIAL NORTH

MINNESOTA
2012: 53% of electorate, 52-46 Obama
2016: 44% of electorate, 55-38 Trump (net gain: R+23)

WISCONSIN
2012: 58% of electorate, 51-47 Obama
2016: 55% of electorate, 56-40 Trump (net gain: R+20)

IOWA
2012: 57% of electorate, 52-46 Obama
2016: 57% of electorate, 54-40 Trump (net gain: R+20)

MICHIGAN
2012: 54% of electorate, 56-43 Obama
2016: 58% of electorate, 49-45 Trump (net gain: R+17)

OHIO
2012: 60% of electorate, 53-46 Obama
2016: 56% of electorate, 51-45 Trump (net gain: R+13)

PENNSYLVANIA
2012: 52% of electorate, 57-42 Obama
2016: 52% of electorate, 52-45 Trump (net gain: R+12)

In more detail, NPR claims that Clinton effectively lost nearly 5 million votes that went to Obama and Trump effectively kept Romney’s. [This is numerical, in bulk, not the same individual voters of course!] Simply keeping Obama’s black-voter total from 2012 would have won her Michigan and Wisconsin. She obviously failed to inspire that level of support. This is squarely on her, though Obama’s festering disaster of a presidency did her no favors.

No, I declare firmly, it wasn’t just “bigots, racists and homophobes” that made the difference, as the left likes to claim with glib self-righteousness. Rather inconveniently for their arguments, a lot of the same blue-collar, ex-union (or even current union, if still employed) industrial workers who used to pull a rote vote for Democrats, as demanded by their labor leaders, have gotten laid off, denied economically the promise of the nation’s founding right to pursue happiness, and flipped Republican. Many of them voted for Obama; and one does not vote for a dark-skinned man with a middle name of Hussein if one is racist in America.

As a final nail in the coffin of the false narrative that bigotry was the reason for Trump’s success, please slowly and carefully consider this story of a left-wing, dark-skinned, Muslim, immigrant, woman voter who picked Trump. She was not an isolated instance either, even if her combination of typically Democrat-voting characteristics was rather unusual for a Trumpling.

Trump carried a higher share of minority and blue-collar votes than Romney. Had the latter not run such a squishy campaign, nor come across as a distant and detached rich oligarch, we would be entering the second term of President Mitt right now. Instead we have another rich oligarch who is pretending not to be distant and detached, but who will sell out to assimilate into the very same Borg he claimed to be fighting.

So much of this was a backlash to a backlash to a backlash too, as I have pointed out before regarding the last midterms. Thanks a lot, Mitt. Thanks a lot, Obama. Thanks a lot, W, a good man who was terribly misled. Thanks a lot, Slick Willie the sexual predator. Thanks a lot, President Read My (Lyin’) Lips, a good man who learned too late not to make promises he couldn’t keep.

Enough of the logistical, logical answer, let’s look at the emotional one, because (sadly) emotion plays a role in this too. Hillary truly lost this election the moment she callously referred to Trump voters as a “ basket of deplorables“. Never mind that she was talking about the (smaller than the 50% “half of” that she thinks) fraction of them who are racist or sexist, the perceptions was that she was insulting anyone even considering a Trump vote. That included a lot of women, as well as a surprisingly large minority of minorities. “Deplorables”, all — in a world where, too often, perception is reality.

This was her version of Romney’s “47% moment“, but worse. This is because she had the bulk of corporate mass media blatantly and unapologetically on her side, and still couldn’t overcome a great gaffe that (unlike Romney’s) her legions of fawning “journalistic” sycophants were trying to ignore or gloss over as trivial. It was the same short-fused, shortsighted, ignorant intemperance that led her to refer to Bernie Sanders supporters as “basement dwellers” — a needless insult which many of them did not forgive.

Collectively, bigger mistakes seldom have been made in electoral politics at this level, in one campaign. You do not, I repeat, DO NOT, insult both your opponent’s supporters and doubters on your side that you hope to bring into the fold! She paid the price. Because of how revolting her opponent was to so many people, and despite her own nearly-as-bad level of disapproval in polls, this election was hers to lose. In a close game, team Hillary’s quarterback then fumbled the ball to Team Trump inside the one-yard line with first down and seconds to go, no Trump timeouts, in a scenario where all she had to do was kneel down on the field and it’s game over. Team Trump returned it for a touchdown with no time left. Unfortunately, in a game between these two, we all lose, regardless of the winner.