One of the most interesting questions going around right now is exactly what will happen to Trump’s business empire now he is safely on the road to the White House. Interesting because this has never really happened before, but also important because without action corruption seems unavoidable.

For example, Trump’s new luxury hotel opening in Washington. Not only is it mere blocks from the West Wing but it is located on land leased from the federal government. He would, in effect, be his own landlord.

But it gets worse. There are reliable reports that he has discussed permits and approvals for his international properties and developments with other heads of state and government representatives. That Trump would receive some commercial benefit both from the campaign and the presidency was unavoidable. He is primarily in the business of brand management, and his brand is certainly more notorious now than two years ago if not more lauded.

His defence against accusations of corruption has been that he will hand over control of the Trump Organisation to his heirs. But in my opinion that is a total non-starter. He has already shown why. His daughter, who under this plan would be one of the prime movers behind the Trump Organization in his absence, has already sat in on a number of meetings and phone calls with representatives of countries where Trump has business interests. The president of Argentina has alleged he was asked about permit approvals on one such call.

This isn’t a small thing. Using an office of public trust to access business opportunities unavailable to the pubic at large is corrupt. No less corrupt is allowing commercial relationships to influence government policy or access to the consideration of the President, even implicitly.   Clinton was rightly criticized for influence peddling while at the State department, not least by Trump himself. We should not apply a lower standard now, especially to someone like Trump who has proved himself so petty and vindictive in his business dealings.

And if international diplomats choose Trump’s hotel as their destination when visiting Washington in order to curry favor then Trump is experiencing commercial benefit as a businessman on the expectation of consideration from him as a president. Which is concerning since many diplomats have already said off the record that they would certainly stay in his hotel.

Handing it over to his children would not avoid conflicts of interest, as Trump has an obvious interest in the enrichment of his heirs. Are we really to believe he wouldn’t care if his company and progeny go bankrupt in his absence? I believe they call that Nepotism. Handing it over to the Trumps Minor would also require him to completely ban them from having any part in his administration while they were running the company.

Even if his children were not involved, we can’t expect some kind of arms-length administration by paid executives to avoid conflict of interest and corruption. The buildings have his name on them. He isn’t going to just forget where and what they are.

So what would put a stop to all of this for him? There are two options that would seem at least somewhat viable to me. Firstly, he must sell of all his international assets as well as those in politically sensitive areas like Washington.  Corruption in terms of these properties is pretty much unavoidable. Secondly he would have to stop leasing his name to hotels and resorts and other such things that he does not in fact own. That would leave him with properties like golf courses that are less susceptible to such attacks.

But that wouldn’t really do it. To really avoid corruption he would need to sell the entire Trump Organization in a public offering, then put his assets in a blind trust. That is the option put forward by several editorial boards and commentators. But I don’t think he will do that.

That leaves us basically where we we started. Donald Trump is corrupt, and seems to be dealing corruptly. To assume anything else is naive and unrealistic in the extreme. He knows what would be necessary to avoid this perception. If he does not do it he has nobody to blame for the endless stream of negative stories, the Chinese water torture of allegations still to come, but himself.

 

There is much furor at present regarding the Green party nominee Jill Stein calling for a recount in the crucial mid-western states that delivered the election to Donald Trump. As with much of the news lately this is a great deal of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

The facts are basically just that. Stein has raised the money for a recount. Assuming she files and gets the money to the relevant election officials in the respective states they will count the votes again. The clue is in the name, really. But there are several details worth noting.

The rapidly diminishing Clinton Campaign did not call for this recount, and neither they nor the taxpayers will be paying for it. If it is to happen those funds will come from Stein. There has also been no intimation from the Clinton camp that they believe the results to be fraudulent or invalid, either in whole or in part.That is likely because the gap between Clinton and Trump in those states is sufficiently large that a recount overturning that kind of vote margin has never occurred before. But they joined the process to ensure that it was conducted fairly, or so they say. It is difficult to imagine a more nefarious motive lurking in their reasoning.

What is puzzling to me is that Trump has been so vehement in his denunciation of the recount. He has already won. There is no chance of this delaying his inauguration, and even less of it reversing the verdict in his favor. It won’t be costly to anyone but those who want it, and if anything will only cement the confidence people can have in the integrity of democratic institutions.

More puzzling still is the assertion Trump made during his anti-recount tirade on twitter. Follow me down the rabbit hole, ladies and gentlemen, into the land of crank and conspiracy. He said that ‘In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally’.

Unsurprisingly news outlets are having difficulty dealing with this particular emission from the billowing cloud of hot air that is The Donald. Nobody has ever had to deal with unsubstantiated nonsense being tweeted by the President Elect before. The press corps isn’t sure what to do with themselves, the horror at the loss of the usual decorum is palpable.

But it is important to note that it really is absolute nonsense. There is just no rational reason for supposing such a thing. Clinton’s chief counsel Marc Elias is likewise bemused, acknowledging just how far through the looking glass we now are:’We are getting attacked for participating in a recount that we didn’t ask for by the man who won election but thinks there was massive fraud’. The cognitive dissonance is truly astounding.

A President Elect who is more, well, Presidential would have said something like ‘We welcome and applaud the efforts of all those working ensure fairness in our democracy and trust that a recount will validate the integrity of the American electoral process’. But Trump can’t help himself. He has to jump right back into the mud. It will be interesting to see if this remains his modus operandi, or if he learns to pick his battles.

Personally I think recounts like this should be a regular and automatic occurrence if the margin of victory for any candidate is below a certain point. Not because there is a great deal of fraud in the system, but because it increases confidence in institutions. In times such as these such confidence is precious indeed.

 

After Trump’s election I had cause to stroll through the 14th street subway station and saw a peculiar manifestation of the mood here in the in the Metropolis. There was a desk with pens, markers and post-it notes sitting in the long hallway there. Thousands of people had stopped and written messages on the wall, affixing tiny squares of paper all over. And while there were too many messages to here relate one did strike me, and it is one I have heard many times since. Not My President.

I know what was meant. We all have a line, something beyond which we cannot stomach going. And for many people, especially around here, that line became personified in the form of Donald Trump. But the problem is that he is now, sadly, everybody’s President. That is how the system works. He was duly and fairly elected to be Commander in Chief of the entire American state, not just of those who voted for him.

But there is also a pervasive opinion going around, particularly on the Right, that those who opposed him and who feel the deep-seated revulsion towards him that I and others feel must now try and find common ground with this moral and intellectual weakling. As if we should forget who he is, what he has done and said and simply rally around this guy because he won the election.  That is not the case, and is in fact the exact opposite of what patriotic duty ought to lead you to do. If I could prevail upon your indulgence for a moment, there is a quote from Theodore Roosevelt that has been whirling around in my head over the weekend:

“The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.”

People must accept Donald Trump’s election has happened. They must also accept that he will now be the leader of the United States. But these realities in no sense require the abandonment of cherished beliefs, or demand  loyalty to someone who has shown himself so very unworthy of it. The President should not be supported simply because he occupies that office. We should hope for his foolish and stupid projects to fail, just as we  wish for any laudable aims he might have or develop to succeed.

Elections are not the end of the constant, messy combat that is Democracy. They are just another battle in the war. They don’t nullify what came before, nor should they. To insist that the other side just surrender after a loss is infantile and naive.

Yes, elections have consequences. The consequence of this one is the Trump Presidency. He will be everybody’s President, as each President is, with all the authority and power that entails. But that dosn’t mean you have to like it. And it certainly doesn’t mean you have to agree with him. In fact it makes dissent more important than ever.

Donald Trump want’s to do things. Donald Trump has aspirations. I’m told he wants to make America great again. He has Republican majorities to work with in the Senate, the House of Representatives and in state governments across the country, as well as vacancies on the Supreme Court to fill so that his agenda won’t be mangled beyond recognition once it is eventually passed. All those things make it much, much easier to get things done.

But unfortunately for The Donald the United States Congress is really not set up to actually do things. It was designed to make it far, far easier to stop things from being done than to make them happen. Not only do you need a super-majority in the Senate to defeat potential filibusters, you need to maintain electoral support in the mid-term contests to keep control. And while Republicans usually do better in mid-term elections, President’s also usually lose support in their first mid-term contest. After my recent experience I am increasingly uneasy about relying on historical precedent to predict the future, and Trump should be too.

So what does Trump actually need Congress for? He can withdraw from trade deals and negotiations with executive authority, rescind Obama’s executive orders such as those protecting children of illegal migrants as well as enact his own. Then of course there is the prodigious administrative authority now in his hands which would enable him to set policy for the vast umbrella of federal agencies he is now in charge of.  So he can do a lot, really.

But he cannot appropriate funds, nor pass new laws, nor confirm appointments to the administration without the support of Congress. And the Democrats in the Senate are likely to be emboldened by both the antipathy of their supporters towards Trump, the increasing liberalism of the states they represent and the simple reality that they have little left to lose.

More than this, Trump will discover that the coalition the Republicans now represent is no less complex and varied than the one Obama inherited in 2008. Social conservatives, teaparty die-hards, corporate Republicans, right-wing populists and what is euphemistically called the ‘alt-right’ all want different things. Getting them all on the same side will be exceptionally difficult. It still remains to be seen exactly how this byzantine web of loyalties will interact, and that will depend largely on how Trump pursues his policies and what those policies actually are. Both are open questions.

If the Democrats close ranks and block Trump’s signature proposals in the Senate, for instance the $1 Trillion infrastructure plan, it will become very difficult to get it through even assuming Republican support is equally uniform. This is not a bug, this is a feature. It was designed his way precisely to make it hard to fundamentally change the policies and political institutions of the country, to force change to come slowly.

As Obama found out to his considerable cost, promises of change are much easier to make than to deliver upon. It took practically Obama’s entire first term to achieve a compromised and incomplete healthcare reform. And while it may be easier to undo things than to do them in the American system, achieving his broad and sweeping stated aims will be no easier for Trump than it was for his predecessor.

If you were to walk uptown from where I now sit, happily ensconced in a cafe near the financial district, to where fifth avenue broadens into Central Park you would see a curious sight. Reporters clustered on the sidewalks, black town-cars and limousines depositing and collecting an endless stream of grandees and cognoscenti, cameras watching with voracious intensity the comings and goings to discern some hint of what the future might hold. Because by some strange alchemy sixty million American voters have transmuted Trump Tower into the American Versailles.

It may lack the architectural and artistic merit of the great French palace, or even of the dingy hunting lodge that preceded that structure. Personally I think the interior looks to have been decorated by a deranged and particularly gauche magpie, but it has all the crucial factors in common. Trump Tower is now the epicenter of the new regime, the seat of power, the venue of court and the home of he who would be king. That is why, night and day you can see the courtiers dancing and bobbing, jockeying for position and primacy. Because the question everyone is currently asking themselves right now is this: What will this new order look like?

There are three broad schools of thought on the subject right now. And each of them is strengthened by some particular appointment already announced.

The Alt-Right

I have resigned myself to having to write about what on earth the ‘alt-right’ is at some point. The fact that is necessary is frankly nauseating. Would that we could simply say they were irrelevant crazies unworthy of further discussion, but the appointment of their champion in the scruffy and belligerent personage of Steve Bannon  to a prime White-House post makes this sadly impossible.

To be brief this group is composed of hard-right, conspiratorial, traditionalist and anti-establishment movement of hardcore reactionaries often in thrall to racialised notions of American identity. White nationalism, or at least white identity-politics, anti-semitism and bigotry of sundry flavors is their stock in trade.

Already they have been disappointed by Trump’s backflip on the prosecution of Hillary Clinton, and I doubt this will be the last time their hopes are dashed on the rocks of Trump’s attempt to move towards the center. But I list them first, because they are his most ardent supporters. And I think when pressured and frustrated, this is where he will run. His home-base, if you will, where he will run if threatened.

If Trump goes along the path of an Alt-Right administration expect to see national registries of perceived undesirables, a more activist and authoritarian state and the reversal of current policies on housing desegregation and voting rights. Ethno-nationalism will be the order of the day.

The ‘Normal’ Republican

This would be the more white-bread option. Think of people like Reince Preibus, Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney and so on. They control congress as well as the traditional Republican organs of party support like the Club for Growth, the Chamber of Commerce and the NRA. They are also not that crazy. I would prefer if they were not even a little bit crazy, but as they say in the land of the blind the one eyed man is king.

If this is the route Trump goes with his administration, expect large scale tax-cuts, the changing of Medicare into a voucher system, the hollowing-out of the public education system in favor of public money going to charter schools, higher defence spending and the erosion of the social safety net.

The Pragmatist
More than any president since Eisenhower Trump is entering the white-house without a set ideological position. He is not ‘from’ any particular group, really. He sometimes sounds like a normal corporate Republican, sometimes like an old-school Union Democrat and sometimes like the running-dog of the Alt-Right. This leads some people to believe that he will govern pragmatically in a way that could unite the country, taking issues as they come and trying to solve them without being hidebound by any particular world-view.

That is possible. But unlikely. As the great British socialist Aneurin Bevan once said the problem with standing in the middle of the road is that you get hit by cars going both ways. And Bevan never had to deal with the 24 hour, hyper-charged, social-network driven circus we are currently pleased to call the media. Which could end up being somewhat tragic, as this is probably where Trump’s corporate leadership style and personal inclinations would probably lead him.

For example. Trillion dollar infrastructure package? Small-Government and libertarian leaning Republicans will have kittens. Huge tax cuts? Liberal democrats will go crazy and start painting him as an out of touch plutocrat. Go after Roe V Wade? Women’s groups will burn him in effigy. Accept marriage equality as settled law? Religious conservatives will desert him in droves. This is one of the reasons America is so neatly sorted ideologically and demographically right now.  Your failure to observe the shibboleths of a particular group will be shouted from the rooftops, irrespective of the fact that you are aligned with them 75% of the way. Just ask Hillary Clinton.

So what will it be like?

To be honest, God only knows. But it will certainly be interesting. My money is on a confused and haphazard administration without the steadying influence of any kind of keel of ideological consistency. Under pressure I think he runs to the right-wing.

But the crucial problem for him is he has no great constituency in the professional Republican party. He brought them to him because of his popularity with voters and his comparison to Clinton. But President’s are not compared to the alternative as candidates are, the are compared to the protean ideal. If his numbers start to collapse the vultures will begin to circle, tearing strips off him to protect their own political futures. That is when circus begins. ‘May you live in interesting times’ indeed.

One of the difficult things about Presidential politics is that you don’t get many data points. To be exact you get one every four years. Which makes the science of the matter rather inexact. For that reason we tend to over-correct for new data when it happens.

There has been much hand-wringing and dismay over Trump’s election. And rightly so, as far as I’m concerned. But its important to remember that this wasn’t some earth-shattering event. We are not living in a new paradigm. Trump won a single election very narrowly. That is all that has happened. And while that event may be momentous, important and instructive it would be foolish to throw out the baby with the bathwater and presume that everything we knew before has been proved false.

It also seems to me that people don’t truly appreciate how close it was. Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin were all won by Trump on about a 1% margin or less. In Michigan he is currently about 12,000 votes ahead. Those three states between them decided the election, and they were incredibly narrow Trump victories.

Both parties should look at this result and see how fragile and in need of solidification are there respective coalitions. This is not cause for Democratic despair or Republican complacency.

If the next Democratic nominee can do even a little better with white voters, the map starts to look incredibly unfriendly for the Trump re-election campaign. And that is assuming Trump alienates none of his previous supporters, which seems to be happening already.

Because its much easier to be all things to all people the first time around when you are throwing stones from the outside. When you have been the ringmaster of the Washington circus for four years its very difficult to run as an outsider. Even harder is running against the establishment when you and your friends are the ones controlling all three branches of the Federal government.

This isn’t to say Trump will lose the next election. My point is that the Democrats won more votes this time, and fell only a hairs breadth short of winning enough electoral votes. This  could end up being public policy catastrophe, but it is certainly not an electoral one. Trump isn’t Reagan in 1984 or Nixon in 1972.  The Democratic party in America is not doomed or declining, merely defeated. And those who feel like their America has vanished should take heart. It isn’t dead. It’s only resting. Pining even. Not for the fjords, but for issues to galvanize it and leaders to show the way. Opposition presidencies have a tradition of providing both.

There are two reasons I have waited so long to post about the recent Presidential election. The first is that my first couple of attempts devolved into strings of expletives punctuated by the occasional statistic. And I don’t want that to be what I do here. The second and more demanding reason is that these results are not really all that clear. There are a number of dynamics going on here, pushing in different ways and it takes time pouring over data to really come to meaningful conclusions. Its good for views to come out with ‘why this happened’ immediately, but if you are telling the story before all the numbers come in you are by definition doing it without the complete facts. Perhaps you have enough, but if the recent result has taught us anything I think it should be to scrutinize  prior assumptions more intensely rather than trot them out as early as you can bang out a thousand words.

So this isn’t going to be exhaustive. I’m going to do a number of posts over the next few days about the results. This one will mostly be devoted to critiquing what I think are wrong or incomplete explanations of the Trump victory.

So what just happened?

Trump won the election. The short  answer is that Trump got some new voters to turn out and persuaded previously Democratic, largely white voters in the industrial mid-west to support him while Clinton failed to turn out enough of the ‘Obama Coalition’ in key areas. And that was the whole ball-game.

First off, I was wrong. Mia culpa.  But I don’t feel terribly selfconscious about that fact to be honest. I am, after all, in fairly good company. The more interesting question is why this happened, because I have serious reservations about the analysis being bandied about online in particular. Events this complex almost never have singular, neatly identifiable causes. You should be extremely suspicious of anyone telling you that there is one factor that explains Trump’s victory, or indeed Clinton’s defeat.

So lets go through a few of the arguments being made, and the explanations currently being offered.

Angry, Poor, Racist White Men

This seems to be the most common explanation right now. And it is based on something true: Trump violently over-performed previous Republican nominees in less affluent and more rural areas of the country. Without this he could not have won. But the main part of this thesis is based not on this fact but why it occurred. The argument runs something like this: Trump’s dog-whistle, race-baiting rhetoric appealed to the prejudices of a previously politically disengaged cohort of  white, working class and largely male voters. Now there is some truth to this. But while that may be a necessary it is not a sufficient cause. Voters who hold negative views of other racial groups were overwhelmingly more likely to vote for Trump. That is a fact. But the problem is that there are simply not enough of them. The electorate just didn’t change sufficiently to account for a huge influx of new, racist voters.

The counties where Trump swung the contest were counties that Obama won, often by large margins. So a lot of the crucial Trump voters supported Obama. Twice. It is very difficult for me to believe that someone who is a committed racist would vote for the first African-American president. But that is an essential part of this prognosis. Michigan didn’t suddenly import an entirely new electorate. Detroit was not suddenly  repopulated. If that city had gone to Clinton by the same numbers as it went to Obama, she would have won the state of Michigan.  So the idea that Trump was carried to office on a wave of racist hatred from the American working class is not terribly plausible to me.

There is also a problem with the identification of his supporters as working-class. The median household income in the United States is $56,000, whereas the median household income of Trump voters was $72,000. You see where I am going here. This was not the working-class revolution from the downtrodden that many pundits and news outlets would have you believe.

Its easy to understand why this is such a seductive fiction. To someone like me who was utterly dismayed and disgusted by the elevation of this vapid, ignorant bully it is very comforting to simply blame the racism or stupidity of your opponents. But its important not to fall victim to this oversimplification. Because it leads you to the wrong conclusion.

Knowing who you lost, and who lost you the election, is vital. It informs future behavior, future campaigns and future policies. And while there are many bigots who voted for Trump they were not the crucial voters who swung in behind him. The bitter, hard to swallow truth of it is that these are not by nature bad people. They are not Klan members, they are not white-supremacists, they are not bigoted against other races to any meaningful degree.

They are votes that could  and should have voted for a progressive platform much more aligned to their economic self-interest than the regressive supply-side economics and protectionism of Trump. These are not ‘deplorables’ who could never have been brought on board. To pretend otherwise is to let ourselves off the hook far too easily.

Sun Tzu said that if an order is not followed, it is the fault of the soldier. But if an order is not understood, it is the fault of the general. That dichotomy is instructive in this case. Because these people were lost to the left not because they became suddenly insane and self-loathing, but because the message, intention and policy of the progressive movement in America was not understood or was articulated in an ineffective way. The order never got through. And that is the fault of the general, not the troops. It is the job of a leader to get their followers to follow, not the job of followers to follow the leader. To blame them for not seeing how great Clinton was and flocking to her banners is asinine. The campaign failed, not the voters. That fact is painful, but it really must land in a meaningful way or else this result will be comprehensively misunderstood.

This isn’t a different America to the one that voted for Obama, or that elected a Democratic Congress and Senate. We should be disappointed , particularly in ourselves, that this happened. But we should also be heartened, because it means that Trump’s victory can indeed be rolled back. It is a matter of organisation, argument, persuasion and determination, as ever it was. It was not a consequence of the moral and ethical bankruptcy of the American working class, as many would have you believe.

So why did white voters in the mid-west desert Clinton on the one hand, and flock to Trump on the other? That really is the crucial question. Its complex, deeply linked to both recent and more distant history and requires far more time than I can dedicate to it in this post. But boiling it down to racism and poverty is not sufficient.

Sexism

Books will be written about the failure of the first serious Female contender for the chief magistracy by people far more learned in gender politics and the history of female candidates in America than I. On that basis I’m loathe to pontificate. I will however say I think there is some role for sexism in explaining this result, but in my opinion it was latent rather than blatant. The problem was not that people couldn’t vote for a female candidate. The problem was, as I have been saying all along, Hillary Clinton is uniquely disliked even amongst female politicians. Accusations were leveled at her that I don’t think would have been leveled against another female candidate. More importantly, facts about her were interpreted in the most uncharitable possible way to an extent I find it hard to believe would be universal for candidates of that gender. Prejudice against Clinton was a much greater motivator than prejudice against Women in general. In a way that is more sad to me because I have always admired her, but to think this result is a repudiation of the concept of a female president is to learn the wrong lesson.

I’m also sympathetic to the idea that she was viewed so negatively because of the interplay of gender stereotypes and attitudes. But my feeling is that this is bigger than that. She was held to a double standard not just by comparison to male candiates, but by comparison to political candidates in general. I realize this view will rile some who will always be convinced she was an ethically repugnant individual, but there seems to me no other way of interpreting the data.

For instance, Clinton lost white women. She lost the demographic to which she herself belongs. That says to me that if there is a role for sexism in this calculation its more complex and nuanced than just ‘American voters don’t like women’.

Millennials Stayed Home

Young voters did not go for Clinton in anything like the numbers they went for Obama. They didn’t go for Trump. They stayed home. You can blame Sanders, Clinton, the Media or generational apathy. But the fact remains that they didn’t come out to support the contender from the Blue corner.

Clinton was a Terrible Candidate

This is another analysis that drives me crazy. Its very trendy right now to say ‘Of course Shillary lost. How could anyone vote for her?’. It makes you sound like the kind of informed guy too woke to be deluded by the siren song of the corporate elite. But its also nonsense. Terrible candidates do not win the popular vote. Terrible candidates do not win all the Presidential debates. Terrible candidates do not sweep the field of all primary challengers.

The measure of a Presidential candidate’s  strength is proximity to victory, not fulfillment of some arbitrary list of ethical and political shibboleths dictated by Reddit. And Clinton came achingly, hauntingly close. Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania were all won by Trump with a margin of 1% or less. And it seems very likely she will win the popular vote by between 1.5% an 2% .

The problem for her is the fact that too much of that vote comes from running up historic margins in big, blue states like California and New York where she will beat Obama’s numbers. She also did much better than any Democrat since her husband in places like Texas and Georgia. Change the national popular vote by less than one percent in her favor and we would not be talking about how bad a campaign she ran but about how clever and canny were her operatives. To pretend this campaign was always doomed to failure is misleading, and usually done for some purpose other than to inform.

Republicans Came Home

For my money this is the crucial precondition of Trump’s victory. Clinton’s team always knew they couldn’t rely on all the parts of the Obama coalition turning out in her favor as they had for the preceding Democratic nominee. The plan was to balance this deficit and the likely over-performance of Trump with white voters without college degrees by getting the votes of voters with college degrees. People who had previously voted reliably Republican, but who Trump had alienated. And while she did a lot better than Obama had with this demographic, she failed to do well enough. They caved and backed Trump, leaving Clinton at the altar with no way forward.

I say it is the necessary precondition because Clinton could have won with the level of the vote she ended up getting if Trump didn’t end up getting the support of the overwhelming majority of Republican voters. Both candidates were widely disliked by the public, although Trump’s unfavorable numbers were always worse. But one side held their nose and took the plunge anyway. The other side held back. So if you want to blame one single thing, the weakness of the ‘Never Trump’ movement and the capacity of Republican elites to rationalize Trump’s statements so that they wouldn’t have to vote for Hillary would be my pick.

All the levers at once..

But in truth, it was all these things to some extent. The reason I felt Trump would not win was because he required all the pieces to fall in line just so, and Clinton’s loss required all her pieces to fall in line exactly wrong. Trump needed big turnout from the non-college educated, staunch the bleeding from college-graduates, keep minority turnout down, keep millennials at home, get the lions share of the late-breaking undecideds and be the beneficiary of a polling error. And that is unlikely. Sadly though it seems it was not unlikely enough.

1:15- Trump is all but certain to win the election at this stage. In the final analysis, he took Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania from the Democratic column. And that was the ballgame. Parts of the Democratic coalition from ’08 and ’12 stayed home, and the white working class voters of the industrial Mid-West turned out in force. We are now living in the Age of Trump. For our sins.

11:30-Trump has taken Florida and Utah. It’s not really important anymore as the race is being fought out in Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan and Arizona. But it bodes ill for Clinton’s fading chances of election.

11:13- If Trump wins Michigan, as appears to be certain at this stage, then it only takes one more state that was assumed to be in the Clinton camp to go for Trump in order for him to win. At this stage that seems sadly more likely to me. We are going to be talking about how this occurred for a long, long time.

11:12-Trump’s unexpectedly high levels of support in Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada seem to be powering him towards victory.

10:42-Michigan, Wisconsin and Arizona are the states to watch right now. Clinton needs to win Michigan and Wisconsin, while a win in Arizona could counteract an unexpected loss in either of those two.

10:31- I am highly alarmed at Michigan current performance. If Trump can win in Michigan after securing North Carolina and Florida, he could take the election.

10:26- Clinton has been project the winner in Virginia.

10:23- Clinton has pushed her lead in Virginia out to about 43,000 votes. That is less than might have been hoped, but is still a clear victory.

10:20- Trump has taken Ohio. That was expected. He has been ahead in the polls there for a long time now. So its not exactly news. But his margin of victory is higher than I expected. That could signal trouble for other states in the industrial mid-west.

10:16- Michigan is the next state to watch. Since Virginia appears to be somewhat secure now and Pennsylvania is holding Trump needs to win somewhere unexpected to get to 270 Electoral Votes. Michigan seems to be the best candidate. He is currently ahead, but with 26% reporting.

9:56- Clinton just took the lead in Virginia. We can all start to relax a little now. But not too much. There is evidence of higher than expected turnout in working class areas for Trump. If that starts to occur nation-wide states like Michigan, Minnesota or Wisconsin could get competitive, and that could upset our calculations somewhat.

9:51- Pennsylvania seems to be holding steadily for Clinton. This was always meant to be Clinton’s firewall. Without Pennsylvania it is very difficult for Trump to get to 270, regardless of his performance elsewhere.

9:41- So what really matters at this stage? There is a lot of sound and fury flying around right now online and on the airwaves. Much is being made of Trump’s strong performance in rural and working class areas, especially areas with large populations of ‘Reagan Democrats’. But the key places to watch are still Virginia, Florida and North Carolina. Remember that Clinton doesn’t actually need Ohio, Florida or North Carolina. But Virginia is vital. If Clinton loses Virginia, then you should start to panic. She is currently less than 10,000 votes behind in Virginia, after more than 3 million counted and with many votes still to count from the north of the state.

9:28- Democrat Jason Kander is currently ahead in the Missouri senate race. Winning there would help Democrats a great deal in their quest to regain control of the Senate.

9:16- There is currently much lighting of hair on fire going on right now. But is there really cause for that much alarm? For instance, Clinton is running one percentage point behind Trump in Florida. Florida And Florida trends about two points to the right of the national average. So we should expect a Republican winning in Florida by 1 point to lose the national vote by about the same margin, if not more. That would be in line with projections. Most of the discontent seems to be coming from Trump not tanking as badly as people thought in Virginia and ‘matching Romney’s numbers’. They seem to be forgetting that Romney lost. I think we will see Clinton pull ahead in Virginia as more votes from the large counties are counted.

9:12- Early results show Clinton ahead in Virginia by a considerable margin. That is mostly early votes, but its an encouraging sign.

9:06- Clinton is closing the gap in Virginia. The city of Richmond and the suburban centers of northern Virginia still have a lot of vote left to count. I think Virginia will still go for Clinton, but its looking a lot closer than i thought.

9:00- Clinton is currently ahead in North Carolina. Her lead is only about 1.1% with roughly half of the vote counted in that state, but that is encouraging for Clinton. Lets see if the lead holds.

8:47- It is important to remember that only 20% of the popular vote is currently in. There are a lot of people on TV currently nervously fretting about Trump’s performance. In 2004 it seemed for much of the early portion of the night like John Kerry was on his way to victory. Needless to say he was disappointed. So don’t get ahead of yourself and start despairing yet just because Trump’s early numbers are not terrible

 

8:40- Trump seems to be doing better than we thought amongst college educated white voters. He also appears to be meeting or exceeding Romneys performance with non-college eduacted Whites.

8:34- Clinton is currently behind in Virginia. But Arlington and Fairfax counties (which contain about a third of the states electorate) are yet to report, and they are the strongest Democratic areas by far. That should be enough to re-balance the current 44-51 deficit.

8:31-The Republican party will retain control of the house of representatives. At this stage it looks like about 12 seats have fallen to the Democrats. While that isn’t enough to imperil the GOP majority, it could very well imperil Ryan’s speakership.

 

8:24- Todd Young looks to have defeated Evan Bayh for the senate seat in Indiana. I think we can safely say this loss was a reaction to Bayh’s activities as a lobbyist since leaving the Senate.  Before that story really got going he looked to be a shoe-in. It seems like ‘lobbyist’ and ‘establishment’ are rather dirty words these days.

8:21- Trump is leading Clinton in Florida slightly less than one percent of the vote, with 88%  counted.

6:03- The first results should be in shortly. Although it will be a while before we know for certain it shouldn’t go too late. Most of the key states are in the East, so the polls there will be closed and the vote counted much sooner than, say, California.

5:45- Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway says she is concerned about not having the ‘support of the whole Republican infrastructure’. The sense of recrimination is already palpable. Make no mistake, the ‘stab in the back’ narrative is only just getting started.

5:31- Only 31% of voters surveyed by the exit polls have a favorable opinion of Trump. That is a key part of understanding why his bid for the White-house is foundering.

1:41- It has emerged that the Trump campaign filed a lawsuit in Nevada last night. They have alleged that there were irregularities in four polling places in Las Vegas. Basically they are arguing that the polling places were open longer than they should have been or that some people who arrived too were allowed to vote. Expecting more of this sort of thing.

1:27- John McCain has told reporters he isn’t and ‘will not’ talk about Donald Trump today. Thats important. He still has a lot of pull with Republicans and with right-leaning independents in general. Him saying that will give cover to less high profile officials and individuals to voice their antipathy or reservations regarding Trump without being hounded for disloyalty.

12:50- I am loathe to resort to such journalistic crutches ‘feeling’ and ‘atmosphere’ but this feels like a good day for Clinton. Even Fox News seems to be projecting an air of fatalistic resignation.

12:42- Trump’s plan seems to be to attempt to win Michigan in order to offset expected losses in Western states like Nevada. That isn’t totally crazy. Clinton’s lead in Michigan isn’t all that great. But it would require high turnout in the more rural and blue-collar areas of norther Michigan. Clinton would also need to get lower than expected turnout in more urban and metropolitan areas of the state. Personally i wouldn’t hold my breath.

 

Today is the day. After more than five hundred days of campaigning its time for the voters to deliver their decision and choose their leader. It may be a saccharine cliche at this point but it is true and worth remembering that the concept that one governs not by divine right but by the consent of the governed is the foundational principle of the United States.  Being able to pick your leader is a principle over which much blood has been spilled, and we should never become too jaded, cynical and nihilistic  to appreciate just how important that idea is.

I’m already feeling a little uncomfortable about my prediction that Trump will take Florida and North Carolina. Late polls I read last night and anecdotal evidence from this morning makes me think Clinton might take those two states after all. And if Trump fails to win either his metaphorical goose is well and truly cooked. Of those two states Florida seems more likely turn blue.

This may sound like a strange admission for someone who maintains a blog about electoral politics but I’m really not terribly keen on predictions. While broad trends are easy to identify and extrapolate from,  once you get into the more granular territory below the banner headline everything becomes considerably more murky.

With this in mind I have waited as long as I can, but with the election less than 24 hours away and finding myself in New York I feel I must finally nail my colours to the mast, or else risk having my credentials as a political junkie revoked by the powers that be.

Because although it may be advisable for someone in my position to remain aloof, to pretend that your prognostications are part of some ethereal and ineffable schema known only to yourself this is sadly not the case. They are based on the same information available to you, dear reader, just run through the filter of my own admittedly considerable nerdishness.

So as I gaze across the street catching glimpses of City Hall through the passing trade and drinking what they are pleased to call coffee around these parts I thought I would at last take the plunge and place my bets.

The Presidential Election

It should surprise precisely none of you that I’m jumping on the consensus bandwagon for this one and predicting a Clinton victory. But lets get specific. It is a foregone conclusion right now that Clinton will win the states that make up the base of the Democratic electoral coalition at the Presidential level. Those are:

Washington, Oregon, California, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Washington D.C, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont and Massachusetts  

Trump is likewise guaranteed the safe Republican states that make up their coalition. Those being:

Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Utah, Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennesee, Missisipi, Alabama, West Virginia and South Carolina

But neither of these lists are enough to get you in to the big house on Pennsylvania Avenue. So lets go to our third category, the all important swing states :

• Nevada
  • I’m giving this one to Clinton. Winning in Nevada hinges on your performance in Clark county, where Las Vegas and the overwhelming majority of the electors in the state are located. Democrats seem to have a huge lead in early voting on the state, even larger than in 2012. So it goes in the Democratic column. 
• Arizona
  • Arizona will likely stay Republican this cycle, as far as I can tell. Really it is only on this list for one reason: Hispanic voters may be driven to the polls in unprecedented numbers by their antipathy to Trump. Democrats usually win the Hispanic vote, of which there is much in the state of Arizona, but they also usually turn out at a lower rate than African-American voters. There is much speculation that this could change. Arizona would be one of the states most vulnerable to such a phenomenon. But I don’t think it terribly likely. So it goes to Trump.  
• Utah
  • I’m also giving this one to Trump. Utah isn’t a swing state, strictly speaking. But conservative independent Evan McMullin is one of Utah’s native sons, running as an alternative to Trump. He has made significant inroads with the states large and conservative LDS electorate taking votes that would probably otherwise go to Trump. For that reason a Clinton or even a McMullin win here is not out of the realms of possibility. But i wouldn’t bet on it. 
• Alaska
  • Again, this one is here because polling indicates it is a comparatively close race. Only about 3-5 points separate the two party nominees. That being said, I will be floored if Clinton wins here. Alaska is one of the most conservative states in the union by most measures. But if Clinton out-performs her polls by a few points she could take it. A 2-3 point polling error is not unheard of. But i’m predicting Trump will take first prize. 
• Colorado
  • Colorado has become considerably more liberal in recent years, helped by an influx of Hispanic migrants and the growth of metropolitan communities in the states big cities like Denver. I feel fairly safe calling this one for Clinton.
• New Mexico 
  • Again, Clinton should win here. Especially if Hispanic turnout is higher than expected. 
• Iowa
  • Iowa has been close all season. But demographically the terrain favors Trump. The state is overwhelmingly white, rural and with a high non-college educated and churchgoing population. But it also has a history of electing practical and populist progressives like Tom Harkin and Tom Vilsack as well as a characteristic Midwestern antipathy towards Trump’s bombastic and vitriolic tone. But I’m calling it for Trump. 
• Ohio
  • Although considered the prototypical swing-state, Ohio actually trends slightly to the right of the national electorate. That is why no Republican has won the presidency without Ohio. Ever. Not once. So Trump should take heart at his performance. I think he will take Ohio, powered to victory by his good performance amongst non college-educated white voters. That being said, the state is still on a knife-edge. Before Clinton’s loss of about 3 points around the time of the latest FBI Leak fiasco I would have been inclined to give it to her. Now it seems to me Trump has the edge in this contest. 
• Pennsylvania
  • They call it the Keystone State, and this cycle Pennsylvania seems to be living up to its name. The theory behind Trump was always that he would win in areas of the industrial mid-west and north-east that Republicans usually have trouble playing in. Pennsylvania was always going to be the place this had to work. But he has been consistently behind by at least 5 points for months now. So in the blue column it goes. And without Pennsylvania it is very hard to see a winning coalition for Trump. 
• Virginia
  • Virginia used to be a Red state. For gods sake, it was the heart of the Confederacy, the jewel in the crown of the South. Obama winning it in 08 was a story people. And now its so safely in Clinton’s column it may as well be Wisconsin. Trump is about as popular in the leafy, affluent suburbs of Northern Virginia as the plague. It will go for Clinton, or else you will see a livestream of me literally eating my own hat. 
• North Carolina
  • The Tar Heel state once looked very favorable for Clinton. But since she lost some momentum over the last week it has looked increasingly dicey for the former Secretary of State. I’m inclined to play it safe and give this one to Trump. But if i had to pick one state to watch as a bellweather, it would be this one. If Clinton has an unexpectedly good night, North Carolina could very easily go for her. But on the information available and based on its previous status as a safe Republican state before 2008 I’m giving it to Trump. 
• Georgia
  • We should not be talking about Georgia. Its Georgia. The fact it is even vaguely close is a savage indictment of Trumps performance with African-American voters, college educated White voters and Hispanics. Two of those groups are usually disasters for the GOP, but White people who went to university usually back the Red team. If Clinton wins here it is because she is having an absolute blowout. I’m giving it to Trump, because predicting a Democrat will win Georgia is…courageous shall we say? But the mere fact that such an event is not out of the question says very, very bad things about Trump’s chances overall. 
• Florida
  • Florida is a bit like Ohio in a couple of ways. Its a big state, its a swing state and it also trends slightly more Republican than the national average. That means in a very close election it should go Republican. That looks like what is happening, because no matter what people might wish this is indeed a close election. But its only by a couple of points. I could be wrong about this one folks, its a huge and diverse electorate down there with vast quantities of cash being pumped in to try and influence the outcome. Trump’s current projected margin in Florida is also within the margin of error for public polling, making a prediction here even more unreliable. I would not be at all surprised if we don’t see a winner declared here on election night. But i also don’t think its going to matter too much, because Clinton doesn’t need Florida to win. So I’m giving it to Trump. But if the available polling is wrong anywhere, my money is on here. 
• New Hampshire
  • New Hampshire is one of only two ‘swing states’ in the North East. I’m giving it to Clinton. Trump is doing better among the large white, working-class population of the state but it looks like it won’t be enough. 
• Maine
  • ‘Red AND Blue? Surely you must be mad!’ I hear you say. Well,  Maine is rather odd. Unlike most states it awards its electoral votes based on winners of its congressional districts. I think Trump will probably take one. The rest will go to Clinton. 

The Senate 

The Senate class of 2010 are up for re-election, their six year terms having expired. While I feel confident in predicting a Democratic victory at the presidential level, I have no such confidence in the Senate results. It seems to me about as likely that the Democrats will regain control as it is that the Republicans will keep it. This might perhaps edge towards a preference for Democratic ascendancy based on three factors. Firstly, 2010 was something of a high-water mark for the GOP, so defending the territory they were able to gain six years ago is now a somewhat tall order. Secondly, this is a Presidential year. And Presidential year electorates are usually younger and more diverse than mid-term electorates. That is a fancy way of saying that old white people are more reliable voters than younger and less white people. Thirdly, Clinton’s likely victory means that in a tie scenario the Democrats will effectively get one extra Senator in the person of Tim Kaine, as the Vice-Presidents main constitutional responsibility apart from being alive is to preside over the senate and break ties. 

But without further ado, lets run down the list of states where the Senators are up for re-election. Most of these are safe, in which case I won’t offer much commentary. 

• Washington
• Oregon
• California
• Nevada
  • Former Majority and then Minority Leader Harry Reid is retiring. The race to fill his seat is between Republican Joe Heck and Democrat Catherine Cortez-Masto. Heck looked to have this one locked up for a while, but Cortez-Masto has made a considerable comeback, pulling just about even with him in the polls. I’m giving it to the Democrats and Cortez-Masto for two reasons. One, the Democratic advantage in terms of early voting seems so large that it could easily swing down-ballot races such as this. Secondly, in a close election organisation matters. And Harry Reid put together one of the most impressive political machines in the country based on the logistical and organisational support of the powerful service employee unions in Las Vegas. So in an even race, which this seems to be, those two factors lead me to believe the Democrat will have the edge. 
• Idaho
• Utah
• Arizona
• Colorado
• Alaska
• Hawaii
• North Dakota
• South Dakota
• Kansas
• Oklahoma
• Iowa
• Missouri
  • Democrat Jason Kander looked like he might pull off an upset and unseat incumbent Roy Blunt for a while, but the downturn in Clinton’s support seems to have doomed his chances. It is still not impossible, but its hard to beat the dual headwind of facing an incumbent and running in a state where the Democratic presidential nominee is losing by nearly double digits, even for an excellent candidate like Kander. He ran a good campaign, did all the right things, but I just don’t think it will be enough. 
• Arkansas
• Louisiana
• Wisconsin
  • I am personally very pleased to be able to say I think Russ Feingold will be returning to the Senate. He was knocked off by Ron Johnson in 2010, but the rematch seems to be favoring Feingold quite heavily. So that is one predicted pickup for the Democrats
• Illinois
  • The defeat of Illinois Senator Mark Kirk is a foregone conclusion at this stage. Challenger Tammy Duckworth is the unbackable favorite. Kirk was always an uncomfortable fit for the liberal voters of Illinois (and Chicago in particular), despite his position on the moderate fringe of the Republican party. Widely despised by his fellow Republicans and the Conservative base that seems to dominate the GOP these days, Kirk’s days in the ‘greatest deliberative body on earth’ seem numbered. So that’s another for the Dems. 
• Indiana
  • F. Scott Fitzgerald once famously wrote that ‘there are no second acts in American lives’. This seems to be sadly true of the current Indiana Senate race, where two term Governor, two term Senator and son of a Governor Mr. Evan Bayh appears headed towards defeat. He was persuaded to run again earlier this year when all the stars seemed in alignment. He had plenty of campaign money, he was well known and well liked and about 20 points ahead of his rival. But his support has consistently slipped away until now he and his challenger Todd Young appear virtually tied. Considering the momentum appears to be with Young, that Trump is ahead of Clinton in Indiana by several points and that the state is generally quite conservative I’m giving this one to the Repubicans. If Clinton was performing better nationally her coat-tails might be sufficient to get Bayh over the line. Or, more accurately, her poor performance in some areas would not be such an albatros around his neck. He also did himself no favors in forgetting the address of a condominium he owns (not exactly man of the people material) and the exposure of his close relationship to financial industry lobbyists during his previous tenure has also redounded to his detriment. Bayh could still pull it off, but i wouldn’t bet on it.   
• Kentucky
• Alabama
• Florida
  • Marco Rubio is running for the Senate after all. The plan was that his name would be on the ballot right now for President. But some guy named Donald took all his marbles, so he is going back to the Senate  despite having told everyone how boring he found the job and that he didn’t want it anymore. The people of Florida appear to be supporting him in this display of naked political ambition. Maybe there is some kind of reverse psychology at work, because Rubio looks certain to get the job.
• Ohio
  • Over the last several months Rob Portman has built a huge lead over former Democratic governor Ted Strickland. It once looked like an even contest, but Portman was able to distance himself from Trump and is now hugely over-performing Trump’s numbers in that state. Its not surprising really, Portman is a canny politician who has been in Ohio state politics forvever and thus has his own independent brand. He has publicly bucked the national party several times, has huge financial resources with which to fight his campaign and the political and organisational support of Ohio Governor John Kasich, whom you may remember as one of this years Presidential also-rans. I’m confident giving this one to the GOP. 
• Georgia
• South Carolina
• North Carolina
  • Again, this one looked promising for the Blue Team. But right now the Republican incumbent Richard Burr seems to be beating Democratic challenger Deborah Ross. But as in the Presidential, if Clinton starts over-performing her polls when the results come in expect this to be one of the places an upset could occur. Burr is only ahead by a few points so his victory is far from assured, but considering the stability of that lead over the last several days and the history of North Carolina electing conservatives I’m inclined to give it to Burr. That being said, I would say this race is highly correlated with the Presidential results in North Carolina. If Clinton wins the state unexpectedly it could give Ross exactly the sort of boost she needs. 
• Maryland
• Pennsylvania
  • Senator Pat Toomey’s electoral prospects are looking decidedly bleak. Despite his best efforts he has been unable to distance himself from Trump sufficiently in the minds of the key suburban and minority voters of his large and diverse state. This race is somewhat like Illinois in that Toomey is a bit of an uncomfortable fit for his state.  Challenger Katy McGinty has a stable and consistent lead of about 5 points. What is more, Clinton is very likely to win the state which will make it all the harder for Toomey to convince Clinton voters to split their ticket and give him their support for the Senate. So I’m giving this one to the Democrats with a reasonable degree of confidence. 
• New York
• Vermont
• New Hampshire
  • This one is tricky. New Hampshire is notoriously fickle in electoral terms. People won’t vote for you until you have had coffee in their living rooms half a dozen times and given at least three speeches at their workplace on your plans for the new economy and manufacturing jobs. The polling results are mixed, with both candidates trading leads for months now mostly in the margin of error. I’m giving it to the Democrats for two reasons. Firstly, I think Clinton will win the state at the presidential level would give a slight edge to challenger Maggie Hassan against incumbent Kelly Ayotte. Secondly, Ayotte has had a devil of a time trying to figure out just how to deal with Trump being the front-man of her party right now.  Make no mistake, I’m going out on a bit of a limb here . The most recent polls actually show Ayotte ahead. She has a high profile locally and is basically the last remaining Republican Senator who could actually be described as moderate so there is good reason to think the voters of New Hampshire might return her. But i have a hunch Hassan will get over the line. This is the call I’m least confident in, but I’m nearly finished with my second ‘coffee’ and feeling courageous. 
• Connecticut

To those of you keeping track, I’m crediting the Democrats with a  gain of four seats. Assuming Tim Kaine is around to break ties and the Independents caucusing with the Democrats (Vermont’s Bernie Sanders and Maines Angus King) continue to do so those four would be sufficient to make Chuck Schumer the new Majority Leader for the Dems. But in order to gain outright control of the chamber without Kaine they would need one more.

This could plausibly come from either Indiana, North Carolina or Missouri. While I don’t think this likely, if Clinton over-performs her polls even slightly it is certainly possible. By the same token, if Trump does better than expected they could end up with less than four seats gained and a Republican congress. 

The House

As I have said previously, the House is essentially gerrymandered in favor of the Republican party. That being the case, I still expect the Democrats to gain about 12-15 seats from all the data I can find. This is important, because the gains will likely come from ‘moderate’ Republicans of the Paul Ryan type whose loss will further empower the radicals within the Republican caucus. 

In Summary

I think we will see a clear but modest Clinton victory, a 50-50 Senate controlled by the Democrats with the aid of the Vice-Presidency and a Republican House. And if you thought this wild, seemingly endless campaign was a strange beast just wait until you see that formulation try and govern. 

I have written before about why it is unlikely the Democrats will take control of the House of Representatives, as well as why this chamber and its leadership are important. But lately a question has been bothering me.

What exactly is Paul Ryan going to do after the election? There are a few factors that make this an interesting question for me.

1. Paul Ryan Really, Really wants to be President 

If you don’t think he is positioning himself for a run in 2020 or beyond you are out of your mind. He was on the ticket as Mitt Romney’s running mate in 2012 and since then his ambition only seems to have grown. His endorsement of Trump was tepid at best, which is a significant risk considering Trump has staged a pretty sucessful takeover of the Republican party to the extent that virtually all the ‘never trump’ crowd have now caved and supported him. This decision only really makes sense if you imagine he is positioning himself as the leader of the non-Trump wing of the party in preparation for riding in on his white horse after Trump’s defeat. But there is a problem with that plan.

2. Being Speaker is a really, really terrible way to run for president. 

Otto von Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor himself, said that there were two things you never wanted people to see how you made. Laws and sausages. Well, the Speaker of the House is basically the sausage-maker in chief. Compromise is key in maintaining the speakers chair. But this cycle there is little that Republican voters like less than compromise. Which leads us neatly to my next point…

3. Nobody wants to be speaker right now

Even he had to be begged to take up the job. Really I should say no Republican. Nancy Pelosi would love to be speaker, but unfortunately for us all this isn’t likely to happen. John Boehner (the former speaker) made history by resigning, essentially because his caucus has become impossible to manage. There is a large sub-group of Republican members (known as the ‘Freedom Caucus’) unwilling to accept any real compromise on a host of issues from taxation to immigration. They made it so hard for Boehner to even pass a budget, much less make progress, that he resigned. Filling the job afterwards was a nightmare, as all the plausible candidates either declared their refusal to serve or later pulled out after media and party pressure because of their unsuitability. It really did become Ryan almost by default.

Just let that sink in for a second. The Speakership is one of the highest offices in the land, with huge powers and profile, and almost nobody of any consequence wanted it. Assuming Ryan loses 10-15 members in the upcoming ballot as the polls seem to suggest his problems will become even worse. Because although that is not a threat to his majority the most likely losses will be comparatively moderate members who are his kind of people while the arch-conservatives who are causing so many problems remain all but immune in their safe districts. Any problems Boehner had are likely to be exacerbated, especially considering they are likely to have to deal with a Democratic senate so compromise will be even more essential to prevent Chuck Schumer from just blocking all their legislation in the upper chamber.

What is more, his election is not a sure thing. While he seems likely to win a majority of Republican members and so be elected their leader in the chamber, to be elected Speaker you need a majority of the house. So if the 20-40 members who don’t like him refuse to support him for Speaker, Ryan would have to rely on Democrats preferring his leadership to no leadership at all. But i doubt he would do that, as it would be seen as the ultimate betrayal by many if not most Republicans.

So it would make a lot of sense for Ryan to resign as speaker for the benefit of his future popularity. In that event I honestly have no idea who might take the job. And that should concern everyone. No matter who is President, the Speaker performs a vital role in getting anything of any lasting consequence done.

What is more, they may well end up being the highest ranking elected official in the Republican party. That would give them  a tremendous leadership role in shaping the direction of one half of the two party system.

So what is Paul Ryan going to do after the election? I don’t know. But its going to be well worth watching.