Sourdough Bread - An Allegory and a Recipe

Try finding that at Panera

I named this blog "Polymath Politics" for a reason. A polymath is somebody who's interested in, and good at, several unrelated things. I can't claim to be good at all of my interests, but I definitely aspire to be. Politics aren't for everyone, so I thought I'd begin to leaven the blog with some baking articles.

Get it? 

Leaven?

Baking?



Ok, if you're still with me after that, let's talk about the path from flour and water to the loaf above.

Humble Beginnings

I've wanted to make my own sourdough starter for a couple of years, but my frequent work travel prevented me from doing it. While easy, sourdough starters require basically daily tending. Now that I'm traveling less, this seemed like the perfect time to get going.

I began, like with most things in the kitchen, with Serious Eats. They're my favorite source for basically all recipes, and their baking columnist had a follow-along guide to sourdough. 

Everything in that guide sounded easy - just mix in 1 oz of flour and water each day, and wait for the microbacterial magic to happen. I followed the guide precisely, and measured everything on a good kitchen scale. I mixed when directed, and I left it alone when appropriate. After about a week, I convinced myself that it was time to bake! Feast your eyes on this:

Don't worry, it looked less impressive in person.

That wan loaf was the product of a week's tending. It, obviously, failed to rise either prior to baking or in the oven. The texture of this bread approximated a dense pretzel, and it tasted of failure. 

What Went Wrong?

I realized that this was a classic case of confirmation bias: I was eager to bake with my starter, and I convinced myself that my jar looked like the pictures in the guide. The few bubbles I saw should have been a warning, but instead I saw them as exactly what I needed.

I determined that I'd been methodically killing my starter with each feeding. Palm Beach County, like many municipalities, treats its tap water with chloramine. This is a stronger, less volatile version of chlorine, and it is extremely successful at destroying microbes. As I was attempting to grow microbes, this was less than ideal. 

Scrumptious.

I never had to deal with additives like this when I lived in Maryland, as our house had a well. Even carbon filters won't remove chloramine (due to its non-volatility), so I switched over to spring water here. 

Success!

With my optimism renewed, I again decided to bake with the starter. A quick spin in the stand mixer, some room-temperature proofing, and and overnight rise gave me...this:

Your yeast is weak, dough.

Turns out that even the bubbles in my starter picture above were insufficient. As discussed in Serious Eats' guide, sourdough starter will only work when the bubbles are actively rising up in the jar, and a too-full jar threatens to spill over onto your counter. Mine wasn't there yet, so it still didn't rise. I learned from my past mistakes, and spiked this loaf with commercial yeast (just bloom a packet in some water and sugar, and knead it into the dough). That gave me some rough success, similar to bread I've made previously:

  

This bread was fine, but not really what I was after. It was still pretty dense, and the flavor was only adequate. Jim Lahey's No Knead Bread is far superior to what this one came out like.

You'll note that I baked my bread in a pot (a dutch oven, technically). This is key. Recipes will tell you to prep a baking stone or a sheet pan, but that's BS. You'll get much better results from a dutch oven, as its lid traps steam during the initial stage of baking (sometimes I even throw in a bit of extra water to produce more steam). This helps lead to better rising, and it does...magic...with the crust. Don't really know what's up with that, but the texture comes out better. Either way, if a dutch oven is an option, always use it.

After this attempt, all I did was wait longer for more success. A few more days of feeding and stirring gave a vigorous starter that rose aggressively. I've also found that my dough tends to come together more quickly, when kneading, with the sourdough starter than with instant yeast. I'm not sure why that would be the case, but it's been a consistent observation. Here's a shot of the hole structure in some recent sourdough bread, and another of the finished product:

The Serious Eats guide has some sourdough bread recipes, and I also quite like this one from the Wild Yeast Blog. For most of these recipes, I still fall back on the baking technique advocated by Jim Lahey, with the dutch oven. 

On Unintended Consequences and Critical Thinking

I promised an allegory, and here it is. My encounter with chloramine seems emblematic of the choices encountered by politicians. Treating municipal water with this chemical likely makes sense for many reasons: it keeps the water clean, prevents us from getting sick, and must have other benefits over straight chlorine. It's a subject too arcane for most constituents to care about or fluently discuss. Still, it has important implications for narrow interest groups. While the water here is perfectly fine for most uses, it was wholly inadequate for my mission.

This was an easy one to troubleshoot - the sourdough starter only has two ingredients, and I can't have mixed them together so incorrectly as to have utterly failed. Still, it's a good reminder to actually assess the situation in front of you (rather than optimistically hoping that everything is ok. "Look, there's a bubble!"), and reexamine the causes of deviation from expected results. 

There's more baking coverage to come. Hopefully this offshoot is a welcome addition to the blog.

Escaping the Echo Chamber

You've probably noticed I've been writing a lot about the Republican primary. Why is that? I'm a solid Democrat, and there's no chance I'll vote for a Republican presidential candidate in 2016, so why focus so much on the other side?

Escaping the Echo Chamber

Researchers generally agree that the Internet, combined with a profusion of TV stations tailored to specific political outlooks, has led to increased polarization in our country. When people choose what to read and watch, they tend to choose things they already agree with. Said another way, the Internet allows you to choose your own facts. I worried, especially this early in the race, about retreating into my own partisan hole. The Echo Chamber is the enemy of true clarity. The first few months of the primary season seemed a good time to immerse myself in the Right. 

Judging by my pageviews, I think this blog lives in the middle of this chart. </ennui>

I figured that by reading about Republicans, and about the differing views among their constituents, that I'd better appreciate views different from my own.

I was heartened by the moderate opinions of candidates like John Kasich. I was interested in Jeb Bush's break with party orthodoxy on immigration. I was appreciative of the party's broad embrace of nuclear power, which I feel is an important tool in our fight against climate change.

Ultimately, though, I was disappointed.

My journey into Republican politics coincided with the rise of Donald Trump. My initial plan was to ignore him, or to write about him only for comic relief. The Republican base, though, has made this very difficult. Not only has Trump's support remained steadfast, his success has caused other candidates to fall off of their positions. Bush fumbled immigration. Lindsey Graham wants to monitor mosques. Scott Walker is going to put up a wall along the Canadian border.

This is what a border wall with Canada would look like. Probably.

In short, the primary process was captured by the lunatic fringe, and moderates like me were scared away. This seems to happen every season (remember "Self-Deportation", waffling on universal healthcare, and the 47% from Romney in 2012; remember McCain's embrace of torture in 2008?)

A future post will explore why I believe Trump's (and Ben Carson's) supporters to be "lunatics", and not just "people with whom I disagree". Regardless, this group's dominance over the Republican political dialog, evidenced by Trump's rise and the reluctance of other candidates to oppose him, has reminded me why I'm a Democrat. My journey out of the echo chamber really did expose me to different ideas, but those ideas were repellent.

Unfortunately, this brings me to the next reason why I haven't been writing about Democrats.

Out of the Frying Pan and Into the 'Meh'

There's another reason why I haven't been writing about Democrats: I'm pretty disappointed with the options. While I've never been a huge fan of Hillary Clinton, I was willing to write it off as a branding problem. Clinton is the most experienced candidate around, and she's generally done a good job on policy. She's just 

such.

a terrible.

campaigner.

Benghazi was a fake scandal - a misappropriation of tragedy to score political points. The email thing is more legitimately troubling, though by itself shouldn't be a huge deal. My problem is that Clinton has mishandled the whole thing. Rather than killing the issue early on, she's allowed the scandal to linger and build. Whether she's telling truth or not, she seems like she's lying. That's a big problem, and may continue to be a problem in the General Election. 

Who else is there? 

Bernie Sanders has been on the rise for months, and he obviously engenders enthusiasm from his constituency. I, too, agree with many of his policy positions, but I disagree with him on things like trade and energy policy. Protectionism never seems to work; I'm unconvinced that we can keep "good jobs" in America by restricting free trade. I've never been too sympathetic to unions, though I understand why they were important in the Prohibition era. Sanders is against nuclear power, even though it is the most available, scalable, technology to combat climate change. I can't pretend to understand the problem the Black Lives Matter people have with Sanders, but that's still been going poorly.

Sanders doesn't come off as Presidential, and that does matter. Worse, Sanders is unelectable. I certainly don't care that he's a Socialist, but I bet that many American voters will. The Republican party once succeeded in making "liberal" a dirty word that Democrats ran away from. Imagine the field day they'll have with Socialist. 

Martin O'Malley does look like a President, but his rationale for running has never been clear. He wanted to run to Clinton's left, but Sanders ruined that. He had a good record as Governor of Maryland, but a series of setbacks have reduced his momentum (his Lieutenant Governor losing the election, unrest in Baltimore, increased scrutiny on his policing policy). O'Malley doesn't seem like the next great hope of the Democratic party.

Joe Biden is considering a run too. I like Joe Biden. He used to ride a train to work every day. Biden isn't meaningfully different from Clinton, though. He lacks some of her baggage, but he's got substantially the same policies. Seems like a good emergency option, but I just don't see him adding anything to the race.

Al Gore is someone I'd be extremely excited about. The environment is among my highest priorities, and there's no candidate I'd trust more than Gore to move us in the right direction on that. There was a brief rumor he was considering a run, but it seemed to die quickly. 

Al Gore will protect us from all threats

Jim Webb and Lincoln Chaffee are also running. I bet this is the first time you've heard their names since they announced their candidacies. You may never hear them again! It's unclear whether they're actively campaigning...the only Google News hit I got on Webb was that he didn't attend a Democratic National Committee gathering. Go get'm, Jim!

I'll get more into the Democratic policy picture in my next post. Ultimately, I'm sure I'll support the nominee, regardless of who that is, since I broadly agree with the whole group on the major planks of their platforms. I worry about my enthusiasm being low, though. If I am not enthusiastic about these people, then who could be?

Republicans are the Party of Ideas, but They All Have the Same Ideas

The dust has cleared from the first Republican debate, and the candidates' polling positions have settled out. Vox echoed many of my thoughts from last Monday, after the insurgent candidates' bumps turned out to be real. We'll see how long the outsider vote remains strong, but in the meantime, let's talk about whether it matters.

From Many, One Opinion

The story so far this season has centered on the triumph of Outsider candidates over the Establishment, but the distinction between Outsider and Establishment seems to be a matter of branding rather than substance. We've all laughed at Donald Trump's shallow incoherence, but his positions aren't very different from those of his rivals. Paul Krugran wrote an excellent column in the New York Times about this recently:

For while it’s true that Mr. Trump is, fundamentally, an absurd figure, so are his rivals. If you pay attention to what any one of them is actually saying, as opposed to how he says it, you discover incoherence and extremism every bit as bad as anything Mr. Trump has to offer. And that’s not an accident: Talking nonsense is what you have to do to get anywhere in today’s Republican Party.

It's very early in this primary race, but we've already seen the candidates stake out their ideological territory. Each candidate has a position or two on which he differs from Republican orthodoxy, but the rest of their platforms are the strict party-line. Again, from Krugman:

Mr. Trump, famously, is a “birther” — someone who has questioned whether President Obama was born in the United States. But is that any worse than Scott Walker’s declaration that he isn’t sure whether the president is a Christian?

Mr. Trump’s declared intention to deport all illegal immigrants is definitely extreme, and would require deep violations of civil liberties. But are there any defenders of civil liberties in the modern G.O.P.? Notice how eagerly Rand Paul, self-described libertarian, has joined in the witch hunt against Planned Parenthood.

And while Mr. Trump is definitely appealing to know-nothingism, Marco Rubio, climate change denier, has made “I’m not a scientist” his signature line. (Memo to Mr. Rubio: Presidents don’t have to be experts on everything, but they do need to listen to experts, and decide which ones to believe.)

It's hard to see where this race is going, as long as the 16 candidates struggle to differentiate themselves. I once had high hopes for Rand Paul, for instance, but he's abandoned his different-thinking mindset and become a Libertarian In Name Only. He's done this in a crass attempt to court votes from Republicans who oppose abortion rights, same-sex marriage, and who support huge defense spending. "Libertarian who supports government regulation of women's health choices and bedroom activities" may be the definition of cognitive dissonance. 

Priorities and Facts

In another great New York Times column, Timothy Egan summarizes the lowlights of policy positions released by the candidates so far:

Other Republicans think we should be living in a theocracy. “It’s time we recognize the Supreme Court is not the Supreme Being,” said Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, testing the latest version of his church-lady demagogy. He wants to ignore the high court on both gay marriage and abortion — breaking the law while waving his Bible.

Huckabee would also use the force of government to intervene with any woman seeking an abortion, claiming a constitutional right, the 14th and 5th Amendments, to protect a zygote. When he mentioned this Brave New World idea in the debate, no one challenged him. Instead, other candidates were equally extreme, refusing to make abortion exceptions even when the life of a woman is at stake. This is junk women’s health care, driven by religious fanaticism.

More empty calories: Scott Walker, the governor whose foreign policy experience is limited to breakfast at the old International House of Pancakes, threatens to start at least two wars upon taking office. He promises to use military action if necessary to coax Iran into doing what he wants it to do. He also wants to pick a fight with Russia, sending weapons to Ukraine and erecting a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Many of these pronouncements earn huge cheers during debates and stump speeches, but they're all based on either magical thinking, deception, or both. Any candidate who calls for an amendment to the Constitution is just spouting unactionable talking points, while most of the illegal immigration blustering is happening on false pretenses.

This summary of common arguments about illegal immigration and border protection is worth reading in full. The context here is that Donald Trump released a position paper on this subject this week, though these arguments have been made by most of the Republican candidates recently. My favorite bit is about the number of illegal immigrants in the US declining in recent years, but please do read the whole thing.

The old formula was for a center-right candidate to throw red meat to the fringe, and ride their support to the nomination. Recently, this approach has pulled the nominee too far, to a point that was ultimately unrecoverable. When misconceptions and magic are the starting point in an ideology, can anything rational result? 

School Resegregation in Florida - Different State, Just as Bad

Percent of students passing both reading and math vs. % of students at each school who are black. Each dot is a school. The colored dots are from Pinellas County; the gray dots are other counties in Florida

A few days ago, I wrote about modern school segregation and the ruinous effects it has on education outcomes for minority students. Today, a friend pointed me to an investigation from the Tampa Bay Times, published yesterday, about the willful school resegregation conducted in Pinellas County, FL. Resegregation has been a disaster for the black students in this county, as the newly majority-black schools have utterly failed the students.

These students are, demographically, no different than other poor students elsewhere in Florida. Their test performance and behavior at school has become markedly worse than those similar students. Previously-successful students who transfer into these schools have fallen behind their previous trajectories. Despite this, attempts at reform in the district have failed. The district has become dynamically unstable: schools are so bad that good teachers won't stay, and they're replaced by either bad teachers, inexperienced teachers, or both.

I won't write much today, as the Times' work stands alone. Please read this article. Also, their interactive feature is excellent, and contains a number of charts that illustrate the situation. 

Pinellas County is too far away from where I live to help out, but I do plan to get involved in Palm Beach County schools this year. Is anyone else interested in getting involved?

Rick Perry, Lawrence Lessig, and Campaign Finance in 2015

Pictured: Every political candidate

Citizen's United was a case decided by the Supreme Court in 2010. This ruling declared political donations to be considered political "speech", and held that corporations were protected speakers. In essence, limits on corporate political spending were equated to limits on an individual's right to free speech. 

This ruling did affect the 2012 Presidential election, but its effects have become even more profound this year. 

Super PACs

Steven Colbert did a great job explaining the problems associated with Citizens United, back when he ran for "President of the United States of South Carolina" in 2012. This video is a good summary of Colbert's work in this field:

This video emphasized the unlimited sums of money that Super PACs can raise. On its face, this seems strange. Why is an individual limited to donating only $2,700 directly to a federal candidate, and a PAC limited to donating only $5,000, while a Super PAC is unrestricted? 

The answer is transparency, or at least the illusion of transparency. Super PACs are required to disclose their donors, and they're prohibited from donating money directly to candidates. The Court's rationale was that this disclosure, and the isolation of funds, would preclude "corruption or the appearance of corruption." Sounds great.

Many Super PACs also registered as 501(c)(4) organizations, which were originally intended as "tax exempt organizations dedicated to social welfare." Colbert Super PAC Shh! was an example of a 501(c)(4). The distinction between this type of PAC and a regular Super PAC is that 501(c)(4)s do not need to disclose their donors. Citizen's United removed restrictions on 501(c)(4)s conducting political speech, thus creating a system where unlimited amounts of money, contributed secretly, can be used for political campaigns.

Fortunately, Americans have the Federal Election Commission to protect us from abuse of this system. The FEC describes their duties as the following:

To disclose campaign finance information, to enforce the provisions of the law such as the limits and prohibitions on contributions, and to oversee the public funding of Presidential elections.

Guess what? There's a problem here too. The FEC is not a nonpartisan organization; it's a bipartisan organization. Its six-member board is legally prohibited from having more than three members of the same party. This forces three Democrats and three Republicans onto the Commission at all times, leading to frequent deadlock. The FEC ruled in a tie over 200 times between 2008 and 2014, meaning that it rarely actually "enforces any provisions of the law". This leaves campaigns able to break even today's lax rules, with virtually no chance of penalty.

Decisions Have Consequences

You can probably see the effects of Super PAC Proliferation today: tons of political advertising, a longer campaign season with more candidates than ever, an unprecedented political influence from the wealthiest Americans.

Rick Perry's campaign shows evidence of a less-expected outcome.

His traditional campaign is basically out of money, as he's failed to inspire any meaningful popular support for his candidacy this year. His Super PACs, meanwhile, have received huge donations from wealthy backers. The combination of low traditional donations plus high Super PAC donations yields the following chart, compiled by FiveThirtyEight:

Perry leads all major candidates in the % of fundraising contributed by Super PACs, and he's also spending more of his money than any other candidate. Normally, this would be a huge problem. Since candidates aren't allowed to coordinate with their Super PACs, there are certain functions which only the candidate's actual campaign can perform. This year, Perry's Super PACs have pledged to take over some of those duties for him. Illegal? Probably. Punishable? Not by the bipartisan FEC.

If Perry's PACs have been so successful raising money, why is his campaign's traditional fundraising ailing? Traditional fundraising is hard, because of the $2,700 donation cap. To raise millions of dollars, you need thousands of donors willing to contribute the maximum amount. It takes effort and organization to marshal that sort of funding. Super PACs just require some wealthy backers with special interests.

Perry's campaign is probably doomed anyway, but it will be interesting to see what happens until it all ends. He wasn't impressive in the Kids' Table debate, and his campaign has stopped paying its staff. I hope his Super PACs really cross the line, if only to catalyze change in our campaign finance laws.

Catalyzing Change in Our Campaign Finance Laws

That brings us to Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard Professor who promises to run for President if he can raise $1 million by Labor Day. Unlike everyone else in the race, Lessig is running as a "referendum candidate". He promises to push an agenda solely of campaign finance reform, and then resign once that's completed. This is probably unrealistic - he'd still need Congress to create the bill and vote for it, and they'll have no real motivation to do this - but it's an exciting idea. Lessig argues that the influence of money has broken our political system, and radical change is the only fix. 

Does his argument interest you? 2016 is already showing us the absurdities of a fully-realized, post-Citizens United world. Maybe an absurd candidacy, from an outsider with a single goal, is the antidote?

School Segregation in 2015 - Education Inequality Leads To...

We'll take a break from the Republican horserace today to cover a vital topic: de facto segregation in our public schools. Below, I link to two podcast episodes from This American Life. You really should listen to both of them, as they're absolutely worth your time.

Backwards Bigots

We all learned in school that Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was a triumph, and that it heralded the beginning of the modern civil rights era. We were horrified that America could so recently have accepted a system where many of our citizens were legally prohibited from coexisting with their white peers. We were revolted by the backward attitudes at the time, and reveled at the enlightened time we lived in.

This lesson implied that school desegregation succeeded. This may have been true, or seemed true, when I was growing up in the 80's and 90's: school desegregation peaked in 1988. The US has been on a backward slide since then, with the level of school integration in 2005 equaling that of 1968. This gradual decline of integration has happened quietly, and thus many of us probably don't realize it's happening.

We now live in a time when economic inequality abounds, with paltry opportunities for young minorities. Education is often proposed as a solution to these woes, but the poor education provided to minority students presents a barrier. "Separate but Equal" doctrine was struck down by the Supreme Court a long time ago, and it remains unrealistic today. Much of schools' funding comes from local property taxes, and for that reason schools in poor districts will be inherently unequal. Just as in 1954, integration is the answer.

Opportunity for All

This American Life released two fantastic episodes of their radio show/podcast over the last two weeks. Called "The Problem We All Live With", after the Norman Rockwell painting of the same name (at the top of this post), the shows examine school segregation today.

Part 1 focuses on the Normandy school district in Missouri, where Michael Brown attended high school. Normandy, which had its accreditation on probation for 15 years, was "accidentally" integrated a few years ago. This happened when the district finally lost its accreditation, and a state law allowed district students to transfer to a neighboring district at no cost. The neighboring district here was majority-white, and nearly 1000 students from Normandy elected to transfer.

Listen in this episode as Nikole Hannah-Jones, of the New York Times Magazine, tells you what happened. The transfer students were initially met with overwhelming resistance, but the first year ended up going very well. The integration of these students raised their educational outcomes well above where they were in the de facto-segregated Normandy school district. 

Part 2 jumps to Hartford, CT, where the school district is actively pursuing integration. They're doing this mostly through the creation of magnet schools, aiming to attract white students from the suburbs into schools in the city. These newly-integrated schools, flush with cash from a legal settlement, have dramatically improved the quality of Hartford's education system. By pursuing a magnet school approach, where a series of schools are individually tailored to different interests, Hartford found a way to integrate students willingly. 

Admitting the Problem is the First Step

Please listen to these two episodes; it's a great way to spend a couple of commutes. Wealth inequality is one of our biggest domestic problems, and our unequal schools are a root cause. As you'll hear in the school board meeting in Part 1, we also continue to have a problem with flat-out racism. Improved education won't fix this directly, but I've got to hope that increasing our exposure to other cultures will help improve how we feel about one another.

--

Once you've listened to the shows, please let me know what you think!

-Eric

Polls had bumps like a Trump, Trump, Trump / I's like what, what what

In my Republican Debate Wrap-Up on Friday, I said the following about Donald Trump's performance:

To quote the New Yorker, Donald Trump was more heinous than previously thought. He defended himself, at all times, by lashing out at others. This made him hugely entertaining, despite the layers of misogyny and incoherence. Republican operative reactions, after the debate, were that he was terrible. I suspect the base loved it. His answers were utterly incoherent. I suspect the base loved that too. [Emphasis added today]

Horrifyingly, that initial reaction has been confirmed by today's polls. To rational observers, Donald Trump had the worst performance of any candidate in the Varsity Debate. His answers were all insulting, mostly non-sequiturs, and generally indecipherable. He actively insulted Megyn Kelly, a popular host on a popular network with Republicans. He refused to commit to support the party's eventual nominee.

Trump's situation seemed to degrade after the debate, when on Friday he continued insulting Kelly, and implied that her tough questioning was motivated by hormones. Just like after "the Mexicans, the rapists", just like after Trump's insults to John McCain and POWs , national pundits speculated that Trump's poor debate performance and misogynistic comments would end his campaign.

These pundits misunderestimated* Trump's appeal to his base.

Trump's style of snappy, irrelevant come-backs may be appealing to an audience that isn't critically thinking about the debate. He lacks any cogent policy position, but he knows how to insult Rosie O'Donnell! 

*Ok, "misunderestimate" isn't actually in that video, but it contains too many classics to avoid sharing it.

Other Movers

Look closely at the plot of polling numbers, in the link at the top. Most candidates' numbers stayed flat, or decreased, over the time period depicted. The biggest gainer, other than Trump, is Ben Carson. Carson was among the most Googled candidates during the debate, and he began the night with nearly the lowest Name ID (John Kasich was lower). I thought that Carson had a bad showing at the debate, offering quiet, non-specific answers to questions. He had a memorable closing statement, but otherwise I figured he'd be eclipsed by some of the serious candidates on-stage. The exposure Carson gained, here, must have outweighed his middling performance. Like Trump, he's an outsider with a populist message. While it's hard to characterize Trump according to the Four Faces, Carson is obviously in the Very Conservative, Evangelical camp. These outsider/populist candidates may be creating sub-factions of each of the classical Republican groups, where each group has an Establishment candidate and a Populist candidate. 

If that theme holds, then Carly Fiorina will be the Populist-Very Conservative, Secular candidate. She was the other candidate to gain a measurable amount of support after the debate. She was clearly the best at the Kid's Table, and was more impressive than several of the Varsity debaters. Just like Trump and Carson, Fiorina has no political experience. 

Jeb Bush has been consistently fading, though by only 1 point per week. Scott Walker lost a bit more than Bush, and the rest of the field remained pretty flat. Trump's Bump seems to have been pulled pretty equally from across the primary.

What's Important

We'll continue tracking this potential theme of splitting the Four Faces into eight, with Establishment and Populist candidates for each. There is obviously a (large) segment of the Republican party that is represented in these polls, but ignored among the chattering class. It's meaningful that virtually all of the increases in support, after the debate, went to these Populist candidates. 44% of the vote, in that poll, belongs to the combo of Trump, Carson, and Fiorina. With three of the four "Faces" covered, it seems like there'd be an opportunity for a Populist-Liberal candidate.

Oh, wait, that's Bernie Sanders.

Introduction, and the Paradox of Choice

The first couple of posts on this blog have been a bit of a cold-open, but now it's time for an actual introduction. This blog isn't about me, so we won't dwell there, though it is motivated by my interest in politics and rational thinking. Lots of people disengage from the political process because it's confusing, they don't know where to start, or there seems to be too much to know. Aside from that, many are turned off by partisan vitriol. The anger that often attends political discourse is what makes politics one of the seven things you should never discuss.

We can do better than that, on both counts.

On this blog, I'll attempt to demystify political news by focusing on what's important, while ignoring trivia. I read a lot, but I'll share only articles that I find particularly illuminating. This will all make more sense if you read those articles too, and I genuinely hope you choose to comment.

I'll avoid article-dumps, posts with links to dozens of articles, because I think this is counterproductive. You may have heard of the Paradox of Choice, which posits consumers are impeded by an overabundance of choices. Decision paralysis results from staring at a shelf full of 27 different types of toothpaste. I wager this same principle applies to the reams of political opinions available online, so I'll try to sidestep it by presenting a curated few in each post.

I hope that we can think rationally through your priorities, and use those priorities to point you towards the candidates who best represent your interests. This is particularly important in a year with so many candidates running. The Republicans are offering 17 different people for your consideration; the Democrats technically have five, but there are only two worth noting. There are meaningful differences between each of the candidates, but it's interesting to contrast how each Primary field fares regarding the Paradox of Choice. Republicans will say that a sea of choices is superior to a "coronation", but picking a favorite from their lineup may be tough. 

Yesterday, I categorized the Republican candidates. There was some overlap between the categories, but chances are good (if you're a Republican) that you can decide which of those categories you fit into yourself. Focus your attention this way: which type of candidate do I want? Within that type, which of the 4 or 5 candidates do I like best? The field will inevitably shrink. Once it does, your list of choices will come into even sharper focus.

I mentioned priorities above, and this is an area where I think Americans need to improve. Swaths of the American electorate consistently vote against their own self-interest, usually due to some convenient wedge issue or fear-mongering from the candidates. Guard against this. I'll attempt to highlight instances of the candidates doing this, so that you can sift through it. 

So, again, join the conversation! Jump into the comments below the articles, and share them with your friends, if you enjoyed them. Avoid ambiguous participles, like I just failed to do. ("If you enjoyed your friends", or "If you enjoyed the articles"? The world will never know.)

-Eric

The Four Faces of the Republican Primary

Anyone who wants to understand Republican primary politics needs to read this article, by Henry Olsen. Rather than framing the primary as a struggle between the establishment and the base/insurgents/Tea Party, this more nuanced view compares four distinct sets of voters:

• Moderate or liberal voters
• Somewhat conservative voters
• Very conservative, evangelical voters
• Very conservative, secular voters

Republican primary voters are spread unequally among these four categories. While the very conservative, secular voters represent the smallest group, their money and lobbying make them a big influence on the party platform. Other groups, though, tend to drive the decision on the nomination.

Let's walk through each category, and assign candidates to them. What can we draw from breaking down the race this way? Let's use FiveThirtyEight's similar Five Ring Circus diagram for help:

Moderate or liberal candidates

Jeb Bush, John Kasich, Chris Christie, George Pataki

I expected to struggle differentiating this group from the "somewhat conservatives"; other than Bush, it was pretty easy. These guys are demonstrably more liberal than the somewhats. "Demonstrably more liberal", in the Republican party, means that they've got one or two issues where they hold center-left positions (that's why I decided to put Bush here). These issues mostly include Medicaid expansion, immigration, gay rights, or the environment. 

Note, here, the first hint of influence from the "very conservative, secular" constituency. All of those moderate policies are important, but you'll never find one of these moderates who espouses higher taxes on the wealthy, despite the balanced-budget dream that's at the core of their economic messages.

If this election cycle plays out like 2012, either Kasich or Christie will get a ton of love from the media, moderate Republicans, and some Democrats. I'd put my money on Kasich, solely because of Christie's Bridgeghazi scandal. This is similar to the trajectory of John Huntsman in 2012, but he failed pretty early in the campaign. Huntsman's voters mostly went over to Romney in 2012, and it's easy to see the Kasich/Christie voters settling for Bush in this cycle.

Somewhat conservative candidates

Marco Rubio, Donald Trump, Rand Paul, Lindsey Graham, Jim Gilmore

The favored candidate of somewhat conservative voters always wins the nomination, though they sometimes choose a candidate who'd also slot into the moderate/liberal wing. From the article:

These voters’ preferred candidate profile can be inferred from the characteristics of their favored candidates: Bob Dole in 1996, George W. Bush in 2000, John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012. They like even-keeled men with substantial governing experience. 

Among my 'somewhat conservatives', Rubio most closely fits the profile of past winners, from a policy perspective. If you roll in Jeb Bush, Kasich, and Christie, it becomes a much muddier picture. Viewed this way, Trump and Paul are clearly irrelevant to the nomination race. Graham and Gilmore have no discernible support, and I'll probably never discuss them again.

Very conservative, evangelical candidates

Mike Huckabee, Ben Carson, Bobby Jindal, Rick Santorum

Welcome to the Right Wing. It's scary in here. These candidates prioritize a Bible-based worldview over almost all other considerations, provided that you ignore the parts of the Bible that say you should take care of the poor. They must be too busy for that part, I guess. Ben Carson, on Meet the Press, failed to answer the question, "Does the Bible have authority over the Constitution?"

This category of voters makes up about 20% of GOP voters, but they're organized, and they're loud. While these characteristics force candidates in other categories to address their priorities verbally, their favored candidates never win anything in the Presidential race. This group does have a tendency to back the runner-up:

The evangelical favorite, for example, surprised pundits by winning Iowa in 2008 and 2012, and supplied the backing for second-place Iowa finishers Pat Robertson in 1988 and Pat Buchanan in 1996. Their strength in the Deep South and the border states also allowed Mike Huckabee rather than Mitt Romney to emerge as John McCain’s final challenger in 2008, and that strength combined with their domination of the February 7 caucuses in Minnesota and Colorado allowed Rick Santorum to emerge as Romney’s challenger in 2012.

You'll hear a lot about this group in the lead-up to, and recovery from, the Iowa caucuses. Their preferred candidate may even win Iowa. One barrier to that outcome is the profusion of choices in this category this year. Ben Carson and Mike Huckabee have been polling well so far, but Santorum is an old favorite, and Jindal will say anything to garner votes. Whoever emerges from this scrum, you can be confident he won't win the nomination.

Very conservative, secular candidates

Scott Walker, Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina, Rick Perry

This is the smallest group of Republican voters, but they back some prominent candidates. Some might argue that Trump fits in this category, since he's a rich, political outsider (like Steve Forbes, Jack Kemp, and others). His policy history, such as it is, doesn't appear to support this categorization. The candidates here are different than those of the past, though, as none seem to have a purely low-taxes and small government message. Scott Walker's propensity to wade into culture wars unnerves these voters, as they feel it's a distraction from their economic priorities. Ted Cruz brings xenophobia to the table, which is starkly counter to the Chamber of Commerce's message. 

Carly Fiorina may be the wildcard here. BallotPedia rates here as a center-right candidate, but her history is so sparse that I suspect their assessment will change when the sample size grows. So far she's presented herself as a pro-business, anti-Hillary, candidate, and I think that could appeal to this group. Ultimately, very conservative, secular voters will back whomever isn't the Evangelical candidate.

Aside

What happened to the Tea Party? You used to hear a lot about their preferences as a bloc, but perhaps they've been fragmented by the huge field? It's also possible that Sarah Palin dragged the group out of prominence when she descended to insanity. We'll see if they resurface once the main contenders come into focus.

Summary

Hopefully the Four Faces article serves as a useful lens through which to view this primary. You can take the long view, and realize that while many candidates will make a splash, they ultimately need to appeal to both the moderates and the somewhat-conservatives. 

Fox News' Republican Primary Debate: We Grill, You Decide

Thursday night brought us the first of nine Republican primary debates this season. The Republican National Committee (RNC) is attempting to tame the chaos that reigned in 2012, and I believe they're off to a good start. Fewer debates, so far competently moderated, might bring some sanity to the process. Will the countless candidates be up to this challenge?

The Main Stage

Fox, famously, split the 17 major candidates into two groups. I'll address the performances of the Top 10 first, and then hit the Kids' Table below. These are my thoughts on each candidate's performance relative to the others; I'm surely not in the core constituency of any of these people.

Moderators

Megyn Kelly, Bret Baier, and Chris Wallace dominated this debate by keeping the candidates on-topic and off-balance. They directed cutting questions at each candidate, probing major flaws in the backgrounds of each. Fox News was the only news outfit that could pull off this aggressive approach, as any other channel would be accused of having a liberal agenda. This may have been the best-run debate I've seen, despite having the most-ever candidates on stage.

Top 10

Some candidates made the most of the spotlight, lapping up exposure they've lacked so far. Others wilted. 

• John Kasich, the Governor of Ohio, was the winner for me. He barely qualified for this debate, but he was engaging, positive, and espoused moderate policy positions. Kasich passionately defended his decision to expand Medicaid, opening up some daylight between him and his opponents. He managed Trump better than anyone, by brushing off the man but addressing his constituency. His campaign brilliantly timed his official entry into the race, allowing his post-announcement bump to carry him into the Top 10 in the polls. Given his nascent name-ID so far, this exposure may have served him better than anyone else.
• Chris Christie also did a good job of mixing personality and policy accomplishments. His personality is bombastic, and he clashed with others onstage, but I thought it was a good showing. 
• Rand Paul's strategy was obviously to create buzz by arguing with others. He went after Trump, Christie, and others. This diminished him. He came away looking like a petulant child, and his unique Libertarian viewpoint was lost. 
• Jeb Bush: Remember when I mentioned wilting? He wilted. Like a Bush. If you didn't know he was supposed to be the front-runner, you never would have guessed it from this debate. He didn't do anything ruinous, but he did have some strange remarks:

"I've got a record in Florida. I'm proud of my dad, and I'm certainly proud of my brother. In Florida, they called me Jeb, because I earned it." 

• Marco Rubio had a great night, according to a lot of pundits. I must have missed something. He seemed inoffensive, and he spoke well, but he mainly stayed away from policy. He tried to make an electability argument, but it feels early in the process for that sort of thing. 
• I'd forgive you for forgetting Ted Cruz was in this debate. Expectations were high for this former Ivy League debate champion, but he didn't really do anything. Borrowing a sports phrase, he came across as "just another guy". 
• Mike Huckabee and Ben Carson were about as absurd as you'd expect. Huckabee always sounds angry anymore. His hectoring style lingers from his years as a talk show host. This was all that was memorable about his performance. Carson, meanwhile, got lost in the fray due to his mild personality. When given the chance to speak, he didn't have any obvious policy knowledge. Pressed on his record of apparently not knowing anything about politics, government, or international relations, he answered that he's "smart, and can learn quickly". Reassuring. 
• To quote the New Yorker, Donald Trump was more heinous than previously thought. He defended himself, at all times, by lashing out at others. This made him hugely entertaining, despite the layers of misogyny and incoherence. Republican operative reactions, after the debate, were that he was terrible. I suspect the base loved it. His answers were utterly incoherent. I suspect the base loved that too.
• Scott Walker. I almost forgot about him. Maybe that's his strategy? Remember when Kramer got a job by just showing up at an office, and blending in by pretending to work there? He learned that he couldn't be fired, since he was never hired. That seems to be Walker's approach.

The Kids' Table

You didn't need to look hard to figure out why these seven candidates couldn't make the Top 10. This group hewed closely to their talking points. Charisma was forgotten. The Republican field will lose nothing if six of these seven are never seen again during this cycle.

• Coming in, I expected to like Lindsey Graham the best of these seven. I expected him to have a cogent national security position, coupled with moderate views at home. Other than the pointless Jim Gilmore, Graham may have been the least impressive candidate onstage. His answers were both preachy and boring, while delivering some extreme-fringe views. Graham went to absurd lengths to focus on ISIS, here pivoting to ISIS in response to a question about Planned Parenthood:

• For some reason, I seem to retain a soft spot for Rick Perry. Despite his new glasses, he still doesn't seem smart. Mispronunciations abound, and he's far too proud of himself each time he finishes answering a question. His answers, in this debate, were basically nothing but his stump speech. Regardless, there's something charming about how Texan he is.
• Carly Fiorina was by far the most competent among the seven, and with more exposure, she could do some damage to the more preposterous candidates in the top 10. I've mostly hated everything she said prior to this debate. The thesis of her campaign has been that she's a woman, and Hillary Clinton is a woman, so she can attack Clinton. That's a pretty low bar. Still, she showed in this debate that she deserved to be on the main stage, and I hope to see her there in the next debate.
• The moderators' questions were astoundingly somnolent. They seemed to be trying for "thorough, precise questions". What they achieved were paragraphs-long, indecipherable questions. By the time the moderators were done talking, I forgot what the premise of the question was. I felt bad for the candidates.
• The most surprising policy position I saw was broad distrust of Muslims. Lindsey Graham advocated for a standing surveillance program in mosques, and George Pataki seemed to say that Muslim religious speech is not a protected category of speech. I thought these guys were the moderates?
• Bobby Jindal was there too, but he's too silly to dwell on. Rick Santorum refused to speak to the camera, instead hunching toward the moderators. By this point, you know who he is. America's economy needs to look like the coal and steel heyday of Pennsylvania. Booo abortions. Yay God.

Overall, it was clear why these candidates were the undercard. None had any supporters in attendance, and they largely failed to deliver eloquence. Fox said that this first debate was closed to the public. That was a strange choice, if true, as the candidates clearly suffered from the empty room. They were literally yelling into a partisan echo chamber.


Wrapping Up

Much more to come soon. I'm new to blogging, but this should collect things that I'd otherwise be posting on Facebook. Here, formatting options abound!