Podcast 541

Podcast 541. Electoral College Yoga. Get ready to twist your brain into pretzel like shapes as I talk about the electoral college, polls, and what the benchmarks for Election 2016 are so far. I’ll do another benchmark in about a month and one just before the election in late October, or early November. There are a lot of caveats on polling data. While most media people and their viewers seem to want to talk about national presidential preference polls, the proof of the pudding is in the state by state polls. The United States does not elect its presidents with a national vote. In fact, a presidential election is fifty state elections. Voters are selecting a slate of electors, chosen and voting generally according to state law and state party rules. So when you hear one candidate is ‘ahead’ over another in a national poll it really doesn’t mean anything. In 2008 and again in 2012 Republicans in particular were so hopeful based on national preference polls that if you said McCain or Mitt Romney wasn’t going to win, you were ‘raining on the parade’. But, if you looked closely at state polls in those election cycles, the outcome was not a surprise. State polls have their own problems; Smaller sample size, different polling methodologies, and in some states they are no polls until just before the election. While its not advisable to compare different polls of different sources and methodologies, we do it all the time. We’re looking for trends primarily. Currently while Donald J. Trump leads Hillary Clinton in a national presidential preference poll, the state polls tell a completely different story. It’s not a good story for republicans. The case isn’t closed. Trump still has time, but time is fleeting. I don’t support any candidate. I’m not working for any candidate. I’m not going to tell you how to vote. I’m also not going to spin the polling data to make you think something can happen, or is going to happen. If you want the straight talk on what’s going on, the Bob Davis Podcasts is the place to check back for these benchmark state-by-state analyses as we progress to Election Day 2016. Sponsored by Karow Contracting and Ryan Plumbing and Heating of Saint Paul.

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Podcast 535

Sturgis 2016 & The Black Hills. A trip to Sturgis 2016 turns into a tour of the Black Hills. Lots of riders come up here for the motorcycle rally but they head out on day trips to the many historic and interesting places in the Black Hills. Deadwood, and of course Mount Rushmore to name two. Lots of history in the Black Hills, especially in Deadwood. In Sturgis 2016 & The Black Hills I stop in Deadwood and have a great conversation about the history of the town, the history of the West and what it meant then and today, with a local historian in character as ‘Colorado Charlie Utter’. Then it’s onto Mount Rushmore and Keystone, South Dakota. A listener to the Bob Davis Podcasts emailed recently to suggest that some of the political podcasts contained some ‘repetitive thoughts’, as she put it. It seems like, when you talk about politics these days in any form, you come to an impasse and it’s almost always about the voters, or the political parties, or the candidates or the media and the fact that almost everyone is disappointed in the choices they have. The great thing about coming to Sturgis, and by extension these other cool places in the Black Hills, is that you forget about politics. It took awhile to come up with a theme for Sturgis 2016 & The Black Hills, Podcast 535 but it finally came to me. With all the talk about the founding fathers and the US Constitution, maybe it’s time for a new myth, a new ‘theme’ from American History. The fact is, the story told by the dime western novels, Hollywood and later TV pales in contrast to the real history of the west. The Hollywood version of the west made it seem like it all happened in Zane Grey’s Arizona, or the Sierra Nevada’s or California. Part of Western History did take place in those places in the late 1800’s and even early 1900’s. Many characters and themes later portrayed in Hollywood Westerns and popular TV shows happened a lot sooner – in the 1870’s – in places like Deadwood. Independence, self reliance, working harder and smarter and the opportunity to reinvent yourself, and to jettison your past are all themes that echo throughout the region’s history and across the area from Deadwood and Rapid City, to Mount Rushmore. As Colorado Charlie suggests maybe that inclusive, opportunistic theme is what’s missing a lot of times in the rest of America. Sponsored by X Government Cars and Brush Studio in The West End.

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Podcast 521

Stormy Weather. In a surprise only to ‘conservatives’ who listen only to ‘conservative’ talk show hosts, watch ‘conservative’ TV shows and go to conservative websites, the FBI decided not to recommend criminal prosecution of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over her use of a personal email server while she was in the Obama Administration. Why? The short answer is, intent is a key consideration in cases like these. The long answer is, Mrs. Clinton played her ‘Benghazi Card’ better known as ‘If I go down, you go down’ and she got action from the administration. At least that’s one possible explanation. In the past few days President Obama suddenly closed ranks with the Clintons (despite all the rumors of the rancor between the Obamas and the Clintons). Attorney General Loretta Lynch had a now famous ‘tarmac meeting’ with former president Bill Clinton and President Obama allowed Hillary Clinton to ride Air Force One with him to a campaign event, where they walked, hand in hand, down the steps. “If I go down, YOU go down”. Now it’s a matter of politics. He said, she said. He said she’s a crook. She said he’s an anti semite. Congress releases a damning report on the administration’s conduct regarding ‘Benghazi’…Democrats say it is a partisan document. Republicans say it’s the ‘truth’ about Mrs Clinton and her boss, President Obama. “If I go down, YOU go down.” More fodder for the campaign trail. They were asleep and the switch, says one side. They’re partisan dividers, says the other side. Meanwhile the world’s leading economies are drowning in a sea of paper money and deficit spending, and economies are faltering. Do you really think this election is going to fix anything? We live in interesting times, with the great potential of a new technical industrial revolution and all that portends, and a personal challenge to change the way we think and how we work, and what we demand of our political institutions. Too bad our sclerotic politics delivers a statist who wants to spend and tax more, and a statist who wants to wall the country off from the rest of the world. We could have this technology revolution now, or we can languish for another thirty years while these idiots we call presidential candidates stumble around in economic darkness. Yeah sure, go ahead and talk until you’re blue in the face about Hillary’s email server, or about the Star of David on Trump’s twitter account, while the printing presses debase the currency, governments spend themselves into the poor house, the media puts on cartoons and calls them news, and we hurtle toward our destiny, whatever that may be. The US is now a country that’s happy about revised economic growth from .5 percent to 1.1 percent, with 95 million people out of the work force, a media that writes gossip and calls it news, and a population that believes Russian Propaganda and You Tube conspiracy theories because…what’s the difference? The Earth is hollow, you know and there’s a whole civilization down there, right? And you wonder about moral hazard? Sponsored by Karow Contracting and Brush Studio in the West End, Saint Louis Park. (Editor’s Note: In this podcast I refer to former CIA Director David Petraeus’ offenses regarding passing classified information with intent, and engaging in a coverup after as occurring while Petraeus was on active military duty. I wondered whether he would be under the Military Code of Justice in this case. This is incorrect. Petraeus was director of the CIA when the offenses occurred and not on active duty. For comparison to the Clinton question, one should refer to the FBI director’s congressional testimony regarding the differences between the Clinton question and the Petraeus case.)

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