Election Prep Books

Election Prep Books


Preparing for Fall OLLI classes at SSU, I read these two books to try to understand why the polls failed so catastrophically to predict the election of The Orange One in 2016, and how the effects of that were felt in the government agencies in Washington, D.C.

Seth Stephens-Davidowitz worked for one-and-a-half years as a data scientist at Google and his book explains the bias in polling why political polling is likely to become even more difficult to do well. He received his BA in philosophy, Phi Beta Kappa, from Stanford, and his PhD in economics from Harvard. Comparing what people search for, with what they tell another human they want, reveals that people try to hide their unacceptable desires which is why many told pollsters they were undecided in 2016 when in fact they gave in to their desire for entitlement and privilege. His examples range from sexual searches to baseball history and illustrate how “bias” creeps into sampling. Engrossing.

Michael Lewis writes so brilliantly about statistics. He recounts the effect of the failure of new Trump administration, in 2017, to fill the job openings at the top of many government agencies, most notably the Commerce Department. Lewis comments that the Commerce department isn’t really about business, it’s more the department of science and measurement, including NOAA, and managing nuclear waste. It reminded me of my trip to Morocco a year ago.

In Morocco, once a French colony, most of the road signs in Casablanca (the largest city) and in Rabat (where the French located the capital) were in both Arabic and French. As we got closer to the desert tribes in the East, French disappeared from the signs and they were in Arabic and Amazeigh, the recently-invented written Berber language which looks like a mashup of Greek and Korean letters. Until recently, these languages were unwritten. In public school, mandatory until 8th grade, only Arabic and Amazeigh are taught. French is not taught. The Roman alphabet is not taught. Only the wealthy, who go to private French schools, can read European books. The king of Morocco runs the public schools, and it is better for the monarchy if his subjects do not read European books.

This seems to be the underlying driver for dismantling the “deep state” bureaucracy which enforces the rules and standards across all administrations. The president can change every four years, but the Commerce Department rules are supposed to remain consistent for all citizens over time. These rules and those of the EPA grated against oil companies who wanted to roll back “the Chevron Rule” created by the Supreme Court which is the legal doctrine that the EPA knows more about environmental safety than congressional representatives do, so that when Congress empowers the EPA to regulate oil drilling, there is no need for Congress to pass a law over every single thing — the EPA can set standards. The “Chevron Rule” was rolled back this year by the Trump-packed Supreme Court.

Pete Buttigieg said that JD Vance, if elected, plans to march through government institutions looking for people with “woke” agendas and “de-bathify” the civil service. Fears are that this would enable corporations to maximize their profits as they ignore the safety of citizens. On the Jon Stewart Show, guest Mark Cuban pointed out that Trump’s father ran a family-owned real estate business which he bequeathed to his son. The son inherited the properties and Cuban asked Stewart, “how is running a family owned business different from running a kingdom?” Stewart’s eyes widened. “It’s not very different, is it?”

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