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Happy Monday,
Are you tired of reading about the election? If so, I don’t blame you but you also probably shouldn’t read this email. This special Monday edition of the Oregon Roundup is all about what the outcome of the 2020 general election means for the country and for Oregon. I’m writing it selfishly, because the process of writing forces me to arrange the little bits of thoughts careening around in my head into some kind of logical (to me) structure. It’s my way of making sense of the world.
The Facts
Biden won. As I wrote last Wednesday, the lawsuits, and not generalized allegations of fraud, are where the real action is. Republicans are right to want to count all the votes and exhaust legal challenges, but Biden probably has too big a lead in too many states to overcome.
Republicans will probably hold the U.S. Senate. “Probably,” because the question may well be determined by Georgia voters who will vote in at least one but maybe two runoff elections in January. In a special election for an exhausted electorate in which Republicans can argue that they need a Senate majority to blunt the Biden administration, Republicans are likely to prevail. Those poor people in Georgia are going to be really, really sick of political ads/texts/calls/mail by the time it’s over.
Democrats will probably have a slim majority in the U.S. House. As of this writing, Democrats have won 214 seats, while Republicans have won 200, with 21 races yet to be called because they’re too close. Two hundred eighteen seats constitutes a majority in the House.
Oregon more or less stayed the same. Democrats swept statewide elections for the millionth time in a row, but Republicans netted one House seat after flipping two coast districts while losing Cheri Helt’s district in Bend, and held set in the Senate trading a pickup on the coast for a loss in Salem. Oregon voters also legalized shrooms so the odds of keeping Portland weird seem pretty good.
The Feels
The polling sucked, again.
Republicans nationally, including Trump, did much, much better than the pre-election polling suggested, once again. It seems pretty clear that pollsters, including most Republican-leaning or at least Republican-friendly pollsters, are having a hard time zeroing in on who’s going to turn out to vote and for whom, as the parties’ coalitions change pretty rapidly (more on that in a bit).
The effect of the polls showing Trump losing badly, and Republican senate candidates like Maine’s Susan Collins never once leading in that state’s polling (she’s winning by nine points) is probably significant in at least two ways. First, at least at the margins, it probably discourages Republican turnout (although Republican turnout was high). Second, it almost certainly hurts Republican fundraising – donors and particularly big donors are less likely to contribute to candidates who they think will lose.
Republicans did well in congressional races nationally, but I suspect they would have done better if the polls were more accurate or did not exist at all. I know I’m not going to pay much attention to public polling until pollsters demonstrate they have a better handle on the electorate.
The Parties’ Coalitions are Changing Rapidly
It wasn’t so long ago that the Republican base was relatively affluent, college-educated suburban white people, and the Democrat base was blue collar workers. Well, that appears to be changing, and pretty rapidly. According to exit polls, Trump did the same or better with all demographic groups in 2020 compared to 2016 except seniors (-4) and white college-educated men (-16 (!)). Remarkably, he improved with black men (+5), black women (+4), Latino women (+3) and Latino men (+4). In fact, Trump did better among non-white voters than any Republican presidential candidate since Nixon in 1960. Read that sentence again.
Now, exit polls are far from perfect. We will see if other data confirm these exit polls. If they do, then we have seen a hastening of the process by which the Republican Party might, just might, be gradually expanding its new base from the white working class to the multiracial working class, while continuing to shed college-educated white people to the Democrats.
Bits vs. Atoms: A half-baked theory
Peter Thiel, billionaire cofounder of PayPal, a few years ago observed that most of our innovations have occurred in bits (i.e. transmission of data, like via the Internet, smart phones, etc.) but we’ve failed to significantly innovate in areas related to atoms – physical stuff. For example, we’re still flying in airplanes using more or less the same technology as was widely used 60 years ago, but we can access most any piece of knowledge generated by humans with a little device in our pockets or purses. Thiel’s explanation for why:
“I would say that we lived in a world in which bits were unregulated and atoms were regulated.”
It’s patently true that atoms are regulated much more strenuously than bits. Try to build a house, which is rearranging atoms in a particular way, or drive a car or try to cut someone’s hair, and you are going to run into gobs of regulations. Try to write a weekly(ish) email and you’ve got free reign, so long as you don’t defame anyone and even then there’s no prior restraint. I won’t (yet) go down the rabbit hole of whether bits will follow atoms in the conga line of stuff that will be regulated into obsolescence, because we have an election to talk about.
My half-baked theory is that Republicans are becoming the party of atoms and Democrats are becoming the party of bits. If you’re in the bit business, and experience little or no government-induced friction, Republicans’ promise to deregulate and promote a business-friendly environment means very little because, well, you’re not regulated much at all. If you’re in the atom business, the government is, frequently, right up in your face. The meaning of a pro-business party is more, uh, relevant, if you’re in the kind of business government tries to discourage via regulation.
The theory is only half-baked because, while I think it’s true, it’s hard to say how far the trend will continue, or whether it will continue at all, particularly once Trump is no longer on the ballot, which may or may not be the case in 2024.
The bits vs. atoms dichotomy makes a lot of sense if you look at Oregon, where Portland, Bend and Hood River are, increasingly, places where people in the bit economy have fled from cities that are too expensive or too dangerous. Whereas, districts on the Oregon coast, where there are far fewer bit workers and far more current and former atom manipulators (the timber industry was, once, a big old manipulator of atoms), are turning more Republican.
As bits become increasingly important to our lives and our economy, they will become more susceptible to regulation. They already are – just look at the bipartisan angst about social media companies like Facebook and Twitter. It’s only a matter of time before the government jumps in to regulate them, and when they regulate social media companies (maybe under the rubric of “fact-checking”) it’s only a matter of time until the government and its allies start fact-checking fourth-rate Internet offerings like the Oregon Roundup and its half-baked theories.
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Enjoy your week!
Jeff Eager
For media or speaking inquiries or to let me know why I’m wrong, email me at jeff@oregonroundup.com.
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EagerLaw PC – A business and real property law firm in Bend, Oregon.
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Waste Alert – Local government monitoring for the solid waste and recycling industry.