The 'Rising American Electorate' Not So Fired-Up for 2016 Election

The Democrats have a major uphill climb to a third Democrat term in the White House in 2017.

The "Rising American Electorate," another term for Obama's "coalition of the ascendant" (ethnic minorities, Millennials, and single women), have a significant lag in voter enthusiasm relative to the older, whiter electorate.

Far-left Greg Sargent, at the Washington Post, even makes note of it, "Here’s Hillary Clinton’s big 2016 challenge, in one chart."

Combine the enthusiasm gap with the intense anger and pessimism in polling data, especially among those same older, whiter voters, and we're seeing the stirrings of a major earthquake election next November. The Obama interregnum is coming to a bitter end. It's all going to come crashing down for the Democrats. I expect Hillary Clinton to be a formidable candidate, but she's not going to generate the kind of enthusiasm that Obama did. Not by a long-shot.

I'll be keeping an eye on this all the way to November 8, 2016.

Voters Anxious About the Future, New Los Angeles Times Polls Finds

Instapundit linked my post on the angry voters at the Wall Street Journal poll. See, "WELL, WITH THE WORST POLITICAL CLASS IN HISTORY, THERE’S PLENTY TO BE ANGRY ABOUT: Americans’ Mood Darkened by Widespread Anger, New WSJ/NBC News Poll Finds."

And now here comes the Los Angeles Times with virtually identical findings. For leftists, the anxiety is economic inequality, especially class envy at the corporate rich. For conservatives, rapid social change, especially moral decay and unchecked immigration, is generating tremendous fear. Huge pessimism is the constant theme across the spectrum.

See, "Poll On the left and right, voters express anxiety over future":

On the left and right, voters express anxiety over the future in a new poll https://t.co/YhMV0PM0mc pic.twitter.com/WFVcaBv6Pd

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) November 9, 2015

One year before the presidential election, a pervasive disquiet has shaped voter attitudes, with a majority of Republicans pessimistic about moral values and the increasing diversity of the country's population, and Democrats uneasy about an economy they see as tilted toward the rich.

By more than 2 to 1, voters both nationally and in California say they are more worried than hopeful about changes in the country's morals and values. By nearly the same margin, more worry than express hope about the changing national economy. And by 5 to 1, they say they are worried about how the nation's politics have changed.

California voters and those nationwide largely agree on those points but diverge on others. Nationally, for example, voters divide almost evenly on whether cultural diversity worries them or makes them hopeful. In California, those who are "mainly hopeful" about the changes caused by cultural diversity outnumber those "mainly worried" 56% to 41%.

Those concerns — detailed in a new USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll, conducted online by SurveyMonkey — have been driving voter decisions about which candidates they favor for president. Both in California and nationwide, they have helped propel two nontraditional candidates, businessman Donald Trump and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, to the forefront of the Republican field...

Voters' downbeat mood is particularly notable in light of economic numbers typically associated with good times. The nation's unemployment rate, 5%, is the lowest since April 2008, and the economy has grown steadily, albeit slowly, since the recession officially ended in June 2009.

Still, by 70% to 29%, voters see the country as headed in the wrong direction. California voters are only marginally more positive, with 63% saying the country is headed the wrong way and 34% seeing the nation as being on the right path.

That sense of the country headed the wrong way has been true now for a dozen years, through two presidencies, for "the longest period of sustained pessimism in more than a generation," said Neil Newhouse, a veteran Republican pollster who advised Mitt Romney's presidential campaign in 2012.

Pessimism is particularly profound among white voters, especially those without a college education. In California, fewer than 1 in 4 non-college-educated whites say the country is on the right track, and 70% say they are worried about the way the economy has changed. Nationally, the worried share among the group is even higher, 74%.

By contrast, racial and ethnic minority voters have a considerably more upbeat view, particularly those who have graduated from college.

Those two groups — whites who have not graduated from college and minorities who have — stand at opposite ends of the political spectrum. Non-college-educated whites have become a bulwark for Republicans, while upwardly mobile minority voters have reshaped the Democratic Party.

In California, where about half of college-educated minority voters are optimistic about the economy, the two groups are of similar size, each about one-fifth of the electorate. Nationally, whites without college degrees outnumber college-educated minorities by about 3 to 1.

Among the Republicans in the presidential race, several candidates have tapped into the pessimistic mood of whites who did not graduate from college, none more directly than Trump, whose slogan "Make America great again" expresses a sense of better times gone.

Trump has a significant lead among white voters nationwide who have not graduated from college. Rubio, by contrast, does notably better with the college-educated; he is in first place with that group of voters among Republicans in California.

Trump's strongest base of support, however, comes from those troubled by the effects of immigration.

Nationally, voters divide closely over whether "immigrants from other countries mainly strengthen American society" or "mainly weaken" it, with 49% seeing immigrants as a source of strength and 43% as a weakness.

In California, with its much larger population of minorities, 59% see immigrants strengthening America and 35% say they "mainly weaken American society."

Trump's backers are overwhelmingly in the "mainly weaken" camp: 73% in California and 82% nationally take that view...

Emily Ratajkowski by Mark Sacro

At Egotastic!, "EMILY RATAJKOWSKI WET SHOWER TOPLESS OUTTAKES."

SeaWorld to Phase Out Killer Whale Shows in San Diego (VIDEO)

I guess it was inevitable.

At the San Diego Union-Tribune, "SeaWorld to end theatrical killer whale show," and "'Blackfish' director wary of SeaWorld plan."



More video, "SeaWorld's new plan to lure more visitors."

Brazil's Crisis Hits Emerging Middle Class

At WSJ, "Brazil’s Economic Crisis Beats the Emerging Middle Class Back Down":

RIO DE JANEIRO—When proper electricity arrived in Santa Marta, a small favela in the shadow of Rio’s Christ the Redeemer statue, longtime resident Cândida Oliveira Silva was happy to get the bill.

For the 52-year-old homemaker, it meant having legal proof of address and “feeling like a citizen” for the first time. But in recent months it has also meant cutting back on all but the most basic expenses. Reduced government subsidies and a drought have raised her bill to about 280 reais ($72) a month, roughly five times what it was a year ago.

“I can’t travel anymore, I can’t afford to eat at even a modest restaurant,” Ms. Silva said. Rising inflation and Brazil’s plummeting currency have quashed any hopes of visiting her daughter in San Francisco.

Ms. Silva’s struggle to maintain her standard of living amid rising prices shows how a spiraling economic crisis has pushed Brazil’s emerging middle class to the brink.

Urban unemployment rose to 7.6% in September, tied with August for the highest rate in more than five years. Economists on average expect gross domestic product will shrink 3.1% this year and 1.9% next year, according to the Central Bank of Brazil’s latest weekly survey. Inflation approaching 10% has forced the poor to stop buying meat and the central bank to ratchet up interest rates. A disorganized effort by the government to stem a widening budget deficit has resulted in painful tax increases, further crimping family budgets.

Experts say it is hard to estimate how many people are at risk of falling down Brazil’s social ladder, as official data aren’t yet available. But with wages rising less than inflation, around 35 million members of Brazil’s lower middle class are vulnerable, says Maurício Prado, a partner at research firm Plano CDE.

“They have low education and low job formalization,” he said. “There is confluence of negative factors.”

The situation is threatening to derail what Brazilian leaders have extolled as a transformation of the country’s economy and society. Long counted among the world’s most unequal nations, Brazil made significant progress in the past decade toward reducing its gaping income disparity, authorities say.

Strong prices for commodity exports stuffed public coffers with money that was used to weave a social safety net, including a cash-transfer program targeting nearly 14 million impoverished families. Minimum-wage increases averaging more than 11% a year since 2003 transferred more wealth toward the bottom of the spectrum.

Between 2003 and 2013, Brazil’s median household income grew 87% in real terms, compared with a 30% rise in per capita gross domestic product, says Marcelo Neri, an economist who wrote a book on the “new middle class” and served as President Dilma Rousseff’s strategic-affairs minister.

“People who were left behind—uneducated people, people in the northeast and rural areas, poor people, black people, domestic workers, informal workers—these people grew at a much faster rate than the country as a whole,” Mr. Neri said...

Remember, Rousseff’s a Marxist. I guess the withering away of the state toward the communist utopia's going to have to wait.

But keep reading.

Hot Outtakes from Lily Aldridge's Sports Illustrated Swimsuit 2014 Shoot (VIDEO)

A little flashback with Lily.

She's coming up next month with the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show.

Mountain Lion Captured in San Dimas (VIDEO)

Cool video.

I love how the lion takes a few swings before being thrown into the animal control truck.

Russian Model Sofia Nikitchuk Tries on Swimsuits Ahead of Miss World Competition (VIDEO)

At Ruptly:

Kristallnacht

It was November 9-10, 1938.

From John Lang, at WSJ, "From Kristallnacht to the Kindertransport to, Finally, America."

And check out Martin Gilbert, Kristallnacht: Prelude to Destruction.

University of Missouri Resignations Covered on 'CBS Evening News' (VIDEO)

You know, you're not really "marginalized" when you have that much power, the power to bring down the president and chancellor at two state campuses at the state university.

We should expect to be seeing more of this stuff. The coddled are revolting.

Standardized Tests Are 'Modern-Day Slavery'

I think leftists are starting to spew increasingly hyper-ideological agitation as the last year of the Obama administration is almost upon us. They're literally pushing the boundaries as far as they can, perhaps in the hope that some of the craziness actually sticks.

At FrontPage Magazine, "'Social Action' Principal: School Tests are 'Inequality' and 'Modern Day Slavery'":

I know there are plenty of kids who think that school is slavery. But finally there's a principal who agrees with them.

Think about it. They're rounded up on buses, sent to buildings, forced to learn things and then answer questions about them. It's just like slavery or the Holocaust or something terrible. We must all join together to stamp out all learning and test-taking so we can finally achieve true social justice utopia.

Just ask the principal of the Cornerstone Academy for Social Action.

In an online rant, a Bronx public school principal has likened standardized testing to slavery, redlining and crack cocaine in damaging the lives of minorities.

Educational standards. They're just like crack cocaine and slavery...

Keep reading.

You know, this principal's only saying out loud what the Obama administration's attack on standardized tests is all about.

Timely Reminder: Kirsten Powers: The Silencing — How the Left is Killing Free Speech

It's not even about "free speech" on our campuses these days. We're to the point of no speech. Coddled student leftists literally don't want anyone to talk to them. They don't want media and debate, and if you violate their "safe spaces," they'll take down your institution with boycotts, hunger strikes, and financial ruin.

ICYMI, "University of Missouri President and Chancellor Step Aside Amid Protests."

And here's Kristen Powers' book, which is a keeper, The Silencing: How the Left is Killing Free Speech.

Semi-Trailer Big-Rig Crashes Into Apartment Building in Garden Grove

I take this off-ramp to get gas on the way to work on some Tuesdays and Thursdays. I was planning on stopping there in the morning, heh.

At ABC News 7 Los Angeles:

BIG RIG UPDATE: At least 3 apts damaged in crash; Residents were evacuated from building https://t.co/Ylx4cdPvUc pic.twitter.com/Q7BVPgxYzX

— ABC7 Eyewitness News (@ABC7) November 10, 2015

University of Missouri President and Chancellor Step Aside Amid Protests

The MSM take is at the New York Times (via Memeorandum).

This whole thing is kind of mind-boggling. And fascinating.

The left's racial grievance industry demands "safe spaces" for oppressed minorities, and the universities can't roll over fast enough.

Graduate student Jonathan Butler, who is black, staged a hunger strike. He's interviewed at the Washington Post, "‘Justice is worth fighting for': A Q&A with the graduate student whose hunger strike has upended the University of Missouri":

Marginalized populations are not obligated to educate and converse about our experiences, but we did to make this campus more aware.

— ConcernedStudent1950 (@CS_1950) November 10, 2015

A lot of people who otherwise wouldn’t pay attention to this type of protest now are because of the solidarity you received from the football team. For those who are just tuning into this story, what do you want them to know?

Butler: The campus climate here at the University of Missouri is an ugly one, it’s one that often we don’t talk about and it’s one that, when issues come up, whether it’s sexual assault, whether it’s Planned Parenthood, whether it’s racism, it gets swept under the rug because we want to rest on our traditions and rest on all these values that we hold in high esteem. And I think the message is that underneath all of that there is a lot of dirt and there’s a lot of pain and there’s a lot of hurt. There’s things that need to be changed. And at the end of it all, even if you don’t really understand what I’m saying, even if you can’t really understand systemic oppression and systemic racism, is the fact we can’t be at a university where we have values like “Respect, Responsibility, Discovery and Excellence” and we don’t have any of those things being enacted on campus, especially in terms of respect. I’m on a campus where people feel free to call people the n-word, where people feel free as recently as last week, to used [their] own feces to smear a swastika in a residential hall. Everything that glitters is not gold. We really need to dig deep and be real with ourselves about the world we live in and understand that we’re not perfect but understand that just because we’re not perfect doesn’t mean we don’t start to understand and address the issues around us...

Basically, demands for respect, amid amorphous "racial incidents," shut down a university, and almost derailed a major collegiate football program, with potential financial losses in the million dollar range.

It's pretty striking.

More at Memeorandum.

Plus, lots of coverage at Instapundit, "WHILE IT’S FUN TO SIT BACK AND WATCH THE “REVOLT OF THE CODDLED” AS COLLEGE CAMPUSES SELF-DESTRUCT...", and "MIZZOU AND YALE SHOW WHY IT’S TIME TO BURN UNIVERSITIES TO THE GROUND..."

Still more, "MY SECRET PLAN TO END THE HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE BY USING INSIDERS TO MAKE HIGHER EDUCATION LOOK RIDICULOUS CONTINUES TO ADVANCE..."

Well, I need to read around a bit myself. More on this later. We're reaching some kind of tipping point, that's for sure.

Black Activists Turn on Shaun King for Collapse of 'Justice Together' Org, Financial Irregularities

Heh.

I saw this story yesterday, at Sooper Mexican, "UH OH!! Race Huckster Shaun King Being CALLED OUT By Supporters With #ShaunKingLetMeDown Hashtag!!"

And now at Instapundit, "HE’S JUST ANOTHER WHITE GUY SCAMMING PEOPLE OF COLOR: Black Activists Turn on Shaun King for Collapse of ‘Justice Together’ Org, Financial Irregularities."

FLASHBACK: "#BlackLivesMatter Organizer Shaun King's Racial Appropriation."

We're Headed for an Economic Civil War

From Joel Kotkin, at the Daily Beast, "Are We Heading for An Economic Civil War?":

Forget that red state-blue state stuff. The real chasm dividing the US is economic, with one economy for industry and one for tech, and the friction between them is getting fierce.
When we speak about the ever-expanding chasm that defines modern American politics, we usually focus on cultural issues such as gay marriage, race, or religion. But as often has been the case throughout our history, the biggest source of division may be largely economic.

Today we see a growing conflict between the economy that produces consumable, tangible goods and another economy, now ascendant, that deals largely in the intangible world of media, software, and entertainment. Like the old divide between the agrarian South and the industrial North before the Civil War, this threatens to become what President Lincoln’s Secretary of State, William Seward, defined as an “irrepressible conflict.”

Other major economic divides—between capital and labor, Wall Street versus Main Street—defined politics for much of the 20th century. But today’s tangible-intangible divide is particularly tragic because it undermines America’s peculiar advantage in being a powerhouse in both the material and non-material worlds. No other large country can say that, certainly not China, Japan, or Germany, industrial powerhouses short on resources, while our closest cousins, such as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, remain, for the most part, dependent on commodity trade.

The China syndrome and the shape of the next slowdown

Over the past decade, the United States has enjoyed two parallel booms that combined to propel the economy out of recession. One was centered in places like Houston, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Oklahoma City, and across much of the Great Plains. These areas were all located in the first states to emerge from the recession, and benefited massively from a gusher in energy jobs due largely to fracking.

At the same time, another part of the economy, centered in Silicon Valley as well as Seattle, Austin, and Raleigh/Durham, has also been booming. Though far more restricted than their counterparts in the “tangible” economy in terms of both geography and jobs, the tech/digital economy did not lag when it came to minting fortunes. By 2014, the media-tech sector accounted for six of the nation’s wealthiest people. Perhaps more important, 12 of the nation’s 17 billionaires under 40 also hail from the tech sector.

Until China’s economy hit a wall this fall, these two sectors were humming along, maybe not enough to restore the economy to its ’90s trim robustly enough to improve conditions in many parts of the country. But as China begins to cut back on commodity purchases, many key raw material prices—copper and iron to oil and gas as well as food stuffs—have fallen precipitously, devastating many developing economies in South America, Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia.

Plunging prices are also beginning to hurt many local economies in the U.S., particularly in the “oil patch” that spreads from west Texas to North Dakota. This is one reason why overall economic growth has fallen, and is unlikely to revive strongly in the months ahead. Overall, according to the most recent numbers, job growth remains slow and long-term unemployment stubbornly high while labor participation is stuck at historically low levels. Much of this loss is felt by the kind of middle and working class people who tend to work in tangible industries...

Keep reading.

High Costs of College Textbooks Come Under Attack

I'm assigning the digital book version of George C. Edwards, et al., Government in America: People, Politics, and Policy. For the spring semester, I've got the digital package set up through the publisher for about $70.00, and students will also get a loose-leaf version of the hard-copy textbook for $5.00. It'll be just a little more if the students use the campus bookstore.

It's a good deal.

But a lot of professors have their students spending much more than that, and we've seen that controversy at Cal State Fullerton, where the math professor is refusing to assign the department's consensus textbook. It's turned into a lawsuit.

In any case, here's more at the O.C. Register, "Required reading: faculty's pricey textbooks":

It’s been long understood at Fullerton College that faculty cannot make a single cent off any self-created, custom course materials, from books to course packs.

However, roughly two miles away at Cal State University, Fullerton, no such policy exists to keep faculty from doing just that.

Schools across Orange County vary in how they handle faculty authored educational materials -- a touchy topic that exploded in recent weeks into a nationwide debate about academic freedom and soaring textbook costs.

In the region, at least 500 higher-education classes during the most recent school session are taught by faculty members who require students to use their published works, according to a Register analysis of public documents.

Sales of faculty-written materials at these schools could amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars for a single semester or quarter, assuming new copies are purchased in each case, based on the Register’s sampling of schools.

The priciest such text at Chapman in the most recent semester was law professor Michael B. Lang’s “Federal Tax Accounting,” which comes with a $206 price tag at the campus bookstore. It can be purchased on Amazon in used condition for about $100.

At Cal State University Long Beach, a new copy of “Language Learning Disabilities in School-Age Children and Adolescents: Some Principles and Applications,” co-written by professor Geraldine P. Wallach, sells for $197 at the campus bookstore. Online, the book can be rented for as low as $17.

“I think you bring upon yourself greater scrutiny when the book is not only expensive, but also happens to be written by a campus faculty member who benefits from its use,” said Meredith Turner, assistant executive director of the California State Student Association.

At least two schools in the county have rules in place to address the topic of faculty-authored course materials. Nationwide, some institutions, such as University of Missouri and Iowa State University, require academic authors to give any royalties back to the school, or to charity.

Cal State Fullerton has no such policy. Last week, the president of the roughly 39,000-student campus stood by the school’s decision to reprimand associate math professor Alain Bourget, who assigned less expensive alternative textbooks instead of a text co-written by the math department chair and vice chair.

Many faculty authors say they assign their books because they are experts in the field and are offering specialized knowledge. The profits argument is overblown, they contend, as typical royalties are meager and academic book advances are rare. The professors’ cut is often 10 percent to 18 percent, according to Stephen Gillen, a media and publishing attorney.

In fact, faculty authors in a class-action case in New York court allege royalty payments have essentially remained flat over the years while textbook prices have ballooned by more than 80 percent in the last 10 years, according to the lawsuit...

I don't have a problem with professors assigning their own textbooks. Actually, it's kind of cool to take a class with a professor who's a major published author.

I do have a problem if those same professors require less senior faculty to use their textbooks for classes offered by their academic department, which is what's happening at Cal State Fullerton. I'd be fighting that tooth and nail if I was dealing with it at my college.

Keep reading, in any case.

Kristen Keogh's Got Your Cooling Sunday Weather

The warm fall afternoons right now are spectacular.

Via ABC News 10 San Diego:

Robert Stacy McCain on William F. Buckley, Jr.'s, God and Man at Yale

I love Robert's writing.

See, "The Godless Men at Yale":

Every time I mention William F. Buckley Jr.’s God and Man at Yale here, it sells a few copies via the Amazon Associates link, a surprise that is both pleasant (because I need the money) and troubling, because it bugs me to realize that today, in 2015, there are conservatives who have not yet read that 1951 classic. Buckley’s book, published not long after he had graduated from Yale, immediately ignited a firestorm among the liberal elite. God and Man at Yale was published amid the Cold War tempest that history has called “McCarthyism,” and Buckley pointed out the ways in which “the superstition of academic freedom” was used to protect teaching that was clearly hostile to capitalism and Christianity...

Keep reading.

Here's the Amazon link to Buckley's book, God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of 'Academic Freedom'.

For Enemies of the United States, the U.S. Navy is a Frightening Adversary

The "silent service," via Theo Spark: