Chalk another one up for President Obama and the Democratic leadership. The Gallup organization has found that more Americans now identify as Republicans than Democrats:

PRINCETON, N.J. — Since the Republican Party’s strong showing on Election Day last month, Americans’ political allegiances have shifted toward the GOP. Prior to the elections, 43% of Americans identified as Democrats or leaned toward the Democratic Party, while 39% identified as or leaned Republican. Since then, Republicans have opened up a slight advantage, 42% to 41%, representing a net shift of five percentage points in the partisanship gap.

Everybody loves a winner, right? However, that’s merely continuing a long slide that began after Barack Obama won the presidential election in 2008 and is the lowest showing for the Democrats in 25 years. “The Republicans are even worse” is no longer a particularly good argument.

The argument will now turn to whether the Democrats should try doing something different or do more of what they’ve been doing. The persistence of the slide suggests that the former would be a better strategy but I suspect that the Democrats will rely on doubling down as their best response.

Hidden in Gallup’s findings they may find some solace: the percentage of Americans who identify with either party or even lean towards either party is the lowest since Gallup has been polling this question.

Andrew Sullivan does a very tidy job of summarizing my view of the killing of Michael Brown and the riots that followed the grand jury’s decision not to indict the police officer who killed him:

I agree with those who argue that the police’s interaction with young black men is, in too many cases, riddled with bias and far too quick to use lethal force. But I agree with others that the Michael Brown case is not the case with which to make that argument.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Picking the wrong symbol may saddle you with some unwanted baggage, in this case the riots.

Charlie Cook touches on a point that I think is worth underscoring:

Much has been said about the long-term demographic challenges facing the Republican Party. Given how dismally Republicans fare with African-American voters—Mitt Romney and congressional Republicans garnered only 6 percent and 8 percent, respectively, in 2012, and this year congressional Republicans got 10 percent—it matters how the GOP does with other minority voters.

In 2012, Romney picked up 27 percent and congressional Republicans received 30 percent of the Latino vote. This year, House Republicans got 36 percent. This doesn’t matter that much in the House, because of natural residential patterns and, to a lesser extent, gerrymandering. But it is a big deal in presidential matters and in some Senate election years more than others (the Latino vote will be much more critical in the 2016 class of Senate seats than it was in the 2014 grouping).

But considerably less is being said about a parallel problem that Democrats are facing. Although the national red-blue maps of the partisan makeup of the House, the governorships, and, somewhat less so, the Senate are misleading in that they equate population with land area, the maps do illustrate where Democrats are strong and where they are not (interesting factoid: Only 14 percent of the land area in the U.S. is represented by a Democrat in the House). Increasingly, Democratic strength is concentrated primarily in urban areas and college towns, among minorities, and in narrow bands along the West Coast (but only the first 50-100 miles from the beaches) and the East Coast (but only from New York City northward). The South and the Border South, as well as small-town and rural America, are rapidly becoming no-fly zones for Democrats. Few Democrats represent small-town and rural areas, and the party is find it increasingly difficult to attract noncollege-educated white voters.

Democrats’ strategy of cobbling together a fractious coalition of minority voting blocs has a serious flaw.

It resembles the “Hastert rule”, the rule of thumb in the House under which a Speaker won’t bring legislation to the floor unless it can secure a majority of the majority party’s votes. In order to be able to govern a political party needs to be able to garner a majority of the majority voting bloc.

Regardless of the hype you may have read the majority of voters will remain white in the United States for decades and, possibly, forever. A majority of babies born in 2012 were white. That means that if you divvy up the electorate by race (I don’t but there are a lot of Democrats who clearly do) you can’t afford to ignore the white vote. At least not if you want to win elections.

The editors of the Wall Street Journal embroider the point I made yesterday a bit:

Republicans have twice captured new majorities in the House and Senate since 1994, only to achieve less than they hoped. If they want to do better the third time as they take charge next year, they will have to do better at running the institutions of Congress that the majority controls.

That means above all taking charge of the Joint Committee on Taxation and the Congressional Budget Office, which “score” the impact of tax and spending bills on the economy and federal fisc. CBO in particular is often portrayed by the media as the independent legislative scorekeeper that keeps the politicians honest. In fact it was created by Democratic majorities to counter GOP Presidents and support the Democratic agenda of expanding government.

CBO was created by the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, passed with a veto-proof congressional majority and enacted with the begrudging signature of a weakened Richard Nixon a month before he resigned. The law restricted the President’s power to “impound,” or decline to spend, money. The law, and later amendments to it, also gave the Joint Tax Committee expanded powers.

The rules according to which bills must be scored are more important than that they are scored and those rules make certain assumptions. Change the assumptions and the rules and the scores will be different, too.

The prospect of changing the rules by which bills are scored is already being vilified by pundits and members of the press. They should keep in mind that elections have consequences and that’s as true of midterm Congressional elections as it is of presidential ones.

There is a Great Truth in Matti Friedman’s Atlantic article, “What the Media Gets Wrong About Israel”, that goes far beyond Israel and which I wish more people understood:

To make sense of most international journalism from Israel, it is important first to understand that the news tells us far less about Israel than about the people writing the news. Journalistic decisions are made by people who exist in a particular social milieu, one which, like most social groups, involves a certain uniformity of attitude, behavior, and even dress (the fashion these days, for those interested, is less vests with unnecessary pockets than shirts with unnecessary buttons). These people know each other, meet regularly, exchange information, and closely watch one another’s work. This helps explain why a reader looking at articles written by the half-dozen biggest news providers in the region on a particular day will find that though the pieces are composed and edited by completely different people and organizations, they tend to tell the same story.

and

Many freshly arrived reporters in Israel, similarly adrift in a new country, undergo a rapid socialization in the circles I mentioned. This provides them not only with sources and friendships but with a ready-made framework for their reporting—the tools to distill and warp complex events into a simple narrative in which there is a bad guy who doesn’t want peace and a good guy who does. This is the “Israel story,” and it has the advantage of being an easy story to report. Everyone here answers their cell phone, and everyone knows what to say. You can put your kids in good schools and dine at good restaurants. It’s fine if you’re gay. Your chances of being beheaded on YouTube are slim. Nearly all of the information you need—that is, in most cases, information critical of Israel—is not only easily accessible but has already been reported for you by Israeli journalists or compiled by NGOs. You can claim to be speaking truth to power, having selected the only “power” in the area that poses no threat to your safety.

More times than should make us comfortable reporters write the story that’s easy to write rather than the true story.

There are all sorts of different ways in which a story may be easy. Some stories are physically dangerous. We’ll never get good reporting on tyrants in power or ISIS. That’s too difficult and dangerous.

Nobody every got fired for writing the story their editors wanted written. That’s another way in which a story may be easy. The story may support the prevailing wisdom or not provoke criticism of the reporter on the grounds of racism, not caring about the climate, or being insensitive to the plight of the poor. And, finally, a story may be easy because it is reassuring—it supports the ideas and prejudices with which the reporter was equipt when he started reporting it.

Keep all that in mind when you read the coverage of the White House or Ferguson or Ukraine. If what you’ve read are the easy stories what are the hard ones?

Update

Bret Stephens touches on the same subject:

Mr. Bradley’s sharpest observation is that the journalistic fabrications that most often make it into print are those that “play into existing biases.” In the UVA case, he notes, those include biases against fraternities, men and the South—exactly the kinds of biases that led to the fabricated rape charges against the Duke lacrosse players in 2006.

Much the same could be said about other recent media sensations, Ferguson most of all. The killing of Michael Brown was many things, but for the media it was largely an opportunity to confirm an existing narrative, this one about trigger-happy cops, institutionalized racial disparities and the fate of young black men caught in between.

That narrative, also conforming to pre-existing biases, overwhelmed what ought to have been the only question worth answering: Was Darren Wilson justified in shooting Brown? If the media had stuck to answering that, the damage inflicted on the rest of Ferguson—not to mention all the squalid racial hucksterism that went with it—could have been avoided.

I wish I had put money on this. Black Friday sales were disappointing:

Even after doling out discounts on electronics and clothes, retailers struggled to entice shoppers to Black Friday sales events, putting pressure on the industry as it heads into the final weeks of the holiday season.

Spending tumbled an estimated 11 percent over the weekend from a year earlier, the Washington-based National Retail Federation said yesterday. And more than 6 million shoppers who had been expected to hit stores never showed up.

My prediction for the excuse that would be made was that there were too many pre-Thanksgiving sales.

The federal Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation is broke:

The PBGC has total assets of $90 billion but total liabilities of $152 billion. So its assets are a mere 59% of its liabilities. Put another way, its capital-to-asset ratio is negative 69%.

There are two basic parts of the PBGC—the “single employer” and “multiemployer” programs. The first guarantees the pensions of individual companies, which are managed by the company; the second guarantees union-sponsored pensions involving multiple companies. The PBGC discloses in Footnote 1 of its financial statements that “neither program at present has the resources to fully satisfy PBGC’s long-term obligations.” Not by a long shot.

The multiemployer portion is in worse shape. It has total assets of $1.8 billion and total liabilities of $44 billion. Its assets are 4% of its liabilities, and its capital-to-asset ratio is negative 2,300%. The PBGC tells us this program is likely to run out of money “in as little as five years.” The single-employer program is also deeply insolvent, but less so. It has total assets of $88 billion and total liabilities of $107 billion. Its assets are thus 82% of its liabilities and its capital ratio negative 22%.

and likely to remain so. The only prospect for its continued operation is “borrowing” an ever-increasing amount from the Treasury which it can’t repay as it presently operates.

The great irony of this program is that like so many other federal insurance programs it doesn’t operate like insurance. Insurance programs necessarily charge premiums that are proportional to risk. The risk may be based on you and your circumstances or on the circumstances of people who are superficially like you but however they are calculated they are based on risk. The PBGC doesn’t operate like that; their premiums are regulated.

Back in the Old Days fifty years ago when defined benefit pension plans looked like the vanguard of history the PBGC might have made some sense. Now when the number of people (other than those who work for the government) who participate in defined benefit pension plans is decreasing rapidly the PBGC is a lot more like a welfare program for the rich and moderately well-to-do.

These are the dinner rolls I made for Thanksgiving and I believe they turned out better than any other dinner rolls I’ve ever made. The recipe is based on one I took from Cook’s Illustrated, a publication I recommend enthusiastically. None of their recipes has ever turned out badly for me.

I think that one of the reasons these rolls turned out so good is the interesting folding technique used in their preparation which I believe serves two purposes. First, it raises the gluten in the dough which gives the rolls a nice crust. That can probably be improved on by using Julia Child’s “spritz” technique.

The other purpose that I think it serves is that it makes for a lighter crumb, somewhat in the same way as the layering technique used in making croissants does.

This recipe makes about two dozen dinner rolls.

Ingredients

1¼ cups whole milk
2 Tbsp. granulated sugar
1 package dry yeast
1 large egg, beaten slightly
3½ cups unbleached all-purpose flour, plus a bit extra for dusting working surfaces
1½ Tbsp. table salt
8 Tbsp. unsalted butter, cut into 8 pieces and softened

Now Cook!

1. Mix milk and sugar in a microwave-safe container and microwave them both long enough to warm—about 95°. That takes about 30 seconds at full power.
2. Sprinkle the dry yeast on top of the milk/sugar mixture, cover with plastic wrap, and set aside for ten minutes.
3. Whisk the beaten egg into the milk, sugar, and yeast to dissolve the yeast.
4. Combine the flour and salt in the bowl of a stand mixer and mix using a paddle attachment for about 15 seconds.
5. With the mixer running add the milk, sugar, and yeast mixture in a slow stream for about one minute.
6. With the mixer running add the butter one piece at a time for about two minutes.
7. Replace the paddle with a dough hook and knead the dough for about four minutes. It should be smooth but still sticky.
8. Knead the dough by hand on a floured surface until it is very smooth and no longer sticky for about one minute. Do not add more flour.
9. Transfer the dough to a bowl, cover it with plastic wrap, and allow it to rise until the dough has doubled in bulk.
10. Punch the dough down, replace the plastic wrap, and allow it to rest for 5 minutes.
11. Turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface.
12. Pat it into a 9×9 inch rectangle.
13. Fold the dough into thirds by folding the left third into the center and the right fold over the rest of the dough. (like a piece of paper). Pinch the edges to seal it shut.
14. Make a deep indentation in the dough by pressing along the length of the dough with the side of your hand.
15. Fold the left hand side towards the indentation, then the right hand side. Pinch the edges shut.
16. Repeat the two steps above 5-6 times. The dough should now be a tight cylinder.
17. Roll and stretch the dough until the roll is about 36 inches long.
18. Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper.
19. Cut the dough into triangular pieces by cutting with a sharp knife or bench scraper, alternating left to right at 45 and 135°. You should have 24 rolls.
20. Transfer the rolls onto the two cookie sheets (12 rolls per sheet).
21. Cover the rolls with clean kitchen towels and allow to rise until doubled in bulk.
22. Preheat your oven to 375°F.
23. Bake until the rolls are golden brown, about 15 minutes.
24. Serve immediately.

The original recipe called for dusting the rolls with flour and placing the cookie sheets into two more cookie sheets to prevent the bottoms of the rolls from being overdone. I didn’t find either of those steps necessary.

Sometimes I feel as though my wife and I were supporting the U. S. economy unassisted. I’ve already mentioned some major purchases we’ve made this year—a new washer and dryer. This week we were abruptly faced with another unanticipated and unwanted major expense. The other morning my wife went out to start the car she drives to (and for) work. Nothing. She had it towed to the dealer and a day later we received bad news. The problem would be very expensive to repair—completely unjustifiable in an eleven year old vehicle. We would have needed to replace the engine. Nothing we’d done—it was just one of those things. We needed to buy another car and yesterday we did. Perhaps I’ll write about that experience another time.

However, the car that died had been Jenny’s car and we were very saddened to bid it farewell. I may have told this story before but I’ll repeat it here.

Eleven years ago we were faced with a very similar problem—a sudden need to purchase a new car. My wife drove up to the dealer to shop, taking Jenny with her. When she explained what we were looking for to the salesperson he said, “We don’t get cars like that in very often but let’s look in the lot.” As they walked up and down the rows of new cars, Jenny suddenly dragged my wife to a car. They looked in the window and the car had every single feature we wanted. They brought the car up to the front, Jenny jumped in, and hopped onto the back seat as if to say “No need to dilly-dally around. Wrap it up, boys! We’ll take this one.”

Thereafter that car was always “Jenny’s car”.

Jenny’s car has been a good and reliable car and we’ve had many adventures in it. It has given us good and faithful service and we can only hope that its successor will do so as well.