Hi Mike:

I’ve been reading Jonathan Chait’s excellent article in Medium today. I was struck in particular by this:

The Democratic presidential field has largely abandoned that model. Working from the premise that the country largely agrees with them on everything, or that agreeing with the majority of voters on issues is not necessary to win, the campaign has proceeded in blissful unawareness of the extremely high chance that Trump will win again.

A new batch of swing state polls from the New York Times ought to deliver a bracing shock to Democrats. The polls find that, in six swing states — Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida, North Carolina, and Arizona — Trump is highly competitive. He trails Joe Biden there by the narrowest of margins, and leads Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

Normally, it is a mistake to overreact to the findings of a single poll. In general, an outlier result should only marginally nudge our preexisting understanding of where public opinion stands. This case is different. To see why, you need to understand two interrelated flaws in the 2016 polling. First, they tended to under-sample white voters without college degrees. And this made them especially vulnerable to polling misses in a handful of states with disproportionately large numbers of white non-college voters. The Times found several months ago that Trump might well win 270 Electoral College votes even in the face of a larger national vote defeat than he suffered in 2016.

In my very progressive mind this is a very frightening portent of what might be to come. The inherent flaw in the US system is the electoral college. The minority rules the majority. If this is to be addressed in a non-violent fashion it has to be one of immediate ongoing discussions which, even if the Democrats don’t take it all, has to be established by them through some kind of commission. This would include ideas for changing the Supreme Court. Once the Dems are back in power they need to be ready to move forward swiftly with legislating changes that will hand our democracy back to us.

Of course as you know my main interest is climate change and researching and writing novels about this subject. Somehow this puts a lot of what is happening in perspective. In another hundred years I’m afraid all of this nonsense will turn into the question of whether or not our civilization can survive a massive release of methane, located under one particular piece of perma frost in Siberia. The change that is predicted to happen to our planet when this happens will take place in days not even weeks, like many of the other five or six extinction events.

Nothing now I’m afraid that can be done to stop it, so my advice is enjoy our lovely planet as we now know it and the people you love.