Full disclosure. I called this. Seriously. In the run up to the "surprise" vote by Great Britain to give the stiff middle finger to the EU, the smart money, ie the stock market, gained steadily in the days preceding the vote, in anticipation of a vote to "stay" in the EU. But little noticed was an observation (can't remember by who or whom, but maybe it was 538, the geek stats blog, now part of ESPN) that, in prior British elections of recent years, the conservative position had underpolled by several points the actual results, and the polling heading into the Brexit vote had it a very close call with the "stay in" group leading by a hair. But the show's over, we can all move on. But can we...
Okay, so what American's didn't care about the vote? Well, most Americans, frankly. Yea, the stock market took a deep dive on Friday, when the news broke, but it's been pretty lackluster recently so what's a little more crap news. Also, if you're one of the roughly 53% of Americans (53%, ALL CAPS) who have NO money in the market (in any form, stocks, IRAs, retirement accounts, etc...nada, zilch, zero), then the fall in the market is like the opening of Independence Day; Resurgence. Uneventful. So... if more than half of Americans are not directly affected by the stock market, by virtue of not owning stocks, should the non-binding referendum of a foreign country (yes, folks, dem Brits are foreigners) be of any concern? Hint: the answer is "Brexit? WTF?".
If you've watched the news over the weekend, it would have seemed like the Cavs won the NBA championship and... wait, the Cavs did win the NBA championship, so unexpected things do happen. So it is with Brexit. The news media is falling all over themselves about how they were wrong, and now the world is going to end, when in fact, NO ONE knows exactly, or even inexactly, what will be the consequences of Britain leaving the EU. Except that it'll be bad, because that's what the media, the same folks who just got this prediction wrong, have said it'll be bad, just because. Uh, okay.
There's one fact I can see here that's not speculation but real. Just about 52% of voting Britons said "hasta la vista, baby" a la Arnold Schwarzenneger (multicultural pun intended) to EU membership, and that's a real number, not a prediction. Honest folks can argue all they want about "I intended to vote" or "I didn't mean to vote that way" but vote they did, and the number's the number. But it's much much more fun to try and answer the question, "why?" One candid observation, if you've caught any of the US news coverage. Almost universally the pundits all believe that Britain leaving the EU is "bad", and thus all the commentary has focused on "how bad?". I have yet to see a single article that is even lukewarm about the Brexit, which begs the question, "what were the 52% thinking?". If you're reading along stay tuned while I pivot this back to the US Presidential elections.
Common to the commentary I've been reading and watching since the Brexit vote is the strong opinion that the "leave" voters made a choice that was not in their self-interests, i.e. they're either stupid, uninformed, or a combination of both. I don't know how that plays on the other side of the pond, but here in 'merica, calling or implying someone is either stupid, uninformed, or a combination of both isn't viewed as the makings of polite conversation. The word that comes to my mind is "patronizing". NOW here's my pivot to the general election.
A big reason for starting this seldom-read blog was the impression that both sides of the aisle really have, in the pursuit of votes, cast the opposing side as either low-brow cretins or hi-brow elitists, with little ground for a balanced discussion of issues for middle-brow non-Vegans. There are clearly drawn lines; gun rights, abortion rights, "sanctity of marriage" rights, LGBGT rights, etc... and most of the time the talk focuses on demonizing the other side. So why did 52% of the land of Shakespeare vote to leave, can there be that many stupid people? Hell, this is the land of James Bond, Aston Martin, the Spice Girls! Let's try an example. Imagine an older middle-class worker in England, getting by but certainly not getting rich, and he/she's kinda worried about the prospect that their employer, in the interest of cost-cutting, might think to replace you with a lower-wage worker, perhaps even with an immigrant, who might work for even less? Let's make the scenario more interesting by saying you have 2 young kids. Are you wrong in voting for a measure that you might think will help your own personal economy? Then, on the flip side, you have the Prime Minister, lobbying for the "stay" side, who comes from the upper crust of British society, generationally wealthy, who's saying that staying part of the EU is important in an increasingly "globalized" world. What the hell does "globalized" even mean? I think, for many of the "leave" voters, globalized means watching your jobs go everywhere global except for the UK. I also think it's safe to say that, even with resigning on Friday, David Cameron (he's the Prime Minister), and his family won't be missing too many meals on account of his new unemployment.
Now...bring that scenario back to this side of the pond. Let's have our prototypical American middle class worker driving a truck for an coal mining company in West Virginia, or maybe even building air conditioners for Carrier in Indiana. There's one Presidential candidate has promised to "put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business", while in the other scenario that worker has just seen his/her job go to Mexico. And Brexit can't happen here? "Of course not!" says the know-all media, 'cause they got England oh so right. We'll see... And one more thing. Find me a working class 'merican who can give a speech for even 1/10th of $225k. Yup, Hillary's just like us. She feels our pain. Yes, the other guy is a probably-rich boor with bad hair and bad manners, who plays every card in the book like it's a... wait for it... Trump card. But at this point, he's in it to win it, and contrary to the media and the polls, I think he still can. I'm definitely NOT saying that this is a good thing, just that it's a real thing.
To wrap things up this week, my VP prediction market continues to be solid. Tim Kaine, as predicted weeks ago!, is unofficially now the front-runner position on the Dem side, but in weird counter-intuition, having his name bandied about this early before the convention has me thinking that Clinton-world is floating his name as a trial balloon, to see how the fish (media) are biting. They still have time to change the bait. On the Trump side, jettisoning Cory Lewandowski, while likely a good move, REALLY ignores the large orange elephant in the room. I still love my stealth pick, Petraeus, and still think he needs a good exit strategy before he signs on. I think the talk of Newt Gingrich as VP has to rank right up there with Mike Huckabee as guys with really no other job prospects who desperately need work. If they can't work a deal with Petraeus they might have to settle for Jeff Sessions, R-Alabama, who would likely say "yes" but will equally likely bring to the table "0" additional GOP votes.
It's certainly not boring. Thanks for reading!
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