The Indian Panorama

Tag: AD Amar

  • MODEL THAT PREDICTED THE LAST 25 of 27 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS CORRECTLY HAS TRUMP WINNING BY 362 ELECTORAL VOTES

     

                                                  US ELECTION 2020

    We have created a new column- US Election 2020 -where experts will analyze election scenario, week after weeks, until the election results are out, for the readers of The Indian Panorama.

    Articles and comments are welcome, and may please be emailed to editor@theindianpanorama.com

     

     

    Stony Brook Professor Helmut Norpoth is doubling down on his “Primary Model,” which has correctly predicted 5 out of the past 6 elections since 1996 and every single election but two in the past 108 years.

    “The primary model gives Trump a 91 per cent chance of winning in November, “ Norpoth said.  “This model gets it right for 25 of the 27 elections since 1912, when primaries were introduced.”

    The two elections the model failed to predict were the 1960 election of John F. Kennedy and the 2000 election of George W. Bush.

    We are still seven weeks out from the election, but if all you did was look at the polls, you might be discouraged about the chances of reelection for President Trump.   Most of the polls have him behind Biden and not looking good.  But of course as we know, polls are not particularly accurate and 2016 is a perfect example of that, especially when many seem to be slanted or often agenda-driven.   Most of these polls are sponsored by the mainstream media that puts out fake news.

    It is hard to know how the pandemic, not to mention the riots and chaos being propagated by the radical left, are going to affect the election.  If you blame the party in power, that might adversely affect Trump and that is what the polls may be showing.  But if you see that he is far better to bring the economy back and is already doing that, if you see that voting for Biden and Democrats would open the door for even greater destruction and chaos from the radical left, then it would seem that that should push those in the middle toward Trump.  I personally know folks in the middle or who were liberals who could not stand Trump but now not only will be voting for him but pushing for him.  Because they are so outraged at what has been happening on both those fronts and the Democratic reaction to it all.  WILL THAT “SILENT MAJORITY” be speaking in November for Trump?

    In May, Stony Brook professor Helmut Norpoth said his model was predicting that Trump would win.  Now he is doubling down on the prediction, even after the pandemic and riots.

    Norpoth’s model is based upon performance in presidential primaries and that enthusiasm or the lack thereof as the strongest indicator of the ultimate outcome.    If in fact that is the measure, then there is no question that Trump trounced Biden big time in terms of enthusiasm.  Trump has had record turnout of folks in the primaries even when he was the guaranteed winner.  Biden in the early primaries had real trouble until South Carolina and is still objectionable than Bernie Sanders, albeit not by much.  It would be really hard to say that anyone is enthusiastic about Biden.

    What favors Trump in 2020 as well as the cycle of presidential elections operating for nearly 200 years, as illustrated by the snapshots since 1960.   After one term in the White House the incumbent party is favored to win reelection unlike the situation when it has held office for two or more terms.

    Norpoth’s model predicted Trump’s victory nine months before the election in 2016 and he predicts Trump will win by an even wider margin than he did then, 362 electoral votes versus 304 he had then.  If you thought they cried then, just wait if that happens in November, the meltdowns are going to be historic.

    (Ven Parameswaran, Chairman, Asian American Republican Committee (founded 1988) lives in Scarsdale, NY.  His email: vpwaren@gmail.com)

     

  • Restarting America

    Restarting America

     

     

    It may be accepted that waiting to restart all sectors of the economy simultaneously will  unnecessarily keep some sectors shut that actually can be re-engineered to open  without much further delay.

     

    America should restart its economy and other operations by mitigating risk and making sure that it is done right to be able to succeed at the effort. While playing safe and delaying it beyond May 2020 may sound like the appropriate step to take, we should also know that it brings with it a loss of about two trillion dollars and a consequential setback worth several trillion dollars more every month. On the other hand, restarting America early may bring the risk of extending the misery due to COVID-19. There is no way to come to an optimized solution to this problem. It will have to be made by guts and appetite for risk-taking. We have to carefully look at several pro and con aspects and decide.

    Restarting the economy would be especially important because some estimates tell us that the effect of coronavirus could hang on until August 2020 or even later. A shutdown of that magnitude no economy will be able to handle. Moreover, some say that coronavirus would come back with an even greater vengeance as cold season returns in the fall. The economy has to be ready to cope with that if it does indeed happen. In fact, the longer the U.S. economy remains in this dormant state, the longer it will need to get restarted, harder to bring it back to its past size and the greater irreparable harm it will cause.

    To restart the economy, we will look at the type of operations deployed for product and service transformation. There are certain operations that are large, both in terms of the size of employment and contribution to the gross domestic product. This list includes businesses such as restaurant, retail, sports and entertainment, education and training, and travel and tourism that can be restarted with proper and careful reconfiguration, adaptation of technology, redesign and/or creative reinventing of their processes, workflows, and scheduling. Their restart can be begun in a matter of weeks.

    We can formulate standards of operating for those large organizations that have more machine and technology interface and reduced human interactions. Such outfits include manufacturing, service processing, fulfillment centers, etc. The restart of these businesses will depend on how soon each of them comes up to these standards.   

    Taking the calculated risk of restarting this economy that had been willfully put to sleep rather than shut down because of an external one-time mishap will be unavoidable. It will have to be woken up with whims, such as presidential or gubernatorial executive orders . The alternative in the form of slower legislative processes will likely cause a long-lasting recession or depression or deep depression, as some are stating.  

    Moreover, no matter when we restart the economy, given the politically ultra-divided America and the anxiety over the upcoming presidential election, opposition to any proposal to restart is bound to be there. That is why, we have to move fast and devise a scheme to open the economy and begin the restarting in weeks rather than months. It may be accepted that waiting to restart all sectors of the economy simultaneously will unnecessarily keep some sectors shut that actually can be reengineered to open without much further delay.

    Utilizing the countrywide state by state and county by county data on coronavirus already collected by the White House, we can sectorize our economy and get what can be started within weeks by presidential order and what will need congressional action. The latter will have to be started soon and completed on an expedited basis.        

    Operations that need longer will be restarted applying science, engineering and technology. Our effort should be to redesign human and machine interactions, human-to-human contacts, and group interfaces, all with the goal to mitigate the risk of any second or later legs of COVID-19. We should also work to adapt and design or redesign technologies, operations, and communication systems for keeping workers safe from all similar communicable diseases. This should also make the companies become even more productive.

    America should use COVID-19 experience as a way to emphasize self-dependence for the production and distribution of all goods, services, processes, and technologies. This experience has taught us that all these are important and not just the essential ones.

    We should also work to make sure that we bring back manufacturing to the USA and place requisite importance on research to help us achieve this self-dependence in an economically competitive way. The White House should continue to exert pressure to make sure that American business invests in the goal of self-dependence. Furthermore, we should make sure that our businesses set research and development intensity to achieve the goal.

    We should also fight COVID-19 worldwide and help other countries restart their economies, replicating what we did to put the world back to work after the two world wars.

    ( A. D. Amar, Ph.D. is Professor of Management at the Stillman School of Business, Seton Hall University, South Orange, NJ 07079 (ad.amar@shu.edu). He was one of the three academics who endorsed Donald Trump for president in 2015, much before the primary elections of 2016. Later, he founded Indian-Americans for Trump 2016, a PAC, registered to promote Trump for president)