Brenda Walker did a blog here recently titled Can Microloans Keep Millions at Home?, based on Muhammad Yunus ’s work with the Grameen Bank which recently won him the Nobel Peace Prize. (I always suspect anyone who has won the Nobel Peace Prize. This includes Yasser Arafat, Le Duc Tho,Jimmy Carter, and a number of others who were given prizes for preventing World Wars One and Two, which went ahead and happened anyway.)

Jeffrey Tucker has a story on Mises.org [Microcredit or Macrowelfare: The Myth of Grameen Posted on 11/8/2006 ] which is skeptiical of Muhammad Yunus’s success, which lacks a lot in the way of evidence, and distrusts the collectivist spirit of the Microloan administrators, who say things like

• “We shall take part in all social activities collectively.”
• “We shall grow vegetables all the year round. We shall eat plenty of them and sell the surplus.”
• “We shall build and use pit-latrines.”
• “If we come to know of any breach of discipline in any centre, we shall all go there and help restore discipline.”

which, as he says, is “very strange” for a bank. He suggests that people in Third World countries would do better with fewer regulations preventing them from making money. (This was roughly the position of the late Peter Bauer. ) But the idea that people in Third World contries thould be able to stay home is a good one, however it’s achieved. And if people do have to leave Pakistan for economic reasons, they don’t have to come to America.

According to Bush II, “the Democrat Party had a good night last night.”

Well, that’s one way to put it-another would be “the GOP had their butts handed to them by the libs!”

These words were spoken at a press conference just moments ago. Strangely, President Bush seemed to have an extraordinary amount of difficulty (more so than usual) issuing Karl Rove’s thoughts from the notes on is podium to the mass assemblage of eager beaver reporters before him.

After 10-15 minutes of “Political Let’s Play Pretend” wherein the President played the role of Nancy Pelosi’s new BFF (best friend forever), he took questions from the audience.

As usual, it was one stupid question after another while Peter Brimelow and I sent instant messages back and forth wondering why the immigration question was being ignored.

(And yes, it was intentionally ignored although the President would later deny it.)

Finally, one reporter stood up and asked the $64,000 question:

On immigration, many Democrats had more positive things to say about your comprehensive proposal than many Republicans did. Do you think a Democratic Congress gives you a better shot at comprehensive immigration reform?

What a perfectly worded question…loosely translated: Is your agenda more compatible with liberal ideals or conservative ideals?

This was his response:

“You know, I should have brought this up. I do. I think we have a good chance. Thank you. It’s an important issue and I hope we can get something done on it. I meant to put that in my list of things that we need to get done.”

He mentioned twice again that he “forgot” to mention immigration reform…you know, the issue most divisive to his party that is also quite possibly the cause of their downfall.

He reiterated his commitment to a guest worker program and his confidence that the Dems would likely help him push it through-then he very abruptly left the stage.

Peter Brimelow thought he looked frazzled and was caught off-guard-that for some reason the Bush administration does not want to talk about the issue right now.

I disagree…I think this was the issue he most wanted to discuss.

Crikey! During this same press conference, the President announced the resignation of his long-time Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld…and only devoted about 15 words and even fewer seconds to the subject!

He abruptly left after the immigration question because that was the only question he was waiting for–he knew he couldn’t bring it up himself without looking like a happy pig in mud.

There was absolutely no way for Bush II to broach the topic safely–he had to wait for someone to ask him so he could celebrate the imminent passage of his wholly un-conservative piece of legislation without appearing to thank the Democrats or bitch-slap the Republicans.

Had he initiated the conversation it would have looked something like this:

“Yeah, Republicans lost everything last but night but lookey-loo! I’m still a winner! My amnesty bill will definitely pass now! Tough luck, Hastert…”

So much for bipartisanism…this was just another Bushism.

President Bush, having been thoroughly repudiated at the polls, has called a news conference for today, Wednesday at 1 PM (EST), at which he is likely to ask the new Democratic House, led by San Francisco liberal Nancy Pelosi, to work with him passing legislation. Mark Silva of the Chicago Tribune notes:

“”Some say Bush could find quick common ground on immigration reform with a new Democratic House majority.”

Indeed.

(An appropriate title for the amnesty-plus-indentured-servant bill that Bush and Pelosi might concoct together would be the George W. Bush Memorial Vengeance Upon America Act of 2007.)

If President Bush does advocate a joint venture on immigration with Speaker Pelosi, you can expect countless approving editorials in the mainstream media congratulating the President on his newfound bipartisanship.

If I were Pelosi, though, I’m not sure I’d accept an offer to work together on opening the borders further from this lamest of lame ducks.

Sure, letting in tens of millions more unskilled workers would benefit the Democratic Party greatly over the next generation. She would also be taking the risk of being a one-term Speaker. Just as Hillary Clinton cost the Democrats control of the House in November 1994 by trying and failing to pass massive health care legislation in 1993-94, Pelosi could wreck her Speakership if she tries to push through a vast immigration bill for which this election produced zero mandate.

It would so much safer for her just to raise the minimum wage and investigate the Bush Administration.

From our point of view, the risk of Congress wrecking the country with a disastrous immigration bill is now greater than ever.

Yet so is the possibility of a new President and a new Congress taking substantive steps to save the country in 2009.

The situation resembles the end game of World War I. As long as the Germans stayed hunkered down in their trenches, they looked like they couldn’t be defeated. But when Gen. Ludendorff launched a vast offensive in March of 1918, the odds of a historic decision — whether victory or defeat — shot upwards. The Germans almost took Paris that spring, but when they were stopped short, they had, in effect, lost the war, which they formally admitted by November.

If the Democrats try to open the borders, they may succeed. But if they are beaten back, genuine patriotic immigration reform would likely follow.

It will be a difficult year, but hope remains.

Ward Connerly’s “son-of-Proposition 209″ initiative banning racial/ethnic preferences has won easily in Michigan, carrying close to 58% of the vote, despite just about the entire Michigan Establishment of both parties opposing it.

Connerly had to put up with unbelievable ploys to keep it off the ballot by politicians and by a scary “civil rights group” called By Any Means Necessary. (That, of course, was Malcolm X’s euphemism for violence).

Congratulations also to Ward’s campaign manager Jennifer Gratz, who was one of the losing plaintiffs in the Supreme Court’s 2003 Grutter & Gratz decisions upholding affirmative action at the U. of Michigan. She may have lost in the Supreme Court, but she has now been vindicated by the voters of her state, who have effectively overturned the high court’s misbegotten ruling.

After recent elections, Democrats have taken to consoling themselves by claiming that their voters have higher IQs than Republican voters, based on a table that turned out to be a hoax.

Probably the best way to honestly estimate whose voters are smarter is to look at two exit poll demographic measures of the national House race that are known to positively correlate with intelligence: income and education.

Not surprisingly, the Democrats did best among poorer voters, winning 68% of those making under $15,000 annually, while the GOP won 51% of those making over $100,000.

I would roughly estimate that the median GOP voter had a household income of $85,000 versus $73,000 for the typical Democratic voter. (Midterm elections, with their low turnouts, tend to draw a fairly elite group to the polls, as compared to Presidential election, which bring out more of a mass electorate. That’s why voters’ incomes are quite high for 2006. Or, maybe, respondents are just exaggerating their incomes …)

What about education, as expressed in years of schooling? The Democrats did best among the 3% who are high school dropouts (winning 64%) and the 18% claiming to have undertaken postgraduate studies (59%), while the Republicans were strongest among those who attended college without graduating (47%) and college graduates (49%).

I estimate that voters in House races who voted Democratic averaged (or at least claimed to average) 14.72 years of schooling (i.e., 2.72 years of college), while GOP voters averaged … 14.73 years.

In other words, they came out, for all intents and purposes, exactly the same on years of schooling.

That’s the same result as in 2000, when the two parties’ voters also were tied on education. In 2002, the GOP had a small advantage on years of schooling, and in 2004 the Democrats had a small superiority.

So, the two sets of voters are almost identical on education. This year, there just were more Democratic than Republican voters. And, bottom line, that’s what counts.

The CNN website has posted preliminary national exit poll numbers for House races. They show a big victory for Democrats in House races, in the 55-45 range, in contrast to the GOP’s 51-45 win in the last midterm election in 2002.

(My detailed analysis of the long lost exit poll data from 2002 is here.)

The exit polls show a general shift toward the Democrats among most demographic groups except blacks.

The GOP did disastrously among whites this year, winning only 50-48, compared to 2002 when they won 58% of the white vote. Relatively speaking, they performed better among minorities, where their share fell only from 23% to 20%-21%. As I’ve been saying for years, however, the white vote is the 800 pound gorilla of ethnic blocs, and if the GOP doesn’t win at least 55% of whites, they are in big trouble.

The GOP won by only a 52%-46% margin among white men, a group in which they should win 60%, and lost 50%-48% among white women. The famous gender gap was in the 5 or 6 point range, which is not all that large historically.

The Republicans’ share of the black vote increased from 9% to 11%, perhaps because they nominated black candidates in some statewide races, such as Michael Steele who put up a good fight in the Maryland Senate race. Not surprisingly, it didn’t do them much good overall.

Historically, the GOP’s fraction of the black vote bounces around the 10% mark, and it doesn’t pay much to try to overanalyze why it goes up or down a few points from election to election.

Among Asians, Republicans drew 32%, down from 34% in 2002. Asians have been a consistently strong force for the Democrats since the mid 1990s.

The GOP’s share of the Hispanic vote dropped from 38% to 26%. No doubt this figure will be given vastly more publicity than the 8 point drop among the hugely more important white vote. Prepare to read that House Republicans shot themselves in the foot by not voting to open the borders.

In the conventional wisdom, Hispanics are labeled a “critical swing vote,” but in reality, they are more of a flow vote, going up and down with the white vote. For example, the best year the GOP ever enjoyed in the House vote among Latinos was Newt Gingrich’s big year of 1994, which was also the GOP’s best among white House voters in recent decades. In contrast, the Republicans’ (small) share of the black vote goes up and down according to its own patterns, out of sync with larger trends.

So, if the GOP was down 12 points among Hispanics and down 8 points among whites, then the net loss among Hispanics relative to four years ago was only four points.

The exit poll claims that Hispanics cast 8 percent of the vote, but the exit polls normally exaggerate the Latino share. (They need to “oversample” Hispanics to get statistically significant results, but they seem to fall for their own numbers). The gold standard Census Bureau survey of 50,000 households done right after the election found Hispanics accounted for 5.4% in 2000 and 6.0% in 2004, and only 5.3% in 2002. (That’s because Latinos don’t turn out as much in the less exciting midterm elections.)

Assuming that the Latino fraction of the electorate in this midterm was about six percent, that would suggest that taking a stand on immigration cost the GOP about 6% times 4 percentage points lost, or about one quarter of one percent overall.

In contrast, if the Republicans did just 1 percentage point better among whites than they would have if they had rolled over and played dead on immigration, they would have gained from white voters more than triple what they lost among Hispanic voters.

On the illegal immigration issue, 30% of voters said it was extremely important, and 32% said it was very important, compared to 29% saying it was somewhat important and 8% claiming it was not at all important. Not surprisingly, the Democrats won about 65% of the vote among the 37 percent saying illegal immigration was only somewhat or not important.

Among the five-eights of the electorate rating illegal immigration as extremely or very important, however, the GOP could only win a bare majority of roughly 50-49. The GOP sent a confusing message on this big issue, with President backing amnesty and “guest” workers, as did the GOP’s 2008 frontrunner John McCain, who co-sponsored an amnesty bill with Ted Kennedy. And the Senate’s Chuck Hagel and Mel Martinez, both Republicans, sponsored the bill that passed the Senate that would have let in 66 million more. This kind of mixed message led to a mixed result that would prove fatal to the GOP hopes in 2006.