On The Hustings

Moving to PolySigh

2005-09-23T16:05:00.000-04:00

Since it's getting extremely difficult to post with any regularity, I've decided to join a group blog. I'll now post occasionally at PolySigh, a wonderful blog by a group of first-rate political scientists.

Phil Klinkner was nice enough to post an introduction to me at the site today. I'm fortunate to have this opportunity and I hope to publish my maiden post there soon.

To those of you who were regular readers, I appreciate the traffic. Please check out PolySigh every once in a while.

What Would Jesus Do?

2005-08-23T16:39:00.000-04:00

Probably not call for the murder of a democratically elected leader!

It's Been a While

2005-08-23T09:28:00.000-04:00

I should have mentioned about a month ago that I was teaching a course on British politics in England from the end of July to the middle of August. That explains the hiatus from posts to On The Hustings. Anyway, I've returned and I'm going to try to get back into a routine that will allow me to post at least semi-regularly. Honestly, though, I'm not sure I'll be able to pull it off. I'm back to a regular teaching schedule after a research leave in the spring and the already mounting responsibilities seem too daunting to allow for blogging. But I'm going to try.

Briefly, I want to put in a plug for Bath, England, where the course was held (at the wonderful facilities of Advanced Studies in England). It is an exquisite city. If you haven't been there, put it high on the list of places to visit.

I also want to thank two wonderful guests who spoke to my class: John Jackson of Sandhurst gave a very informed and interesting talk on terrorism and the Liberal Democrat MP from Bath, Don Foster, was simply brilliant. The students were talking about Mr. Foster long after his discussion with them.

It's (Still) the Economy, Stupid

2005-07-21T06:45:00.000-04:00

Here's a very interesting post from Ruy Teixeira on Democrats and the economy, with data from two new polls. In it, he highlights opportunities and challenges for the Democrats on the economy; it's definitely worth reading.

Teixeira also makes reference to Matt Bai's piece on framing in Sunday's New York Times Magazine and argues that framing is not the answer. Couldn't agree more. It's just amazing that Lakoff's political analysis continues to influence so many otherwise sophisticated political thinkers.

London, Rove, etc.

2005-07-14T10:00:00.000-04:00

It's been a while since my last post - I know there's nothing worse than an "occasional" blog, but I've been feverishly working on a number of projects that simply take priority over this. One of those is prepping a class on British politics that I'm teaching in Bath starting on July 25. Needless to say, I've watched coverage of the London bombings closely. I'm not by any means an expert on terrorism, so I have nothing original to say here. But, as someone interested in ideology and political culture, it just seems amazing to me that the bombers were home-grown, suicide bombers. Having grown up in Britain, how did they come to accept suicide bombing as a political tactic?

One of them, reportedly, studied religion in Pakistan and the others, of course, had become radicalized. I basically understand the radicalization part - we have radicals willing to kill for their ideology too (e.g., Timothy McVey). That's explained by some combination of psychological, religious, and/or socio-economic factors. But suicide bombing? Well, according to Professor Robert Pape, who has studied cases of suicide attacks worldwide since 1980 (and reports his findings in his book Dying to Win: The Logic of Suicide Terrorism), the basic goal of terrorists who are willing to kill themselves is "to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland." He claims that "every major suicide-terrorist campaignover 95 percent of all the incidentshas had as its central objective to compel a democratic state to withdraw."

For Pape, it's the homeland of the terrorist that matters. He has "the first complete set of data on every al-Qaeda suicide terrorist from 1995 to early 2004, and they are not from some of the largest Islamic fundamentalist countries in the world" including Iran and the Sudan. Instead, "Two thirds are from the countries where the United States has stationed heavy combat troops since 1990."

But this doesn't seem to explain the London bombings. The bombers might want UK withdrawal from Iraq, but that's not their "homeland" even in an ancestral sense. Whatever the cause, this is an ominous development.

(By the way, we can't ignore the role of our foreign policy in all of this. To say that it plays a role is not to say Bush or Blair are to blame for these attacks; just that our policy has consequences. As Pape says in the interview I link to above, "The operation in Iraq has stimulated suicide terrorism and has given suicide terrorism a new lease on life." He points out that in Lebanon "there were 41 suicide-terrorist attacks from 1982 to 1986, and after the U.S. withdrew its forces, France withdrew its forces, and then Israel withdrew to just that six-mile buffer zone of Lebanon, they virtually ceased. They didn’t completely stop, but there was no campaign of suicide terrorism." And while we're at it, John Judis has a very interesting piece on The New Republic website about the need to change our strategy in fighting Al Qaeda.)

The other story to have developed since I last posted is "l'affaire Rove." My money is on Rove to survive this. Assuming nothing else comes out - like that Rove identified Valerie Plame by name to Robert Novak, for example - this will just be viewed as hardball politics. That's something people expect from politicians in general, Republicans in particular, and Karl Rove specifically. It's unseemly, it's borderline illegal, but it's not a threat to national security. Remember, people give the parties wide latitude to act in ways that they would not tolerate of the other party, depending on the issue. It's going to be hard to convince the average person that Rove - Bush's closest political advisor - would sacrifice national security for political gain. I'M NOT SAYING HE DIDN'T DO THAT, JUST THAT THE AVERAGE PERSON WON'T BELIEVE HE DID.

There's another reason Rove is still an odds-on favorite to survive. Republicans are, as usual, united in their defense of him. The culture of the Republican Party is one of loyalty and hierarchy. Their guiding ideology just doesn't embrace dissent as a value. On top of all this, President Bush hasn't shown a willingness to hold ANYONE in his administration accountable for mistakes. In fact, it's not likely that Bush sees what Rove did as a mistake in the first place. If Rove was eliminating a roadblock to Bush's march to war, and if the war was seen as necessary for national security (which inside the administration it still is, despite all the evidence to the contrary), then a little breach of national security for a much larger gain in national security was itself necessary. Ends justifying means and all that.

The bottom line is that I just don't expect to see Karl Rove leaving the White House anytime soon.

Felons and Terrorists: Democratic Constituencies?

2005-07-05T13:24:00.000-04:00

Gov. Vilsack (D) of Iowa has signed an executive order restoring voting rights to roughly 50,000 ex-felons in Iowa. As you might imagine, conservatives are using this to make outrageous claims about the Democratic Party's base.

Don't ask me why I was listening to Rush Limbaugh today, but I made the mistake of doing so. By pure coincidence, I tuned in right before Mr. Limbaugh launched into a tirade about what Gov. Vilsack had done. He said that Democrats favor the restoration of voting rights because criminals are their biggest constituency. And then he said, with clunky sarcasm, that the Democrats would next be giving voting rights to their "second biggest constituency, terrorists."

I'm not sure why I'm even addressing him, since no one really cares what Rush Limbaugh has to say anymore. Still, any serious conservative should be embarrassed by the use of such intellectually dishonest rhetoric. Terrorists, a Democratic constituency? Give me a break. Even though I believe that Osama bin Laden is better off as a result of Bush's policies (that is, he can achieve his goals - chief among them, recruitment - more easily given the war in Iraq), I'd never suggest that terrorists are a Republican constituency. Bush is doing what he's doing because he honestly thinks it is the way to defeat terrorism. Many Americans happen to disagree with the means, but no one disagrees with the ends. And for Limbaugh or anyone else to suggest otherwise of the Democratic Party is just pathetic. Terrorists don't discriminate between Republicans and Democrats.

Anyway, Limbaugh ended by saying Vilsack acted as he has because "Democrats need every vote they can get." Let me remind him that a Democrat got more votes than his beloved Mr. Bush in 2000; that a Democrat received the votes of over 59 million Americans in 2004 (far more than any previous candidate for president of either party); and that more people have voted for Democratic Senate candidates (99.7 million) than have voted for Republican Senate candidates (97.3 million) in the last three election cycles.

As for Vilsack's executive order, Limbaugh's reaction illustrates why it was such a courageous act. The public is not likely to be sympathetic to any sort of rights for criminals. And if he is contemplating a run for the presidency in 2008, as many think he is, this won't help him (even in Democratic primaries, Mr. Limbaugh). So I tend to think Vilsack was doing the right thing as he sees it and for no other reason. Why can't conservatives like Limbaugh just acknowledge that and argue on the merits?

Speaking of the merits, I think Vilsack did the right thing and I hope to explain why in an upcoming post.

O'Connor's Retirement and the Dems' Response

2005-07-01T10:55:00.000-04:00

Justice O'Connor has announced her retirement which, by being the first of the expected resignations, complicates the Democrats' strategy for how to respond. Had Rehnquist left first, the Dems would have been smart to give way to whomever Bush wanted to nominate. Replacing a conservative with a conservative is to be expected and doesn't change the ideological balance on the Court (even if the nominee is more conservative than Rehnquist - we're only talking a matter of degrees). They couldn't reasonably make the argument that a conservative president should replace a conservative with a moderate. And, by not fighting Rehnquist's replacement, the Dems would also have gained significant good will among the public (through the media), which would have helped make a credible case for fighting later nominees.

But now they have to hold the line by insisting on a (relative) moderate to replace O'Connor. That means they have to fight right off the bat.

One could argue that the Democrats could still give way on the first Bush Supreme Court nominee, no matter who it is or whom it replaces (within reason - they'd have to fight for Stevens' slot), and then fight to ensure that the second nominee is a moderate. That way, the balance is the same in the long run. But it doesn't quite work like that. O'Connor's replacement will be seen as just that - a replacement for O'Connor, just as Rehnquist's replacement will be viewed as a replacement for him. People aren't likely to approach this from the aggregate perspective.

So Democrats are going to have a hard time not fighting this tooth-and-nail. Batten down the hatches!

Charlie Cook on Safe Districts (and a Soc. Sec. Proposal)

2005-06-28T09:54:00.000-04:00

Yet another call for changing our corrupt system of drawing legislative district lines... In his latest column, Charlie Cook wonders, "what are they smoking at the Ways and Means Committee, and does the Drug Enforcement Administration know?" The reason for his query is the proposal by Ways and Means Chairman Bill Thomas (R-CA) and several other Republicans for "private investment accounts to be funded out of the Social Security surplus." That's right, the Social Security SURPLUS. This coming on the heals of President Bush's claims that the system will soon be in deficit.

Cook argues that politicians will never be able to convince the average voter that there is a surplus in the Social Security system (or, at least, one that's large enough to be used right now). He says Thomas and other Republicans (not to mention many Democrats) are simply out of touch with mainstream Americans because they reside in safe districts. I'll let him speak for himself.

The thinking that led to this proposal is a consequence of having members in safe seats who have not met a swing voter in years. Don't get me wrong; Democrats have an equal share of members whose actions make one wonder what planet they live on.

That said, it should not come as a big surprise that drawing such safe districts means that it takes mind-boggling misbehavior to even draw a credible opponent. Add a campaign finance system that is so imbalanced that incumbents typically face opponents spending less than $50,000 for the entire cycle, and members become insulated from having to wonder what an average Joe or Jane Citizen would think about a given solution.

While there are a number of factors that have led to the paucity of competitive districts, this episode makes California Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's case for him -- recalibrating districts would help to recalibrate Congress. If there were fewer slam-dunk districts for each party, then each side would have to look over its shoulder a bit more.

As someone who loves to see competition and wants to see more hot congressional races, regardless of who ends up winning, I say bring it on!

And I say, Amen!

By the way, Cook points out that the average loss to the president's party in the last six "6th year" elections is 36 seats in the House and 6 in the Senate. (Of course, in the most recent 6th year election, in 1998, the president's party gained seats.) Numbers like that aren't likely to obtain next year given the precision with which district lines are now drawn. In fact, only a handful of districts will be in play in 2006. Hence Cook's call for "recalibrating" congressional districts.

APSR Study Gets NY Times Coverage

2005-06-21T18:19:00.000-04:00

Just noting that the American Political Science Review study I mentioned a few days ago did make the national media - it's in the New York Times. There's also a Times article on a June 10 study in Science on the influence of inferences of competence based on facial appearences on the outcome of elections.

A few people have asked in the comments about the availability of the APSR article on-line. Unfortunately, you have to pay for it, but anyone interested in doing so can find it here.

2008 Frontrunners

2005-06-14T23:28:00.000-04:00

This is really OLD news, but a few weeks ago National Journal published the results of a poll of party insiders on the presidential frontrunners for 2008. The insiders were asked to name and rank the top five contenders for their party's nomination. Here are the top 10 for both parties (with total votes in parentheses; a first-place vote was worth 5 pts, second-place 4 pts, etc.):

REPUBLICANS

1. George Allen (229)
2. John McCain (217)
3. Bill Frist (184)
4. Rudy Guiliani (129)
5. Mitt Romney (109)
6. Haley Barbour (93)
7. Jeb Bush (61)
8. Condoleezza Rice (56)
9. Chuck Hagel (36)
10. George Pataki (34)

DEMOCRATS

1. Hillary Rodham Clinton (407)
2. John Edwards (205)
3. Mark Warner (179)
4. Evan Bayh (131)
5. John Kerry (90)
6. Bill Richardson (85)
7. Tom Vilsack (73)
8. Joseph Biden (49)
9. Wesley Clark (35)
10. Al Gore (21)

On the GOP side, I can't believe that Republican insiders really think that John McCain has a shot at winning the party's nomination. Of course, this poll was conducted before McCain helped broker the filibuster cease-fire. Still, he doesn't exactly toe the party line and he doesn't emphasize the social issues nearly enough to be taken seriously by the base.

Second, what does it mean that Jeb Bush was 7th? I had always thought that he would be a near shoe-in if he threw his hat in the ring (and, until recently, I thought he'd be nearly unbeatable in the general). Is this an acknowledgement that the name "Bush" might be a liability after this term?

On the Democratic side, notice that HRC is the front-runner by a significant margin. Is this wishful thinking on the part of Dem insiders, or just an objective assessment of what they think is likely to happen? (I suspect the latter. She's way ahead in polls of the public as well; see this recent Marist College poll. Of course, that's based on little more than name recognition at this point.)

The most interesting thing about this list, however, is the remarkably high placement of VA Gov. Mark Warner. I've not been the only one saying that Dems (and the GOP, for that matter) would be smart to pick a governor next time around. That Warner is from the south doesn't particularly mean much to me (I doubt he could even win Virginia, though it depends on who the Republicans nominate). But he has been a successful governor and I think that's the key. Watch Warner closely.

In Response to Kevin Shaw

2005-06-08T20:16:00.000-04:00

You might not know it, but I'm really no different than James Dobson, the arch-conservative founder of Focus on the Family. At least that's what one Kevin Shaw seems to think. Readers outside Pennsylvania may not care much about what follows, but it does illustrate how ridiculous some partisan bloggers can be.

Pennsylvania recently passed Act 72, a property tax relief measure that is complicated and flawed in many ways (e.g., school boards had to decide whether to opt into the Act 72 program; if they did, their power to raise income taxes in the future would be severely restricted). Anyway, our governor (Ed Rendell, a Democrat) was a big advocate of the measure, which includes the limited legalization of gambling (i.e., slot machines), the revenue from which would go to local school districts to help offset the reduction in property taxes. But the vast majority of school districts have voted not to participate in the program.

Anyway you slice it, this is a political loss for Rendell. He had barnstormed across the commonwealth using the bully-pulpit to convince local politicians to support Act 72. Kevin Shaw, incidentally, doesn't really disagree. In his blog on the PA for Democracy website, he says Rendell is "understandably embarrassed and upset because he failed to deliver on a campaign promise. If I worked my butt off to deliver on a promise and circumstances conspired against me, I be upset, too." Shaw also calls Act 72 "crap."

Now, in a Philadelphia Inquirer story on the political ramifications of Rendell's defeat, I was quoted, as a professor at Franklin and Marhsall College, as saying, "When you look at all the boards who voted this down, one after another, it's hard to believe it won't somehow come out of his hide." I also said, "It's hard not to identify the governor with this bill or its defeat."

Shaw cites those two statements and then says,

Are we talking about Franklin and Marshall College at Lancaster, PA, United Church of Christ, Evangelical-Reformed? Why didn't you [the reporter] just call the Heritage Foundation or James Dobson? I'll wait to see Mr. Medvic's research and statistics before I put any stock in his opinion.

Shaw doesn't have to put any stock in my opinion. But he really ought to be fair when he quotes me in order to compare me to a right-wing theocrat like Dobson. Here's rest of the Inquirer article where I'm mentioned...

Medvic said Rendell might not be entirely to blame for the defeat, saying bold plans to reshape a state are often met with resistance when they are complicated and difficult to understand, like Act 72.

"Local politicians voting on this had no idea what the consequences might be five years from now," he said. "When people can't predict the outcome of a plan, they tend to follow the status quo."

Not so controversial, is it? Rendell campaigned hard for Act 72, so having failed he'll pay some price (perhaps not a very big one); on the other hand, it was complicated legislation and school board members probably preferred to stay with the devil they knew - namely, the current property tax system. And here I thought I was being a neutral analyst!

Casey vs. Santorum

2005-06-08T08:34:00.000-04:00

I just got the latest Keystone Poll (conducted by the Center for Opinion Research here at Franklin & Marshall College) and it contains horserace numbers on the 2006 Casey-Santorum race:

Casey 44 - Santorum 37 - "Don't Know" 19 (MoE = +/-4.5)

-----

I'm going to use this opportunity to make the following statement about this race:

I'm planning an in-depth case study of the Casey-Santorum race in an attempt to test some theoretical work I've been doing on how campaigns are run. As a result, I will not be blogging on this race beyond an occasional factual post (including information like that above). This race is going to be extremely interesting and it will be hard not to chime in, but I don't want to do anything that will compromise my role as a neutral observer and analyst.

Was the 'Gulag' Statement Worth It?

2005-06-03T23:56:00.000-04:00

E. J. Dionne takes Amnesty International to task today for the "gulag" statement. At first, I disagreed with him. Surely some hyperbole is acceptable in order to break through the din of the 24 hour news hole. Without some controversial claim, reports like Amnesty's get buried beneath celebrity trials and revelations of long-held secret identities.

But on second thought, Dionne is right. Amnesty made a mistake in comparing Guantanamo to a gulag. They did get attention, but it wasn't constructive attention. No one has heard the substance of the latest report, and the organization certainly lost some credibility. There's a lot to be gained from rhetorical flourishes; but, ultimately, the central argument has to be sound - or at least believable.

Political Attitudes and Genetics

2005-06-02T22:15:00.000-04:00

I just received the latest issue of the American Political Science Review and I think there's an article in it that might garner some attention. John Alford (Rice), Carolyn Funk (Virginia Commonwealth) and John Hibbing (Nebraska) have a piece entitled, "Are Political Orientations Genetically Transmitted?"

The authors looked at the political attitudes and behaviors of monozygotic ("identical") and dizygotic (fraternal) twins and found that "genetics plays an important role in shaping political attitudes and ideologies but a more modest role in forming party identification."

I haven't finished the article so I can't say much about the study itself, but I'd be surprised if this didn't show up in various national media outlets.

Senate Democrats: Back to Basics in 2006

2005-05-26T12:05:00.000-04:00

According to the Christian Science Monitor, Senate Democrats in 2006 "plan to rely on a back-to-basics strategy, avoiding internal squabbles and ideological litmus tests and stressing instead the economic issues that are often paramount to voters."

The Monitor interviewed Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee chair Sen. Charles Schumer (NY), who said the focus would be on "meat and potatoes: healthcare, education, jobs." The DSCC appears to be dropping the framing approach in favor of a strategy of what I'd call "deliberate priming."

A priming strategy determines which issues are most salient to the voters, identifies those on which the party - or an individual candidate - has a natural advantage (based on voters' perceptions of which party handles which issues better), and emphasizes only those issues.

This is far better than trying to persuade voters to see it your way on issues on which they trust the other side more (i.e., a framing strategy). Try as they might, Democrats just will never convince the average swing voter that they have a better approach to national security than the Republicans. Likewise, President Bush can talk until he's blue in the face about Social Security, but the more he talks the worse he does. That's because voters trust Democrats more to protect and preserve the program.

It's also encouraging (if you're a Democrat) to see the Democrats finally focus on bread-and-butter issues. Beginning in 1968, the only time a Democrat has won the White House (with the exception of Carter's narrow win in 1976, based in large measure on Watergate) is when economic issues, particularly jobs, were paramount (1992 and 1996).

Gronke's earlyvote Blog

2005-05-23T10:55:00.000-04:00

Here's a great resource that I've just found out about - Prof. Paul Gronke's (Reed College) blog devoted to early voting. Check it out...

Kos and the DLC: Anti-Single Issue Groups

2005-05-23T10:23:00.000-04:00

Kos has a post today on "the curse of the single issue groups." In it, he makes the following point:

One of the key problems with the Democratic Party is that single issue groups have hijacked it for their pet causes. So suddenly, Democrats are the party of abortion, of gun control, of spottend [sic] owls, of labor, of trial lawyers, etc, etc., et-frickin'-cetera. We don't stand for any ideals, we stand for specific causes. We don't have a core philosophy, we have a list with boxes to check off.

It's an interesting argument, but I think I've heard it before. Oh, yes, over at the Democratic Leadership Council (see here and, especially, here, one of the earliest expressions of this critique). Don't get me wrong; I'm not saying I disagree. It's just interesting to hear someone who has said that the DLC is a "tool of the GOP" make one of their most fundamental arguments.

Scheiber on Lakoff

2005-05-23T09:48:00.000-04:00

I'm way behind on my blogging responsibilities. I've wanted to comment on the latest Pew study of the electorate (though Ruy Teixeira said most of what can be said here and here) and the Newsweek Koran story, but I've been finishing up a few other projects. Anyway, I wanted to mention Noam Scheiber's critique of George Lakoff in The New Republic. This is the latest in a string of critical pieces and, as Pete Ross says at Teixeira's site, it's the most thoughtful to date. (The title of Ross's post, by the way, is "Dems Drunk on 'Frames'?" The answer to that question is undeniably YES.)

Scheiber's argument is, essentially, that Lakoff would have Democrats frame issues according to his own preferences - which are decidedly left - rather than those that would appeal to mainstream (read: swing) voters. Fair point, but that still isn't the biggest problem with Lakoff's approach. It's that he thinks framing is the solution to Democratic woes when a far more effective approach is priming (based on issues the party owns). I hope to have my own critique of Lakoff very soon (though don't hold your breath).

Election Reform in PA

2005-05-16T11:43:00.000-04:00

The Pennsylvania Election Reform Task Force issued its final report last week. It had recommendations in six areas (primary date change, absentee voting, uniformed and overseas citizens absentee voting, voter participation, compliance with HAVA, and the Electoral College). The most significant recommendation is to move PA's primary to the first Tuesday in March in order to garner more influence for PA in presidential nominations. One can't blame the Task Force for wanting to jump on the front-loading bandwagon, but if PA does this, the parties and state legislatures need to get together to implement a national plan for managing this problem. I personally like the National Association of Secretaries of State's "regional rotating primary plan" (even though it exempts New Hampshire and Iowa), but there are a number of other interesting plans to consider.

The PA Election Reform Task Force also suggested that the state begin using no-excuse absentee ballots but didn't endorse early voting. Unfortunately, they also rejected (by a vote of 7-6) same-day voter registration. On the plus side (from my perspective) they opposed PA "unilaterally moving away from the 'winner-take-all' method of electing presidential electors."

I wish they had dealt with the most pressing electoral problem in PA, and most other states, which is redistricting. But they did call for further study of that and other issues, including the use of instant run-off voting and proportional representation.

My Pet Goat, Part II?

2005-05-13T09:00:00.000-04:00

My friend Dale Miller sent this link to an Editor & Publisher transcript of Wednesday's White House press briefing. In it, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan defends the decision not to inform President Bush of the Cessna flying dangerously close to the White House until 36 minutes after the all-clear had been sent. It's worth a read, especially since this is a president who likes to cultivate an image as a take charge, hands-on commander-in-chief. But, as Dale noted in an e-mail to me, "You would think that after Fahrenheit 9/11 they would bend over backwards not to let this happen again."

For me, however, this is yet another example of how party issue advantages operate. To this point, there is virtually no flap over this aspect of the incident. But image that John Kerry had been in the White House. Now imagine that he was RIDING A BIKE while a mysterious plane entered restricted airspace and he just continued riding that bike while much of D.C. was evacuated, his wife was taken to a secure location, the decision of whether or not to shoot down the plane was made, and the all-clear was given. And then he rode for 36 more minutes without any knowledge of what was transpiring! Does anyone doubt that President Kerry would be skewered over this? Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and Tom Delay would have a field day. You can hear the talking point now - The elitist John Kerry riding a $3100 mountain bike [the reported cost of President Bush's bike] while D.C. fears an attack.

Perceptions of party strength give both parties the benefit of the doubt on the issues they "own." So Bush isn't viewed as derelict; rather, he's got security so much under his control that he can leave the decisions to someone else.

Lessons from Britain?

2005-05-06T10:34:00.000-04:00

Expect American pundits to begin uncovering lessons for Democrats in the British election results. Some will say that moving to the center enabled Labour to win an historic third consecutive term. Others will say that same move cut their majority in half.

The truth is that there are no lessons for Democrats in Labour's performance. As Kenneth Baer has recently pointed out, "England is England and the US is the US; chalk up [the parties'] individual positions to their unique political cultures and history." One of the differences that makes comparison particularly difficult is the presence of a credible third party in Britain (the Liberal Democrats). The losses would not have been as great for Labour if Tories were the only alternative. [Even though the Lib Dems, as of this writing, only have a net gain of 11 seats, they certainly drained votes from Labour in districts all across Britain. In the London constituency of Putney, for example, Conservatives picked up a seat previously held by Labour with a majority of about 1800 votes; the Lib Dems garnered nearly 6000 votes there.]

The British results do, however, raise questions about the old saw that voters prefer a party that has a vision, takes clear positions and knows where it wants to lead. That's true in the abstract and it's certainly the case that they prefer clarity to muddle. But when given the choice between a clear vision they oppose and no vision at all, it's a toss-up. Blair tried to convince voters that he faced a difficult choice over the war in Iraq and, agree with him or not, he should be given credit for making a decision. (For a vivid illustration of this line of argument, see his interrogation on the BBC program Question Time.) Most voters didn't buy it.

People want to be lead, but only in the direction the want to go.

Teixeira - The Myths of Democratic Renewal

2005-05-04T14:47:00.000-04:00

For those interested (and this should include Republicans who follow party politics), Ruy Teixeira has a great post on the "myths of Democratic renewal." They include my favorite, the "Framing Myth." But he goes beyond de-mythification. Teixeira points to some promising paths for a Democratic comeback.

Kos (from Across the Pond) on Framing

2005-05-02T10:13:00.000-04:00

Markos Moulitsas (a.k.a. Kos of DailyKos.com fame) is writing for The Guardian this week, comparing the British campaign to those in the U.S. Yesterday, he made the case that Labour has an advantage over the Conservatives because they've won the "framing wars." The essay itself is simplistic and sloppy, while the basic argument misunderstands how the electorate approaches election choices.

Kos, like so many American progressives, has fallen for George Lakoff's notion that if Democrats just expressed their positions in a more appealing way, they'd win more often. As such, Kos says that "key" among the factors "fuelling the rise of the American right" is Conservatives' control of the political language. "[T]here has been no greater framing success in the last 30 years," writes Kos, "than the GOP's demonization of taxation and the social services those taxes buy." This vastly overstates the case. Poll after poll suggests that people would rather spend money on a clean environment, education, and deficit reduction, than get a tax cut.

Tony Blair certainly has won the framing battle in the U.K. But, according to Kos, this is "probably his chief legacy." Blair's victory in this all-important fight, he continues, "can provide the philosophical foundation for a long lasting Labour majority." In Kos's hands, a frame has apparently become more than a rhetorical device - it's now an entire philosophy. But he has the cart before the horse. Frames derive from worldviews, they don't constitute them. This mistake is precisely the kind progressives make when they obsess about framing.

Kos acknowledges that "Democrats have been able to ride specific issues to the presidency," like Carter did in the wake of Watergate in 1976. The implication is that the Democrats lack anything more durable. But, strangely, he includes 1992 as an example of the Dems' use of specific issues, arguing that "Clinton wielded the economy as his secret weapon." This captures nicely the silliness of the "frames shall set you free" school of thought.

Leave aside the fact that "the economy" is not a specific issue and that it wasn't - and never is - a "secret" weapon (remember, "It's the economy, stupid"?). Democrats best hand has always been the basket of issues called "the economy." It's why they were the majority party from the 1930s to the late 1960s. But, similarly, the Republicans have an advantage on national security (and cultural issues). Currently, we live in a time when security is crucial to the calculus of the average voter (and, because so many feel insecure, cultural issues become more salient). In that environment, Republicans will always have the upper hand. There's not much Democrats can do but try to be credible on defense and culture, change the subject to economics, and wait for times to change.

Frames aren't irrelevant and smart political actors give some thought to them. But frames aren't the whole ball of wax either. Until progressives learn something about how the electorate really operates, they're in for a long period of frustration.

The Economist Endorses Labour

2005-04-29T09:40:00.000-04:00

From The Economist yesterday - "For want of a better option, we favour another Labour victory on May 5th." [Read the entire endorsement here.]

Third Party Possibilities

2005-04-28T10:46:00.000-04:00

In Monday's Los Angeles Times, Ron Brownstein had an interesting column in which he suggested that the current partisan polarization in the country and the resulting failure to address pressing problems facing the American public presents an opening for an independent candidacy in 2008, if not an opportunity for the development of a third party.

Ordinarily, I'd say that the chances of either happening are non-existent. Mounting a national campaign, or even a statewide one, requires a vast organization and candidates not linked to a major party lack such organizations. But there's another element to Brownstein's argument that has to make one pause before pooh-poohing the rise of a third party (or an independent candidacy). That element is the Internet. The Dean campaign - not to mention organizations like MoveOn.org - showed that a campaign's infrastructure can be built quickly and relatively cheaply.

I'm still skeptical. The space for such a movement, as Brownstein points out, is in the middle. But folks in the middle aren't highly motivated to get active in politics because (a) they are moderates who, by definition, tend not to be activists; this is in part because (b) the kind of rhetoric that best activates people is ideologically charged and because (c) most independent voters (though by know means all) don't follow politics closely. Still, it's worth keeping an eye on developments in this direction.

One aspect of Brownstein's column addresses the strategies of the two major parties in mobilizing voters. Joe Trippi, the brains behind Dean's Internet "revolution," argues that the Bush 2004 campaign proved that you can win by focusing on your base, rather than appealing to swing voters. I think Bush did both, simultaneously. Furthermore, in an era when your party is dominant (as Republicans are now), mobilizing the base may be more successful than when you aren't dominant. There are just more Republican voters (not identifiers, but voters) out there right now than there are Democratic voters. I'm not arguing for a DLC-type move to the center for the Democrats, just that this is a little more complicated than it appears (and far more complicated than Simon Rosenberg makes it sound when he says the strategy of appealing to the center has now "been rejected for all time"!).

Incidentally, Trippi visits Franklin & Marshall today and I've got the good fortune to have 45 minutes with him for an interview. I'll post on our conversation tomorrow.

Hitchens Endorses Blair

2005-04-27T23:08:00.000-04:00

Christopher Hitchens is backing Tony Blair for another term as British Prime Minister. If it has any effect at all, I wonder if this endorsement will help Blair or hurt him.

British AG's Advice on War Leaks to Press

2005-04-24T10:25:00.000-04:00

The Observer is reporting today that the British Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, advised Tony Blair in March of 2003 that a war in Iraq "could be in breach of international law for six reasons ranging from the lack of a second United Nations resolution to UN inspector Hans Blix's continuing search for weapons." Eventually, Goldsmith publicly gave his seal of approval to the invasion.

Leaving aside the validity of the legal advice (which I'm in no position to judge), the "sudden disclosure is bound to have an explosive effect on the election campaign," according to the paper. Labour has a structural advantage going into this election (once again, single-member districts will distort the seats-to-votes ratio), so they are still likely to hold a legislative majority. But this news will fuel Lib Dem and Tory attacks on Blair's credibility, which will diminish the size of the Labour vote, if not its majority in the Commons.

Stay tuned - the election is only 11 days away.

NPR Story on Strat-O-Matic

2005-04-19T14:43:00.000-04:00

I spent the vast majority of my waking hours outside of school as a kid playing baseball. I preferred the real thing, but when I wasn't actually playing outside, I was playing a baseball board game called Strat-O-Matic. I mention this because NPR had a really nice piece on "Strat" this morning. The Jon Miller sound effects are worth a listen by themselves!

By the way, Congress gave me the perfect excuse to occasionally post about baseball on a blog devoted to American politics when they held the steroids hearings.

Carter-Baker Commission Hearing

2005-04-19T06:41:00.000-04:00

The Commission on Federal Election Reform (a.k.a. Carter-Baker) held its first hearing yesterday. Unfortunately, the Commission made it clear that it won't tackle the real defects in our electoral system - legislative redistricting and the Electoral College. According to Commission co-chair James Baker, "We should not take on the really volatile issues with respect to which we have no reasonable chance of success... There are plenty of other issues for us to consider." Fair enough, but some national commission ought to take on the really big issues.

As for the testimony itself, Loyola law professor (and fellow blogger) Rick Hasen best captured the house of cards that is our election process.

In the 2004 presidential election, the United States came much closer to electoral meltdown, violence in the streets and constitutional crisis than most people realize.

[snip]

Less than a 2 percent swing among Ohio voters -- about 100,000 voters -- toward Democratic candidate for president John Kerry and away from incumbent Republican President Bush would have placed the Ohio -- and national -- election for president well within the 'margin of litigation,' and it would have gotten ugly very quickly.

[See Hasen's entire testimony here.]

Dems Looking West

2005-04-18T17:34:00.000-04:00

Interesting piece in the LA Times today on the view of some within the Democratic Party that the path to electoral fortune lies in the West. I continue to believe that the Chicken Little Democrats are wrong - the sky isn't falling and the party doesn't need a major overhaul to be competitive. (Thus, the obsessive focus on values is overwrought. Today's Roll Call reports {subscription only} that the Senate Democrats are developing a media strategy that focuses on Christian broadcasting. That is a serious waste of time and money.) Nevertheless, as the LA Times piece notes, Democrats made some inroads in the West in 2004 and so a bit more effort there couldn't hurt.

One footnote to this is that as Democrats place more emphasis on the West, the stock of politicans from that region will rise. When coupled with what is likely to be a desire to give the 2008 presidential nomination to a governor, I'd say keep an eye on Gov. Bill Richardson (NM).

Frontline on Rove

2005-04-12T14:32:00.000-04:00

Be sure to watch tonight's Frontline documentary on Karl Rove, "The Architect" (check local PBS listings here). Reviews haven't been good, but it's still probably worth seeing.

The problem with stories about Rove is that they're all circumstantial. On the one hand, you feel compelled to conclude that if there's no hard evidence for his role in any of the dirty tricks, maybe he's not guilty. On the other, it can't just be a coincidence that so many of the same kinds of things happen in campaigns he's involved in.

By the way, check out "Bush's Brain," a documentary based on the book by the same title. More tomorrow after I've watched the Frontline piece...

Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy to Meet

2005-04-12T10:36:00.000-04:00

ABC's The Note reports today that a group of liberal movers-and-shakers is meeting this weekend to mount a "vast left-wing conspiracy." (NB: The latter link is to the National Review website; lefties beware!) According to the Note,

For years now, wealthy liberal activists have formally strategized about the creation of a center-left message machine, similar to the pyramid Bill Bradley described in the New York Times last week and equal in heft and influence to what conservatives built through the Scaife and Bradley funds and the Heritage Foundation. Rob Stein, formerly a top aide to the late Ron Brown, has been the project's intellectual and organizational whip.
Stein and dozens of top party fundraisers will meet this weekend in Scottsdale, Arizona to plan the future of his enterprise, called the Democracy Alliance. These are folks who have seen his fabled PowerPoint and who have agreed to help build a grassroots, communications and think-tank network for liberals and progressives.

From this preliminary meeting, according to several Democrats who planned to attend but who asked not to identified for fear of losing their invitation, will come more concrete proposals down the road for groups, political entities, think tanks, and coordinating bodies.

Some fundraisers have ties to top party officials, although very little time will be spent discussing electoral politics per se.

The Bradley piece mentioned above is must-read (it can be found, via Common Dreams, here). In it, he argues for a stable base of big donors, a second level of think tanks, a third level of political candidates and operatives, topped off with an ideological media effort. (Right now, according to Bradley, the Democrats operate under an inverted pyramid.) Most importantly, this structure would produce new ideas.

Everyone on the left can agree that new ideas are important and should be cultivated in a manner similar to conservative efforts. But what I'll be interested to see is whether this new liberal effort - the Democracy Alliance - buys into the George Lakoff model of "reframing" the left's positions. If so, it will be a waste of time. (I hope to explain my dissatisfaction with Lakoff's approach in the near future; in the meantime, take a look at this piece by Marc Cooper in last month's Atlantic.)

Et tu, Santorum?

2005-04-11T10:25:00.000-04:00

Arianna Huffington suggested on Real Time with Bill Maher this weekend that unless there's a celebrity death every three days for the foreseeable future, Tom DeLay will soon be out of power. You can't predict when the bottom will fall out of this thing - or even if it will - but it's not looking good for Mr. Delay. First, DeLay's supporters have been forced, according to the Washington Post, "to form what is essentially a campaign organization aimed at minimizing damage to DeLay and building support despite what they believe will be a continuing torrent of news stories about his travel, fundraising and dealings with lobbyists."

Now, some prominent Republicans are distancing themselves from him. This includes not only the RINO (Republican in Name Only) Rep. Chris Shays (CT), who called DeLay "an absolute embarrassment to me and to the Republican Party," but also PA Senator Rick Santorum. Whether Santorum would be calling on DeLay to come clean in the absence of his own reelection bid next year is irrelevant. Santorum's comments are a sign that the pressure is mounting. It will be hard to keep the troops in line if they start hearing from the voters back home (as is apparently beginning to be the case).

Who are the Deaniacs?

2005-04-07T15:12:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, the Pew Research Center released the results of an absolutely fascinating survey of Dean activists. I haven't read the entire report yet, but the executive summary includes a few interesting tidbits. For example, Dean activists aren't as young as many assumed. While 18% are under 30 and another 26% are 30-44, 42% are 45-64. As expected, however, they are "far wealthier, better educated, more secular and much less ethnically diverse than other Democrats," according to the report. They are also far more liberal.

And, yet, there is less support for bringing the troops home from Iraq among Dean activists than among Democrats generally (52% to 64%, respectively); this, despite the fact that 99% (yes 99%!) of Deaniacs believe that invading Iraq was the wrong decision, compared to 68% of all Democrats who believe the war was wrong. (I think explanation for this is that Dean activists are better informed than Democrats generally and, thus, are more likely to recognize the consequences of such a move.)

This does not, however, mean that the Dean wing of the Democratic Party is pacifist. Only 21% of Dean activists think preemptive force is never justified; similarly, 20% of all Democrats agree. Nevertheless, 60% of Dean activists believe such force is rarely justified (compared to 32% of all Dems); just 19% of the former think it is often or sometimes justified, while 44% of all Democrats think that.

One last nugget - when Dean activists' foreign policy views are broken down by age group, it's the youngest Deaniacs who favor keeping troops in Iraq; 61% of those under 30 take that position, while only 34% of those over 50 agree. Why? As the Pew report reminds us, the latter group is comprised of 1960s activists.

I'm off to read the report in detail - this faction may dominate the party for years to come and it's worth understanding where they're coming from.

The Permanent Campaign

2005-04-06T16:35:00.000-04:00

I've been falling down on blogging duties for the past few days because I've had some writing deadlines. I did, however, want to make mention of Mark Barabak's LA Times article from Monday on the "permanent campaign." Here's the nut graph(s):

The permanent campaign a never-ending cycle of fundraising, polling and candidate positioning has been a growing part of American politics for a generation, even before the term was popularized in a 1980 book of that title by journalist Sidney Blumenthal.

But those immersed in the election system candidates, fundraisers, campaign consultants, issue advocates say that in just the past few years the pace has grown even more relentless, to a point where the notion of a political "off-season" seems every bit as quaint as straw boaters and torchlight parades.

The article focuses primarily on the most obvious sense of the term 'permanent campaign' - that elected officials are constantly looking ahead to the next election (as are potential challengers). There's another sense of the term that the article mentions but doesn't spend a lot of time on; namely, that the line between campaigning for office and campaigning to govern has been erased. That is, in order to govern successfully, one has to employ the tactics of an election campaign (e.g., polling, messaging, etc.). This phenomenon has many causes and a number of consequences (none of which are good). If you want to understand it, Barabak's article is a good place to start.

Baseball 2005

2005-04-03T20:10:00.000-04:00

Opening Night, Red Sox vs. Yankees. The first pitch of the season is a... strike from Randy Johnson.

Here's hoping for a Red Sox - Pirates World Series.

Illiberal Culture and Democracy

2005-04-03T16:10:00.000-04:00

The New York Times Magazine this week has a truly fascinating article on Dutch member of parliament Ayaan Hirsi Ali. She's a former Muslim feminist from Somalia who is highly critical of Muslim culture and it's potential impact on Dutch democracy. Hirsi Ali herself is interesting given the fact that she doesn't fit the conventional left-right spectrum in the Netherlands and given her bravery in the face of numerous threats to her life. (She was a friend of, and collaborator with, Dutch film maker Theo van Gogh, who was murdered by an Islamist last November.)

But the article raises even more interesting questions about how a liberal democratic society accommodates an illiberal culture that is growing within its boarders and that threatens the foundations of democracy. I don't study comparative politics, so I can't say anything insightful about this. However, it seems to me that we all ought to consider the paradox of a multicultural society, whose very principles embrace diversity, being forced to consider intolerant measures to preserve tolerance.

Fake Town Hall Meetings

2005-04-03T11:01:00.000-04:00

I'm WAY behind the curve on this, but I've been thinking about the scripted "town hall meetings" that the president is holding to promote his efforts to change Social Security. Last week, the Washington Post ran a story on the lengths the president's handlers will go to ensure there's no dissent in the audience. Three nicely dressed individuals were escorted out of the hall because some Republican operative noticed a "No Blood For Oil" bumper sticker on their car in the parking lot. (The Post doesn't say how, exactly, the individuals were linked to the car.) Mind you, they had no signs, no buttons and hadn't done anything to suggest they were going to disrupt the event (and they certainly hadn't actually done anything of that sort). This is an administration that really is committed to preemptive strikes!

On Friday, E.J. Dionne wrote about the incident and Bush's "Stepford Town Meetings." As usual, Dionne has a great take on the matter. Here are a few tidbits:

Lately the president has been chastising Democrats for not sitting down with him to fashion a solution. "I think there is a political price for not getting involved in the process," Bush said in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Wednesday. "I think there is a political price for saying, 'It's not a problem, I'm going to stay away from the table.' " But when Bush's critics show up at the president's taxpayer-financed events, they are often told there is no place at the table for dissenters.

[snip]

Do we live in a country where the president's representatives are authorized to read citizens' minds to determine who is suitable to hear his speeches?

[snip]

And so you wonder why a president who sells himself as a tough, confident bring-'em-on type of guy seems so anxious about facing average citizens who disagree with him. Why does he insist on being surrounded, always, by people who tell him that he's right and great and wonderful?

What interests me most about these events is that they're having no impact (and maybe even a negative effect) on public support for his plan. Why? There are two possibilities. The first is that these sham town hall meetings are seen for what they are - campaign-style events where the president preaches to the choir. As a result, many citizens may wonder, if the President's plan is so good, why can't he answer his critics? One possible answer is that the President's plan isn't any good.

The second explanation is based on what political scientists call "issue ownership." This is one of the most important concepts in American politics, though it isn't often invoked in popular analysis. The concept explains what's happening as follows: The two parties "own" different sets of issues. The Republicans are thought (by a majority of voters) to be better at handling taxes, crime, national security, foreign policy, and "values." Democrats are more trusted to handle education, the environment, health care and jobs. Importantly, they are also more trusted to protect Social Security. Thus, the more President Bush talks about Social Security - particularly in hermetically sealed situations - the more people are primed to apply their preconceived attitudes about which party they trust on the issue.

To be sure, a politician who devotes considerable time and effort to "leasing" an issue that the other party owns, can do it (particularly if something in his/her political history makes him/her uniquely credible on an issue). But leasing an issue is difficult and even when successful is only temporary (e.g., Clinton gained an advantage on the issue of crime during his time in office, but Republicans own the issue again). So it's unlikely that Bush is going to win on this issue; but if he wants a chance, he ought to open up the discussion.

Hitchens on the Pope

2005-04-02T16:19:00.000-05:00

Hitchens, as usual, has the guts to say what needs to be said, when it needs to be said.

Credit is certainly due the Pope for his efforts to defeat communism. But let's not go overboard praising him as a "champion of human freedom," as President Bush referred to him today. There's this, for example, (from a NY Times article this week on unprecedented religious unity in Jerusalem against a gay pride event planned for that city)...

When the first WorldPride festival was held five years ago in Rome, religious opposition came from the Vatican, while secular opposition came from a neo-Fascist group that vowed to hold a counterdemonstration. But the neo-Fascists canceled their demonstration, the march came off peacefully, and even a few center-right politicians joined many thousands of marchers.

One day later, however, Pope John Paul II appeared on a balcony over St. Peter's Square and delivered a message expressing his "bitterness" that the gay festival had gone forward, calling it an "offense to the Christian values of a city that is so dear to the hearts of Catholics across the world."

Judicial Tyranny?

2005-03-31T17:56:00.000-05:00

Dana Milbank has an interesting piece in the Washington Post today pointing out that the feud over Terry Schiavo is but a precursor to the upcoming battles that will take place over judicial confirmations. In fact, I think the most significant consequence of this case is going to be a conservative campaign against "judicial tyranny." Here's Tom Delay from his press conference today - "We will look at an arrogant, out of control, unaccountable judiciary that thumbed their nose at Congress and the President." Who's "we" and what will it mean to "look at" the judiciary? Which judges were arrogant, out of control and unaccountable? Since there was virtual consensus among judges - whether liberal or conservative, state or federal - it's hard to believe they are out of control (arrogant maybe, but coming from Delay that's a bit like the pot calling the kettle...). Are judges unaccountable? This is a serious charge and it raises some complicated issues.

The judge who has taken the brunt of the conservatives' ire in this case is Florida Circuit Judge George Greer. He's the judge that has been most involved in the Schiavo case and also the one who ordered the feeding tube removed and ignored Congress's subpoena for Terry Schiavo. But in what way did Judge Greer act tyrannically? It can't be because he doesn't have to answer to the voters - judges in Florida (with the exception of the Florida Supreme Court), including Judge Greer, are elected! Besides, if that's the only reason, then the unelected judiciary - including all federal judges - act tyrannically every day.

It must, then, be that he override an elected branch of government. If so, the Supreme Court acted tyrannically in Brown v. Board of Education(and, in fact, many conservatives at the time argued that they had) and in hundreds of other cases where they ruled legislative actions unconstitutional. Overruling the other branches is the judiciary's prerogative under our constitutional system of checks and balances. Furthermore, the principle of separation of powers requires an independent judiciary and gives the courts the responsibility for interpreting the law.

But that's apparently not what Pennsylvania's own Sen. Rick Santorum thinks. When U.S. District Court James Whittemore refused to hear the Schiavo case de novo following the passage of the Schiavo bill in Congress, Santorum argued,

"You have judicial tyranny here... Congress passed a law that said that you had to look at this case. He simply thumbed his nose at Congress."
"What the statute that [Whittemore] was dealing with said was that he shall hold a trial de novo," the Pennsylvania Republican explained. "That means he has to hold a new trial. That's what the statute said."
"What he's saying is, 'I don't have to hold a new trial because I've already determined that her rights have been protected,'" Santorum said.
"That's nice for him to say that. But that's not what Congress told him to do," he added. "Judges should obey the law. And this judge - in my mind - simply ignored the law."

But if judges are simply supposed to "obey the law" as written by Congress, what is their purpose? What is their role in a system of separated powers? In fact, it is Congress that overstepped its bounds, as Judge Birch argued in his concurring opinion in the 11th Circuit Court's decision yesterday not to take the case.

Section 1 of Pub. L. 109-3 [the Schiavo law]which states that the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida shall have jurisdiction to hear a suit regarding alleged violations of rights held by Mrs. Schiavo under the Constitution or laws of the United Statesis not facially unconstitutional. If the Act only provided for jurisdiction consistent with Article III and 28 U.S.C. § 1331, the Act would not be in violation of the principles of separation of powers. The Act, however, goes further. Section 2 of the Act provides that the district court: (1) shall engage in de novo review of Mrs. Schiavos constitutional and federal claims; (2) shall not consider whether these claims were previously raised, considered, or decided in State court proceedings; (3) shall not engage in abstention in favor of State court proceedings; and (4) shall not decide the case on the basis of whether remedies available in the State courts have been exhausted. Pub. L. 109-3, § 2. Because these provisions constitute legislative dictation of how a federal court should exercise its judicial functions (known as a rule of decision), the Act invades the province of the judiciary and violates the separation of powers principle.

It IS offensive to democratic sensibilities to allow unelected judges to strike down acts of the elected branch(es) of government. But making them more accountable to "the people" (read: the majority) is problematic too. Ultimately, conservatives aren't really upset with tyranny - just with decisions they disagree with. The campaign against an independent judiciary seeks to do something radical to our constitutional system. We'd better think long and hard before letting it happen.

New Report Shows Effects of Redistricting

2005-03-29T10:01:00.000-05:00

A new report by POLIDATA on the presidential election results by congressional district shows how rapidly the nation is becoming polarized. The number of districts in which voters split between the presidential candidate of one party and the congressional candidate of the other went from 103 in 1992 to 59 last year. The reason for this increasing polarization is redistricting. The process is now so precise (due, largely, to the use of computers), that the resulting districts are far more homogeneous in partisan terms.

This report is yet more evidence that something drastic has to be done about redistricting in the United States.

New Election Commission Formed

2005-03-25T09:54:00.000-05:00

American University's Center for Democracy and Election Management has announced the creation of a bipartisan Commission on Federal Election Reform to, in the words of commission co-chair Jimmy Carter, "define an electoral system for the 21st century that will make Americans proud again."

During hearings of the National Commission on Federal Election Reform (chaired by Carter and Gerald Ford) after the 2000 election, Carter maintained, "I think it is a waste of time to talk about changing the Electoral College. I would predict that 200 years from now, we will still have the Electoral College." It certainly will be around in 200 years if high-profile commissions headed by former presidents don't address the grossly undemocratic nature of that institution. Let's hope they address it this time.

Public hearings are set for April 18 at American University in Washington and one in June at Houston's Rice University. A final report will be delivered to Congress in September.

Rep. Shays on the Republican Party

2005-03-23T07:18:00.000-05:00

From an article in today's New York Times - "This Republican Party of Lincoln has become a party of theocracy," Mr. Shays [R-CT] said.

Note that Shays is saying that it "has become" a theocratic party, not that it is in the process of becoming one. To the extent that he's right, this is a serious - and dangerous - development.

New Keystone Poll Results - Santorum in Trouble

2005-03-22T11:15:00.000-05:00

The results of a new Keystone Poll (conducted at my institution, Franklin & Marshall College) have just been released and they suggest that Sen. Rick Santorum is vulnerable. He's in a dead-heat with State Treasurer Robert Casey Jr. (D) - Casey 44%, Santorum 43%. Santorum's favorable rating is 39% (26% not favorable) and Casey's is 33% (10% not favorable).

If Casey is well-funded, as I suspect he will be, this might end up the most closely watched Senate race in 2006.

For PA readers - Gov. Rendell leads the three potential Republican nominees by fairly significant margins - St. Sen. Piccola (53-23), former Lt. Gov. Scranton (47-37) and former Steeler wide receiver Lynn Swann (59-29). None of these GOP candidates have much name recognition yet (including Swann, who, despite being a Hall of Famer, is unknown by 63% of respondents). Plus, Rendell's job approval isn't great (39%), though his favorables are okay (48%). This one could get tight too, but as my colleagues at the Center for Opinion Research point out in the poll summary, "No sitting Pennsylvania governor has lost a re-election campaign since the states constitution was amended to allow for successive gubernatorial terms."

Saletan on the "Culture of Life"

2005-03-22T09:27:00.000-05:00

In Slate today, William Saletan's column on the "culture of life" is an absolute MUST-READ. Here are a few choice paragraphs...

If Congress makes such decisions, here's the kind of judgment you'll get. At a press conference Saturday, one Republican congressman said his colleagues were intervening in the case "so that this young woman can continue to make her parents as happy as she has"—as though that were the purpose of her existence. DeLay accused Democrats of starving Schiavo to death. He called it "medical terrorism." One day DeLay said she'd die slowly of starvation; the next, he said Congress had to move fast because she'd die quickly of dehydration. Frist, who has asserted special credibility "as a physician," claimed that "neurologists who have examined her insist today that she is not in a persistent vegetative state"—neglecting to mention that neurologists who testified in court concluded the opposite. On the Senate floor, Frist claimed to have "been in a situation such as this many, many times," when in fact he had never made such an evaluation. On the basis of the family videos, he challenged the assessment made by doctors who had examined Schiavo in person.
... [snip]...

And here's the culture you'll get. Schiavo's parents have filed a motion to divorce her from her husband. Protesters at the hospice have suggested that the husband should be starved and the judge should be beaten. On the Senate floor, Frist has challenged the husband's right to make the decision because he has "a girlfriend." What about the judge's confidence in the husband's account of Schiavo's stated wishes? Unless Schiavo "had specifically written instructions in her hand and with her signature," scoffs DeLay, "I don't care what her husband says." This from an out-of-state congressman who got his legal training in campaign-finance creativity and his medical training in pest control.

If I were Terri Schiavo and saw what was being done to my body, my honor, and my country in my name, I'd sooner die.

The Politics of the Schiavo Case

2005-03-21T12:55:00.000-05:00

If you have a blog on American politics, I suppose you have something of an obligation to address a story as extraordinary as the Schiavo case. It's tempting to point out the apparent hypocrisies in the Republican position - that a states' rights, sanctity of marriage party is willing to use the federal government to interfere with a decision by a husband about his wife.

To be fair, conservatives would say that the right to life is a principle that overrides their dedication to other values. But that simply highlights the inconsistencies in their supposed commitment to a "culture of life." It is unimaginable, for example, that a Republican-lead Congress would intervene on behalf of a death row inmate who is likely to be innocent. And the defense of life, of course, is not the same as a commitment to quality of life. If life is so important, why not provide health care coverage to all?

There are plenty of other questions to be raised about Republican behavior in this case. Does it violate the separation of powers? Isn't this contrary to a view of limited government that Republicans supposedly embrace; where is this particular congressional power enumerated in the Constitution? Is the precedent this creates - the federal government stepping into specific, unique cases - an acceptable one?

Of more relevance to this blog, though, are the politics of the case. Clearly, Republicans see a benefit in placating the most important part of their base, namely, conservative evangelicals. As the Washington Post reported Saturday, a GOP memo circulated among Senate Republicans in which "the Schiavo case was characterized as 'a great political issue' that could pay dividends with Christian conservatives, whose support is essential in midterm elections such as those coming up in 2006." It also

singled out Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), who is up for reelection next year and is potentially vulnerable in a state President Bush won last year.
"This is an important moral issue and the pro-life base will be excited that the Senate is debating this important issue," said the memo, which was reported by ABC News and later given to The Washington Post. "This is a great political issue, because Senator Nelson of Florida has already refused to become a cosponsor and this is a tough issue for Democrats."

As The Note points out today, Christian conservatives have been lobbying Congress for a while to do something in the Schiavo case. The truth is, congressional Republicans probably HAD to act.

But there's a significant risk as well. The libertarian streak within the American public may very well be activated by this heavy-handed move. In fact, public opinion is clearly opposed to the Republican position. Gary Langer's analysis of an ABC News poll today finds that

Americans broadly and strongly disapprove of federal intervention in the Terri Schiavo case, with sizable majorities saying Congress is overstepping its bounds for political gain.
The public, by 63 percent-28 percent, supports the removal of Schiavo's feeding tube, and by a 25-point margin opposes a law mandating federal review of her case. Congress passed such legislation and President Bush signed it early today.

That legislative action is distinctly unpopular: Not only do 60 percent oppose it, more — 70 percent — call it inappropriate for Congress to get involved in this way. And by a lopsided 67 percent-19 percent, most think the elected officials trying to keep Schiavo alive are doing so more for political advantage than out of concern for her or for the principles involved.

The poll shows that even conservatives and evangelicals oppose congressional action (57% and 50% respectively) and both groups support removal of the feeding tube (though evangelicals are split on the subject, 46% for removal, 44% opposed to it).

The political consequences of this may be similar to the Clinton impeachment. Republicans moved forward with that despite opposition from the public at large because in the conservative districts of their leadership, that position was popular. Here, the leadership is being encouraged by the socially conservative interest groups it communicates with, but they're missing the bigger picture.

Many Democrats are likely feeling pressure to appear morally sensitive to this situation. But the American people value living a dignified life that requires more than being technically 'alive.' They want a quality life for themselves and their loved ones. (That's why roughly 80% would prefer to have the feeding tube removed were they in Ms. Schiavo's condition.) Furthermore, in cases like this, the people prefer to let a private matter remain private (only to be adjudicated in courts, if it comes to that). As a result, the Democrats shouldn't exploit the issue; the Republicans' misstep speaks for itself.

More on the Senate and Democracy

2005-03-18T14:12:00.000-05:00

A few people have taken exception to my previous post on the Senate (see, for instance, the comment by my good friend Stephen Caliendo), so I thought I'd say just a bit more.

Part of the disagreement over the Senate is based on terminology. 'Democracy' is simply too vague a term to use in referring to specific aspects of a political system. Arguments over whether or not an institutional arrangement is 'democratic' are based on particular conceptions of 'democracy.' Thus, when supporters of the Senate insist that 'democracy' and 'majority rule' aren't synonymous, there's validity to the claim but only to a point. Of course they aren't perfectly synonymous, but under majoritarian conceptions of democracy, they're closely linked. Under pluralist conceptions, the two are less clearly related.

But even pluralist models, some allowance for majority rule is necessary. As a result, something can't be called democratic if it didn't allow for majority rule at some point in the process. Hertzberg's column, I thought, showed how the Senate might very well be operating under minority rule (and not simply because of the filibuster, though that too makes minority rule highly likely).

If majority rule is a necessary condition of democracy, then we have to acknowledge that the protection of minority rights is a check AGAINST democracy (as the Framers knew and repeatedly asserted). Don't get me wrong, protection of minority rights is a good thing, especially when the minority is relatively powerless in society. It's good because democracy can (at least theoretically) bring about bad results. But, just as democratic results aren't always good, not all good things deserve the label "democratic."

The Supreme Court - as Caliendo well knows - isn't democratic either. Sometimes they advance good causes nonetheless (e.g., Brown v. Board). More often in our history, however, they've hindered progress. Today, they may be imbued with pluralistic spirit enough to not trample on minority rights. But, we're only one more Scalia away from being on thin ice in that regard.

The minority in "minority rights" is another issue to address. When we use that term, we normally mean groups of people who are in danger of being oppressed. But all the Senate does is protect small states. As Robert Dahl points out in How Democratic is the American Constitution?, why should small states be protected? First, why do STATES, as opposed to PEOPLE, even deserve protection? Second, are small states so systematically oppressed that they need protection?

Anyway, the filibuster protects numerical minorities in the Senate, which may not be aligned with small states as Hertzberg's numbers for the current Senate indicate. Again, that might be a nice check against numerical majorities, but it's not democratic. And it might contribute to minority tyranny, as it did for years in stopping civil rights.

We'll never strike the perfect balance between majority rule and minority rights. But what arrangement gets us closest? I doubt it's the Senate, though I'm fully prepared to be proven wrong. In the meantime, I'd rather cast my lot with a parliamentary system under proportional representation (but that's a discussion for another time).

Another Theocracy Sighting

2005-03-16T22:17:00.000-05:00

Lest anyone think I was exaggerating the attempt to establish a theocracy in the United States, the Christian Science Monitor reported today on a national conference of evangelicals devoted to "reclaiming America for Christ." (The host church, Coral Ridge Presbyterian, supports the Center for Reclaiming America and the Center for Christian Statesmanship.) As one of the conference speakers told the attendees, "We have God-sized problems in our country, and only God can solve them." And part of the conference materials contains this statement - "As the vice-regents of God, we are to bring His truth and His will to bear on every sphere of our world and our society. We are to exercise godly dominion and influence over our neighborhoods, our schools, our government ... our entertainment media, our news media, our scientific endeavors - in short, over every aspect and institution of human society."

This may be a relatively small number of right-wing activists at the moment, but they are emboldened by the belief that they are responsible for the reelection of President Bush. (For his part, Bush believes he wasn't elected as much as chosen by God for the office.)

On the Road to Theocracy?

2005-03-16T10:47:00.000-05:00

Two recent articles on religion and politics caught my attention and highlight the kookiness and cunning of some fundamentalists. The first is Bill Moyers' piece in The New York Review of Books on fundamentalists and the environment. In a nutshell, he shows how belief in the Rapture leads to a disregard for the environment. As Moyers writes, "why care about the earth when the droughts, floods, famine, and pestilence brought by ecological collapse are signs of the apocalypse foretold in the Bible?" But more than the policy implications, it's the actual belief in the Rapture that stopped me short. Moyers notes that it's difficult to tell how many true believers there are, but he cites some recent poll numbers to give a sense of how many people out there hold similarly crazy beliefs: 36% believe the Book of Revelation to be "true prophesy" and 25% believe the Bible predicted the 9/11 attacks. Here's the basic "plot of the Rapture" according to Moyers...

Once Israel has occupied the rest of its 'biblical lands,' legions of the Antichrist will attack it, triggering a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon. As the Jews who have not been converted are burned the Messiah will return for the Rapture. True believers will be transported to heaven where, seated at the right hand of God, they will watch their political and religious opponents writhe in the misery of plagues - boils, sores, locusts, and frogs - during the several years of tribulation that follow.

What does this have to do with politics? "One is foolish to think that their bizarre ideas do not matter," writes Moyers. "I have no idea what President Bush thinks of the fundamentalists' fantastical theology, but he would not be president without them."

Then I read an article in the Washington Post on Monday about the new strategy of the so-called "intelligent design" movement. The idea is not to immediately push for the removal of evolution from the schools (and to replace it with creationism), but to simply "teach the controversy," the controversy being that evolution has its critics. My own Senator, Rick Santorum, for instance, is quoted as saying, "My reading of the science is there's a legitimate debate" about the validity of evolution. (With all due respect, Rick Santorum's reading of the science?!?!) And Cindy Duckett, a Wichita mother who sends her children to a private Christian school, believes that "the more options, the better" and that students should have to consider "any other belief that a kid in class has." Any other belief? So flat-earth, alien invasion - it's all on the table? I wonder if all beliefs - including Darwinism - are welcome at Ms. Duckett's Christian school.

Again, how is this political? It's nothing but political, given that the intelligent design movement has very little to do with science. Science, after all, is based on hypotheses that scientists do their best to reject; the scientific method is based on searching for counter-evidence. What evidence could possibly exist to "disprove" the notion that an "intelligent creator" formed the world and its inhabitants? No, this movement is about fighting progress and enlightenment. As one of the intelligent design advocates admitted in the Post piece, "If you can cause enough doubt on evolution, liberalism will die." But with it, so will advances in science and medicine.

Add to all this Justice Scalia's recent claim that "government derives its authority from God" (as opposed to the people?) and it doesn't seem unreasonable to worry that we're inching toward some form of theocracy in the United States. But every step toward theocracy is a step away from freedom and progress. If our pluralist democracy is to remain healthy, political movements based on religion really must be resisted.

Video News Releases, Propaganda and the Media

2005-03-14T10:12:00.000-05:00

Yesterday's New York Times had an absolute must-read article on the Bush "message machine" and its ability to get "video news releases" (VNRs) placed, in many cases unedited, on local news programs. In many ways, I don't blame the Bush administration for using this tactic - VNRs are just sophisticated examples of the kind of spin you see daily in the White House press briefings. No one expects political actors to offer criticisms of their own positions and programs. And few would argue that, in the age of 24/7 news cycles, political actors should not actively attempt to get their messages out.

But does this tactic amount to domestic "propaganda," which by law cannot be disseminated by the government? Determining what counts as "propaganda" is a tricky endeavor. What, for example, makes these VNRs different from run-of-the-mill press releases? One thing is that press releases are distributed on agency letterhead and, as a result, anyone reading them knows exactly who the source is. Because the distribution of VNRs is rather complex, the provenance of the piece may not be obvious. So local news stations may very well think that the piece was produced by their parent network.

Does this mean the government have an obligation to make it crystal clear that it is the source of a VNR? I think so, though failure to meet this obligation probably isn't a gross ethical violation. At any rate, most of the VNRs do contain some hint of the original source. For example, one piece for the Agriculture Department ends, "In Princess Anne, Maryland, I'm Pat O'Leary reporting for the U.S. Department of Agriculture." It may be brief - and may not be enough to tip the average viewer to what's going on - but I think it meets the government's obligation for sourcing. (Of course, some VNRs have been tailored for certain stations, as in the case of one Ag Department piece for an Illinois station that ended, "With the U.S.D.A., I'm Bob Ellison, reporting for 'The Morning Show'." That can sound as though Ellison is "on location with the U.S.D.A." This is more problematic.) Ultimately, the sourcing on these things is blurry, but as long as there's no disinformation in them, I think they're acceptable.

Far more troubling is the way local news stations use VNRs. The news directors the Times reporters talked to said they don't run them, but in fact they were shown to have done so. Local stations are under pressure to do more with fewer resources and this makes it hard to resist a pre-packaged news segment, even if it isn't really a news segment at all. Add to that the basic shoddiness of so many local television news divisions and this is fertile hunting ground for public relations specialists. Networks and local affiliates ought to simply prohibit the use of VNRs in any form. Until they do, the average viewer won't really know if they're watching neutral reporting or propaganda.

How Undemocratic is the Senate?

2005-03-11T07:26:00.000-05:00

Hendrik Hertzberg has, as usual, a terrific column in the latest New Yorker and it's a must read if you want to know just how undemocratic the Senate is. The numbers are devastating.

The filibuster allows a minority within a legislative body to thwart the will of a majority. But that is hardly the worst of the Senates democratic imperfections, most of which spring from the arithmetical disparity among state populations. Fifty-one senatorsa majoritycan represent states with as little as seventeen per cent of the American people. Sixty senatorsenough to stop a filibustercan represent as little as twenty-four per cent. Thats theory. What about reality? Well, if each of every states two senators is taken to represent half that states population, then the Senates fifty-five Republicans represent 131 million people, while its forty-four Democrats represent 161 million. Looked at another way, the present Senate is the product of three elections, those of 2000, 2002, and 2004. In those elections, the total vote for Democratic senatorial candidates, winning and losing, was 99.7 million; for Republicans it was 97.3 million. The forty-four-person Senate Democratic minority, therefore, represents a two-million-plus popular majoritya circumstance that, unless acres trump people, is at variance with common-sense notions of democracy. So Democrats, as democrats, need not feel too terribly guilty about engaging in a spot of filibustering from time to time.

In an ideal system, there'd be no Senate. But I wouldn't be for eliminating it - as if that's even a possibility - given the undemocratic nature of how the House and the presidency are currently elected (i.e., first-past-the-post districts and the Electoral College, respectively).

The trickier question is the filibuster, since it could realistically be abolished. It, too, is undemocratic and, as Hertzberg points out, has been used for ill more than for good. But when a legislative minority actually represents a popular majority, it might be a good way to restore some balance. In the current circumstances, think of it as a device for protecting majority rights.

House New Dems Sell Out on Bankruptcy

2005-03-10T08:32:00.000-05:00

Apparently the House New Democrat Coalition supports passage of the extraordinarily bad bankruptcy bill. Leaving aside any policy evaluation, however, the politics of this escapes me (as it does Noam Scheiber). What Democratic constituency - or group of swing voters, for that matter, would find this bill attractive? Furthermore, what Democratic principle does this bill possibly embrace? If Democrats don't defend working and middle class people, particularly those who are facing bankruptcy as a result of medical expenses (which account for half of personal bankruptcies according to a recent study by Harvard researchers), who do they stand for? This certainly doesn't seem like the way to convey the "values" that New Democrats are always accusing the rest of the party of ignoring.

Scheiber - a centrist himself - calls this a "colossal, inexcusable mistake" and says, "The political imagery here so obviously benefits anyone who'd oppose the bill you're left to conclude that the only way a congressman could possibly support it is through a craven and reflexive willingness to do the bidding of big business" [i.e., credit card companies].

If New Democrats want to prove their bona fides as moderates, why not split the difference and push for a provision exempting medical bankruptcies? No wonder liberals are fond of referring to the DLC (or Democratic Leadership Council, the New Dems' parent organization) as "Democrats for the Leisure Class."

Barone on Campaigns in the "Networking Era"

2005-03-08T09:49:00.000-05:00

I read Michael Barone's Feb. 25 National Journal cover story called "American Politics In The Networking Era" over the weekend and I've just finished thinking it through. The piece, which is an excerpt from the forthcoming Almanac of American Politics 2006, seems to have two purposes. First, it discusses campaigning in the "networking era," arguing that the Bush `04 campaign was tailor-made for the demands of this age. Second, he strongly suggests that 2004 is a "reshaping" (he never uses the more common term "realigning") election along the lines of 1896 and 1936.

Barone is a smart guy (he was editor of the Harvard Crimson and the Yale Law Journal) and a very good political analyst, but his assessment of the "networking era" and the Bush campaign's place in it is seriously flawed. He claims that the 2004 campaign "produced a different kind of politics, a politics that reflects the character of the post-industrial, networking age we live in." Rather than the old command-and-control structures appropriate for the Industrial Age, a networked campaign is decentralized and can draw upon thousands of contact points through which it communicates. In the Information Age, it's the networked campaign that will have an advantage.

Barone believes that the Bush campaign "created an organization unlike any seen before, a networking organization that far surpassed what the Democrats were doing." As evidence of this organization, Barone notes that the Bush campaign collected 6 million e-mail addresses and had 1.4 million active volunteers. More than the numbers, Barone argues it was how the Bush campaign used its volunteers that made it unique. As he says, the Bush organization

used connections - networks - to recruit volunteers and identify voters. The campaign built on existing connections - religious, occupational, voluntary - to establish contacts. If a Bush volunteer was a Hispanic accountant active in the Boy Scouts, the campaign would reach out through him to other Hispanics, accountants and their clients, and Boy Scout volunteers.

So, what were Democrats doing? According to Barone, they relied on unions and 527s, groups that, in turn, "relied on paid workers supervised by command-and-control organizations." That approach is "traditional, industrial-era politics."

To be blunt, I'm not sure what campaign Barone was watching. First of all, MoveOn has 2.9 million e-mail addresses of its own, while Kerry and the DNC maintain lists of almost 3 million and 4 million, respectively. And, with respect to volunteers, the Kerry campaign and the Democratic Party signed them up in unprecedented numbers. Furthermore, volunteers organized by progressive 527s numbered in the hundreds of thousands and America Coming Together created the largest get-out-the-vote effort in history. When unions are included, my bet is that the raw number of volunteers was roughly equal.

More puzzling is Barone's contention that 527s are "traditional, industrial-era" organizations. MoveOn.org might be a lot of things, but it isn't traditional. It began life in 1998 as an e-mail to 100 friends and rapidly became a grassroots (or "net-roots") movement. Since then, it has used the Internet in innovative ways to organize and mobilize. (A few weeks after the election, MoveOn "hosted" 1,500 parties around the country to encourage 18,000 attendees to help set the future direction of the organization.) And, as a Wired News story explained last summer, it has "no office and no formal organization other than a website and a handful of staff members spread around the country." You can't get much more decentralized than that.

In fact, it's the Democratic effort that fits Barone's networking model far better than the Republican model. In fact, the approach Barone describes - voters being contacted by someone like them in some important way - was essentially invented by the unions. Labor may be old school, but their tactics helped Democrats beat the Republicans at the turnout game for decades before Republicans mimicked them with their "72 Hour Task Force" in 2002.

Furthermore, progressive outfits coordinated their efforts under the umbrella group America Votes, which consisted of over 30 liberal organizations. But coordination is not command-and-control. Groups still had the flexibility to create their own efforts. For example, when Emily's List needed people in Florida, they e-mailed members from around the nation asking for volunteers. According to a staffer at the group, "Within 36 hours, we had filled four planes with 650 people, and we had such a large waiting list we had to shut it down" (as quoted in a Washington Post story on October 24, 2004). Admittedly, Emily's List paid for the plane tickets, but this was one group contacting its own members. Sounds like networking to me.

The Republican effort, on the other hand, was completely controlled by the Bush campaign and the party. As Barone says in his essay, Bush campaign manager Ken Mehlman established goals for voter contact and, "Every week, the leaders of the local, state, and national organizations got reports on whether those metrics had been achieved." In addition, "Unproductive volunteers were replaced or persuaded to do more." Leaving aside the question of whether these reports might have violated the prohibition against campaigns coordinating efforts with outside groups, this reads like a classic command-and-control operation. And reporters covering the campaigns' get-out-the-vote shops refer to the Republicans over and over again as "centralized."

In fact, there was no command-and-control structure in the Democratic operation. This, as it turns out, may have been its problem. Remember that perhaps the most decentralized campaign in history was Howard Dean's - which campaign manager Joe Trippi has referred to as an "open source campaign" to signify its emphasis on empowering the grassroots. But Dean's campaign crumbled, at least in part, because there was a lack of logistical direction at the top.

Barone's basic conclusion - that decentralized campaigns are more effective than centralized ones - is simply incorrect, regardless of the era. If you need evidence, you need look no further than the Bush campaign of 2004.

Ironically, Barone's second point - that Republicans might be on the verge of partisan domination for years to come - may very well be right because his first point is wrong. In other words, the Republican organization in 2004 may have "reshaped" the electorate to the GOP's advantage. But that's only possible because the Bush campaign (and, by extension, the Republican Party) ran a tight ship, not a decentralized one. For instance, the GOP's e-mail list is basically the Bush-Cheney `04 list, because the campaign built the list with a post-election hand-over to the RNC in mind. The Kerry campaign, however, promised list members that the e-mails wouldn't be shared with anyone. Thus, the Kerry list and the DNC list remain separate. And all the decentralized efforts of more than 30 527s exacerbate the problem.

House Dems Shouldn't Follow GOP Lead on Redistricting

2005-03-04T10:01:00.000-05:00

The Hill is reporting a split in the House Democratic leadership on whether or not to follow the lead of Republicans and redraw district lines before the 2010 reapportionment in states favorable to Democrats. Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (CA) is against doing so, as is Rep. John Larson (CT) who is running for vice chair of the Democratic caucus. On the other side are House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (MD) and two other candidates for caucus vice chair (especially Rep. Joe Crowley [NY]). According to The Hill, Hoyer's position "appears to be gaining momentum in the caucus."

Pelosi and Larson are right. The short term gain to the Democrats of picking up a few (no more than about 5) seats is far outweighed by the long-term damage this sort of tit-for-tat battle would do to the system and by the lost opportunity for Democrats to capture the reform mantel.

Republican mid-decade redistricting efforts in Texas and Georgia were premised on change in legislative control since the 2001 redistricting round. They claimed that since the voters gave them control over the legislatures in those states, redrawing the district maps was necessary to reflect the new reality. It's a bogus claim, but one that would constrain Democratic efforts to do the same. In other words, Democrats could only "legitimately" try to redraw lines in states where they have taken legislative control since 2001. Those states are CO, NC, VT, WA, IL, LA, and NM. CO and VT are out because there's a Republican governor in CO (and because the state Supreme Court has already said it can't be done - Republicans tried in 2003) and VT only has one congressional district. That leaves NC, WA, IL, LA, and NM. An article from Roll Call a few days ago said Democrats are considering this move in IL, NM and LA. In the first two states, they think they can pick up a combined 3 seats. If - and this is a BIG if - they can gain one more in each of the other three states, that's a total of 6 seats. Is it really worth making a bad system worse to gain 6 seats? And Republicans would certainly move to redraw lines in other GOP controlled states, thus mitigating Democratic gains.

Perhaps the more important reason for not engaging in this petty retribution is that the Democrats have a golden opportunity to cement their image as the party of reform. The American public believes that parties and politicians look out for themselves first and only then think about the common good. By embracing redistricting reform, like that proposed by Gov. Schwarzenegger in California, Democrats would be sending a signal to the voters that they put American democracy above short-term partisan gain. If they miss this opportunity, they'll lose any credibility they might now have in advocating other election reforms.

Times Poll: Bush Isn't Moving the Public

2005-03-03T11:49:00.000-05:00

The latest poll from the New York Times indicates that President Bush is having difficulty convincing the public to accept his plans for Social Security. Fifty-one (51) percent oppose private accounts, which climbs to 69 percent on the assumption that private accounts will lead to a decrease in guaranteed benefits. This after weeks of traveling around the country to rally support for his scheme.

The problem for Bush is that, for a "going public" strategy to be successful, the public has to approve of the job the president's doing in the first place. In the Times poll, Bush's approval rating is 49 percent.

In fact, Bush is wildly popular among Republicans but equally unpopular among Democrats. In such a polarized setting, there is a natural ceiling to Bush's popularity and it probably isn't high enough to enable him to enact a major policy revision.

On a related note, a National Journal article from a few weeks ago (January 22 to be exact), noted the "declining currency" of winning reelection to a second presidential term. There are too few cases (only six since 1950) to be certain of such a decline, but one trend does look ominous - the approval rating of presidents by members of the opposition party has dropped dramatically. [From the National Journal article...]


The Satisfaction Gap
Newly re-elected presidents always have strong support from

their own partisans, but over the years the approval such

leaders receive from the out-of-power party has declined

steadily. The chart below shows each president's approval rating

in the first Gallup Poll conducted in the year after his

re-election.
Col. 1: Approval rating from members of the president's

party

Col. 2: Overall approval rating

Col. 3: Approval rating from opposition party members



                    Col. 1      Col. 2      Col. 3

1957 (Eisenhower)       91          73          57

1965 (Johnson)          85          71          51

1973 (Nixon)            81          51          36

1985 (Reagan)           88          62          39

1997 (Clinton)          85          58          32

2005 (Bush)             91          52          19



SOURCE: Gallup Poll

Because the number of independents has increased, the drop in overall approval ratings hasn't been as precipitous. But these numbers suggest a deep polarization that, if continued, will make it difficult for any president to govern effectively (in the absence of majority control of both chambers in Congress, of course, though even that won't help Bush with Social Security privatization).

Is Scalia a Hypocrite?

2005-03-02T14:46:00.000-05:00

Justice Scalia is, by all accounts, a brilliant person and he certainly has a well-developed ideology and judicial philosophy. So when someone accuses him of contradicting himself, it's worth listening to. In his Slate column yesterday, William Saletan claims that Scalia has flip-flopped on whether or not minors should be held responsible for their actions.

In his dissent from the majority in Roper v. Simmons (announced yesterday), Scalia himself accuses some of his colleagues of reversing course on this matter. He points out that in the abortion case Hodgson v. Minnesota, they argued that minors are often mature and rational enough to make their own decisions and, therefore, insisted that parental consent laws provide for judicial by-pass. Now, in the juvenile death penalty case, Scalia argues that some of these same justices hold minors to be too immature to fully comprehend their actions, which is the basis for the majority's ruling that a person can't be put to death for acts committed as minors.

Saletan, however, says it's Scalia who has changed his position. Scalia opposed the judicial by-pass requirement - thus, according to Saletan, treating minors as incapable of making grown-up decisions - but now believes that minors are quite aware of what they're doing in committing murder and, as a result, can be held accountable for their actions.

The problem with Saletan's argument is that he never provides evidence that Scalia argued against judicial by-pass on the grounds that minors aren't mature enough to make decisions about pregnancy. He dissented from that part of Hodgson because he opposes abortion, regardless of how old someone is and no matter how mature or rational she is. His technical reason for opposing judicial by-pass is simply that he finds no basis for such an exemption in the Constitution. As he wrote at the time, "I continue to dissent from this enterprise of devising an Abortion Code, and from the illusion that we have authority to do so."

Saletan should have known that Scalia won't be caught in a contradiction that easily.

When Consultants use MRIs

2005-03-01T09:28:00.000-05:00

Apparently, neuroscience has found a biological link to religious belief, has vindicated utilitarianism, and might be able to perfect political (and other marketing) appeals. The Los Angeles Times is the latest to report on studies of brain activity in response to political advertising [see also here and here]. Preliminary results suggest that there are differences between the ways Democrats and Republicans react to images in campaign spots. This scientific endeavor may be very fruitful in extending our understanding of voting behavior. The downside is that political consultants will someday be able to use the same techniques to manipulate the electorate.

At first blush, the thought of MRIs replacing focus groups seems ominous indeed. But how troubled should we be by this prospect? Is a map of brain activity significantly different than responses on a survey or in a focus group? I'm not sure. My gut reaction is that, yes, there is a difference. But the only argument I can come up with is that appeals based on neuroresponses enable consultants to influence people at an almost pre-rational level. When ads are created based on focus group discussions, there will be slippage between the appeal and the response. That's because there's a real possibility that people aren't explaining their reactions completely, as even they don't fully understand them. But if, in using MRIs, consultants were to know more about voters' responses than the voters do, there seems to be an advantage for the consultant that borders on manipulation.

The assumption here is that the brain activity being monitored in this process is based more in emotion than in reason. But that may not be the case at all. As an earlier article by John Tierney in the New York Times described the studies...

One of the most striking results so far is the way that subjects react to candidates after seeing a campaign commercial. At the start of the session, when they look at photographs of Bush, Kerry and Ralph Nader, subjects from both parties tend to show emotional reactions to all the candidates, indicated in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain above the nose associated with reflexive reactions.
But then, after the Bush campaign commercial is shown, the subjects respond in a partisan fashion when the photographs are shown again. They still respond emotionally to the candidate of their party, but when they see the other party's candidate, there is more activity in the rational part of the brain, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.

There's still a lot to be learned here. But I don't think it's at all clear that a future of MRI-tested ads would be one of mind control.

Hitchens on Ohio

2005-02-28T22:00:00.000-05:00

I haven't agreed with much of what Christopher Hitchens has had to say about the war in Iraq, but I still respect him as much as any writer (for his writing and rhetorical skills, if nothing else). So I was happy to see that he's taken on "Ohio's Odd Numbers" for Vanity Fair.

There's a lot that smells in the Ohio results and Hitchens covers most of it. I don't believe whatever funny business went on there had any impact on the ultimate outcome (and I'm not even sure there was funny business, though Hitchens builds a pretty good circumstantial case). But people standing in line for 11 hours, wildly high numbers of undervotes in certain (Democratic) precincts, and more votes for one candidate (Bush) than there were voters in a particular precinct is an absolute embarrassment.

I don't want to wax indignant here, but we ought to be able to perfect the process of election administration in this country. Unfortunately, the level of paranoia is so high on both sides in Washington that any reform effort will be suspect as soon as it's announced. Place that suspicion in the context of federalism and you've got a recipe for stasis. Thus, unfortunately, the Count Every Vote Act of 2005 isn't going anywhere. As a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article [free registration required] put it this weekend...

Democrats want all 50 states to let former felons vote. Republicans want all 50 states to require photo IDs from voters.
These and several other election reforms now circulating in Congress have two things in common.

One is that they pit the two parties squarely against each other, and thus have little chance of winning bipartisan support.

The other is that they are federal mandates on the states, designed to create more uniformity in a messy patchwork of state and local rules. That makes them unpopular with many officials outside Washington.

News from California

2005-02-28T06:27:00.000-05:00

Like president, like governor... Taking a page from President Bush's playbook, Gov. Schwarzenegger's administration has produced a mock news story and distributed the videos to news channels. Because these videos mislead the public into thinking that neutral journalists did the story, I find them to be unethical. But much of the blame for this propaganda should also be placed on the news channels that run the videos. It's no surprise that the target of these efforts is local news stations (18 of which ran Schwarzenegger's tape), which are often just a step above incompetent.

On another matter, there's a mayoral election coming up (March 8) in Los Angeles (see here and here).

Finally, Ron Brownstein's column in the Los Angeles Times highlights the mindset of those in the political trenches today. It's a "with us or against us," mentality that leaves no room compromise. It's the natural product of the 24 hour news cycle and single member legislative districts.

From the Sunday Papers

2005-02-27T20:56:00.000-05:00

A few articles of note from today's papers:
Maureen Dowd on Bush's "Stiletto Democracy." (See her column on USA Next from Thursday, a subject I've written about too).

Via the Washington Post, fifteen governors are considering bids for the White House in 2008! Will either party nominate a legislator ever again?

Matt Bai's New York Times Magazine essay tries to figure out Howard Dean in the context of a "Democratic Party whose ideology feels... muddled and incohesive."

Perhaps most interesting of all is David Kirkpatrick's New York Times piece on religion and American political history. Both evangelicals and secularists try to claim the founders for themselves and both should give it up. There are far better arguments in favor of a thoroughly secular nation than that one or another of the founders would have wanted it that way. (Of course, secularlists have a better reason to appeal to the authority of the founders. Since it is simply assumed that all great American leaders were devout Christians, noting the less than orthodox views of some of them would serve to remind people that one can be a strong leader, even a moral one, without believing in angels, Satan, the virgin birth or resurrection.)

And some British politics - voters in the UK appear tired of Tony Blair's "presidency" and some ministers are wondering whether he's now a liability for the party. One parallel and one lesson in this story for Democrats - Labour is currently losing ground among married women with children; and it is going to "refocus its efforts on bread-and-butter economic issues."

Conservative group to put 9-yr old on the Soc. Sec. stump

2005-02-26T11:47:00.000-05:00

Progress for America - the same outfit that ran "Ashley's Story" during the presidential campaign, an emotional ad featuring a girl whose mother was killed in the 9/11 attacks, and that ran misleading attacks on Kerry's voting record - is once again turning to a child to hawk its agenda. The New York Times is reporting that the group will use (I'm tempted to say, exploit) a 9 year old boy to help sell the president's Social Security plan. While "officials say the effort is a lighthearted way to underline Mr. Bush's message" - he'll "travel to a handful of states ahead of visits by the president and will go on radio programs, answer trivia questions and say a few words about Social Security" - there's a serious strategic purpose to the idea. Ultimately, the goal is to "have Noah [the 9-yr old] there as the face of Social Security reform," according to the operative who came up with the idea (more on him below).

Testimonials are always useful for making an issue real to people. A campaign I managed while in college ran an ad featuring a woman who had been raped and became pregnant as a result. She made a powerful appeal to keep abortion legal, which was the hot-button issue in our race. (Importantly, SHE came to US asking what she could do for the campaign and she also happened to be an adult.) We lost, but the race was very close, much closer than it really should have been. Having said that, I think Progress for America's approach in both the Ashley and Noah cases raises some serious ethical questions about the appropriateness of using children for political purposes.

And a footnote to the story: the "brainchild" of the 9 year old stump campaign is Stuart Roy, a former aide to Tom DeLay. Should we be surprised?

UPDATE: The use of children in political ads isn't always problematic. Thousands of candidates, Democrats and Republicans, have shown images of kids playing in a playground or sitting behind desks in school. These nameless (and virtually faceless) children aren't being exploited. But there seems to be something very different about using individual kids as spokespeople (of sorts) for your political agenda.

Since writing the original post, however, I remembered MoveOn.org's ad called "Child's Pay," wherein little children are shown working, mostly at jobs requiring manual labor, with a tag line that reads, "Guess who's going to pay off President Bush's $1 trillion deficit?" And my friend Dale Miller mentioned the Johnson campaign's "Daisy" ad from 1964. Both of these ads seem a more deliberate use of kids to evoke emotion than the typical "students in the classroom" ad. And, yet, the kids aren't offering - under their own names - their personal stories or opinions about the candidates or the issues. So, while MoveOn and the Daisy ad were bumping up against the line, I think they're ethically acceptable.

Dionne on the Price-Herman Commission

2005-02-26T08:34:00.000-05:00

In his column yesterday, E. J. Dionne wrote about the Democrats' Commission on Presidential Nomination Timing and Scheduling (a.k.a. Price-Herman Commission), which is set to begin its work soon. A few things in his piece are noteworthy.

First, he starts the column with the following truism - "When the going gets tough, Democrats form commissions." Indeed, as Philip Klinkner showed in his book The Losing Parties, Democrats do tend to react to electoral losses with procedural (i.e., rule) changes, while Republicans (reflecting their business-like party culture), tend to make organizational changes. But while the Price-Herman Commission appears to be a continuation of that pattern, I think the Democrat's most significant transformations in the near future will be organizational. That's what Dean's selection as chair was all about. (If this turns out to be true, it raises an interesting question - what changed in the Democrats' party culture to make organizational concerns paramount?)

Second, Dionne suggests that Democrats should do something that parties rarely do - reexamine their core beliefs. He proposes a Commission on Values, Ideas and Policies. It might be a good idea, but it isn't going to happen. In Klinkner's study, which looks at the years 1956 to 1993 - only once did a party undertake a policy response, as opposed to a procedural or organizational response, to a loss (the Democrats did so following the 1956 election; even in 1964, the Republicans' response was primarily organizational, though policy was addressed).

Finally, the purpose of the Price-Herman Commission is to examine the nomination calendar. The Commission should strongly consider endorsing either the "Regional Rotating Primary Plan" put forward by the National Association of Secretaries of State or the "Delaware Plan" created by the Republicans' Brock Commission in 1999-2000.

In the former, the nation would be divided into four regions; states in a given region would hold their primaries in the same month (as close to the first Tuesday as possible); and the order in which regions may hold their primaries would be rotated every four years. In 2008, the plan calls for the East to begin in March, followed by the South in April, the Midwest in May and the West in June. (Iowa and New Hampshire would keep their "first in the nation" status under the NASS plan but that, of course, isn't necessary.) The Delaware Plan is sometimes called the inverted pyramid plan because it divides states into four categories (or "pods") based on size and then begins the process with the smallest states and ends with the largest states.

There are a lot of problems with the current nomination process, including frontloading and the disproportionate influence of Iowa and New Hampshire. Choosing a nominee in what amounts to a snap judgment by voters in one or two small states isn't a very rational process. There are advantages and disadvantages to all the reform proposals currently under consideration, but virtually any of them would be an improvement over what we have now.

GOP's Permanent Campaign

2005-02-24T09:56:00.000-05:00

The "permanent campaign" in American politics is often misunderstood. Many believe it's simply the politician's never-ending quest for reelection. It's true that elected officials begin their next campaign the morning after the last election, but that's not new.

What is a relatively new development is the use of campaign tactics in governing. The permanent campaign, in this sense, didn't happen overnight - Teddy Roosevelt's bully pulpit is an early manifestation of the notion that you have to use public relations techniques to effectively govern; from there, it was a short step to press conferences (beginning in the Wilson administration), the use of polling (first seriously employed in by FDR), and an organized communication effort in the White House (the Office of Communications, created in the Nixon Administration). Parties and individual members of Congress, as well as interest groups, quickly followed the White House's lead.

But the permanent campaign took a huge leap forward in the Clinton years. Remember the ad blitz put on by the insurance industry that sunk the Clinton health care initiative? And then Clinton responded in kind with ads (paid for by the DNC) in the summer of 1995 that portrayed Republicans as wanting to cut Medicare.

Today, the permanent campaign is being perfected on an almost daily basis. A new story in The Hill describes the House Republicans "message machine." They've created communications teams - each with its own pollster for guidance and a "war room" in the conference office - to help move the GOP agenda in eight policy areas. The teams won't craft policy, but will focus solely on message coordination.

The new structure will allow the conference, and leadership in particular, to schedule issue outreach as legislation moves to the House floor. The Retirement Security team, for example, will get increasingly active as Social Security advances within the Ways and Means Committee. The Economic Competitiveness team will be responsible for trumpeting, or downplaying, jobs numbers as they are released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The War on Terror team will coordinate constant message strategy regarding the war in Iraq and other issues relating to homeland security.

The Republican conference (their term for their caucus) will oversee coordination with lobbyists, while the

new groups help [conference chair Deborah] Pryces office monitor press from individual districts and... vet that information as it comes in. But the teams primary function will be crafting a conferencewide message as it moves quickly from one agenda item to the next.

Just like a full-service public-relations firm, House Republicans have streamlined and mobilized our conference so that we are accessible, articulate and ahead of the game on every issue, [conference spokeswoman Andrea] Tantaros said.

According to The Hill, this is an "unprecedented communications strategy." The empirical and normative effects of this sort of activity are still uncertain. The partisan implication, however, is crystal clear - Democrats once again find themselves losing the permanent campaign.

"Gannongate" (a.k.a., Nothinggate) and Divided Government

2005-02-23T21:40:00.000-05:00

I feel as though I should have said something about "Gannongate" by now, though so many others (particularly Media Matters) have done such a good job that I have little to add. However, Hendrik Hertzberg's column in this week's New Yorker got me thinking. He claims (for reasons I'll mention below) that Gannongate should be called "Nothinggate" since nothing will ultimately be made of it.

Like many of you, I've been outraged by this scandal and I've been following it closely. But I also had the sense that few people outside the blogosphere (despite Keith Olbermann's best efforts) have been paying attention to it. So I did a little experiment this afternoon. I called my mother to ask her if she had heard of "Jeff Gannon" or of the story of the fake White House correspondent (and alleged male escort) who has been lobbing softballs at press conferences. She hadn't. Now my mother follows the news closely - far more closely than the average person but certainly not as closely as news junkie political scientists. So the fact that she hasn't even heard of this story is a pretty good indication of how much most Americans know about (i.e., nothing).

Hertzberg's right; the story isn't going anywhere. But his explanation for why is instructive. He argues that all of the presidential scandals of the past thirty years have happened during times of divided government. That is, the opposition party controlled at least one chamber in Congress and, therefore, could conduct investigations into questionable executive activities. I've always disliked divided government because it makes even the semblance of "responsible party government" impossible. But Hertzberg's is a pretty powerful argument in favor of it.

Giving Campaign Handlers Far Too Much Credit

2005-02-23T08:25:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, my colleague Bob Gray drew my attention to an interesting item in the latest New York Review of Books. In it, Mark Danner replies to two letters written in response to his (very good) election postmortem in the January 13 issue of the NYRB.

Danner suggests that journalists aren't very good at covering the subtexts of campaign discourse because they're too caught up in "horserace coverage," which includes detailed reporting on the internal machinations of campaign "war rooms." That critique has been around for a while (and is made very well in Thomas Patterson's Out of Order), so in and of itself this wouldn't be noteworthy.

But Danner illustrates the problem with horserace coverage by calling attention to an incident that seems to show journalism's complicity in campaign manipulation. He notes that two prominent stories early in the campaign revealed that the Bush team was reeling from criticism over its first television ads. (One ad used footage of the flag-draped body of a dead fireman being carried away from Ground Zero, prompting complaints from the firefighters union and some families of 9/11 victims.) However, Danner implies that the campaign faked their response to the criticism in order to fuel the controversy over the ads, thereby kicking the story along and giving the ads even more coverage than they would have otherwise received. As evidence, he cites Newsweek's reporting from inside the Bush campaign, which, in exchange for extensive access, was allowed to be published only after the election. That reporting suggests (when juxtaposed with Danner's summary of the earlier stories) that the ad flap was welcome by the Bush team. "So much for the 'inside story,'" writes Danner. For him, this is a perfect example of how

The public, offered the impression that they are being given a pathway into the inner sanctum, in fact is simply offered another constructed story carefully designed to reinforce the kind of attitudes campaign strategists have decided, in the real "behind the scenes" meetings, are critical to their candidate's success.

In fact, the original pieces Danner cites never really claim to show a campaign in crisis; instead, Bush aides freely admit, in each story, to welcoming the attention to their ads and the issues therein. The first piece, a New York Times article from March 5, 2004 does say that the Bush campaign was "scrambling to counter criticism," but it also notes that "Mr. Bush's aides said... the battle over [the ads] could even work to their advantage by focusing new attention on what they said was the president's forceful response to the attacks and the continued threat from terrorists." Furthermore, "They said the controversy had been expected and was serving their aim of changing the debate from Democratic turf like health care and jobs to Mr. Bush's strongest suit, national security." The article cites unnamed Democrats - not Bush campaign insiders - as saying the Bush staff wasn't prepared for the response they got.

The second article, from the March 15, 2004 Newsweek, has "some GOP insiders" and "some GOP strategists" - not Bush insiders or Bush strategists - questioning whether the Bush campaign had made a mistake in running the ads. But when they used campaign sources to comment on the story, those sources "were dismissive and insisted the flap had only strengthened their plan to make 9/11 'a central topic of the campaign.'" Danner wants us to believe that the Bushies had a devious plan to get the media to do their work for them by pretending to be on the ropes when, in fact, they knew all along that controversy would draw attention to their message. But it doesn't seem too devious to publicly acknowledge the effect you hope to (secretly) produce!

Ultimately, I agree with Danner when he argues, "our political campaigns are built largely of... pseudo-events and rely fundamentally on the press and the commentariat to play their necessary part in constructing them and conveying them to the public." But there's another problem with horserace journalism that doesn't get nearly the attention it deserves; namely, it treats campaign operatives as wizards who are so wickedly clever that a wave of their wands casts a spell over even seasoned reporters, not to mention voters. Unfortunately, Danner is guilty of perpetuating that myth with his inaccurate characterization of the 9/11 ad flap.

Labour in Trouble

2005-02-22T10:06:00.000-05:00

Labour's lead in the upcoming (May) elections in Britain is shrinking fast. A new Guardian/ICM poll gives Tony Blair's party a mere 3 point advantage over the Conservatives (37% to 34%).

I wouldn't want to overstate the lessons Democrats could take from this, because Blair's support for the war in Iraq (among other things) muddles easy analysis. But one thing is clear - in fully-developed, modern party systems (i.e., those that are "frozen"), major parties don't stay down for long. Not long ago, commentators in Britain were writing the obituary of the Conservatives. Even a former Vice-Chair of the party warned that Conservatives were in danger of being overtaken by the Liberal Democrats as the main opposition party. Now, they may be a little more than two months from returning to power.

Take heart Democrats!

New Strategy - Attack an Opponent's Strengths

2005-02-21T10:04:00.000-05:00

My colleague Bob Friedrich suggested to me during the fall campaign that a new strategy was emerging - rather than exploit an opponent's weakness, it seemed that the anti-Kerry forces were going after his strengths. Now, a right-wing lobbying outfit, USA Next (formerly United Seniors Association), appears to be employing the same approach. The New York Times is reporting that the group has hired consultants who assisted the Swift Boat Veterans to help assail the AARP because the latter opposes Bush's efforts to "reform" Social Security. I realize the AARP is unpopular in some circles, but generally speaking they're viewed quite favorably by the public.

Nevertheless, USA Next plans to take them down. Here's a sense of the subtlety of the group's efforts (from the Times article):

"They [AARP] are the boulder in the middle of the highway to personal savings accounts," said Charlie Jarvis, president of USA Next and former deputy under secretary of the interior in the Reagan and first Bush administrations. "We will be the dynamite that removes them."
...

One USA Next official predicted that this time around, the campaign would be so aggressive that the White House might not to want to associate with it.
...

"We are going to take them on in hand-to-hand combat," said Mr. Jarvis, who is biting in his remarks about AARP, calling the group "stodgy, overweight, bureaucratic and out of touch."

It also doesn't seem to matter to USA Next that nearly everything the Swift Boat Veterans said about Kerry was thoroughly discredited (see here, here, here, here, and here, all of which are from the highly respected, non-partisan, Annenberg Public Policy Center's FactCheck.org).

To USA Next, the battle lines have already been drawn, and it does not shy away from comparisons to the veterans' campaign against Senator Kerry. "It's an honor to be equated with the Swift boat guys," Mr. Jarvis said.

Now, I'm not squeamish, and I know that politics "ain't tiddlywinks," but at some point the nastiness of campaigns (for office or over policy) steps over the line (though don't ask me where to draw that line). I know politics has always had a negative edge and that there really isn't a Golden Age of Substantive Political Debate. But in an age of hypermedia, this sort of thing will eventually begin to have a negative effect on democracy - if it hasn't already.

Having said that, it's the content, not the tone, that's most problematic. I don't mind groups or individuals yelling at one another, though it's unseemly. But what does being "stodgy, overweight, bureaucratic and out of touch" have to do with the AARP's argument against Bush's Social Security proposal?

Perhaps even more than the normative concern over what this means for democracy, however, I'm interested in whether or not - or rather, under what conditions - this strategy is effective. Will candidates be able to engage in it, or is it strictly the bailiwick of advocacy groups? To this point, the basic approach has been to highlight an opponent's weakness, emphasize your own strength, or some combination of the two. Attacking the opponent where he/she/it seems most invulnerable is relatively uncharted territory and it deserves to be watched closely.

Beinart's Naive Suggestion

2005-02-19T11:49:00.000-05:00

In his latest column in The New Republic, Peter Beinart suggests that Democrats need to express their approach to foreign policy in a way that will inspire the American public. He says, "Bush's second inaugural doesn't challenge liberals at the level of policy; it challenges them at the level of rhetoric."

If I understand him correctly, he asks Democrats to acknowledge the United States' less than democratic history in the Third World. Such an acknowledgement would include admitting mistakes and "recognizing U.S. fallibility." Doing so, Beinart continues, "has implications for how the United States promotes democracy today." The upshot? "The United States should hold the world to a higher standard, but ultimately the best way to do that is to allow others to hold us to a higher standard as well."

Beinart is calling for a rhetoric "that fuses idealism with humility." If you read closely, though, you'll notice that he shifts from a prescription for Democrats to one for the nation as a whole. He's right that the country's foreign policy elite should be more humble. But if he thinks that's the way for Democrats to gain an upper hand over Republicans on foreign policy, he grossly misunderstands the American electorate. In the post-9/11 era, few swing voters will warm up to a party that humbly admits the faults of the United States - at least not while Republicans offer nationalistic certitude.

Presidential Public Funding Fix Introduced

2005-02-18T09:50:00.000-05:00

Roll Call has reported that Reps. Bob Ney (R-OH) and Steny Hoyer (D-MD) have introduced legislation to establish a single date for presidential candidates to receive public funds for the general election. The date would be the Friday of Labor Day weekend.

This is in response to the grossly unfair situation that occurred in 2004, whereby John Kerry received his public funds five weeks before George Bush because the Democratic Convention was held first (and the Republicans set their convention date unusually late). As a result, Kerry had to spread the $74.6 million in public funds over almost 14 weeks, while Bush had just under 9 weeks in which to spend the same amount. Another way of putting it is that Kerry had roughly $5.5 million to spend per week whereas Bush had an average of $8.8 million per week.

This isn't sour grapes and it isn't a partisan issue. At some point, the Republican nominee is going to face the same situation.

The legislation is a no-brainer - call your member of Congress and tell him or her to support this TODAY!

Mellman's Take on Election 2004

2005-02-17T20:26:00.000-05:00

In a series of columns since the election, pollster Mark Mellman has been offering some insights into what happened in November. I don't agree with every word, but I highly recommend them, particularly the November 17, December 8, February 9 and February 16 columns.

Mellman has been the target of great deal of criticism, especially in Noam Scheiber's piece following the 2002 midterm elections. Most of those who want to blame the consultants for recent Democratic losses assume consultants have far more influence over the outcome of elections than they actually do. (I'll have more to say on this topic - one which is very close to my academic heart - soon.)

Anyway, Mellman is a very bright guy and I think his general approach to campaign strategy is sound. Take a look at what he has to say.

Gallup Poll of DNC Members

2005-02-17T10:36:00.000-05:00

[This is a post I intended to publish last Friday, when the software problems occurred.]

Gallup recently released the results of a poll [subscription required] of 223 members of the Democratic National Committee. Among the findings are that a majority of DNC members have great confidence in Howard Dean as party chair; believe "major changes" are needed to the party's approach to winning elections rather than a "complete overhaul" (or "minor changes"); and think that persuading swing voters is more important for future success than is mobilizing the base.

However, I was most interested in the responses to the following question:

2. Next, here are a few reasons some people have given for why the Democrats lost the 2004 presidential election. Which of these do you think is most to blame for the Democrats' loss - [ROTATED: the Democrats' inability to match the Republicans' grass roots efforts, the fact that the Republicans ran an incumbent president during wartime, the Democratic Party's positions on major issues, (or) the weaknesses of John Kerry as a presidential candidate]?

2005 Jan 27-Feb 8:

Inability to match grass roots efforts ---- 20%

Incumbent pres. during wartime --------- 49%

Party's positions on major issues ----------7%

Weaknesses of Kerry ---------------------- 16%

OTHER (vol.) ------------------------------- 2%

None/No opinion -------------------------- 6%

The plurality response here - that Bush was a wartime incumbent - isn't exactly the explanation I'd give, but it's close. And it suggests, correctly, that Kerry's loss was the result of circumstances that were largely out of his control.

I'll soon be offering a more detailed explanation of why I think Kerry lost, but it's good to see so few DNC members on the "blame Kerry" bandwagon that others are pushing (e.g., the editors at The New Republic, particularly Martin Peretz).

Software Problems

2005-02-17T09:41:00.000-05:00

Blogger was having some problems for a "small number of users" for the past six days. Unfortunately, I was one of those users. Things are working now and I should be able to post more regularly.

Dean as DNC Chair

2005-02-10T09:44:00.000-05:00

For my "maiden" post to On The Hustings, I was planning to offer an explanation of why John Kerry lost the 2004 election, but Howard Dean's presumptive victory in the race for chair of the Democratic National Committee is a more timely matter.

Let me say at the outset that I did not support Dean for president. I had a number of problems with his candidacy, but the biggest was his complete lack of credibility on security issues. It's not that I thought the Democrats could capture that issue - they couldn't (and they won't be able to going forward) no matter who they nominate. But they could go some distance toward neutralizing it. That's why I was for Kerry from the beginning (though I did toy with the Wesley Clark idea for about two weeks; see this column that I wrote for TomPaine.com when Clark announced). We can argue, in retrospect, about whether Kerry had the right kinds of security credentials - despite the Swift Boat Veterans attacks, I still believe he did - but at the time I thought it was clear that Kerry offered some protection against the "weak on defense" attack that was certain to come from Republicans regardless of who the Democratic nominee was.

Having said all that, I do believe Dean is a good choice for DNC chair and I think the handwringing in some quarters is misplaced. Dean, more than any other candidate for chair, will be able to maintain and build upon the base of the Democratic Party. It's too early to tell just how effective party activist blogs like Daily Kos and MyDD are, but my hunch is that there is great potential there to transform the Democratic Party into a grassroots juggernaut. The "netroots" will be a big part of the Democratic base in the future, both in terms of money and organization. Had an "establishment" candidate been chosen as chair, there's a good chance the Democrats would have lost a lot of the new recruits who were brought into the party in 2004. With Dean as chair, the energy and excitement of the MoveOn and Democracy for America crowds can be tapped to help rebuild the Democratic Party.

Of course, the argument against Dean is that, by appealing to the party's base, he'll turn off swing voters. But running the party isn't like running for president. The party's message won't be Dean's alone; he has already said that he's going to leave the policy agenda to governors and members of Congress. Furthermore, swing voters don't pay attention to political minutia like what the party chairs have to say. If Dean keeps his head down and organizes, as he's promised to do, he'll be successful.

There is reason to be slightly concerned about Dean as chair. As Jonathan Chait points out in a rather snide LA Times column, Dean is something of a "loose cannon." And while he may not be crafting the message (at least not by himself), he will be coordinating it. Thus, even if the party message is a good one, the messenger may not be. In addition, his presidential campaign lacked managerial oversight. That may not be entirely Dean's fault, but he'll need to oversee the day-to-day operation at the DNC and ensure that it's being run efficiently.

The chair of a political party is not as powerful a position as it might seem. Nevertheless, the most influential chairs have been those who lead their parties when they were out of power. As I hope to make clear in future posts, I don't think the Democratic Party is in any sort of crisis. However, a good dose of organizational reform would be useful. For that task, I think Howard Dean is the right choice.