Politics and Other Random Topics

In the Clown Car, who's Driving?

2011-12-31T18:46:00.000-08:00

Or, if you prefer, Elliot's prediction for the Republican Iowa Caucus.

In all seriousness though, I have to say, for as seemingly unpredictable the Republican side has been, things seem to be happening that one might have predicted early on, namely that Mitt Romney is probably going to be the Republican nominee for the presidency. Although I do think that Romney is more likely than not to win the nomination, I still don't think that Romney actually wins the caucus, even though he *is* leading in the Des Moines Register poll. I also am convinced that Ron Paul has no chance of winning the caucus either (Paul is showing in second place in the poll, but he's also showing real signs of weakening).

So if Ron Paul and Mitt Romney aren't going to win the caucus, who will? Enter former Pennsylvania senator Rick "man on dog" Santorum, who will stun political circles and win Iowa.

Final Score will be:

Santorum 25%
Romney 20%
Paul 18%
Gingrich 10%
Perry 10%
Everyone else 17%

I'm also going to predict that the top two candidates (whoever they are) can't even garner 50% of the vote.

I'm back but...

2011-09-17T21:20:00.000-07:00

Hey there, after another year of not posting, I'm back, however, I wanted to let you know that I've been having a real block when it comes to writing politics. I don't know why but I haven't really had my heart in commentary on the political scene. Maybe it's because I'm still depressed over the 2010 elections, maybe I'm sick of so many on the left who seem to want to be self-destructive (yes, I wholeheartedly back President Obama, and frankly, there have become very very few places where pragmatic progressives still remain, too many), or maybe it's because I just haven't felt that I have enough to say about what's happening.

Point being, while I'm going to start posting (probably semi-regularly), chances are most of it won't be very politically oriented, actually I'm pretty confident that none of it will be politically oriented for a while, you're probably going to see a few random thoughts about some movies, comics, and shows that I've watched or have been thinking about.

I'm ALIVE!!!

2010-09-03T19:58:00.000-07:00

After a really long hiatus, I've done some major updates to my race ratings and added a permanent predictions widget for both governor's races and the Senate (I may choose to do a House one, but I'm not completely comfortable with it, so I wouldn't count on it).

RIP Senator Byrd

2010-06-28T06:26:00.000-07:00

Wow...

While I guess I'm not surprised by this, Byrd has been in really poor health for a while now, it's still really hard to fathom the Senate without Robert Byrd in it.

Senator Byrd started off as a member of the KKK, who eventually filibustered (with Strom Thurmond) the Civil Rights Act of 1965. Three years later, he voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1968, and since then has shown a deep regret of his past. For me though, the completion of the circle was when he endorsed Barack Obama for President, after he had lost the West Virginia primary by 2-1 against Hillary Clinton.

Ultimately, despite his checkered past, I think that Senator Byrd has ultimately been a strong force in the Senate (right up there with Teddy Kennedy), and the Democratic caucus and the Senate as a whole are that much worse off without him.

On the political side of things, I guess there's some confusion about how the law is supposed to work in this situation in West Virginia, but there seems to be a distinct possibility that Gov. Manchin will wait until Saturday to declare a vacancy and run for the seat himself in 2012.

Political Break: Fullmetal Alchemist Discussion (For anime/manga nerds only)

2010-06-11T15:19:00.000-07:00

(Weekly reminder: For readers who are so inclined, a small donation, given at the Donate link on the side of the site, would be greatly appreciated)

As I've said in my site statement, this blog is not completely dedicated to politics, and it occurs to me that I haven't had any non-political posts since the site founding. So, as a bit of an introduction to myself, you should know that I'm a huge anime and manga fan, and one of my favorite mangas, Fullmetal Alchemist, just released its final chapter. On the one hand, I think it was a solid end to a really strong story, but, like most endings, I still wasn't all that happy with it.

(THERE WILL BE SPOILERS FOR BOTH THE MANGA AND FIRST ANIME, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED)

Just so we're clear, from the standpoint of wrapping up the story, tying up the loose ends, and making sure there aren't any plot-holes remaining, Fullmetal Alchemist's final chapter (#108) was very good. I have two basic problems though, one is simply a fan-boy's typical "awwww, why does it have to be over already...?" pout (and what're you gonna do about that) but my other complaint is that, like too many endings, was just a little bit too "and they all lived happily ever after" for me (it's probably darker than most stories you'd see in the United States, but still...). Too many stories are perfectly willing to fall into the trap of letting the main characters win and live a happy life, which is what Fullmetal did. Yeah, there was a "cost" paid by Ed to bring his brother Al back from the Gate, but, like a lot of endings that try to pull this, the price Ed paid was ultimately not all that important to him, but for every other main character, they got their cake and ate it too (Mustang got his eye-sight back, Al got his body, Ed and Winry got hitched and had kids, the Ishbalans (I'm using this spelling, anyone who has problems problems, deal with it) got their land back, Scar got to work towards rebuilding Ishbal, hell arguably Hoenheim got what he probably wanted (he died with a smile) and they banished the evil Homunculus to get his just desserts in total isolation). This is why I preferred the ending to the first Fullmetal Alchemist anime (yes, yes, I'm aware that the manga came before the anime), the story didn't end on a totally triumphant note, yes Al got his body back and Ed and Al were ultimately reunited, but by circumstance, they both had to leave their world, and left several characters in simply a bad situation (the scene when Winry realizes that Ed wouldn't stay in Amestris was heartbreaking).

While I'm on the anime, the other thing that I had always preferred in it relative to the manga was the way the homunculi were portrayed. Now, don't get me wrong, I did like the way the manga portrayed some of the Homunculi (Pride, Greed, and Envy were excellently done) but for the most part, they weren't fleshed out that well. The manga had all of the homunculi simply being offshoots of the main antagonist (whose name is actually Homunculus, but also goes by the name Father), and even this character didn't have that much development, other than having a severe God complex about him. The homunculi in the first anime, by contrast, were born when there was a failed human transmutation (and also took on the form of said person). This allowed the anime to cast the homunculi in the light of possibly being human and wanting to shed that humanity... or maybe the other way around, and led to some very interesting interactions between the humunculi and the protagonists Ed and Al (the best of them was when Ed learned the truth about Envy).

With those things being said, I still loved the Fullmetal Alchemist manga, and its creator, Hiromu Arakawa, had an absolutely brilliant story filled with strong character development, well drawn characters and settings, an excellent story, and created a wonderful world in which the logic of it was always consistent. Arakawa has a lot to be proud of, and I'll miss seeing new chapters from her excellent series.

For any other fans, I'm curious how you see the story, feel free to discuss in the comments.

For Progressives, an Arkansas Loss was Inevitable

2010-06-09T15:48:00.000-07:00

Before starting this little rant, I'd like to say that as a progressive Democrat, I would've preferred that Lt. Gov. Bill Halter win his primary challenge to Sen. Blanche Lincoln (and, in fact, it was my prediction that Lincoln would lose the run-off). Having said that, the progressives who really think that Halter was going to be able to defeat Republican congressman John Boozman need a reality check, and should reflect a little on what happened here before getting so bummed out by the events of the Arkansas race.

This is Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas:

The GOP establishment tries to nominate electable candidates, and gets sabotaged by the teabaggers. We're trying to nominate electable candidates, and we get sabotaged by the Democratic Party establishment. We won in Pennsylvania, lost in Arkansas. You can't win them all. But make no mistake -- we made the politically smart move.

Unfortunately, the smart political move lost. So say hello to Sen. John Boozman, the next senator from the great state of Arkansas. It's the political reality. No need to sugarcoat it.

How much do you think the Chamber of Commerce and its corporatist allies will spend on behalf of Blanche Lincoln through the fall? Zero. Suddenly, you're going to see Lincoln quite friendless

Those evil "out of state" unions and progressive groups sure won't lift a finger to help her. The only question is how much the DSCC wastes on the losing effort.

I've long since quit being impressed by moral victories. In this case, we forced Blanche to dramatically improve the financial reform bill, and it may be too late to strip out her derivatives reform language. And we delivered the kind of pain that no other incumbent wants to suffer. So congressional Democrats have two options -- they can either shape up and be spared primary pain (I'd be happy focusing solely on Joe Lieberman in 2012), or they can be Blanched

It's much easier to keep your job if you don't have to fight for it twice in a single year.

Kos seems to be arguing a few things here; one that the Democratic establishment (really, the White House) was being stupid by supporting Lincoln, that Bill Halter would've been able to win while Lincoln would not, and that this primary challenge will make conservative Democrats in congress somewhat more progressive.

The first thing, that the Democratic establishment should have thrown Lincoln out the door for Halter ignores one simple truth: political parties, at their core, are incumbent protection rackets, period. This is not an ironclad rule that can never be broken, but those circumstances usually involve some pretty bad scandals (for example, the Republican Governor's Association (the RGA) actively endorsed Brian Sandoval against incumbent Governor Jim Gibbons, mostly because of how scandal plagued he was). The Democrats had no business supporting incumbent Congressman Bill Jefferson in Louisiana's second district, and they should have been criticized heavily for it, as Jefferson was accused of and later convicted of bribery, but that was simply not the case for Lincoln. Political parties protect incumbents for good reason, they are the power-base of the party, without incumbent members in government, the party has no power (just look at the Green Party, the Constitution Party, the Libertarian Party, and many others) and if the party isn't going to go to the mat for its incumbents, then its incumbents will stop supporting the party, period. This isn't limited to the Democrats either, the Republicans support their incumbents as well, and Kos is, frankly, delusional if he thinks that any political party should abandon incumbents who aren't scandal-tainted (but for the record, it was pretty stupid of the White House aid to shoot his/her mouth off about the labor unions, though I suspect that he/she wasn't authorized by the White House to talk either).

On the second argument, electability, I'd find that view a lot more convincing if Bill Halter were either winning or were within range of John Boozman in polling, but the fact is, Boozman is beating Halter by double-digits too and there's no prize for only losing by 15 instead of losing by 20. To be clear, yes, I believe that Halter was more electable than Lincoln, but to pretend that Halter's chances of victory were really that much better than Lincoln's doesn't do progressives well in the credibility department.

On the final point, well, frankly, I know that Kos means well, but there's a case to be made that Lincoln's derivatives language isn't really that good an idea. Just because something sounds good on paper and looks like it's putting the screws to the banks and everything which is evil, doesn't mean that it actually is or that this has somehow created better policy. Frankly, it's even arguable that this was good politics for just the general election, as everyone hates the banks and appearing to be tough on them just looks good. In addition there was a point made by a regular commenter on Swing State Project who goes by DCCyclone which I'd like to bring to light:

And, frankly, to a substantial extent it bothers me, because the singling out of Lincoln for demonization shows a big lack of perspective. Lincoln is from a most conservative state and the strongest anti-Obama state of any Democratic Senator up for reelection this year.
I suppose this is about making an example out of her for the sake of doing so, and winning in politics does, ultimately, require demonizing the opponent. That's just a fact of political life, I accept that.
But if Halter wins tonight and goes on to lose by 20 to Boozman, I don't think the left benefits. ConservaDems don't feel pressured to be more responsive to the left, instead they just feel more tightly squeezed with a narrower needle to thread to win. The only way the left wins politically out of this is for Halter to win not only tonight but to pull off the massive upset and win in November. If that happens, then the intense emotional energy will have been fully vindicated, and I'll be proven a fucking moron. But it's hard to see a "Senator Halter" getting sworn in in January.

DCCyclone's point is a good one, what if Halter had won the primary? Maybe there would have been a polling bounce for him, but I doubt he'd even get a lead in that situation (or even close to it) and he'd probably return to where he was, 10-15 points behind Boozman which is almost certainly what the final result would have been. If that would have happened (hypothetically), it could easily by Democratic operatives to argue "see, this is what happens when you primary incumbents, you lose seats, you're no better than the Club for Growth!" (not to say that their point would be all that good, but it'd be pretty easy to make it, and suddenly the progressive groups who supported the primary look stupid for being successful). And that's really the main point, a loss for the progressives who backed Halter was probably inevitable no matter what, whether it would've been now or in November is sort of beside the point.

Update: Or what Nate Silver said.

Quick Primary Predictions (CA-Gov, CA-Sen, AR-Sen, IA-Gov, NV-Sen, NV-Gov

2010-06-08T08:58:00.000-07:00

Political nerds of the world unite, today is a relatively busy day for primaries (see here for a run-down of all the elections happening today), and, to make up a bit for not posting any real predictions prior to today, I'm going to throw out a few predictions for the races I've been following (the Swing State Project should have a predictions thread, I highly recommend them for thorough coverage of the results tonight).

Elliot's predictions for posterity:

CA-Sen (Republicans)

Fiorina: 53%
Campbell: 27%
DeVore: 20%

Notes: I think DeVore will do somewhat better than polling suggests, but not enough to get anything outside of third place, and Fiorina's money is going to buy here a majority of Republican primary voters.

CA-Gov (Republicans)

Whitman: 64%
Poizner: 36%

Notes: Not much to say here, Whitman is going to deliver an epic drubbing to Poizner.

AR-Sen (Democratic Runoff)

Halter: 53%
Lincoln: 47%

Notes: The polling is rather limited, but my sense of the race is that Lt. Gov. Bill Halter will be able to pull off a decisive (but not huge) win over incumbent Democratic Senator Blanche Lincoln. Some people think that there is the making of a total disaster for Lincoln, but I'm not really convinced (though I will note that runoffs can be really unpredictable, so Lincoln's drubbing or a decisive Lincoln win will not surprise me).

IA-Gov (Republicans)

Branstad: 44%
Vander Plaats: 32%
Roberts: 22%

Notes: Not much to see here, in a one-on-one race, former Governor Terry Branstad might have had trouble with Bob Vander Plaats, but the addition of State Sen. Rod Roberts has made it a lot more difficult for the not-Branstad voters to assert themselves.

NV-Sen (Republicans)

Angle: 39%
Lowden: 31%
Tarkanian: 30%

Notes: It amazes me that the Republicans were able to screw things up this badly against Harry Reid (who is about as popular as a root canal) but here we are. Former Republican Party Chair Sue Lowden (henceforth known as Chicken Lady) has collapsed in the polls because of her crazy position on health care (I'll trade you two chickens for a Chicken Pox shot) and this makes former Assemblywoman Sharron Angle very happy. Some have suggested that Lowden could finish third, but I think she'll barely squeak by Danny Tarkanian (who has held no elected office) for the simple reason that there's no real reason to back his candidacy (he's always been "the other person" in this race, and there's nothing that has happened to change that fact). Really, no matter what happens in this race, Harry Reid has got to be smiling right now.

NV-Gov (Republicans)

Sandoval: 47%
Gibbons: 34%
Montandon: 19%

Notes: While Harry Reid is going to be smiling, his son Rory Reid is probably going to be crying just a little bit as Former Attorney General Brian Sandoval is in a strong position to take out incumbent governor (and violent maniac) Jim Gibbons. I have no idea why Rory Reid decided that the smart move was to run for governor when his father was running for re-election, but there we are. As an aside, after this primary ends, I'm almost certainly going to move this race, as well as the Iowa gubernatorial race, to Leans Republican in my race ratings.

As a quick note, I think that in South Carolina, there will be a runoff between State Representative Nikki Haley and Attorney General Henry McMaster (Haley will get 45% and McMaster will get 23%)

Second Meta Note

2010-06-07T17:58:00.001-07:00

For those people who have followed me on Election Inspection, you might know that I'm the type of person who tends to have ruts where I don't write for quite long periods of time. Frankly, it's in my nature, when I can't think of something to write, I don't write. This is seen as such a sin in today's world where a blog of any worth is expected to have huge amounts of writing done (at least during the week) that too often it's the case that the content begins to suffer.

So, to make a long story short, while I hope that I'll be able to bring out high-quality posts over time, you shouldn't expect me to have new posts up every day or even every other day. I believe that the worth of anybody's writing is not in the quantity of posts, but in the quality and I hope to bring that to bear here. If you don't like that sort of thing, if it keeps you from visiting this site on a regular basis, I certainly respect that, but for those who want to read what I write, I'm not going to change my ways on this, and hopefully I can work out a system that will allow other people to contribute to this site who have no trouble writing on a continuous basis.

Oh, and as a random note, Matt Yglesias is totally right about the insanity of the self-imposed standards of "objectivity" which the traditional press is so fond of.

Preview of the Myth of Anti-Incumbent Elections Part II

2010-06-07T09:00:00.000-07:00

Just so you don't think I've forgotten about it, I have finished compiling the data for the 2008 House elections, and much like 2006, incumbents of both parties were still extremely likely to hold on to their seats (once again, 93% of all incumbents running in the general election held on, by party it was 98% for the Democrats and 92% for Republicans). Once I've gotten this post taken care of, I'm going to go a bit into the past and look at 1994, when the Republicans swept into power (that one is probably going to take a long time, so it might be as late as the end of the month before I'm prepared to put up a post on that).

Updated Senate Rankings and the first official Senate Prediction

2010-06-06T15:53:00.000-07:00

(Note: My senate rankings can be found here)

It's funny, in some ways this has been a bad few weeks for Democrats politically (Dino Rossi's entrance in Washington State against Patty Murray and the thing with Blumenthal in Connecticut) but at the same time, the Senate picture actually looks better for the Democrats.

My most recent changes are to move Connecticut back to Likely Democratic from Leans Democratic and to move Nevada from Leans Republican to Toss-up.

The Connecticut thing should be pretty obvious, the New York Times screwed up pretty bad on their several stories regarding Blumenthal (plus Linda McMahon's idiotic bragging about giving the Times the story basically killed any chance of it seriously damaging Blumenthal).

Nevada's an interesting one, because Harry Reid hasn't magically become more popular than he was, but his polling against all three challengers has definitely improved. While I had been classifying the race as Leans Republican for my purposes, I'd always believed that Harry Reid was the incumbent who was most likely to come back from the grave and win simply because his opposition is so weak and his war-chest is really nothing to sneeze at ($9 million Cash on Hand, compared to his opposition who have a combined Cash on Hand amount of about $400,000, with that coming largely from Lowden with $200,000).

Now then, with the official caveat that the election is still several months away and there are any number of things that could happen in the meantime, let me give you my first preliminary prediction for the Senate races:

Democrats take the following seats from the Republicans: Ohio, Missouri, and Florida (I think Charlie Crist wins and that he caucuses with the Democrats, thus I consider it a Democratic gain).

Republicans take the following seats from the Democrats: North Dakota, Delaware, and Arkansas.

Honestly, I think for all the hoopla about Democrats getting routed in the fall, there's a very good chance that the Democrats break even for Senate races (to get this out of the way, I believe that Democrats will hold Indiana, Colorado, and Illinois despite polling to the contrary).

The best-case scenario for the Democrats right now is probably keeping their seat losses limited to North Dakota and Delaware (some Democrats are holding out hope that New Castle County Executive Chris Coons can pull off an upset, but I doubt it) and somehow hold Arkansas (frankly, Arkansas is bordering on being a lost cause as well), and then taking Ohio, Missouri, New Hampshire, Kentucky, North Carolina (this one's definitely a sleeper for the Democrats), and maybe catch Chuck Grassley off-guard in Iowa (to be fair, this is a bit of a stretch, as Grassley, despite showing some slight weakness, is still a pretty damn popular incumbent who isn't likely to lose). This scenario gives Democrats somewhere between 61 and 63 seats with the Republicans at between 39 and 37 seats.

Conversely, the best-case scenario for the Republicans is to hold onto to their competitive open seats (Ohio, New Hampshire, Kentucky, and Missouri), protect North Carolina (which is probably going to be pretty easy if the Republicans hold all of their open seats), take all of the Democratic open seats (save for Connecticut), knock off Reid, Lincoln (or the open seat, depending on what happens in the run-off), and Bennet, and then beat Barbara Boxer in California (frankly, despite their candidate recruitment coup, I don't think the Republicans really have a prayer of defeating Patty Murray). This scenario gives the Republicans 50 seats (which basically means that Democrats will maintain control of the Senate unless Lieberman decides to screw the Democrats and switch, which I wouldn't put past him).

My current prediction might seem a bit optimistic for some, but it's still worth mentioning that even now, it's still reasonably possible that the Democrats can break even or even gain a seat or two in these senate elections.

(To reiterate, this is a preliminary prediction of the status of a series of elections that won't take place for another five months, so these predictions are very much subject to change).

Apologies for the Lack of Posting

2010-06-06T12:24:00.000-07:00

This is a bit of a short one, but I'm sorry that I haven't been posting as of late. It's a really big problem I have, while I like to write, I really need to be in the right mood to write anything of substance, and I really hate making small posts (such as this one, but this is an exception). Anyways, while it's going to be a little weird soon, I'm hoping to do the second part of my "Myth of an Anti-Incumbent Mood" series and a post detailing the methods to my senate rankings (and you should see an update in my race rankings shortly).

To Paul Rosenberg: Obama is more Progressive than You

2010-05-24T15:12:00.001-07:00

(Cross-posted at Daily Kos)

So, here's a good question; whose opinion do you trust regarding whether President Obama has been an effective progressive, Al Giordano's or Paul Rosenberg's? Well, before giving my opinion, let's see both sides of the "disagreement" (well, let's face it, one argument is a lot better than the other, and anyone who knows me will know which side I come out on).

First, here's Rosenberg's piece:

In turn, to understand why Obama [is] potentially such a disaster, we can look to his career-making speech at the 2004 DNC, which millions of liberals took as clear evidence that Obama was one of them, while millions of conservatives drew the same conclusion. It's now clear that the conservatives were right: with few, if any, exceptions, all his liberal impulses are expressed in terms of a political and conceptual framework defined by conservatives. (Conservatives themselves may not like his choices, but heck, they'd defeat Ronald Reagan in a primary if he were alive today--if he didn't pull Charlie Crist on them first. He is, in short, a Reagan Democrat.) And thus he follows the Supreme Court rules created by conservatives: (1) No ideology on the court. (2) "No ideology" means "strict constructionism" "calling balls and strikes" "insert your conservative buzz-phrase here". He does not challenge the conservative rules, because he believes in the conservative framework, here in dealing with the Supreme Court, just as he believes in the "long war" approach to terrorism, and just as he believes in balancing the budget, provided that the bottom 99% pay the vast majority of the bill.

Next, here's Giordano's take:

What has really just happened is conventional media wisdom has begun to shift, and it looks to me like President Obama is about to get that honeymoon from the media that all the white previous presidents got in their first year in office, only a year and some months late.

And that works out real well, too, since it is this year when midterm Congressional elections will be held in the United States. Sometimes it makes sense to save the honeymoon for the second anniversary.

It won’t last – no media honeymoon does – but it might well endure through November, which would be another triumph in political timing with positive, real world, consequences.

Even if I didn’t like and admire this President, I would still be impressed by his temperament, and by the way he plays the political game. It is worthy of study, and I've learned lots of new tricks just by watching him in action, and taking notes.

So, who's right? Well, to those who know me, it shouldn't come as any big surprise that I come down on Al's side of this (in fact, I've had plenty of problems with Open Left in the past, particularly a scuffle with David Sirota). Frankly, I don't fully understand why people like Rosenberg, Sirota, or Open Left founder Chris Bowers (who seems to be taking sides in this by blasting anyone who dares criticize that which is Open Left) are so fixated on the notion that Obama is not one of them (sounds eerily like the right-wing fringe, doesn't it?) To be fair, I happen to agree that Obama isn't one of them, Obama, unlike Rosenberg and company, has actually accomplished something for the poor and working class of all races, rather than just complaining about how important their opinion is and how horrible it is when people disagree with it.

Incidentally, this brings up something else that Al mentions:

...[F]or sixteen months, denied the media honeymoon that every other president always had in his first year in office,The President has been one hundred percent unflappable. He has not lost his cool or blown his temper in public, not even once. Instead, Obama set to work cueing up his legislative priorities and shepherding them, one at a time, through a difficult Congress, especially hard in the Senate where 40 Republicans plus any one or two conservative Democrats could, as a minority, block the 100-member chamber from voting on any proposed law. And on every single law he proposed or backed, he won passage. Let me repeat that: Every single one. In baseball terms, Obama has batted 1.000. He hasn’t struck out once. Not yet. In a funny way, that infuriates his naysayers even more.

Whether one agrees with Obama’s positions or not, one has to give credit that is due: He walks to his own drumbeat and step by step has gotten big things accomplished.

After all, even in frat house hazing rituals, if the guy being hazed endures it with grace, he has to be invited into the fraternity. In that sense some of the current serial hazers have shown less class than frat boys.

Suddenly – and I suppose the Rand Paul implosion pinpricked some white liberal consciences to contribute to their sudden turnaround, because it made it clear just how much of the American dysfunction is about race – some journalism and opinion column insiders have begun to consider the cumulative whole of President Obama’s first sixteen months in office and do some very simple math.

This is why I've always been a big fan of Al Giordano, he's very good at making connections to things that aren't always completely clear (but when he makes them, they always make perfect sense). Speaking as a white guy in a country that tends to be a lot more favorable towards whites than nonwhites, it's easy to forget how often race explains a lot about what happens in the world, and how easy it is for people like me to forget that for a lot of people, race is more than just an interesting dissertation, it's the way a lot of people are viewed and how they are treated in the world. The same applies to President Obama, and frankly, I suspect that if John Edwards were president right now and accomplished half of what Obama did, Bowers, Sirota, and Rosenberg would be on the forefront championing man-of-the-people President Edwards who is only out for the average worker.

To be fair, I have no idea what the Open Left crowd is really thinking, and for all I know, they'd be just as hard on President Edwards as they have been on President Obama, but it really is interesting that President Obama, who has accomplishments which are on par with Franklin Roosevelt's and with a lot less to work with, is being called a conservative corporatist by college-educated white guys who get to write for a living and not have to actually do any labor or do any real work helping people. For the record, I'm a college educated white guy myself, but I'm certainly not under the delusion that the progressive movement is only made up of people like me. Ultimately, if progressive means what Rosenberg and company seem to believe, then you can count me out, but if progressive means actually working towards the betterment of the poor and working class and not an ego trip for some college-educated white guys (who give the rest of us college-educated white guys a bad name), then count me in!

A More Moderate Senate GOP? I doubt it

2010-05-24T12:40:00.000-07:00

Booman has an interesting argument concerning the potential for Senate Republicans to potentially become more moderate, depending on who gets elected.

So, looking at the open seats created by Republican retirements, it's not clear that it's likely that the Republican caucus will move in a rightward direction. And, even if it does, it's not likely to move much.
If we look at the open Democratic seats, there is actually the potential for the caucus to move to the left. Only four House Republicans have more liberal lifetime Progressive Punch scores than Rep. Mike Castle of Delaware, who is running for Joe Biden's old senate seat. Only eleven House Republicans have more liberal Progressive Punch scores than Mark Kirk, who is running for Obama's old seat. Both of them would immediately bolster the tiny rump of moderates made up of Collins, Snowe, and Brown, and open up more avenues for bipartisan compromise.
So, looking at open seats from both the Republicans and the Democrats, it seems to me a little bit more likely that the Republican Senate caucus is poised to move a bit leftward than rightward. The only way I can see the caucus moving significantly to the right is if the Republicans succeed in knocking off some Democratic incumbents.

To be clear, Booman isn't arguing that Senate Republicans are definitely going to become more moderate (in fact, he lays out some circumstances in which he believes the senate caucus becomes more conservative depending on how successful the Republicans are in knocking off Democratic incumbents). Having said that though, I don't really agree with Booman's assessment about Castle and Kirk, for a few reasons.

First of all, I'm not convinced that using Progressive Punch is really a good idea for determining how liberal or conservative a given candidate is, as it relies on how a group of selected Democrats voted against a majority of the Republican caucus, which can be helpful in a pinch, but doesn't necessarily give a totally accurate view of how conservative a candidate would be (as it doesn't give a control group for conservative Republicans (not to mention that the process of choosing a "control group" is itself an exercise in subjectivity when regarding members of congress). So, if we're going for accuracy, DW-Nominate is the way to go.

I actually commented in Booman's post about my own views on the subject:

Honestly, I don't have much faith in Castle and Kirk being anywhere close to being like Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, or even Scott Brown. You should look at the DW Nominate scores for both Kirk and Castle, over they years they've gotten more and more conservative. On a -1 to +1 scale, where -1 is extremely Liberal and +1 is extremely Conservative, Castle went from having a score of .24 in the 103rd Congress (which isn't even all that moderate) to having a score of .49 in this congress. The same has been pretty much the same for Kirk (.39 in the 107th congress to .5 in the 111th Congress and a steady shift in between).

Relative to the House Republican Caucus, Castle and Kirk are actually relatively moderate (of course, you should know that House Republicans have an average DW-Nominate score of .65, with 1 being Very Conservative and -1 being Very Liberal). However, and this is where things get a little counter-intuitive, both Castle and Kirk are actually more conservative than a majority of Senate Republicans.

Frankly, I doubt that Castle and Kirk really wind up building up the "moderate" coalition and instead end up acting like the Republican versions of Dianne Feinstein in that they'll probably annoy a lot conservatives with their rhetoric, but will ultimately vote fairly conservatively.

The Myth of Anti-Incumbent Elections Part I: 2006 elections

2010-05-21T10:03:00.000-07:00

A little while back, ThinkProgress's Matt Yglesias made a very good point about how it's kinda weird that the media and many others are arguing that there is some sort of broad "anti-incumbency" mood going on in the country.

Yglesias writes:

There’s something inherently odd about the concept of an anti-incumbent wave in a country wherein the overwhelming majority of incumbents are invariably elected. In the 2008, for example, 23 House incumbents were defeated in an unusually eventful election. A year in which “only” 75 percent of incumbents running for re-election were successful result in a shockingly large amount of change in the House. Indeed, I think everyone regards such a scenario as wildly unrealistic. And yet it would be hard to describe a universe in which 75 percent of incumbents are re-elected as all that gripped by anti-incumbent sentiment.

The interesting thing is that both 2006 and 2008 are largely seen as being both anti-Republican and anti-Incumbent (2008 moreso than 2006), but by absolute numbers, the number of incumbents who lost and the number of seats where the incumbent party switched are actually pretty low. A lot of people might be asking the obvious question; how can you say that 2006 and 2008 weren't extremely anti-incumbent? After all, those two years saw the House, the Senate, and the Presidency switch from the Democrats to the Republicans. Before delving further, I'm not saying that the most recent elections weren't extremely significant and that there wasn't a massive change in control of government, but I am saying that this did not happen because incumbents had been thrown out left and right (especially in the House of Representatives). I'm going to work on a series which involves looking at the last two elections (both of which were Democratic wave elections) to try and give some perspective to the "anti-incumbent" myth which pervades the House of Representatives.

So, how well did incumbents (and incumbent parties) fare in 2006? According to the electoral compilation site The Green Papers, in the 2006 House elections, there were 390 incumbents running in the general election. Of those 390 incumbents, 22 lost their bid for re-election, of 435 seats, 31 seats were not held by the incumbent party (1 belonging to now-Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT)). Roughly 94% of incumbents who were renominated by their parties ultimately went on to win the election. When including all seats, 368 incumbents won re-election to the House of Representatives out of 435, which means that the 110th congress started out being made up of 85% of members who had served in the previous congress.

Let's look at this in picture form:

As you can see, when an incumbent was nominated successfully, they won re-election more than 9 times out of 10.

Looking at the seats in which the incumbent party retained control of the seat they had before the election, that number is 404 out of 435 seats, or roughly 93% of all seats (meaning only 7% of seats switched control in 2006).

Here's what that looks like (including for both parties):

If we look at it from the perspective of the two parties, there were 202 Democratic incumbents, 232 Republican incumbents, and 1 independent incumbent. Of the 202 Democratic incumbents, 186 got their party's nomination, and all of them won re-election (or 100% of all Democratic incumbents who were re-nominated won re-election). Of the 233 seats the Democratic party won after the elections, roughly 80% of those would be held by an incumbent member. Looking at the Republicans, out of 232 incumbents, 204 of them were successfully re-nominated and of those who were re-nominated, 182 won won re-election (or roughly 89% of those running for re-election). Of the 202 seats the Republican party won after the elections, roughly 90% of them were held by were held by incumbents.

To illustrate the point:

Some of you might be asking why I'm not talking about incumbents who lost their primaries? After all that might skew these numbers. The reason is pretty simple, only 2 incumbents who sought re-nomination lost their bids (Republican Joe Schwarz (MI-07) and Democrat Cynthia McKinney (GA-04). That means that over 99% of incumbents who sought re-nomination by their party were successful (all the primaries haven't ended yet yet, but 2010 appears to be heading in that direction again).

One might argue that 2006 wasn't really an "anti-incumbent" year so much as it was an "anti-Republican" year (not even necessarily an anti-Republican incumbent year) but even granting that, it's still pretty telling that what many considered to be a giant wave election, when only 7% of all seats (13% of all Republican seats) changed party hands. This should give a little more insight into American elections.

Next time: the 2008 House races.

CT-Sen: Even if Blumenthal stays in, can the Republicans win?

2010-05-18T12:11:00.000-07:00

It's looking more and more likely that Dick Blumenthal is going to try to stay in the race until the bitter end. While this fiasco definitely hurts his chances at both being the nominee and winning the general, two things seem to be working in Blumenthal's favor.

The first thing was elaborated on by Marc Ambinder in the link I gave:

A tactical aside: Linda McMahon's campaign planted the story with the New York Times and then bragged about it. Basic political gamesmanship: "If you land a hit like that on [an] opponent you don't brag about it an hour after. It undermines the story, the reporter, and no matter what the facts are, it lets the target of the hit say "This is Republican hit job. I'm not saying it. There campaign is bragging about it." A complete rookie unforced error, one that might help Blumenthal keep his position in the race.

This is incompetent on more than one level. First of all, if the McMahon people had any sense about them, they would've waited at least a couple of months to start putting this stuff out for the New York Times to find. Taking credit for it was even worse, now the damage that Blumenthal is likely to take over this will be limited by the appearance of a partisan attack by the Republicans, and it makes it harder for both Simmons and McMahon to do anything, which incidentally leads into the other reason why there is still a pretty good chance that Blumenthal will be the next Senator-elect from Connecticut: Linda McMahon herself.

Honestly, McMahon is a terrible candidate to have this time around, she has all sorts of controversies around her, has probably the worst profile to run this year, is way too conservative for a state like Connecticut, and her lack of experience running a campaign is apparent with this sort of thing. If the Republicans nominate Rob Simmons, at the very least, they'll have a fighting chance at taking the seat, with McMahon, they have next to no chance.

Side note: I'm moving CT-Sen from Likely Democratic to Leans Democratic, pending how Connecticut Democrats handle the situation and on who the Republicans nominate.

Technical issues

2010-05-18T10:45:00.001-07:00

I apologize in advance, but as this is a pretty new site, I'm still tweaking the site and experimenting with how it looks. If things change a little (or a lot) it's not your browser.

IN-03: Rep. Mark Souder to Resign seat by Friday

2010-05-18T08:23:00.000-07:00

I thought the thing with Blumenthal was pretty crazy, but it's getting even better with Mark Souder of Indiana's 3rd district announcing his resignation. Frankly, I've never really cared about who slept with whom or any real details involving an elected official's sex life, except insofar as it affects a candidate's ability to be elected, but this story has a pretty amusing caveat to it:

Rep. Mark Souder (R-IN) had an affair with a part-time staffer named Tracy Jackson, Fox is reporting. Jackson played the role of interviewer for a Souder Web video show on the issues of the day -- including one on the value of abstinence.

As a Democrat, I'm happy that this opens up an opportunity for us to win the seat, but on the other hand, I really American culture is too prudish about it's views on sex and are too quick to butt into others' sex lives.

Will a new Democrat run if Blumenthal digs in?

2010-05-17T23:20:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading Nate Silver's take on the Blumenthal fiasco, and I find myself largely in agreement with him, it's really going to be difficult for Blumenthal to pull his way out of this mess (though, as I said earlier, it is theoretically possible).

That being said, there's still a major problem of actually getting a top-tier Democrat to run against Blumenthal if he really decides to dig his heels in and stays in the race, it's happened in the past that candidates refused to run if they couldn't get a cleared field (Lisa Madigan, another Attorney General, refused to run for Senate because Alexi Giannoulias refused to drop out). While I don't think Blumenthal will dig in too deeply if the Democrats really make a play to force him out, it's still a possibility and it's worth mentioning that if he does, there could be major problems for the Democrats.

CT-Sen: What is wrong with Blumenthal?

2010-05-17T20:03:00.000-07:00

Wow...

The race rating for this seat is in flux, based on whether or not Connecticut Democrats force Blumenthal out of the race and if they do, who they can get to run, and for the record... who the hell lies about something like that anyways?

Update: It looks like it's possible that this isn't as big a deal as the New York Times has made of it. I'll say this much, though, one way or another someone is going to come out of this looking like an idiot, and I wouldn't be horribly surprised if it's the New York Times (regardless of whether the actual allegation is true or not).