Divining the Meaning of an Election

Michael Gerson has written a column in which he accuses political parties of... I guess it's of not sharing his personal beliefs about what is signified by the outcome of an election. Should we find it surprising that politicians characterize the political climate as being consistent with their own, and their party's, political agenda even when the facts might suggest otherwise? When G.W. Bush was pushing Social Security privatization as part of the supposed mandate from his 2005 re-election, despite its not being an election issue, Gerson was still working for him as a speechwriter. If Gerson wants to pen an interesting column on what it means to have a mandate, the collapse of that effort should provide plenty of material.

Gerson's commentary is largely inspired by the recent midterm election,

The GOP is feeling the momentum of its best congressional performance since the New Deal, and Senate Republicans are enjoying the pleasing weight of committee gavels in their hands. Elected Republicans generally believe that [President] Obama was humbled by voters and should act like it — that he should make concessions commensurate to his losses, as President Clinton did following his 1994 midterm defeat.

Obama, in contrast, seems to view the November outcome as his final liberation from a dirty political game characterized by complete Republican bad faith. He finds no repudiation in the verdict of an unrepresentative, midterm electorate. And he is no longer required to pretend that he cares about the political fate of the 4th District of Podunk. His reaction to the election has been to seek new avenues of executive action as an alternative to congressional dysfunction. So far, he has been politically rewarded.

My initial reaction to this split of opinion is pretty simple: The midterm election involved the House of Representatives and the Senate. Neither party disputes the obvious consequence of that election -- the Republicans took control of the Senate. However, the President did not stand for re-election and, as much as his political opponents might want to point to their electoral successes in a different branch of government as a reason why the President should abandon his own political agenda, that's not the way our system of government is constructed. We don't have a parliamentary system, where the party with the most seats gets to form a government with the party head becoming Prime Minister.

Gerson argues,

This type of polarization seems more psychological than ideological. Obama and congressional Republicans are inhabiting alternative political realities, with no overlap in which compromise might take root.

Although ideology comes into play, the word for which Gerson should have been searching is "political". Contrary to Gerson's suggestion, "Obama and congressional Republicans" are not "inhabiting alternative political realities" -- they are seeking to advance their own political agenda within the constraints of our political system. Gerson proceeds to explain that "'The meaning of elections... is almost always contested'" and "Election outcomes are not self-interpreting" -- well, no kidding.

As to the 2014 election: "It may well be," [political scientest Frances Lee told me, "that no single conventional wisdom will ever emerge. . . . Faced with ambiguity, people tend to believe what they want to believe. When people are surrounded by social networks that also want to believe the same thing, their views will harden further."

Cognitive bias 101... which, of course, has absolutely no relevance to how the President and Congressional Republicans interpret or respond to the election.

Gerson opines,

The parties do not view themselves as losers, even when they lose. The 2012 election should have demonstrated to Republicans (among other lessons) that they need a seriously revised outreach to minorities, women and working-class voters. The 2014 election should have demonstrated to Democrats (among other lessons) that a reputation for unreconstructed liberalism seriously limits their geographic appeal.

That, of course, is abject nonsense. If the lesson of the 2012 election is supposedly that Republicans "need a seriously revised outreach to minorities, women and working-class voters", a lesson the Republicans most certainly did not internalize, then the election of 2014 would be that the Republican Party does not need any such revised outreach. I'm reminded of how some commentators, speaking on climate change, confuse weather and climate -- it's the overall climate that requires the Republican Party to evolve. The big picture. The next twenty years. The result of a specific election is a data point, not a trend line.

When it comes to the President, it would be helpful if Gerson provided us with his conception of what it means to be an "unconstructed liberal". The term is bandied about in right-wing circles, but with little attention to meaning or consistency. It seems often to be used to describe somebody who adheres to far-left liberal positions. If that's what Gerson perceives in Obama's legislative history and his present political goals, to put it mildly, he's out of touch with reality. To the extent that Gerson is applying a dictionary definition of "unreconstructed", attempting to suggest that the President is advancing a liberal agenda that has become criticized or is unpopular, it's an odd argument. One of the reasons we have representative governments, and one of the reasons we elect officials for terms of years, is to insulate the political process from popular whims and prejudices. Further, such a definition would mean that Gerson is looking at opinion polls, not the result of the 2014 election and certainly not the results of prior elections.

Gerson's focus on geographic appeal is interesting, given that he presents geography as a problem for the Democrats but not for his own party. While it's not surprising that a Republican like Gerson would suggest that the Democrats should abandon their platform in favor of one that of his own party, it's not clear that doing so would actually do much to change the political map in the red states. What it would do is alienate blue state voters from the party, something the Republicans would no doubt appreciate but which would be entirely counter-productive to the Democratic Party itself. Gerson can't have helped but notice a clear red state, blue state divide in the 2014 election, yet he shows no sign of concern that the Republicans disavow their platform in order to woo more blue state voters. Under this interpretation of his statement, Gerson's suggestion to the Democrats is either a form of preaching to the Republican choir or is the sort of advice you give in the hope of handicapping an opponent who heeds it.

Gerson concludes,

Both parties could gain electoral advantages by realistically addressing their weaknesses, which would also open up the possibility of legislative progress. But everyone, unfortunately, seems to like what they see in the mirror.

Except... not so much. To the extent that Gerson correctly identifies trends within the population, he could make the argument that both parties need to focus on that long-term picture. Within that context it makes sense for the Republicans to pass a bipartisan immigration reform bill -- like the one that the Senate passed last year, but which the Republicans would not even allow to come up for a vote in the House. Instead the House is serving up a mess of a bill, unlikely to even gain Senate approval, but which seems to be fairly characterized as throwing red meat to anti-immigrant factions of their base.

Gerson might argue that the GOP is proving his point, that they need to pass something along the lines of the bipartisan Senate bill to help ensure the party's successful future. But even accepting that as true, the problem would be that the Republican Party, like Gerson, is focused on data points as opposed to trends. They're out to win the next election, not to lose that election for the sake of potentially positioning themselves to dominate politics a decade or more into the future. It's the President who has the eye on that future and, even if Gerson chooses to characterize his immigration policy as "unreconstituted liberalism", as something that should be abandoned, through the President's action the contrast between the Republican position and the Democratic position is made stark. Obama is taking the long view.

It's worth noting that Gerson is also playing the "pox on both your houses" game, in which he depicts both the Democrats (through Obama) and the Republicans as being equally at fault for legislative gridlock. The Republicans have come to the political realization that when a Democrat is in the White House, their party benefits from gridlock. The Senate immigration bill represents the sort of bipartisanship that Gerson would have us believe that we need (even as he suggests that the weaker reforms the President enacted through executive orders represent some form of liberal extremism) -- House Republicans killed the bill. Right now there is no chance that the Republicans are going to offer the President a reasonable immigration reform bill, let alone one that could fairly be characterized as bipartisan. There's similarly no chance that they will offer a reasonable healthcare reform bill (perhaps instead passing a score of "ObamaCare repeal" bills to add to the pile of their prior failed attempts) or a reasonable bill to address carbon emissions.... Where's the opportunity for the President to do anything but stand up for his core beliefs and do his best to advance the long-term interests of his party? It's not an issue of the President's liking what he sees in the mirror -- it's a matter of his being sufficiently politically literate to read the handwriting on the wall.

What "I Voted" Stickers Actually Do

On Bill Maher's latest show, while lamenting that more people in our society don't vote, he lampooned the idea of the "I voted" sticker as bragging about performing a relatively minor civic duty. I see it differently. When you wear an "I voted" sticker in a culture with low voter turnout, the sticker serves as a reminder to others that it's election day. The stickers also have some potential to create social or peer pressure to vote.

George Will's Odd Argument for Congressional Term Limits

Although I understand the sentiment behind term limits, dissatisfaction with career legislators, a "throw the bums out" attitude, and the like, I have not been particularly impressed with the reality that they create. Specifically, rather than having perhaps a few too many career legislators we seem to end up with far too many neophytes, many of whom fully intend to have long political careers by transitioning from one office to another as they're term limited out. It also seems that the point at which many legislators are term limited out of office roughly corresponds to the point at which they finally have enough experience and seniority to actually do their jobs effectively.

George Will wrote an editorial in favor of congressional term limits, based principally upon his personal dislike of Democratic Presidents Congress's failure to assume its role in a decision to take the nation to war. Will tells us,

The president should present to Congress the case for war. The House, structurally the government’s most democratic institution (short terms, small constituencies), should express itself. The Senate, whose powers (to approve treaties and confirm ambassadors) give it special pertinence to foreign policy, and whose structure (six-year terms) is supposed to encourage sober deliberation, should speak. Then the president, through relevant civilian and military officials, executes the approved policy.

Okay, fair enough. But despite being in near-constant military conflicts since WWII, we have not had a declared war since that time. So, what gives?

What has actually transpired since Barack Obama’s Sept. 10 address to the nation has been, Corbin and Parks argue, “a parody” of propriety. In his address about the Islamic State (which did not mention Khorasan, the asserted imminent threat that supposedly justified acting without Congress), Obama spoke to the public, not to the public’s institutional embodiment, Congress, whose support he said would be “welcome,” implying that it is unnecessary. Next, the administration argued with itself about what it was that Obama was going to do without congressional approval. (This was before his press secretary identified it as war.) Then the House tacked onto a spending bill its approval of arming certain Syrians (the “vetted” moderates?) and dispersed. The Senate, having added its approval without discernible deliberation, also skedaddled.

So, pretty much what we have seen in every armed conflict since WWII, except the President happens to be a Democrat?

I've commented before on this particular failure of Congress -- and make no mistake, it is a failure of Congress. The fact is, Congress does not want to have any responsibility for the entry into our outcome of armed conflicts, and thus does its best to wash its hands of the issue. The net effect is that they delegate war-making power to the executive. Will is correct in his inference that only one branch of government can correct the imbalance that this delegation creates -- Congress, the very branch that doesn't want that responsibility.

I can't help but think of Jack Kingston's admission, some months back, in relation to Syria and ISIS:

”A lot of people would like to stay on the sideline and say, ‘Just bomb the place and tell us about it later,’ ” said Representative Jack Kingston, Republican of Georgia, who supports having an authorization vote. ”It’s an election year. A lot of Democrats don’t know how it would play in their party, and Republicans don’t want to change anything. We like the path we’re on now. We can denounce it if it goes bad, and praise it if it goes well and ask what took him so long.”

For the House of Representatives, every other year is an election year -- but truly, they never go out of election mode. Kingston correctly identifies the strategy of the opposition party -- do everything it can to avoid having any responsibility for military action, and criticize the President no matter what happens. A president's own party, though, doesn't want responsibility either, so the biggest difference is that by avoiding authorizing military action they can avoid taking responsibility for the outcome, but with less finger-pointing at the President.

Will cites a professor from a small Catholic college, who argues that Members of Congress are seeking office "for something other than the power, for power is something with which they are not merely willing but often eager to part." I think that's incorrect. I think that Members of Congress want power without responsibility, and that there remains plenty of power within the halls of Congress but that when they are looking at a context in which they may have to face voters over a bad outcome they are happy to let somebody else make the decision and take the heat. Congress as middle management. While Will seems to endorse the professor's theory, "[Congress] has an ever-higher portion of people who are eager to make increasingly strenuous exertions to hold offices that are decreasingly consequential", I have little sense that the power of Congress has in fact lessened.

The professor believes that long-term politicians who should be "more competent [and] confident" aren't standing up to the President, apparently because "something has gone wrong with Federalist 51’s assumption that members of Congress seek office for power and not perquisites", and that the solution would be term limits:

[']Members of Congress who serve for brief periods will have . . . every political reason for taking up the power available to them while they can. . . . Members so situated will be likelier to defend their branch as a branch.”

Except perhaps those new, less confident, less competent legislators will in fact be more likely to defer to the executive. And perhaps those neophyte legislators, looking at a short term of office, will be more interested in perquisites, more interested in moving onto their next jobs, than they are with legislating or standing up to the White House. What is the incentive for a Member of Congress, being term limited out of office, to take a strong stand? Congress is to soar on the wings of lame duck legislators?

erm limits are Madisonian measures, altering the incentives — the “interests” or “personal motives” — for entering and using public office. Term limits can define a conservative agenda of taming executive power by enhancing the power of Congress.

To me it seems more likely that term limits would weaken Congress in favor of the executive, and potentially make Congress even less functional. But even if I presuppose that Will is correct, I can't help but think of how recently the "conservative agenda" involved expanding executive power through the theory of the unitary executive. As Will himself once put it,

Because contemporary conservatism was born partly in reaction to two liberal presidents -- against FDR's New Deal and LBJ's Great Society -- conservatives, who used to fear concentrations of unchecked power, valued Congress as a bridle on strong chief executives. But, disoriented by their reverence for Reagan and sedated by Republican victories in seven of the past 10 presidential elections, many conservatives have not just become comfortable with the idea of a strong president, they have embraced the theory of the "unitary executive."

This theory, refined during the Reagan administration, is that where the Constitution vests power in the executive, especially power over foreign affairs and war, the president, as chief executive, is rightfully immune to legislative abridgements of his autonomy. Judicial abridgements are another matter. When in 1952 Truman, to forestall a strike, cited his "inherent" presidential powers during wartime to seize the steel mills, the Supreme Court rebuked him. In a letter here that he evidently never sent to Justice William Douglas, Truman said, "I don't see how a Court made up of so-called 'liberals' could do what that Court did to me." Attention, conservatives: Truman correctly identified a grandiose presidency with the theory and practice of liberalism.

You'll notice an inherent inconsistency to Will's thinking -- he argues that Truman, who was not a particularly liberal President, was rebuked by the Supreme court when attempting to seize control of steel mills, rendering the expansive view of executive power relatively inert until it was revived by Reagan and kicked into overdrive by George W. Bush -- and thus it's a liberal theory. Will can call it what he chooses, but to the extent that he believes that modern conservatives eschew the unitary executive in favor of a weak President, it would be because he sees in them a reflection of his own thinking -- that it's absolutely horrible that the President continues to have power when he's a Democrat -- and he can expect their concerns about executive power, like his own, to face the moment a Republican takes office.

Why Stop at Biting Off Your Nose?

In one of those "Polls don't tell you everything" moments, as by now pretty much everybody has heard, Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor lost his primary race to a guy who appears to be wholly unqualified for public office by any objective standard -- but who happens to be a reactionary Tea Partier. A column in the New Yorker observes that, until now, the Republican establishment had been doing a good job at having their preferred candidates beat Tea Party challengers,

Jim Messina, Obama’s former campaign manager, tweeted gleefully, “Eric Cantor losing. So much for the R’s “tea party doesn’t control us” narrative.” He added, “That vomiting sound you hear is wise R’s who just realized what the ‘16 nominee will have to say & do to get thru primary.”

But this might be taking the argument too far. Clearly, the Tea Party hasn’t gone away, but one swallow doesn’t make a summer. In most big primary contests around the country, the G.O.P. establishment candidates have won, and those from Tea Party have been routed.

It does appear that when the Republicans carefully select candidates for open seats where they will face Tea Party challengers, and carefully support incumbents likely to face strong Tea Party challenges, they have developed a pretty good skill set for defeating challengers in key districts. The lesson here seems to be that you can't trust the polls, and had best apply that type of energy and skill set to every race in which you don't want a Tea Party challenger to potentially score an upset victory -- or be prepared for some surprising upsets.

Among the joys of elevating the Tea Party as a core constituency, not only that you have to cater to their politics in a manner that can turn off independent and swing voters, it's that they don't seem at all likely to forget that their power is at the primary level. Cantor's defeat is going to re-energize them. These challenges are going to continue.

Calling People "Low Information Voters" Doesn't Validate Decentralization or Privatization

In a recent article in Forbes, Ilya Somin bangs one of his favorite drums, that of the "low information voter". Somin complains that many voters don't understand the background to the government shutdown, or how much government spending goes to Medicare, Social Security and foreign aid, then lectures, "This kind of basic knowledge may not be all voters need to know to form intelligent opinions. But it’s hard to do so without it." He complains further that even informed voters can misunderstand the evidence, and that people with conflicting political beliefs can interpret the same evidence as being consistent with their own beliefs. Somin, in essence, blames this all on laziness:

It is easy to blame ignorance on stupidity or on the media. But basic information about most political issues is readily available in the media and online. It isn’t hard to find out what Obamacare insurance exchanges are. The problem is that most people don’t take the time and effort to do so. That is not because they are stupid, but because there is so little incentive to acquire political information.

I'll take issue with both of Somin's assertions. First, there is a concerted effort by parts of the media, the so-called news entertainment industry, to mislead its audiences into believing utter nonsense. If you're marginally informed about the issues, you can't turn on Fox News or drive time talk radio without figuring that out. Whether or not people should trust that type of news source isn't really the point, as many people do trust those sources and end up being misinformed and distracted from the actual issues.

Further, the mainstream media has an unfortunate tendency to turn every policy debate into a horse race, taking the proverbial "view from nowhere" while airing guests and interviews that they know to be objectively false or misleading. It seems that people like the argument more than they like to be educated, and that conflicts and contests generate more readers and viewers than a dispassionate explanation of the facts and how one side of the issue has a weaker case or is just plain wrong. A case in point would be "death panels", an outright lie about the PPACA (Obamacare) that was concocted, refined and perpetuated by the right-wing media. The mainstream media could have snuffed out that absurdity at the outset, but instead treated it as if it was a valid claim and let partisans lie on the air about the meaning and effect of perfectly reasonable provisions of the PPACA. Even though those provisions were dropped as a result, to the detriment of elderly patients, many people remain convinced that the PPACA creates "death panels". The fault for that lies almost entirely with the media. Another example would John Boehner's statements, including his widely distributed editorial, about the government shut-down. If you believe what he says you'll be less informed than when you began trying to follow the issue - but the media is not going to help you understand that, because they want Boehner to submit editorials or make appearances on their shows.

More than that, though, why does Somin believe people should have to dig for information in order to be informed, when they are reading the newspaper (or virtual equivalent) or watching the news and are being assured by the talking heads that they're getting enough information to be informed? Not everybody has the luxury to be a law professor, with many hours in an office to explore areas of esoteric interest, read the Internet, and discuss the issues of the day with informed colleagues. Most people work jobs that do not afford them similar luxuries, and it's perfectly reasonable for them to believe that the time they spend catching up with the news before heading to work, in the car, or after putting the kids to bed is sufficient to keep them informed. It's not what Somin deems being "rationally ignorant", with people knowing that they are informed but choosing to spend time on other things. It's a matter of there being only so many hours in the day, and the fact that the less you know the less aware you are of how much you need to learn.

Let's recall also that the concept of democracy does not anticipate that every voter will be informed on every issue, or even most issues. The Founding Fathers includes a number of checks on popular democracy out of concern that the masses might make bad choices - hence the non-elected Senate and the Electoral College. Inherent in the popular vote is the notion of the wisdom of the crowd - the idea that the larger body of voters will collectively exercise a level of insight and wisdom that significantly exceeds that of the typical individual voter. That's not an excuse for failing to try to better educate the pubic about the issues of the day, but if you accept that concept it's much less worrisome that people wish that spending for foreign aid were only 1% of government spending... it's actual level... instead of 10% or more.

From that rather dubious perch, Somin launches himeslf into a non sequitur:

The problem of ignorance is exacerbated by the enormous size and scope of government. Government spending accounts for well over one third of GDP, and government also regulates nearly every aspects of life. Even if voters devoted far more time to following political issues, they would still be ignorant about most government policies.... But we can help alleviate the problem by limiting and decentralizing government. When people “vote with their feet” in the private sector or in choosing what state or local government they want to live in, they have much better incentives to acquire information and use it rationally than when they vote at the ballot box.

That argument strikes me as utter nonsense. The federal government gets an incredible amount of media attention. The more local government becomes, the less media attention it typically receives. In many communities there's no meaningful media coverage of local government. While there have been corruption scandals at the federal level, in recent decades they have typically involved a small number of individuals with little impact on the overall functioning of government. The problem of corruption can be significantly more pronounced at the state level, as evidenced by Illinois, and can be appalling at the local level, as evidenced by Kwame Kilpatrick's Detroit. It is absurd to pretend that it is easier for voters to stay informed in relation to matters handled by a panoply of state and local governments, than it is to stay informed in relation to the actions of the federal government. Were that not true, one would reasonably expect that corruption and misconduct would improve at the local level, not significantly worsen.

Also, it's a rather arrogant conceit to suggest that if people don't like where they live, it's simple for them to sell their homes, uproot their families, get new jobs, and relocate to a community more to their liking. While there is no question but that when things get really bad a growing percentage of people will "vote with their feet", the significant number of people who stay behind reflect the reality that for most people it's not simple or easy, and for many it's an unaffordable luxury. More than that, there's more involved in choosing where you live than whether or not you like the state or local government, and moving to a different location that has a government more aligned with your beliefs may mean sacrificing social, employment and cultural opportunities that are important to your quality of life, as well as giving up easy access to top hospitals or similar local amenities.

Most of us spend far more time and effort acquiring information when we choose what car or TV to buy, than when we choose the president of the United States. The person deciding which car to buy knows that their decision is likely to make a real difference to the outcome. The same goes for a person deciding where to live in a federal system.

Perhaps he's speaking for himself, but I disagree with Somin's initial assertion. Most people give considerable thought to the president, and whether or not they will vote for or against an incumbent president. One might argue that much of that thought is partisan, and thus "doesn't really count", but that would sidestep Somin's claim - which is tantamount to arguing that people start thinking about their next car or television the moment they bring a new one home. I think people who vote hope that their vote makes a difference. A real difference in the outcome? Very few people who move to a new community do so with Somin's unrealistic notion that they will somehow influence local government simply by leaving one community or by joining another - I don't believe that I've ever met such a person. Moving to a different community based upon an assumption that it will be materially better than the place you live because of your perception of the political ideology of the local government seems like a fool's errand.

Somin presents no evidence, nor really any argument, that localized government would be cheaper, better, more transparent, less corrupt, more efficient... that it would provide any actual benefit to the public. He does not address the complexity of the modern nation state, nor the fact that some of the things of which he complains (e.g., ignorance of spending levels for foreign aid, Social Security and Medicare) are going to remain at the national level. He may have a pipe dream where programs like Social Security and Medicare become state-run programs, but the added complexity of such an approach should be obvious, as should be the impairment of people's ability to "vote with their feet" when they have to worry about how benefits are coordinated between states. But if you leave the big ticket items at the national level - military spending, Social Security and Medicare, along with matters that the federal government alone can reasonably address, such as managing foreign relations, regulating interstate commerce, providing the FDA, FTC, SEC, EPA, FEMA, USCIS, ICE, USPTO and the like, Somin's approach isn't actually going to simplify choices for voters at the federal level. It will instead add to the complexity of their other votes while doing next to nothing to simplify the federal government.

From there, Somin doubles down on his non seqiturs:

By reducing the size of government, we can enable more choices to be made in the private sector, where people have better incentives to become informed.

It seems that Somin imagines a future involving a lot more than localization of government, with government either outsourcing various tasks to the private sector or people being left without government support in certain areas of their lives and having to turn instead to private sector solutions. Somin is employed by a major university, and likely chooses his health insurance from a number of heavily subsidized plans offered by his employer - something akin to a health insurance exchange under the PPACA, but with his receiving a large subsidy for which he would be ineligible under that law. It's unlikely that Somin has ever tried to purchase health insurance on the individual market, let alone insure his family in that manner. It is unlikely that he has dealt with insurance companies' arbitrary denial of coverage, or trying to get individual coverage with a pre-existing medical condition. If he had, he wouldn't adhere to the fantasy that "more choices" result in a better informed consumer and even if all he cares about are incentives he would be aware of how difficult it is to actually compare individual health plans - even those offered by a single insurance company.

Were Somin to research the issue he would learn that having too many options can be paralyzing - people get confused, don't know how to draw meaningful distinctions, and may end up making their choices based upon arbitrarily selected, sometimes incorrect, information and assumptions. Somin may fret for hours or days about what TV to buy or what car to purchase, but at the end of the day his life will be little affected by whether he chooses a Camry or an Accord, a Vizio or a Samsung. If Somin believes his own conceit that voters are too lazy to educate themselves, his is a recipe for making that situation worse.

If Republicans Obstruct Voting Rights, They Can't Pin the Consequence on Roberts

Ross Douthat purports,

If you believe Chief Justice John Roberts Jr.’s more overheated liberal critics, last week’s Supreme Court decision invalidating a portion of the Voting Rights Act is designed to make sure African-American turnout never hits these highs again. The ruling will allow a number of (mostly Southern) states to change voting laws without the Justice Department’s pre-approval, which has liberals predicting a wave of Republican-led efforts to “suppress” minority votes — through voter ID laws, restrictions on early voting and other measures.

These predictions probably overstate the ruling’s direct impact on state election rules, which can still be challenged under other provisions of the Voting Rights Act and other state and federal laws. But it is possible that the decision will boost the existing Republican enthusiasm for voter ID laws, and hasten the ongoing, multistate push for their adoption.

I think there's an inherent tension between suggesting in one paragraph that an argument is a ridiculous slippery slope theory advanced by "overheated liberal critics", then in the next to say that the predictions of those "overheated liberal critics... probably overstate" the impact of the ruling. At first blush it would seem either that a characterization of the critics as "overheated liberal[s]" is unfair or that the risk of vote suppression is dramatically overstated by the suggestion that it "probably" won't occur - is it truly a coin toss? Perhaps Douthat means to suggest that although only "overheated liberal[s]" are concerned, a much larger population of liberals and conservatives underestimate the possibility that they're correct? I suspect it's poor editing.

The "gift" Douthat perceives is that Republicans will continue their effort to disenfranchise African American voters:

A 2 percent dip is still enough to influence a close election. But voter ID laws don’t take effect in a vacuum: as they’re debated, passed and contested in court, they shape voter preferences and influence voter enthusiasm in ways that might well outstrip their direct influence on turnout. They inspire registration drives and education efforts; they help activists fund-raise and organize; they raise the specter of past injustices; they reinforce a narrative that their architects are indifferent or hostile to minorities.

This, I suspect, is part of the story of why African-American turnout didn’t fall off as expected between 2008 and 2012. By trying to restrict the franchise on the margins, Republican state legislators handed Democrats a powerful tool for mobilization and persuasion, and motivated voters who might otherwise have lost some of their enthusiasm after the euphoria of “Yes We Can” gave way to the reality of a stagnant, high-unemployment economy.

Oddly, despite having noted that tjhe "effects [of voter ID laws] are relatively limited" and that the resulting "reduction [in voting] crosses racial lines, rather than affecting African-Americans exclusively", Douthat seems unconcerned by those efforts on voters. His concern seems to be only that his party of preference may suffer for its actions. Douthat shares some numbers:

As Sean Trende of RealClearPolitics has pointed out, for all the talk about how important Hispanics are to the conservative future, the Republican Party could substantially close the gap with Democrats in presidential elections if its post-Obama share of the African-American vote merely climbed back above 10 percent — a feat achieved by Bob Dole and both Bushes. If that share climbed higher still, the Democratic majority would be in danger of collapse.

Such a turn of events wouldn’t just be good news for Republicans. It would be good news for black Americans, as it would mean that both parties were competing for their votes.

First, an implicit admission that Republican "voter ID" initiatives and similar measures were pursued in order to suppress the African American vote, and now an implicit admission that the Republican Party is not attempting to compete with the Democratic Party for Republican votes? But there must be something more to transitioning from the present state of affairs to a context in which "both parties [a]re competing for [African American] votes" than the Republican Party's merely retreating from efforts to suppress African American voter turnout. Douthat does not explain what that might be.

As Jon Stewart put it, if the Republican Party wants to win more African American votes, "You can’t just yadda yadda yadda the last 60 Republican years". Other than "Let's back off voter suppression efforts," what does Douthat suggest? Meanwhile, rather than suggesting that an outcome the Democratic Party opposed, and which Republican partisans have been seeking for decades, is a gift to the Democrats, perhaps Douthat should ponder the fact that if he's correct it will still be the Republican Party that cuts off its nose to spite its face. The gift in that imagined future is not from Roberts to the Democratic Party, it would be from the Republicans.

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A "Bush v. Gore" What If....

Courtesy of Sandra Day O'Connor, Scott Lemiuex shares his memories of a horrible series of Supreme Court decisions.

And, again, it’s not just that justices notably unsympathetic to broad equal protection claims claimed to accept an innovative equal protection argument. Where Bush v. Gore immediately falls apart and becomes a historic disgrace is that the completely lawless remedy left an election count with all of the alleged equal protection defects of the court-ordered recount (and the “mess up” job of the Florida authorities) in place.

Here's a thought experiment: What if, rather than tampering in a poorly conducted state election the Supreme Court had let the result stand. Even in the worst of circumstances the Constitution provides a remedy, specifically that the House of Representatives would elect the President.

The Electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by Ballot for two Persons, of whom one at least shall not be an Inhabitant of the same State with themselves. And they shall make a List of all the Persons voted for, and of the Number of Votes for each; which List they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the Seat of the Government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate. The President of the Senate shall, in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted. The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President, if such Number be a Majority of the whole Number of Electors appointed; and if there be more than one who have such Majority, and have an equal Number of Votes, then the House of Representatives shall immediately chuse by Ballot one of them for President; and if no Person have a Majority, then from the five highest on the List the said House shall in like Manner chuse the President. But in chusing the President, the Votes shall be taken by States, the Representation from each State having one Vote; A quorum for this purpose shall consist of a Member or Members from two thirds of the States, and a Majority of all the States shall be necessary to a Choice. In every Case, after the Choice of the President, the Person having the greatest Number of Votes of the Electors shall be the Vice President. But if there should remain two or more who have equal Votes, the Senate shall chuse from them by Ballot the Vice President.

Had the election come down to that, we might as a nation have taken a hard look at how elections are conducted, inconsistent approaches to taking and tallying votes, and similar flaws and set about fixing them. Instead the Supreme Court allowed the nation to bypass that type of difficult work, and subsequent concerns about election technology, fairness and potential for actual fraud have largely been either ignored or have gained attention based not on the genuine flaws reveled by Florida, but based upon demagoguery about largely imaginary allegations of voter fraud. Rather than having remedies directed at improving elections, legislatures have largely focused on making it difficult for certain classes of voter to reach the polls and vote.

Maybe it wouldn't have made a difference. But....

Who Wants to Provide a Full-Throated Defense of Labor Unions?

Harold Meyerson repeats the common belief that Michigan's rushed-through anti-union law was meant to punish unions for daring to attempt to protect collective bargaining through a constitutional amendment:

In Wisconsin, a union-initiated effort to recall Republican governor Scott Walker, who had pushed through the legislature a law stripping public-sector unions of collective-bargaining rights, failed badly at the polls. In Michigan, after voters (in the same election in which they gave Obama a clear victory) decisively rejected a union-initiated ballot measure that would have enshrined collective-bargaining rights in the state constitution, the Republican legislature passed, and Republican governor Rick Snyder signed, a right-to-work law in the cradle of American industrial unionism. What makes these defeats more bitter was that both involved unforced errors—actually, the same unforced error—on labor’s part. On the evidence of polling, many union leaders and political directors believed from the start that the Wisconsin recall and the Michigan ballot measure were fights that could not be won, but their cautions went unheeded by well-intentioned unionists in both states. It’s not clear that Snyder, who had previously disavowed any interest in enacting a right-to-work law, would have changed his mind had the measure not been put on the ballot and defeated, but its defeat certainly set the stage for the Republicans’ sudden and unheralded push for right to work during the legislature’s lame-duck session.

Did it also "set the stage" for their trying to cram through "open carry" legislation? For their attempting to cram through anti-abortion legislation? If you take a step back and look at the reactionary legislation of Michigan's lame duck session, the only reasonable takeaway is that the Republican Party had the bills prepared, ready and waiting, and that the only thing that changed following the election was that they no longer had to lie about their intentions. If Governor Snyder can be assumed to have had a change of heart, rather than it being inferred that he has been telling his party, "Wait until after the election", I expect that the change of heart had a lot more to do with the defeat of his emergency manager legislation than it did with the pro-collective bargaining amendment.

There's something else to consider: even if the Republican party passed its right-to-work law as petty revenge for the proposed collective bargaining amendment, they hid that intention through the election. It's correct to suggest that the amendment never had much of a chance, but it would have had a much greater chance of passing had the Republicans announced, "If this fails, we're going to make Michigan a 'right-to-work' state", or "We plan to cram through anti-union legislation in the lame duck session." I have encountered several people who voted against the proposed amendment on the basis that it was overreaching who have expressed that had they known what the Republicans were planning they would have voted for the amendment despite its flaws.

But it's important to remember something else. Even with the Republicans lying about their intentions due to their fear of a public that supports the right to unionize, they understand that many people who favor protecting the right to organize are not big fans of unions. They recognize that for the most part, whether we're talking about the state or federal level, the Democratic Party is of a similar mindset - to the extent that Democratic administrations may have pursued policies that slowed the demise of organized labor, they supported other policies that contributed to the loss of union jobs. Democrats have overtly rejected a German-style approach to labor organization. Under the best of circumstances, labor unions would not have had an easy time over the past half-century, but nobody's been trying to make it easy for them.

What of the unions themselves? Over the past fifty years, Michigan has had six governors. Four were Republican. Neither of the Democratic candidates emerged from unions. When the unions have managed to advance candidates with strong union ties... things have not gone well at the ballot box. Michigan's Democratic U.S. Senators are similarly pro-union, but not out of the unions. That is to say, the public at large seems to have long wanted to maintain something of an arm's length relationship with the state's unions. If history's lesson can be trusted, about the worst thing that could happen for the Democratic Party, two years from now, would be for the unions to dominate the nomination processs and election campaign.

When you ask people to make the case for unions, some will start with a history of the labor movement and point to the abuses of management, past, present and overseas. Some will talk about the importance of protecting the rights of workers in an imbalanced relationship, or of how weak U.S. labor laws are as compared to other countries while suggesting that the job and workplace protections we have emerged in no small part from the efforts of the labor unions. But you almost never encounter a full-throated defense of unions. It's in fact pretty rare to encounter somebody who, perhaps reluctantly but often quite willingly, admits to the problems associated with organized labor even as they defend the role of unions. Here's something else that's interesting. One faction that is heavily invested in the debate has done a terrible job of defending labor unions and organized labor. I am speaking, of course, of the unions themselves.

Governor Snyder can't make a case for his right-to-work law, so we get stories about jobs supposedly flooding into Indiana, or the suggestion that becoming a right-to-work state is actually good for workers and labor unions. You know what? If the "solution" to Michigan's economic woes is to add a handful of low-wage jobs to the economy, part of the race to the bottom that leads to Michigan's economy being indistinguishable from that of Mississippi, I don't consider that to be a good thing.

Flint has gone a great job adding non-union, low wage jobs - telemarketer phone banks. Is that the future Snyder wants for Michigan? Because if his model is Ann Arbor, this anti-union stuff is at best a distraction. I admit that my perspective is skewed by wanting good governance, healthy communities, the availability of good schools, good jobs, and the like. If you look at the states with the worst economies, the worst per capita incomes... Republican strongholds.

Contempt for the Constitutional System

The Republican Party is apparently urging Democratic-leaning swing states to abandon "winner takes all" in favor of a pro-Republican redistribution of electoral votes.

Republicans alarmed at the apparent challenges they face in winning the White House are preparing an all-out assault on the Electoral College system in critical states, an initiative that would significantly ease the party's path to the Oval Office.

Senior Republicans say they will try to leverage their party's majorities in Democratic-leaning states in an effort to end the winner-take-all system of awarding electoral votes. Instead, bills that will be introduced in several Democratic states would award electoral votes on a proportional basis.

The historic norm has been for the electoral vote to be awarded on a state-by-state "winner takes all" basis. The goal here is to leverage Republican gerrymandering and control of state legislatures into a system that subverts both the popular vote and the rationale for maintaining the Electoral College.

Under the current system, whatever its faults, the Electoral College gives smaller states a voice in presidential elections - without it, campaigns would focus almost exclusively on states with high populations, and the urban centers of smaller states, as that's where the votes would be. With it, not only do the smallest states benefit from the provision of a minimum of three electors, but politicians pay attention to states and regions that would be of marginal interest if the goal were simply to win a national, popular vote.

The goal of this initiative is to undermine the strength of Democratic states and regions by, in effect, eliminating their relevance to the national election - or even by providing a significant majority of the electoral vote to a candidate who was trounced in a state-wide popular vote. It's easy to see why Republican partisans would get excited over the idea of taking states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin out of contention, to be followed by Florida, Ohio, and Virginia. But if the governors of those states are stupid enough to go along with the idea, they'll be less relevant to the next presidential election than West Virginia and North Carolina. There is, of course, no Republican move to redistribute the electoral vote in "red states".

If you take yourself out of the picture, you may well get a, "Thanks, you're a great guy" from the partisans who want you to chop your state off at the knees, but once you've made your state irrelevant to the next presidential election... who do you imagine is going to show you love? There's a reason why Iowa works so hard to maintain its prominent role in presidential elections.

Alas, there's little sign that the targeted Republican governors value either the democratic process or the long-term welfare of their states. My guess is that if you offer them enough of a personal reward, they'll happily sell their states down the river.

Reinventing the Republican Party - "And Never the Twain Shall Meet"

A significant number of Republicans have renewed their argument for a modest reinvention of the Republican Party, that it needs to move away from social conservatism, tone down its anti-immigrant rhetoric, cast off the remnants of the southern strategy, and emphasize broadly accepted conservative principles: personal responsibility, independence, hard work, and the like. That appears to be the vision of David Brooks, although he has to distort history in order to try to lay claim to those values as somehow being Republican. It has been somewhat amusing to see how many conservatives now claim to have "always argued" in favor of such a transformation of the party, never mind that before the election most never raised the argument in more than a whisper and many were at times part of what they're now describing as the problem.

Here's the thing: If the Republican Party can in fact transform itself, if it can convince America "We're no longer interested in your bedrooms. We want to be the party that helps everybody get a reasonably equal start in life, and give everybody the opportunity to advance, but not the party that subsidizes irresponsibility. No more 'trickle down' or 'laffer curves', we are going to focus on building the economy based upon sound principles. No more anti-science arguments or measures, that stuff is an artifact of the past. We're going to maintain a strong military, but will refrain from adventurism and have no interest in empire. We're going to stick to free market principles, we're going to push for small government, we're going to avoid trying to solve society's problems through laws and regulations, but we are advocates of good governance, and for government to be there when we need it," it will be in a powerful position in future elections. I could see that type of party pulling 55-60% of the vote.

The difficulty the Republican Party faces is two-fold. First, Members of Congress are going to be focused principally upon their own needs and futures, not what might benefit the party as a whole. They will want to avoid primary challenges from the right. It will be difficult for the Republican Party to transform itself when a significant core of its elected representatives refuse to play along. Second, the presidential primary process requires the party's candidate to run a gauntlet that poses similar issues along the way - if a candidate alienates the religious right, a competitor who by all right should be laughed out of the room can become a viable alternative for the nomination.

That is to say, a serious reform effort is going to be painful. First, when you tell your wealthy contributors, "How about we try to give you 95% of what you want instead of 100%," those contributors are apt to say, "Then what makes you different from the other party?" And if you tell the religious right, "We're no longer going to go to the wall for you on moral issues," even if at some level the voters at issue were already skeptical of your sincerity, you risk that they will decline to show up at the polls or will back a third party candidate.

Meanwhile, you aren't actually that far into the hole. Despite all of the flaws of your party, its platform, the nomination process and your presidential candidate, you came very close to winning. Despite the problems caused by the Tea Party and some candidates who no sensible person would want associated with the party, you have a solid majority in the House of Representatives and can correct your mistakes in the Senate races without drastic action. Further, things cycle - no party stays in power indefinitely and it may be "your time" as soon as four years from now. Why change?

Perhaps more than that, if the price of not changing is that you lose a few more elections before facing the music, whereas the price of facing the music now is that you lose a few elections while reinventing the party, is there an actual benefit in attempting a dramatic transformation instead of a less coordinated evolutionary process going forward? Isn't it better to keep things pretty much the way they are, to try to win the next few elections, than to write them off in the name of a dramatic experiment that guarantees that some Members of Congress will lose their seats and at best will make a presidential candidate marginally more competitive four years from now?

Is it possible to dramatically transform the Republican Party without alienating core elements of both its base and its deep-pocketed supporters? I doubt it. And as much as some of the more level heads in the party can see the need, even describe a path, I think they're going to receive a lot of push-back. At best, "Maybe we can run a candidate who says all of those nice things, while reassuring the base and our donors that we still have their backs?" If it almost worked with Mitt Romney, might it not work with the next candidate?

George Will's Self-Serving Arguments on Campaign Spending

Note to George Will: If you can't make an honest case for your position on campaign spending, specifically allowing unlimited corporate money into political campaigns, perhaps you should admit that your argument is nowhere near as compelling as you pretend.

The 2010 elections, the first after the Supreme Court’s excellent Citizens United> decision liberalized the rules about funding political advocacy, were especially competitive. Social science confirms what common sense suggests: More spending on political advocacy means more voter information and interest. The approximately $2 billion spent in support of this year’s presidential candidates — only about two-thirds as much as Procter & Gamble spent on U.S. advertising last year — surely contributed to the high turnout in targeted states.

Let's start with the statement, "Social science confirms..." - if in fact social science supports Will's suppositions, where can I find it? Why isn't Will citing studies, or linking to materials that support his contention that his positions are now supported by "social science"?

The first thing "social science" supposedly confirms is "spending on political advocacy means more voter information and interest". Where can I find evidence that increased spending on political advocacy resulted in more information being available to voters? Where can I find evidence that the spending made voters more interested in the election? Given that a great deal of third party spending goes to negative advertising and misinformation, to the extent that we assume that voters are engaged by the advertising where is the evidence that it improves how voters engage with the facts and issues? If "more voter information" is provided, but it's inferior in quality or false, could it not result in a less informed electorate, less capable of making an informed decision?

When we talk about the amount spent on the election campaign, how does $2 billion become a trivial amount? Why does Will believe P&G's advertising budget to be a relevant number for comparison to election ad spending?

Will says that the ads "surely contributed to the high turnout in targeted states" - again, based on what "social science"? Why should we assume ads, not GOTV efforts, were what brought otherwise ambivalent voters to the polls? In recent years the top six states for voter turnout have not been swing states - unless you count Wisconsin as a swing state. This year?

Ohio had a 61.8% turnout - down 5.1% from 2008.
Florida had a 62.2% turnout - down 3.9% from 2008.
Virginia had a 63.8% turnout - down 3.2% from 2008.
Colorado had a 65.6% turnout - down 5.4% from 2008.
North Carolina had a 64.5% turnout - down 1% from 2008.
Pennsylvania had a 57.7% turnout - down 5.9% from 2008.
Iowa had a 69.1% turnout - down 0.3% from 2008.
Nevada had a 56.9% turnout - down 0.1% from 2008.
Wisconsin had a 72.2% turnout - down 0.2% from 2008.
Michigan had a 63% turnout - down 6.2% from 2008.

In other words, there's what Will is saying (increased political advertising in swing states brings more voters to the polls) and then there's reality - spending went way up, voter turnout went down. Karl Rove, king of campaign filth, has been shedding crocodile tears over "voter suppression" caused by negative ads - perhaps he and Will should talk.

Will next attempts to play the hypocrisy card,

Media and other “nonpartisan” — please, no chortling — dismay about “too much money in politics” waned as seven of the 10 highest-spending political entities supported Democrats and outspent the three supporting Republicans, according to the Wall Street Journal.

First, the fact that you believe that campaign finance should be regulated does not mean you have to go into an election unarmed. There is nothing wrong with following the law as it presently stands, even as you're arguing that it should be changed - even as you're promising to change it if you're elected. That's not hypocrisy - it's common sense. And by the same token it's possible to be appalled by how much money you're able to raise and spend on your campaign, even as you're continuing to raise and spend that money to try to win. It's possible to be appalled by the expenditures of your favored party or candidate, yet still see the necessity of contributing to their campaign.

As Will did not link to the source of his "seven of the top ten" allegation, I had to search for it. Given that Will did not provide a link, I expected to find that his source did not say what he was implying - and sure enough it did not. In terms of dollars spent, as of the date the article's figures were compiled, the three right-wing groups spent $205.6 million, and the seven left-wing groups spent 229.8. If you remove the 27.6 spent by the Senate Democrats' Super PAC, the three outside right-wing groups outspend the remaining six Democratic outside groups. If you look at updated data, and believe that the raw count is somehow relevant to the discussion, the number shifts to 6:4 groups in favor of the Republicans.

It's also immediately apparent that Will is referring to out-of-date information. It would be one thing if November 1 were the best you could do, but... not even close. As the figures used by the WSJ come from The Center for Responsive Politics, it's easy to obtain more recent data. Surprise! The number one and two organizations on Will's list, both supporting Romney, spent an additional $136 million between when the WSJ compiled its statistics and the date of the most recent data from their named source. SEIU's spending, recited in the WSJ piece as $69 million, is listed as $30.1 million... odd? Will, I'm sure, is heartened that the top two organizations are both conservative, and both make the left-leaning groups seem woefully underfunded.

At least Will is honest in the end, at least about his motives:

The advocacy infrastructure being developed by both sides in the post-Citizens United world will, over time, favor the most plausible side, which conservatives know is theirs.

That is, despite all the window dressing, for Will it's not about the Constitution. It's not about educating voters or bringing them to the polls. It's about helping the party he supports get a structural advantage that will help it outspend the other party. It seems reasonable to infer that Will's actual fear is that his party can't win in the marketplace of ideas, and that he thus supports their being able to drown out other voices through massive campaign spending. Will can pretend it's about principle if he chooses, but it seems inescapable that the primary driver for his position on campaign funding is politics.

Update: As more votes are counted, the voter turnout picture is more mixed. For the key swing states, Virginia and Florida showed very small increases in turnout, while turnout was significantly down in Ohio. Will's position that the barrage of campaign spending increased turnout remains unsupported by the data.

The Fleecing of the Billionaires

One of the terms that should strike fear into your heart when uttered by a government agency is that they've entered into a "cost-plus" contract - the winner is compensated for his expenses and is guaranteed a contractually specified rate of return on top of those expenses, sometimes a percentage. Fortunately there are few circumstances in which cost-plus contracts are offered, and they usually involve issues involving a high up-front investment and high risk of loss (e.g., setting up a distribution network for food and supplies in a war zone).

When I think of the past election, I can't help but think of the sweet deals that campaign consultants can often obtain, through which they "earn" a percentage of certain campaign expenditures, such as ad buys. With Citizens United, they can cut out the middle man - set up an organization and solicit funds from contributors, with nobody from the campaign breathing down their necks about whether their ads are working or if there might be better ways to spend the money. If rich people want to give you hundreds of millions of dollars to spend on an ad campaign, win or lose, you pocket an enormous fee.

One positive aspect Romney's loss is that it will make billionaires think twice before again trying to buy an election. But I would not be surprised if, over the next four to twelve years, we see them again attempt to do so, all the while getting smarter and smarter about how they allocate their money. But for now, it seems reasonable to say, some very rich individuals who believe themselves to be the brightest, most capable people on the planet, got fleeced.

Let's Not Forget How the Game is Scored

In sport, a team that has reached a point at which it is guaranteed victory may hesitate to run up the score. A win is a win and, absent the opportunity to set a new record, genuine concern about a late comeback, or a similarly reasonable reason to do so, it's widely viewed as poor sportsmanship.

Politics isn't sport, but a win remains a win. Save for the possibility of a recount, the outcome of an election predicated on the popular vote doesn't change based upon whether you win by 1 vote or 1,000,000 votes. If one strategy gives you a 75% chance at winning with 55% of the vote, and another gives you a 90% strategy of winning with 51% of the vote, the latter strategy is the better bet. When Karl Rove dreams of a "permanent Republican majority", or at least a semi-permanent majority, while I'm sure he would be happy if it were 75% or more, or even 55%, he'll take 51%.

Let's also recall, the presidency is not decided based upon the popular vote. It's decided based upon the Electoral College, and the Republican Party is very much focused on preserving that institution. Not because they're truly worried about voter fraud, but because the manner in which electors are assigned to states and subsequently chosen by voters benefits them. Do away with the electoral college and even in swing states the focus will be on major population centers. If you're trying to maximize the popular vote, your priorities will be very different than if you're trying to maximize the electoral vote.

When you watch a football game and you see a score of 21-18, that's a close game. If you see a score of 21-9, not so close. But the first score may be three touchdowns versus six field goals, and the second three touchdowns versus three field goals. Would you be tempted to say that the losing team "really won" the first game and "really tied" the second, based upon the number of times each team scored? Well, if it's your team you might be tempted, but your friends are going to laugh at you if you try to persuade them that you're right.

The Electoral College works in a similar way. You get a certain number of electors for each state you win, mostly on a "winner takes all" basis. So you plan your victory based upon the number of electoral votes you can accumulate. You put enough resources into safe states to keep them in your column, but you focus your recourses on getting your supporters to the polls in the states in which you believe you'll win - or lose - by a narrow margin. When a state does not appear to be in play, it won't get much attention from either candidate - you don't want to waste time and money on a sure win or sure loss when you can better use your resources in a swing state.

When Kevin Drum lectures,

Liberals, you should rein in the triumphalism. Obama won a narrow 51-49 percent victory and the composition of Congress changed only slightly. This was not a historic vindication of liberalism, and it doesn't mean that we can suddenly decide that demography will sweep us to victory for the next couple of decades.

I thus agree in part and disagree in part. If there are people on the far left of the Democratic Party who believe that the nation is now ready for the roll-out of their agenda, they are in for a rude awakening. If the Republican Party gets its act together, it could be a bona fide contender in the next presidential race - and even if it doesn't it remains a serious contender for the midterm elections.

But...

Obama did not win "a narrow 51-49 percent victory". Assuming Florida certifies for Obama, as it is likely to do, he won a landslide 332-206 victory. Because the victory is not based upon "number of states one" or "percentage of votes case". The victory is based upon the number of electors won. Had the Obama team reallocated its resources, it could have lost the election while winning 55% or more of the popular vote. Frankly, Romney could have done the same thing, but would likely have been rewarded by an even greater loss in the electoral vote. So yes, remember the popular vote and that the nation is divided on a lot of important issues - but don't pretend that the popular vote is significant to, or somehow trumps, the result of the electoral vote as that's not how the game is scored and obviously that's not how the game is won.

Still Crazy Illogical After All These Years

I've commented on the dimwitted argument by people that it's hard to believe don't know better, that any negative movement in the stock market is somehow the fault of a Democratic politician. For example, George Will.

Right-wing law professor Jim Lindgren made that insipid argument four years ago. Today he doubles down.

If Lindgren believes this type of claptrap, it would seem you can teach law while having a very poor grasp of logic. If he does not, that type of games-playing is beneath him.

People in Other Nations Don't Obsess Over Domestic U.S. Politics?

Okay, so that's not news to you, but it appears to be news to Anne Applebaum.

“Is this presidential election really the most important in our lifetime?” That was the question asked, in so many words, by a concerned Brit at a discussion here a few days ago. His words were directed at the political analyst Larry Sabato, whose countenance had been beamed onto a conference-room screen like some giant electronic guru. Sabato didn’t blink. “This presidential election,” he replied, “is definitely the most important since 2008.”

Appreciative laughter followed, but the audience wasn’t entirely satisfied.

Perhaps that should read, self-satisfied laughter followed, but the audience didn't entirely appreciate the joke? Applebaum continues,

For the British — as for most Europeans and, indeed, most other foreigners — that aspect of this election is extremely hard to understand. Is the 2012 presidential race “important”? That is, will it mark a momentous change in U.S. foreign policy and attitudes toward the world — or will its result make no difference at all?

Here's the thing: people in other nations pay more attention to U.S. presidential elections than we do to theirs, because the decisions of the U.S. President are more likely to affect them in some way than the decisions of their leaders are to affect us. It's also, frankly, a bit fun to be appalled by the low quality of one American politician or another, the crazy issues that Americans based their votes upon, and the staggering sums of money expended on the presidential race. A fair retort, in the U.S., it's unlikely that Silvio Berlusconi would have been able to buy himself into a higher office than... the U.S. Senate. A Canadian was giving me a "Mitt Romney, seriously", line the other day to which there is now an easy two-word retort, "Stephen Harper.")

Applebaum goes on to describe past elections in which... Europeans enjoyed being appalled by some of the politicians and their conduct, the money, and a larger indifference - as if they realize that the choice of President is more likely to affect our lives than theirs.

There are multiple reasons for this indifference, starting with the fact that people no longer believe, as many once did, that an American president can solve all of their problems.

You'll excuse me for asking, in what alternate reality did Europeans believe that our choice of U.S. President could result in a solution to "all of their problems"? I've lived in two other countries, have relatives who live in other countries, and have traveled internationally, and yet I've never met such a person.

The myth of America as an all-seeing, all-knowing superpower persists in a few places — ironically, one hears it most often in the Arab world — but most everywhere else it is long gone.

I have to wonder... Applebaum doesn't get out much, does she....

In my experience, people in other countries have long recognized what is only now dawning on Applebaum: That they have no say in U.S. elections and that, although U.S. elections may affect them and the policies of their own government, the primary effect of a U.S. election will be on the people of the U.S. - there, just as here, it's fun to watch the horse race coverage and make condescending comments about the candidates and system, but at the end of the day the elections they most worry about are their own.

In her slow recognition that the outcome of the U.S. election won't matter much to Europeans, Applebaum appears to also be suggesting that the outcome won't matter much to us. That's true to a degree - certainly true to those like her who are fortunate enough to live their lives in a gilded bubble, and it's certainly true that a change of President has no material impact on most international issues - but there are many domestic issues that will affect the middle class and less fortunate individuals in our society, and while a joke along the lines of "this is definitely the most important election since 2008" may seem funny to those who think the election is about a 3% tax increase (vs. a 20% tax cut) for the wealthy, it's not as funny if you're slipping out of the middle class, unemployed, or on Medicaid.

Michigan Voters - Preview Your Ballot

Go to Publius and find out exactly what's on your local ballot.

The ballot is ridiculously long this year - if you're going to try to work through the lesser-known offices and the nonpartisan ballot, and don't want to spend a lot of time at your polling place trying to figure out what each of the ballot initiatives is about, Publius allows you to do all of your thinking in advance.

Foreign Policy? What's That?

David Ignatius presents what on one hand is a fair criticism of the President for his failure to articulate clear policies on foreign policy issues, and is on the other hand an unfair implication that this failure is both unique to President Obama and not a predictable consequence of our political system with its rigidly scheduled elections, presidential term limits, shallow political commentary and larger public disinterest in foreign policy.

Let's be blunt, our nation's Middle East policy has been a disaster for pretty much as long as the Middle East has had geopolitical significance. For much of that history, the United States has backed dictators and monarchs, even if that meant suppressing secular democratic movements and turning a blind eye to the rise of Islamic radicalism and the impact our policies have on popular opinion. We have been consistent in our support for Israel, but that's a one-off, not a coherent regional policy. The most articulate Middle East policy I can recall is the Carter Doctrine, "An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force." But that's more about hegemony than about creating a Middle East that, if not aligned with our interests, is at least not in large part openly hostile.

I have commented for years on what is obvious, that Presidents shy away from doing anything important prior to elections. And I'm not just speaking about the months or year leading up to an election. I'm talking about any major policy proposal or change that is expected to be difficult or potentially unpopular. To the maximum extent possible many of those issues are postponed until after the President is elected to his second term, or are implemented on a time table that delays important policies and benchmarks from being implicated until a year or two after the election.

Ignatius complains that a comment by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a "laugh line" that reflects "President Obama’s risk-averse refusal to engage on foreign policy issues", but I find it to be neither a laugh line nor even about Obama.

“I do believe that some conversations and key issues must be talked about again once we come out of the other end of the political election atmosphere in the United States.”

It's a candid statement of the reality faced by any nation hoping to effect foreign policy change in the United States. If it's controversial, the President is likely to put it off until after the election. If it's both difficult and controversial, there's a good chance any given President will punt, or take late action that leaves his successor to deal with any problems or to clean up the mess.

Ignatius complains,

The “come back after Nov. 6” sign is most obvious with Iran. The other members of the “P5+1” negotiating group understand that the United States doesn’t want serious bargaining until after the election, lest Obama have to consider compromises that might make him look weak.

It's fair to ask, what does Ignatius believe that the nation will gain by pushing ahead with negotiations right now, and trying to come to some form of deal with Iran in advance of the election? Will we suddenly be able to breathe a collective sigh of relief, end all sanctions against Iran, and live forever as a big happy family? Of course not. If and when an agreement is reached, things will continue to carry on pretty much as they are.

Ahmadinejad and some of his aides let slip during their visit to New York that they may be willing to offer a deal that would halt enrichment of uranium above 5 percent. Is this a good deal or not, in terms of U.S. and Israeli security? Sorry, come back later.

Why does Ignatius pose that as a rhetorical question rather than sharing his opinion, or the opinion of any of the other nations in "" who aren't burdened by pending elections? In case he needs the reminder, Netanyahu, bomb chart in hand, just gave the U.N. a somewhat condescending lecture about Iran. I missed the part when he said, "But if Iran says they won't enrich past 5%, peace will break out all over." If, consistent with the consensus view of their plan, Iran hopes to be the turn of a key away from becoming a nuclear state, does it matter if they "only" enrich uranium to 5% if with a few taps on a keyboard the very same centrifuges can enrich uranium to 20%?

This is pretty amazing:

Will Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu keep his gun in the holster until after the polls close? The White House certainly hopes so. But someone should check the odds with Sheldon Adelson, the casino magnate who is one of Mitt Romney’s biggest financial backers.

What we saw over a period of months was Netanyahu's open effort to influence the outcome of U.S. elections, despite a growing criticism of his tactics by other political and military leaders, right to the point he flew to the U.S. to grouse about being snubbed by the President and to appear on Meet the Press, but then... oh, those polls. Time to be contrite, stay out of U.S. election politics, distance himself from any claim that he hopes for a Romney victory. Looking at Adelson's bet on Romney and their joint visit to Israel earlier this year, it isn't the President who looks like the loser in that round of high stakes gambling.

Ignatius then complains that, although the President has implemented programs in Egypt and Syria that Ignatius seems to regard as promising, the President isn't talking about those programs. So the problem isn't that the President is failing to form good policy, or is making bad bets, it's that he's not flashing his cards? How would public attention improve Obama's policies? How might Republican demagoguery affect their implementation? Given Romney's embarrassing demagoguery on Russia and New START, it's difficult to believe that it would be helpful.

Ignatius proceeds to complain, not about Obama Administration policies as such, but about the fact that the Obama Administration isn't discussing its policies.

I’m told that the talk in the Libyan underground is about a “global intifada,” like what the new al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri has been preaching for the past five years. But ask U.S. officials about that subject, and you get a “no comment.”

I expect that pretty much every al-Qaeda sympathizer on the planet talks about a "global intifada" and a resurgent al-Qaeda, but politics aside, that doesn't mean it's good policy for the Obama Administration to talk about those groups and their goals, to give those groups publicity and attention that they may not merit in order to vindicate Ignatius's sources. Ignatius complains, "The administration has a lot invested in the public impression that al-Qaeda was vanquished when Osama bin Laden was killed", but I think it's more accurate to say that the media has chosen to treat al-Qaeda as an old story, perhaps even a non-story, and the Obama Administration sees no benefit in trying to inspire the media to again cover the story. It's not just the media - it's also the Republican Party.

The same is true with the war in Afghanistan. Ignatius may wish that the President were giving him a play by play on troop levels, but when you hear Romney talk about Afghanistan - if he even remembers to bring it up - he'll flip between criticizing the President for setting a firm date for withdrawal and giving the enemy too much information, and insisting that he'll have Afghanistan be fully responsible for its own security by the end of 2014. Why no mention of that incoherence?

Ignatius complains about the President's off-the-cuff candor with Dmitry Medvedev that, on certain issues, he would have more flexibility after being reelected. Well, no kidding. To those who pay even slight attention to U.S. politics, the story was that the comment was caught on microphone, not that the President stated something that is blindingly obvious. So why is Ignatius trying to turn that comment into something more than it is? Into something that makes Obama's putting off issues until after the election any different than Bush's pushing off his plan for Palestinian statehood until his second term, claiming a mandate to privatize Social Security after forgetting to mention it during his reelection campaign, having his tax cuts expire two years after he was out of office....

This strategy of avoiding major foreign policy risks or decisions may help get Obama reelected. But he is robbing the country of a debate it needs to have — and denying himself the public understanding and support he will need to be an effective foreign policy president in a second term, if the “rope-a-dope” campaign should prove successful.

That's the wishful thinking of somebody who places a high priority on foreign policy. As Ignatius knows, the average American has little interest in foreign policy and even less knowledge. Has he forgotten Bush's embarrassing lack of knowledge during the lead-up to the 2000 election, "but it's okay, because he'll surround himself with really good advisers." And the public, buying into that argument, bought into the conceit that nations like Pakistan aren't really relevant to our interests, so why should they care if the President can name their leaders or even find them on a map.

I don't disagree with Ignatius that timing foreign policy actions around elections is unhelpful, and that our nation would benefit from finding a way to avoid the problem, but unlike Ignatius I'm not willing to pretend that the phenomenon is new or unique to Obama. I also find Ignatius's comments to be, in large part, style over susbstance. I am perfectly happy to have the Obama Administration refrain from commenting on every hyperbolic claim of every group that sympathizes with al-Qaeda, even if it means that Ignatius can't win confirmation for whispered rumors form his sources.

Let me take you back roughly a year to when elections weren't on Ignatius's mind.

Barack Obama got elected president in part because he promised to change the foreign policy priorities of a Bush administration that was unpopular abroad, had strained relations with key allies and was facing a growing Iranian challenge and a continuing menace from al-Qaeda.

So what’s happened over the past 32 months? There have been a lot of bumps and bruises, especially in the global economy. But if you step back from the daily squawk box, some trends are clear: Alliances are stronger, the United States is (somewhat) less bogged down in foreign wars, Iran is weaker, the Arab world is less hostile and al-Qaeda is on the run.

Back then, Ignatius concluded, "Obviously, it will take awhile to accept that quiet American leadership is still leadership." I hardly dare ask whether Ignatius's change of position on the Obama Administration's successes and "quiet leadership" is itself a creature of this being an election year. David Frum quotes Ignatius,

David Ignatius of the Washington Post described Mitt Romney as a man having "no grasp of foreign affairs" whose approach to the subject amounts to a "series of sound bites" all of which portray a candidate who knows little about a subject of the utmost importance.

I'll be interested to see whether those thoughts percolate through to his pre-election commentary, as so far, he's pulling his punches.

The Expectations Game and the Presidential Debates

"Have we been telling you that our guy's great? Well, actually, he kinda sucks."

Both sides play expectation games - better to be underestimated and have your middling performance seen as a victory (Sarah Palin vs. Joe Biden) than to be expected to dominate and stumble. But this could be a case study. Following up on Chris Christie's bluster,

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie says on CBS’ "Face the Nation" that Romney is going to do "extraordinarily well" in the debate and that after Wednesday night, "this whole race is going to be turned upside down."

Paul Ryan insists, in essence, "No, Romney's not a great debater, has never debated a single opponent, the President has been on a public stage for six years [don't ask what Ryan has been doing], and the debate's actually a pretty minor event."

The GOP vice presidential candidate calls President Barack Obama "a very gifted speaker" who’s been on the national stage for several years.¹

Ryan also is making the point that Republican nominee Mitt Romney has never been in a one-on-one presidential debate.²

Ryan tells "Fox News Sunday" that the race is close and he expects it will stay that way until Election Day on Nov. 6.

I suspect that from Christie's perspective, Romney needs to excel in order to change the trajectory of his campaign, so he's expressing what he hopes to see. Ryan, on the other hand, wants an debate that isn't completely embarrassing to Romney (an outcome nobody expects to occur) to be taken as a draw, and anything better than that to be perceived as a victory.

Meanwhile, the President's campaign is advancing a less blustery version of Christie's message - Romney's a great debater who repeatedly beat his opponents in the primaries. (Compare and contrast, for example, the banter of boxers in a title match.)
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1. And Romney has been doing exactly what for the last couple of decades of his life, starting with his Senate race against Kennedy? A shrinking wallflower, he.

2. A pretty thin distinction. He's been in one-on-one debates when seeking both state and national office.

The Republican Base Didn't Make Romney What He Is

Stop me if you've heard this one before.

A scorpion asks a turtle to carry him across a river....

Yeah, you got it, the scorpion stings turtle even though he's dooming himself to drown, and gives the excuse, "it's in my nature".

Tod Kelly's comments on the Republican base brought that allegory to mind:

When the smoke clears, will the Republican base recognize their hand in sabotaging Romney’s chances? Or will they put all the blame on Mitt himself, and decide that alienating even more of the center is the key to future victories?

The thing is, the base didn't sabotage Romney. They chose Romney. To the extent that Romney's unforced errors can be deemed the consequence of his "working his ass off to make sure that the base of his own party is willing to vote for him in November", that's what they choice over candidates who were more consistent in their beliefs and less inclined to profess heartfelt changes of mind every time the polls suggested that their former views were unpopular with the base.

You can blame the voters for choosing a candidate like Mitt Romney, but you can't blame them for his being what he is: The cipher who takes every side of pretty much every issue. Romney has deliberately made himself a cipher, a guy who has both sides explaining away his more radical positions, past and present, as his "saying what he has (or had) to say to get elected," and applying that rationalization by ignoring his actual statements and ascribing to him positions much more in line with their own. Mitt Romney did not suddenly become that person over the course of the past year. That's the person he's always been.

It's true that if Mitt Romney weren't that person, he almost certainly would not have been nominated. But compare Jeb Bush who is, by all appearances, laying the groundwork for a White House bid in 2016. The voters chose Romney but, at least in this sense, he's a self-made man.

Update: Paul Waldman observes,

As I've maintained for some time, for all intents and purposes there is no "real" Mitt Romney. His political beliefs are the equivalent of Schrodinger's cat. They exist in every state at once until you open the box to observe them. If the one opening the box is a Tea Partier, they instantly lock into place as a set of Tea Party beliefs; if it's a bunch of GOP plutocrats staring down, that's whose beliefs he'll mirror. Romney has spent the last five years in an intensive period of study, with his subject the contemporary American conservative mind in all its permutations. He's well aware that the misleading talking point about 47 percent of Americans not paying taxes gets repeated all the time on the right, in private and public. What he was telling the people in that room is what he tells any group of people he speaks to. His message was, in Christine O'Donnell's immortal words, "I'm you."

Waldman challenges his readers, "show me an instance in which Mitt Romney tells a group of people something they don't want to hear".