Mapmaker, Mapmaker, Make Me a Map

by Nicholas Beaudrot of Electoral Math

Ken Strasma of Strategic Telemetry posted a town-by-town map of the Lieberman-Lamont race, but it's not fine-grained enough for my tastes. Plus, it sets the midpoint of the color coding at 50% to show Lamont's overall support, rather than 51.7% to show support relative to his final total, the way I like to look at races. Update: go here for a full-sized picture.

In both cases, we can spot some regional trends. Lamont fared best in the small towns of Torrand and Middlesex counties in the Eastern half of the state, and the far Northwest corner of the state in Litchfield county. Both areas represent small towns that are outside the orbit of the major urban areas like Hartford, New Haven, the Greater New York City region, and Groton-New London. He managed a draw (or slight win) in the populous area of Fairfield county, as well as around Hartford. But his biggest loss was in the New Haven area, particularly in its working class suburbs.

That's not to say that Lamont's support depended wholly on pissed-off yuppies; the townships in the Northwest that rejected Lieberman most forcefully are solidly middle class. But urban and suburban voters are more likely to be "low-information" voters who pay only a tangential attention to politics, while small town voters tend to watch the news more often. Plus, Sikorsky Aircraft and the US Navy don't provide many jobs in Lamont's towns.

Busby-Bilbray AAR [Abridged Edition]

by Nicholas Beaudrot of Electoral Math

We don't yet have a complete precinct canvass for the June 6th special election in California, but here are the top line numbers.

• In 2004, George W. Bush earned 55.7% of the two-party vote in CA-50. John Kerry earned 44.3%.
• In 2006, Brian Bilbray earned 52.4% of the two-party vote against Francine Busby (who earned 47.6%).

This represents progress on two fronts. Busby was able to convert the 6-7% of the public that voted for a President Kerry but a Republican Congressman (Duke Cunningham won his district with almost 60% of the vote) into Democratic votes further down the ticket. In addition, she was able to swing another 1-3% of swing voters. If that happens across the country, the 18 Republicans who hold districts that John Kerry won at the Presidential level are in all in serious trouble. Still, that's small a consolation award for the evening.Herman Edwards is right; the prize for coming in second isn't a set of steak knives, let alone a company car. The odds were tough, but it's a shame Democrats couldn't come through for once.

Wishcasting that turnout should have been higher is really asking for too much. You might as well ask for that pony while you're at it. In a contested Democratic primary, no Democratic candidate for Governor is going to expend resources trying to turn out voters in suburban San Diego, for crying out loud. Especially in California, where it costs obscene amounts of money to compete, and you're better off putting your GOTV resources into Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Alameda counties. Perhaps the negative tone turned off some casual voters, but in CA-50 turnout was high by historical norms. At the top of the ticket, Angelides and Westley combined to defeat Ahhnold by a 4:3 margin.

It was good to see Tester win in Big Sky country. Democratic ballots outnumbered Republican ones by over 10,000, so if JT can hold onto most of the Morrison voters and pick up some of the Keenan supporters, he'll be in good shape in November.

There are Other Crazy Folks Out There

by Nicholas Beaudrot of Electoral Math

Via Political Wire, we see that I'm not the only one who is girding for the possibility of a Jeb Bush '12 or '16 campaign. As with Matt Yglesias and his trenchant case for Cheney '08, Jeb Bush practically wins the 2012 Presidential nomination by default. He's perceived as more moderate that his brother, he's a popular governor of a large swing state, he's got access to fundraising dollars. In 2012, the Republican governor's bench will likely be quite thin, leaving former Bush officials (who, unlike Jeb, will be tagged with the specific failures of the Bush years in the White House), leaving only a small number of senators who have pretty clear Presidential ambitions and the appropriate age.

It may seem funny today, but I imagine in six or eight years the possibility will look much more serious.

The Midterms: Where are We Now?

by Nicholas Beaudrot of Electoral Math

Since the Paul Hackett's run at the OH-2 seat last August, we haven't had any elections that can usefully gauge whether or not dissatisfaction with Bush runs deep enough to cause dissatisfaction with Washington Republicans as a whole. We also don't have much information on the shape of public dissatisfaction with Republicans. Is Bush losing support in Orange County & Waco Texas, bringing the Republican margin from 80% down to 60%, while keeping enough support in Connecticut and upstate New York to let Reps like Chris Shays (R-CT) and Peter King (R-NY) skate by? Or are there enough districts that have swing from Red to Blue to take back the House?

The best we can do is look at who's bothering to turn out in primary elections, and the few pieces of district-level polling that are publicly available. In the primaries, the news has been encouraging. For instance, in IN-2, IN-8, and IN-9, Democratic challengers all scored victories over Republican incumbents, based on the number of ballots drawn. Likewise, Bob Casey , Jr. seems to be dragging his party to victory in Pennsylvania, scoring "wins" over two incumbents and making over a half-dozen races more competitive. In most elections, Republican turnout does seem to be down from historical norms, and Democratic turnout is up. But not all the news is good news. Democracy Corps' polling, which focuses on the far end of what one might consider a "competitive" race, shows only the tiniest bit of movement towards Democrats.

So at the moment, we can't forecast a tremendous takeover in November. The odds look good for significant Democratic gains, but perhaps only enough to take back the House by the slimmest of margins, if at all. Francine Busby's (D) June 6th special election in CA-50 will give everyone a bit more hard data.

Score One for the Good Guys (and Gals)

by Nicholas Beaudrot of Electoral Math

Last week I mentioned some election shenanigans taking place in the NOLA City Council races. They didn't work. Despite being outspent by a 5-to-1 margin, Shelley Stephenson Midura (D) ousted Jay Batt (R), the sole Republican on the council. Local pundits are calling it one of the biggest political upsets in the city's history, and certainly one of the nastiest races as well.

Congratulations to the Midura campaign. I hope they all enjoy getting some sleep.

Here Kitty Kitty

By Neil the Ethical Werewolf

With the Republicans unable to muster another serious candidate, Katherine Harris is going to be their Senate nominee in Florida, and I'm feeling so giddy about it.  It's not just that she's down by 30 points against an otherwise-vulnerable incumbent, or that she's doing her part to keep the culture-of-corruption meme alive with her apparent bribes from Mitchell Wade, or that she's opened up a winnable House race for Democrats, or that her presence on the ticket will energize the Democratic base across the state. 

I also have months of delicious naughty Katherine Harris follies to look forward to.  Remember her tipsy, boobalicious appearance on Girls Gone Wild: Florida Hannity and Colmes?  And the time that she was getting snuggly with Rick Renzi on C-SPAN in the background of Rob Simmons' speech?  And best of all, the time she started coming on to that college reporter?  (Take a look at the pictures!)  However I felt in 2000, I can't hate a silly drunk girl who hits on random guys.  My anger has melted away into a sort of amused, patronizing contempt, which is much more fun. 

Odds for a Horse Racing Weekend

By Neil the Ethical Werewolf

On this Kentucky Derby weekend, I thought I'd post the odds that the TradeSports online futures market has set on the 2008 presidential candidates and other interesting political events.  The numbers below are the percentage chances that the market has assigned to each candidate winning.  If Feingold is at 3.7, that means that if you buy $3.70 worth of contracts on Feingold, your money will turn into $100 if he wins, and $0 if he loses.  If you want to end up with $100 after a Hillary victory, by contrast, you have to cough up $45.20, which vanishes if she loses. 

Democratic nomination:
Clinton - 45.2
Warner - 23.8
Gore - 9.6  (you don't have to be running for people to bet on you)
Edwards - 6.5 (I own me some Johnny; I think he's worth 15 or so)
Feingold - 3.7 (I also own some Feingold, since I think he'll go up before he goes down)
Kerry - 3.6

Republican nomination: 
McCain - 40
Allen - 18.1
Romney - 13.6
Guiliani - 11.7
Rice - 5.4

On the GOP side, I've bought AR Governor Huckabee at 2.1, where he stands now, and SC Governor Mark Sanford at 0.1.  (Hey, thousand-to-one odds are fun.) 

Markets are giving us a 20% chance of winning the six seats we need to take back the Senate, and a 47% chance of winning the House.  On specific Senate races, we've got a 70% chance of beating Santorum in PA and a 52% chance of beating DeWine in Ohio.  Montana is even money.  We're at a 45% chance of winning Rhode Island (which I've got a little money on, since Laffey threatens to win the primary and lose the general), a 44% chance in Missouri, and a 32% chance in Tennessee.  For those of you who are market junkies as well as political junkies, there may be some kind of arbitrage play available here that involves selling futures on Dem Senate control, and buying the Dems in all the targeted Senate races.  But these markets are somewhat illiquid, so it'd be a bit of a hassle to pull off.

On more freaky topics, the market says there's a 13.2% chance of our killing or capturing Osama by the end of the year, and a 22.2% chance of our getting Zarqawi.  (Yes, you can actually gamble on those things.)  There's a 17% chance that Hamas recognizes Israel by year-end (?!?) and a 5% chance of a Palestinian state by the end of the year. 27% chance of the US or Israel running an air strike on Iran.  19% on Rumsfeld resigning and 9% on Cheney resigning. 23% on DeLay being convicted of laundering money and 30% of Libby being convicted of lying. 

<spam>If you see a bargain above and you're interested in betting on this stuff, I can hook you up with a referral code that'll give you a bonus $25 to gamble with.  It'll also let you bet on sports and American Idol and other stuff.  My email address is at the top of my home blog.</spam>

Phew!

by Nicholas Beaudrot of Electoral Math

Charlie Wilson (D-OH) won his write-in campaign to replace Ted Strickland in the OH-6 race. Wilson's inability to qualify for the primary ballot cost his campaign and the DCCC hundreds of thousands of dollars. Thankfully, it's at least over.

Meanwhile, who the heck is Zack Space, and does he have any chance to beat Bob Ney?

Strategic Voting 2006

By Neil the Ethical Werewolf

Mischievous consequentialist that I am, nothing gets me excited like a chance to advance the liberal agenda through devious acts of strategic voting. (Okay, other things do get me more excited, but you can't do them in a voting booth.) The coolest strategic voting opportunities in this country arise in states with open primaries, where independents and sometimes Democrats can vote in the Republican primary and cast their votes for unelectable Republicans.  When the Republicans lose in the general election, you get to cackle with glee at being the superintelligent architect of liberal victory.   This strategy is sensible if the Republican primary is more competitive or more ideologically significant than the Democratic primary.

The biggest strategic voting opportunity of the 2006 primary season might be in Rhode Island. It’ll be a tough race if Lincoln Chafee wins his primary – while he’s one of the top five endangered Republican Senators this year, he tends to lead Democrats by a little in polls. But if right-wing goofball Steven Laffey wins, it’ll be an easy victory for Democrats. This is why Bush is supporting Chafee. The only problem with strategic voting here is that you can only vote in one party’s primary, so you won’t get to vote in the Brown-Whitehouse race for the Democratic nomination. But it looks to me like the Republican side is more important – a Laffey victory would basically guarantee us a Senate seat. If I were a liberal with Independent registration in Rhode Island, I’d cast my vote for Laffey. If I were a registered Democrat there, I’d consider changing my party affiliation to put Laffey over the top, especially if Brown-Whitehouse was decided already.  Looking at this questionnaire, both Democrats support abortion rights, the freedom to marry, and universal health care.  So we'll be happy whoever wins. 

While it'd be awful if Laffey actually won the general election, I wouldn't worry too much about that.  He's down by over 20 points in liberal Rhode Island.  I'll take a 5% chance of losing a lot over a 50% chance of losing half as much, and given how important party affiliation is in determining committee control and other strategically important issues, that looks like the stakes.

Tennessee has Harold Ford running against one of three Republicans. Maybe some strategic voting situation will develop, since only the Republican primary is seriously contested, though I’m not really seeing it now. I don’t see big differences between the Republican candidates as far as electability goes, but perhaps some Tennessee readers will have something to say about this. Tennessee, as far as I can tell, has a completely open primary, so Democrats can pick the Republican candidate of their dreams.

The Texas general election will be an interesting one for strategic voters. I may end up telling my friends to vote for Strayhorn, the Independent, who lags Republican Rick Perry by a 40-31 margin, but I'll have to figure out how separate Strayhorn and Perry are on the issues first.  The field also includes Democrat Chris Bell at 13 and musician Kinky Friedman at 9.  (Update: Other polls have Bell a little ahead of Strayhorn, so it's likely that voting for Bell will in fact be the thing to do.)

If your state allows independents but not Democrats to vote in either primary, it might be worthwhile to become an independent for that purpose. It’s not like party registration means that much, anyway. And if you’re moving to a new state with an open primary, initially registering as an independent makes a lot of sense.

Beware Krempasky, Servant of Corruption

By Neil the Ethical Werewolf

A couple days ago, Mike Krempasky at RedState mocked a group promoting public financing of elections, which had (for whatever reason) bought an ad on his site.

For the record - this policy idea is one of the dumbest ever. It will never pass. It should never pass. It's potentially the worst thing I can imagine happening to our election system - the complete removal of any market or jury forces from the selection of appropriate and viable political ideas.

According to Krempasky, the worst thing that could happen to our election system is that wealthy interests would lose their ability to control political debates. I didn't think that anybody actually held this view, but there it is. Only ideas that satisfy well-funded special interests should be considered. On this view, corruption isn't a danger -- it's an ideal.

That's why Krempasky's alliance with Kos to pass the Online Freedom of Speech Act gives me the shivers.

In their letter to Congress, Kos and Krempasky argue that the legislation won't create any new loopholes by which wealthy interests can, say, buy a bunch of banner ads for a candidate:

H.R. 1606 does not create any "loopholes". As FEC Chairman Michael Toner (R) has stated, the charge that H.R. 1606 would somehow allow federal candidates to coordinate with corporations and unions to spend soft money funds to purchase Internet banner and video ads on behalf of candidates "has no legal foundation."

I'm a werewolf, not a lawyer, so I really can't speak to the merits of the legislation. Maybe they're right, and the Act doesn't create new loopholes by which big money can influence politics. But I'd like to know more about how this legislation works. Whenever you see your opponent argue for a complicated piece of legislation by saying that it won't do the thing that they actually want, it's time to be nervous.

I have no problem with empowering online activists on both sides. But I really don't want to strengthen the dark powers that Krempasky serves. So somebody else has got to tell me what to think of this Online Freedom of Speech Act. Any takers?

Sherrod, Harry, Chuck, and Paul: What Should We Make of it All?

By Neil the Ethical Werewolf

You see these stories about Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer calling up donors and telling them not to give money to Paul Hackett.  I can understand Hackett supporters being upset, insofar as they think that Schumer and Reid made the wrong decision in backing Brown instead of Hackett.  But there's absolutely nothing wrong with calling up big contributors and telling them not to donate to some candidate. 

It's just a more high-profile version of what everybody does -- the netroots definitely included.  If you think the issues you care about aren't served by some candidate getting donations, you tell donors not to give them money.  We do it through blog posts, the big players do it through phone calls to rich donors.  If you think that part of the business of campaigning is outreach to donors in the netroots (and it is), you should agree that another part of the business is convincing the guys at the top to use their power on your behalf, or at least not against you.  Hackett didn't accomplish that.  Again, you can criticize Reid and Schumer for making the wrong move.  But making moves like this is their business. 

And that's a good thing too.  Primaries are the kind of money suck that should be avoided whenever possible.  You'd rather see big chunks of cash go to a candidate who's going to run against a Republican than a candidate who runs the risk of losing to another Democrat. I'm also happy that netroots cash won't be diverted away from the primary that matters -- Ciro's primary in TX-28 -- and towards internecine warfare in Ohio. 

We'll have a long time to debate whether Reid and Schumer made the right call. Sherrod Brown has been a tireless fighter in the House on just about every progressive issue, and the DSCC knows that.  His work on fighting tuberculosis around the world and his rejection of Congressional health insurance as long as his constituents don't have proper health care win big respect from me.  There's a lot that Paul Hackett could've done for our party too, especially as far as winning foreign policy media battles goes.  But after seeing how his campaign went, I'm wondering how successful he would've been as a Senator.

people familiar with Hackett's campaign say he was especially resistant to efforts by aides to get him to use one of the most efficient but unpleasant fund raising techniques: sitting at the phone for hours, calling friends, relatives, and strangers to ask for money. Tension over the problem led in January to the departure of his finance director.

Hackett, who prized his independent streak and proudly called it a family trait - he voted twice for Ross Perot for president and championed gun rights as well as gay rights - also chafed at having his schedule set by aides. On the weekend before he bowed out, aides say, he stunned his staff by refusing at the last minute to attend certain events - including appearances at several black churches - that had apparently been put on his schedule over his objections.

His wife, Suzi, alluded in an interview before his withdrawal to Hackett's difficulty adjusting to the life of a candidate.

"He's a very autonomous person," she said. "It's been very hard for him to do the political thing, where you let everyone schedule your life."

Fund raising in particular, she said, had been "a real struggle for him" because "Paul doesn't like to ask for help."

Another problem for his campaign, some aides say, was that Hackett - who billed himself as a political outsider eager to change Washington's ways - didn't seem to fully trust the political professionals he hired to help run his race. It was shocking but not out of character, they say, that Hackett announced his departure to The New York Times Monday without first telling his staff, who learned of it from the Times.

The failures of the Democratic Party over the last few years have convinced lots of activists that anything would be better than what we've got going now, and that maybe we need somebody who doesn't play the game like any of the current players do.  I sympathize with their frustration, but if this leads them to romanticize candidates who crash headlong into the unfortunate political realities that other politicians know how to work past, they're mistaken. Sure, I'd want our Senators to have a little more of Hackett's fire. But the idea that inexperience and swagger will add up to success is an error fit for Bush-loving Republicans, not Democrats.  And I can understand Hackett's hatred of fundraising -- even if atheists weren't automatically unelectable, it's one of the things that would drive me away from a political career.  But candidates have to be able to do it, and any number of other irksome things. 

Maybe Hackett would've made an amazing Senator.  But it's also possible that he would've had difficulty with the some of the most basic things, floundering in areas that never get much comment because they attract no media attention, and failing on organizational and practical issues that few bloggers know to be important.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with Harry Reid's Senate leadership.  While other Senate Dems (Judiciary Committee, I'm talking to you) have disappointed me in the last year, I have yet to see Harry make a bad move as Minority Leader.  I think it's fine if he gets experienced, competent role players rather than stars.  As much as I'd like to have Paul Hackett slamming Bush on cable TV, I know that Senators can stick around for decades, and I'd like to have the steady hand of Sherrod Brown steering us out of the current health care dystopia and every other problem that we face. 

In the end, Reid and Schumer picked the angel they knew over the mysterious (and potentially awesome) creature they didn't.  I'm tentatively supporting the pick, and I don't criticize them for picking. 

(The OH-2 blog notes that Rush Limbaugh tried to inject a racial angle into the story by claiming that Sherrod Brown was black, and had been given preference over the white Hackett.  I guess the whole Donovan McNabb episode didn't teach Rush to stay away from that kind of angle, and he still can't get it to work...)

Running on Katrina, not Wiretapping

Posted by Nicholas Beaudrot of Electoral Math

Via Political Wire, a new Marist Poll shows that the Bush response to Katrina upsets a significantly larger percentage of the public than the warrantless wiretapping story. As the election approaches, blogospheric activity will become more and more expressly political. It's important to remember that one of these issues involves abstract questions of the Constitutional that affect the government's ability to bother a small number of people, while the other involves the government's ability to perform its basic duty to keep people alive. It shouldn't be surprising that disaster response is a bigger story.

Matt Stoller Speaks

Posted by Nicholas Beaudrot of Electoral Math

You Listen.

Stoller's comments deserve much greater treatment, but it is desperately important that the Democratic Party prepare for a negative campaign trashing Democratic ethics. I suspect Hillary's FEC settlement from the 2000 election, Pelosi's minor campaign issues (which were settled without further penalty), and every other ticky-tack infraction will be on the table. My armchair advice is to run a scorched-earth campaign, and run it early. If Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA) goes down, he goes down. If a couple of others do to, there isn't much to do about it. But ethics needs to be primarily a Republican problem from day one. Counting on the press to do its job at this point is simply unrealistic.

Taking Back The House

Posted by Nicholas Beaudrot of Electoral Math

As Atrios points out, running for Congress is one of the most thankless and humiliating tasks in politics. It's even more thankless when you're running an uphill battle against an incumbent. But this year, the DCCC has done a phenomenal job recruiting quality candidates for just such races.

Out here in The Other Washington^TM, Peter Goldmark, a farmer from a famous political family in the area, is going to run for Congress in the rural 5th CD, while already Darcy Burner and Randy Gordon have lined up to run in the suburban 8th CD. There are plenty of others out there; one of my favorites is David Harris, who's running against "Smokey" Joe Barton in the Texas 6th. If you've got your own, throwing them some scratch before the end of the quarter is a good idea. If you're looking for a "pet candidate" go check out the DCCC's list and throw them some scratch.

Number Crunching Interlude

Posted by Nicholas Beaudrot of Electoral Math

I hate to step on the "New Progressivism" salon, but I've spent the last hour or so putting together a spiffy map of this week's election in Virginia, and I'm sure as heck not going to let it go to waste at this point:

This map shows that the Kaine Kilgore election represents a midpoint between the '96 vintage Clinton urban-suburban coalition and the modern Mark Warner/Paul Hackett urban-rural-smalltown coalition. Not pictured are Kaine's small but noticeable improvements in many small towns throughout Virgina: places like Williamsburg, Staunton, Lexington, Waynesboro, and Danville all showed small blue-tinted shifts in their partisan alignment.

The good news is that the Kaine campaign was able to significantly increase Partisan alignment in major Democratic enclaves; Richmond, Charlottesville, and suburban Fairfax and Arlington all showed increased Democratic performance. The great news is that Kaine was able make solid gains in suburban and exurban Virginia; three populous and fast-growing counties within a 70 mile radius of DC flipped from red to blue.

Kaine's remaining gains were limited to a slight increase in Democratic performance in the metro areas of Norfolk, Newport News, and Virginia Beach, plus aforementioned boost in the states' small towns. Places like Virginia Beach and Staunton flipped from red to blue, while the campaign held down the margin of defeat in the outer DC exurbs.

The bad news is easy to spot: Kaine lost most of Mark Warner's mojo in Southwest Virginia. Now, Jerry Kilgore is from Gate City, along the Tennessee-Virginia Border, so to some extent this outcome was expected. And despite the loss in support, Democrats managed to win a few rural counties here and there:

Still, Kaine will have to work hard to consolidate Democratic support in Southwest Virginia. As the folks over at MaxSpeak point out, control of state legislatures matters, and Democrats will need to win seats in rural Virginia in order to take back the House of Delegates. In addition, continuing to string together 51% majorities will eventually prove untenable, so building a strong cushion in Southwest Virginia or the Virgina Beach area would help the party in future elections.

Hooray for Default

Posted by Nicholas Beaudrot of Electoral Math

I promised everyone a rationale for my pollyannish but ill-received claim that Democrats will gain seats if a clear majority votes for a Democratic Congressman. So break out your quill pens, your carbon paper, and your abacus, and we'll take a look at recent congressional results.

Here's share of the popular vote, alongside the share of the House, for each party. For simplicity's sake, I'm counting Social Democrat Bernie Sanders (I-VT) as a Democrat, and quasi-Republicans Ron Paul (R/L-TX) and Virgil Goode (D then I then R-VA) as a Republicans for all terms where they don't have party identification.

Year       Dem Pop   GOP Pop   Dem Rep   GOP Rep
1992       52.7      47.3      59.5 (!)  40.5       
1994       46.5      53.5      47.1      52.9
1996       50.2      49.8      47.6      52.4
1998       49.6      50.4      48.7      51.3
2000       49.9      50.1      49.0      51.0
2002       47.6      52.4      47.1      52.9
2004       48.7      51.3      46.7      53.3

Before we move on, let's all take a moment and stand in awe of the absurdly pro-Democratic gerrymandering that existed prior to 1990. It makes Tom DeLay's shenanigans look like amateur hour.

Now then ... starting in 1996, district boundaries have favored the Republican party by a small margin -- between 0.5% and 2.5% -- in every election. In 2004, Democrats had an even harder time making progress, though they did gain three seats outside of Texas. Two forces work in favor of the Ds, though. First, the GOP advantage due to gerrymandering appears to be larger in Presidential years than it does during the midterms. Second, it's unlikely that Dems will be able to mount strong challenges to re-assert their representation in Texas. This means there will be more GOP blowouts in 2006 in the Lone Star State, but it also means the nationwide vote share will more closely match Congressional Representation. So we can reasonably expect the Democratic share of the House to be at within 1.5% of its share of the popular vote.

Based on recent polling, if the election were held today Dems would take somewhere between 52% and 54.9% of the popular vote, which suggests that they would gain between 18 and 35 seats in the House. Using more fine grained data from the list of vulnerable House members, a uniform nation-wide swing of 6.2% of the voting population from the R to D would give the Democrats 25 new Congresspersons.

Twenty-five seats might seem like a small number in comparison to the Republican revolution, but it's a sizeable gain, and enough to give Democrats a majority that allows them to let a dozen Blue Dog Democrats off the hook. And it would be a shift in membership three times larger than any change since 1994. So let's not start wringing our hands about poorly managed House races that don't even exist yet. Even though no one's out there promoting "an agenda for positive change", Democrats are currently poised to make very sizeable gains.

Surveying the 2006 Landscape

Posted by Nicholas Beaudrot of Electoral Math

Since Ezra will be at shul all day, I guess it makes sense for we goyim to pinch hit; though I'm wishing I wasn't such a putz that it took me until 4pm pacific to realize that would be a good idea. Ay gevalt ...

... In any event, the continuing downward spiral of the President's job approval, coupled with a series of optimistic looking generic congressional ballot polls, along the Hacker & Pierson guest blogging stint at the Washington Monthly, has all generated a fresh round of questions about the landscape for the 2006 midterm elections. Big Media Matt is pessimistic, while Kevin Drum thinks that Madison's Revenge will lead to a GOP crackup. Chris Bowers wants to expand the playing field, and cautions everyone not to read too much into polls taken 13 months before The Only Poll That Matters.

Bowers is right to express cautious optimism, but I think he's being a bit too cautious. It's true that in June of 2004, Democrats held similar advantages in the polls, but at that time they were engaged in a full-court PR campaign against the Republican party. Today, there isn't such a large effort to trash the GOP on a day-in, day-out basis. The Cassandras have simply been too cowed by the Texas re-redistricting; but outside of that maneuver Democrats actually gained seats last election cyle. A clear victory would still change the hands of the gavel-holder. I'll have some numbers to back this up this weekend.

More "Politics of Polarization" Roundup

Posted by Nicholas Beaudrot of Electoral Math

The indominable Oliver Willis says that increasing the perception that Democrats "stand for something" is just a matter of not flitting from issue to issue. There's something to that; both the Kerry and Gore campaigns did a lot of flitting. So, less of that, please. I do want to make a bit of a dissent here; the Kerry campaign was not constantly trying to make nicey-nice with the press. They prioritized press relations in this order: local TV, local newspaper, Post/Times, network news, USA today, cable news. That is, more or less, the proper prioritization, when one considers that a huge number of newspapers decide what to put in the local papers based on what's in the New York Times (though, whoever kept leaking anonymously-sourced snark to the Times needs to find a new line of work).

Kevin Drum is unimpressed. He claims that Galston and Kamarck say we need to avoid the trap of policy literalism, but then fall into the trap of policy literalism itself (by, for instance, suggest that we de-emphasize diplomacy and emphasize military force, and moderate on social issues). He also suggests Evan Bayh should be the next nominee, though not in so many words. That's not a bad idea, in terms of winning elections. But there is a good chance that Mark Warner, Wes Clark, or John Edwards might do the trick too.

Don't and Won't?

By Ezra

Best way to start my piece on this is with one of my favorite Onion articles:

"The Republican party—the party of industrial mega-capitalists, corporate financiers, power brokers, and the moneyed elite—would like to thank the undereducated rural poor, the struggling blue-collar workers in Middle America, and the God-fearing underpriviledged minorities who voted George W. Bush back into office," Karl Rove, senior advisor to Bush, told reporters at a press conference Monday. "You have selflessly sacrificed your well-being and voted against your own economic interest. For this, we humbly thank you."

Added Rove: "You have acted beyond the call of duty—or, for that matter, good sense."

Cute. Not particularly true, but cute. The poor do vote Democratic -- when they vote. They vote Democratic in the North and in the South, in urban centers and rural backwaters. And so, as Neil argues, they do know who's best for their interests. Now, one can easily mount a case for a self-destructive among lower middle class whites, but part of having a bit more disposable income is being able to vote on grounds other than direct economic benefit.

Nevertheless, as Shakes said, the poor largely don't vote, so even if the few who are turning out aren't marking for Republicans, the class as a whole is missing a great opportunity. But, and here's the kicker, we can't seem to figure out how to make them vote. If you guys remember, this was the rationale for Ralph Nader's candidacy -- he was going to sweep up all those disenfranchised stragglers through a combination of ant-corporate populism and quasi-socialist programs. It didn't work. Nor did it work when Mondale called for the reestablishment of the New Deal or when McGovern offered his Democracy Bonds or at any other time.

So, while it's certainly true that the current electorate is in no way equal to the potential electorate, it's not necessarily the case that the simple way to create a rush to the ballot box are programs with a deeper focus on the impoverished -- it's just not worked out that way in the past. There are certain procedural steps we can take (same day registration, voting holidays) that may help, but Democrats support these now and will, theoretically, institute them when they regain power. But there's not a whole lot of evidence that they'll make the difference.

Which is why this conversation ends up being a bit frustrating. This huge mine of votes has been noticed before, candidate after candidate has begged their advisors for the key to unlocking them. Marshal the disenfranchised and, by god, anybody, from Democrat to Republican to third party could sweep the nation. But it hasn't happened. And that's because the obvious methods to boost turnout have all failed. Nevertheless, if anyone's got a better plan, I'm listening...

Prognosticating

Kos says:

No political reporter nailed 2004 better than the National Journal's Chuck Todd, hence I have great respect for his analysis.

But here's Chuck Todd:

2004 could be a decisive victory for Kerry. The reason to think so is historical. Elections that feature a sitting president tend to be referendums on the incumbent--and in recent elections, the incumbent has either won or lost by large electoral margins. If you look at key indicators beyond the neck-and-neck support for the two candidates in the polls--such as high turnout in the early Democratic primaries and the likelihood of a high turnout in November--it seems improbable that Bush will win big. More likely, it's going to be Kerry in a rout.

I like Todd as much as anyone but, at the presidential level at least, he called it quite wrong. And while I very much want his hints at a major Democratic victory in 2006 to be right, I can't but remember all the political prognosticators who promised us President Kerry in 2004. Or, for that matter, all the pundits who assured us of Democratic pick-ups in 2002. Again, I hope Todd's right, but I've seen too many sure things slip right through our fingers to get excited.

Why Do We Love The Incumbents?

My cubicle-mate Matt has a mostly-right post on redistricting (in short, you don't want nonpartisan redistricting wherever Democrats are and massive, DeLay-led gerrymandering where Republicans rule the roost, it's unilateral disarmament) that ends is a potentially wrong way:

As a general matter, gerrymandering is less important to the declining competitiveness of congressional elections than is generally believed. State boundaries haven't changed at all in decades, but Senate races are becoming less competitive, too. The main problem here is that elections are becoming increasingly expensive.

Thanks to a variety of studies, this is seeming much less true than we once thought.  It's true that most incumbents outraise their opponents, but that advantage is no longer thought of as causal to their triumph, it's more correlated to the simple fact that they're incumbents with more ties to party machinery and more votes for lobbyists to buy.  Indeed, the much stronger factor is polarization -- you can have all the money you want, but if you're from the wrong party, you might as well put it to good use remodeling your kitchen.  And since party polarization has been rapidly increasing over the past few decades, that's probably a better explanation for why Senate races are becoming less competitive. 

In any case, these things are multicausal -- it could be that an increasingly apathetic electorate has made name recognition and familiarity more important than they used to be.  Could be that folks don't trust the news anymore and aren't listening to media recommendations to oust incumbents.  I don't know.  But for now, money doesn't seem a good candidate and party polarization, by and large, does.  Some interesting paragraphs on this from an old Roll Call article follow the jump:

In 1996, Republicans won 29 open House seat races, and the Democrats won 24. The better-funded candidate won a seemingly impressive 75% of races -- 40 out of 53 seats. But there was a stronger correlation: Republicans won 29 of 35 seats where Bill Clinton received a plurality of the vote, but none of the 18 seats in districts where Clinton won more than his 49% national average. There was a 89% correlation (47 of 53 races) between Republicans winning in districts where Clinton ran behind his national average and Democrats winning in districts where he ran ahead of his average.

A House candidate's percentage of the vote is correlated far more strongly to the district's presidential vote than relative campaign spending. Overall, Democratic candidates averaged 50% of the vote in the 51 open seat races with two major party candidates -- and so did Bill Clinton in those districts. The difference between Clinton's percentage and that of the Democratic House candidate was more than 10% in only three races -- both in the south, with two conservative white Democrats running ahead of Clinton.

Looking first at very conservative districts, the Republicans won all 11 open seat districts where Clinton received less than 41% -- hardly surprising, as they hold 78 of 82 seats in such districts. Ten of the districts had candidates from both parties, and the average winning percentage was 62% -- only 1% less than the average anti-Clinton vote in these districts. Nine of the ten Republicans won at least 59% -- higher than the percentage won by all other Republicans in open seat races.

Seven of the ten losing Democrats in these safely Republican districts spent over $250,000, including five who spent over $400,000 and one who nearly doubled the spending of his Republican opponent. Yet the average percentage for these Democrats was exactly the same as that of Clinton in their districts: 38%. The other three Democrats each spent under $104,000 and were outspent by an average of 13 to one. The result? Their average percentage was 30% as compared to Clinton's 34% -- being vastly outspent cost them an average of only 4% of the core Democratic vote.

On the liberal end of the spectrum, the Democrats won all ten seats where Clinton won at least 58% -- Democrats have a whopping 97-1 edge in such districts. Clinton's average percentage in the ten districts was 66% -- exactly the same as the average percentage for winning Democrats. Four of the ten losing Republicans spent more than $400,000; their Democratic opponents won an average of 58%, just below Clinton's average of 59% in their districts. Another four Republicans spent less than $100,000; their opponents won an average of 74% as compared to Clinton's average of 75% -- exactly the same relative performance as the high-spending Republicans.

A Choice and an Echo

Posted by Nicholas Beaudrot of Electoral Math

Contra Shakes, news that Senate Dems are picking themes for the 2006 election struck me as a good thing, and a sign that the quest to nationalize the elections is well underway. Shakes doesn't like four of the five topics, including retirement security, because they're Republican issues. Retirement Security? Republican? Even before Bush started his self-immolating quest to privatize Social Security, polls showed the public trusted the Democrats to fix Social Security more than Republicans. I also disagree that "energy indepdence" is a Republican issue. As best I can tell it's dog-whistle politics for the Toyota Prius crowd. As for "economic strength", both parties try to portray their economic agenda as best suited for the public. That leaves one decidedly Republican issue -- national security -- and one decidedly Democratic issues -- health care.

I do agree with Shakes that getting out in front of a specific outside-the-box issue, such as voting reform or preventing further media consolidation, is a fantastic idea. And addressing endemic poverty is a great outside-the-box, and perhaps even something that the public might be warm to in the wake of hurricane Katrina. John Edwards poverty agenda is a fantastic start. Also, I think Shakes is right that  finding some less poll-tested problem would help increase the perception that Democrats have a full-blooded alternative and aren't just singing the same song in a different key. But in the wake of the 2004 elections, where the party failed to have a national message for the House races, let's be thankful that there's an effort to nationalize these things at all.

Kilgore v. Kerry

The Corner, right now, has a banner ad attacking VA Gubernatorial candidate Tim Kaine in a fairly innovative way. First you see Tim Kaine's head on a sheep, with the message that "Tim Kaine would like you to think he's the next Mark Warner." Switch to a John Kerry's head on a sheep with the text, "But he is really a Kerry clone in sheep's clothing." Fade to both of their heads on sheep's bodies with the coup de grace: "Click here to make sure a John Kerry clone won't end up in Richmond."

The subtext, of course, is that they're sheepfuckers.

Okay, maybe not. But what is interesting is that Kerry, unlike Carter or Dukakis, didn't lose with any firmly-held meme dragging him down. There was the flip-flopper thing, sure, but no overriding impression of weakness or wimpitude. And yet here he is, the bogeyman on an attack banner. Warner, I guess, is a bit above politics in Virginia, a Democrat, sure, but not a Democrat. Tying him to Kerry is an attempt to lash him to the national party, the one full of coastal elites who sit down to roasted fetus with rice pilaf while warming themselves by a fire kindled with taxpayer dollars. Which I guess is fair enough.

Nevertheless, it's a reach. The post-election view of Kerry isn't a personal one, he's just kind of a loser. So the argument isn't that Kaine is too wimpy or liberal or corrupt, it's just that he's the first human successfully cloned from a loser, and who wants a loser in Richmond? This is schoolyard stuff. And pulling this on The National Review's website is a bit like justifying HUAC to the John Birch Society. But whatever. If my polls were dropping this quick, I'd be reaching too.

Karl Rove's Fuzzy Math, Part #871

Posted by Nick Beaudrot

It's time to reach down into the bottom of your desk, get out your slide rule, an abacus, a quill pen, and a piece of carbon paper. We'll take a look at the turnout and election returns from this Tuesday's special election, and see if there are any clues pointing the DCCC where they should go next.

[lots of words and pretty pictures to follow]

Special elections are won as much on turnout as on issues or TV ads. Why? Since the number of voters in a special election is small compared to Presidential or even midterm elections, it's possible to score an upset victory by dragging more of your supporters to the polls. To give you an idea of what kind of effort we're talking about, around 80,000 people in the Ohio 2nd voted for Kerry;  Hackett could have won the election simply by finding another 5% of those people and making sure they vote. We can get a sense of which counties had the most "retention" -- the percentage of Presidential voters who came back for a second helping in the special election -- by looking at the turnout rates from 2004, then comparing them to the turnout from the 2005 election. We see immediately that the residents of Scioto County, and to a lesser extent Hamilton County, were really excited to go cast a ballot in this congressional race; we don't know who they're voting for yet, but they're excited to go vote for someone. Meanwhile, the good people of Pike County and Warren County are either too busy to go vote, or they don't feel that either candidate is speaking to their worries.

 

It's important to go beyond turnout and look at the actual vote count to figure out where Hackett succeeded in making gains at the polls and where he didn't (yes, I know this is not rocket science, but it never hurts to repeat yourself. Or so I'm told). Comparing the Hackett-Schmidt race to Rob Portman's recent congressional races isn't really a fair comparison though; Portman's challengers where not particularly serious, and such a comparison would overstate effectiveness of Hackett as a candidate. Instead, let's compare the special election returns to the 2004 Presidential Election, which was very hotly contested in Ohio. The swing towards Hackett -- just over 12% across the district-- would be enough to take 50 seats in the House and give Nancy Pelosi the Speaker's gavel, if they could reproduce that result nationwide. As I've said before, how much of that 12% gain is attributable to Hackett the candidate versus a general shift against Bushim and/or Taftism is unclear. But even a 6% gain would give the Democrats control of the House, although it would require reliance upon Blue Dog Democrats and the few moderate Republicans to maintain a governing coalition.

The Schmidt campaign did do a better job of holding ground in the GOP "base" counties of Warren and Clermont than they did in the pure rural areas; however, base voters did not turnout in particularly high numbers. This may signal some dissatisfaction at Republican government within their own electoral base. Also, when combined with the turnout data, the election tally suggests that Hackett either concentrated his field campaign in Scioto County, or there are a lot of people there who are really P.O.ed about the state of the world today.

 

Looking ahead, what are the key takeaways for Democrats in 2006? The biggest lesson is that there is a clear split between pure rural areas, small towns, and "exurbs". The exurban counties of Warren and Clermont were so heavily Republican in 2004 that even a 12 point swing resulted in a GOP landslide; in addition, the Republican candidate held her ground . On the other hand, Adams and Brown Counties, which have the smallest populations, swung the most towards Hackett.

The next lesson also comes out of the surprising rural swing towards Hackett in rural areas. Democrats have a terrific opportunity to make sweeping gains at the local level in Ohio. It would behoove the Progressive Majority to find Democrats who want to run for office -- County Commissioner, mayor, probate court judge, cemetry commissioner, you name it -- in Brown, Adams, Scioto, and Pike Counties. Winning local elections is hugely important work, since it both shows residents that Democrats can govern and builds the bench for future election.

The third lesson is to show these rural areas some love. They don't get a lot of attention in national elections because of the perception that there aren't enough votes to matter, and Democrats are better off just trying to squeeze a few more voters out of urban areas. But the Hackett election shows that rural voters can be comvinced to vote D if the right candidate comes along. Perhaps this is a result of a lack of higher education, leading to more dinner table politics; perhaps it's a result of more intense local media coverage; perhaps something else. But a nationwide swing of 12-15% of "Country Folk", who compromise 21% of the population, would be enough to make Democrats the majority again.

The fourth lesson is that Mike DeWine might want to buy a new set of golf clubs, because he's going to have a lot of free time starting in December of 2006.

Class dismissed.

Obligatory Paul Hackett After Action Report

Posted by Nick Beaudrot

Now that there's some space separating us from August 2nd's special election, let's take a step back and see what Democrats can learn. My initial thoughts haven't changed much, but I think Charles Kuffer summarizes the Hackett result much more effectively than I can [emphasis mine]:

The bottom line is that a good candidate with clearly articulated values and enough funding to make his or her message heard is a force to be reckoned with, no matter where the race is.

Ohioans are getting fed up with Republican governance, but that alone would not have been enough to push Jean Schmidt to the brink of defeat in such a crimson red district. Paul Hackett had a terrific biography, raised the scratch to get on TV, and portrayed himself as something of a conservative in his ads. Democrats may not be able to find candidates with his strength in every district that Bush carried with 64% of the vote. But if they can find a Paul Hackett or a Coleen Rowley in half those districts, it would be enough to stretch the field tremendously.

Later today, once I've tracked down county-by-county election results (I'm about halfway there), we'll try and find some finer-grained lessons to take away from the Hackett-Schmidt special election

Adrian!

It should be no shocker to hear Paul Hackett fell a bit short in his congressional bid last night. No, what should make you short of breath and leave the children open-mouthed in awe is that he only lost by 4%. 4%! In a district that generally goes Republican by 65%-75%, we lost by 4%!

For the GOP, that's a chill wind blowing.

At this point, it's unclear whether Paul Hackett is a bellwether, an isolated superstar, or both. It may be that Coingate and the Republican Majority's arrogance have given Ohioans a nasty case of voter remorse or Paul Hackett himself was such an attractive option that they almost overcame their natural biases. In any case, he'll be a helluva force for 2006.

Remember in Rocky, where Rocky didn't beat Apollo Creed, but went 15 rounds when no one ever has? Remember what a victory that was?

This was a total victory. And don't mistake it for anything less. Paul Hackett is Rocky.

Hackett

You know the situation: Hackett vs. Schmidt, Hackett good and Schmitt bad, Hackett sane and Schmitt not, Schmitt favored and Hackett fighting uphill. This is the final push, and a couple bucks will help him push harder. Plus, you were just going to blow it on beer and hookers or something.

For those of you not particularly interested in Ohio 02, though, there's a second reason you should think about whipping out the wallet. The networks love electoral news. Love it. And, right now, there's none of it. If Hackett wins, a military vet, a Democrat in a solid-red district, it's going to be the story for awhile. And that means the story will feature a tough-talking Democrat who looks like a soldier, just returned from the war, and loudly, loudly stands up for our party and loves lashing out at Republican incompetence.

Hackett strikes at their strongest issue and shields our weakest. If Rove were a Democrat, this is the guy he'd run. And his win could, in fact, become one of those bellwether elections where the CW shifts and Democrats running against the Bush administration's Iraq policy become widely-acknowledged as deadly to the Republican majority. It happened in the 90's with Wofford in Pennsylvania, his special election win vaulted health care to the top of the agenda and left Republicans cowering in a corner. It can happen again.

But not if Hackett doesn't have the cash to win.

Donate.

Speechwriting

John Kerry's penned an op-ed in today's Times called "The Speech the President Should Give", offering Bush a helpful outline for how tonight's Iraq address should be structured. What's not mentioned anywhere is that this is exactly the speech John Kerry should've been giving during the election, over and over again, rather than continuing with his equivocations over whether we should've entered the country. A good read worth filing in the "What Might Have Been" category, I guess.

More Machines

Tova Wang's got an interesting piece on voter suppression in The Century Foundation's Taking Note. According to her, it wasn't high tech hackers doing the work, but old school class discrimination:

Elections officials, whether through incompetence or intentional efforts to suppress the vote, did more damage than any particular technology might have done by failing to supply sufficient numbers of voting machines. And as the House Judiciary Democratic Committee investigation found in Ohio, "There was a wide discrepancy between the availability of voting machines in more minority, Democratic and urban areas as compared to more Republican, suburban and exurban areas." Right after the election the Washington Post reported that, "local political activists seeking a recount analyzed how Franklin County officials distributed voting machines. They found that 27 of the 30 wards with the most machines per registered voter showed majorities for Bush. At the other end of the spectrum, six of the seven wards with the fewest machines delivered large margins for Kerry."

All over the country, voters had to wait in line for up to nine hours. Interestingly, however, some of the worst of it was in key battleground states. Observing early voting in a Broward County, Florida shopping mall, I myself encountered numerous voters, some of them elderly, who had waited five to six hours to vote. The worst of it evidently was on the campus of Kenyon College in Ohio where there were only two voting machines. According to the Beacon Journal, one student waited ten hours—until 2 a.m.—to vote.

Such waiting times are tantamount to disenfranchisement for many average working Americans, possibly in violation of federal voting laws and constitutional guarantees. How many people can stay away from their jobs for hours on end to vote? What about the single working mother who has to deal with her job and her kids? What about the man who is working two or three jobs to make ends meet?

Something we should fix before the midterms roll around. Paging Dr. Dean?

Repeal McCain-Feingold!

I have to agree with James Hamilton: it's time to repeal McCain-Feingold.  I'd much rather have parties absorbing unlimited contributions than watch the funding get sucked up by unaccountable, unknowable 527's.  Parties and campaigns can, at the least, be held accountable.  527's, on the other hand, are just hatchet men, called in for the dirty work and disavowed for the cameras.  And while it's certainly true that legislation can correct this specifically (and indeed, similar bills have been introduced), what, then, happens to 501(c)6's?  What happens to online speech?

If we're going to do campaign finance reform, it has to be done right.  Clean elections, federal funding, subsidized airtime.  These halfway measures just make things worse, creating all manner of perverse workarounds and loopholes that ends in a more unaccountable, more vicious, more unhealthy public square.  So thanks for dropping by, McCain-Feingold, you even did some good.  Democrats, cut off from soft money, raised unimaginable amounts online, creating a small donor base to rival anything the GOP has in direct mail and setting off a revolution in campaign fundraising that should, in time, reduce the impact of corporate cash.  But now it's time for you to go.
 

Boosting the Brand

I've been wondering why we don't see more political ads aimed at boosting parties as a whole, rather than particular candidates. Given that many voters will walk into voting booths with no idea who the downticket candidates are, spending money on improving the Democratic brand might win more votes than giving the cash to individual candidates. And there are lots of advantages that the Democratic Party as a whole is in position to claim. I've mentioned the deficit reduction stuff, but I'm also wondering if there's a nice way to sell parts of our anti-terrorism plan on TV. I'm not sure what the prospects for catchy jingles are here, but I'd like to see what some smart people would come up with. Maybe MoveOn could do another contest like the one where they came up with that great deficit ad. The media covers political ad buys heavily enough that even if we buy only a few spots in select markets, our message will probably reverberate for a while.

--Neil the Werewolf

At Long Last Sir -- Have You No Zingers?

A few days ago I flagged an American Prospect article by Geoffrey Nunberg for its excellent description of the ideologically conservative/operatively liberal divide. Now I want to highlight a different part:

Republicans will try to pin a big-government label on the Democrats, but the appropriate response to that is not to apologize for government, as some liberals have recently done, but rather to call the Republicans' bluff. Kerry just once might have responded to Bush's charge that he was a big-government liberal not just by denying that his health-care plan was a government takeover but by bearding Bush on his government-bashing. "Just which government programs are too big?" he might have said. "What should we do away with? Social Security? Medicare? The Food and Drug Administration? The Securities and Exchange Commission? The Environmental Protection Agency?"

This sort of thing is genuinely confusing to me. Why aren't debates filled with more lines like this? After all, it wasn't impossible to predict that Bush would tag Kerry with the "big government" label-maker, nor was it particularly hard to foresee Massachusetts pejoratively entering the discussion. Meanwhile, Kerry has weeks to prepare for all this, can call on the best writers, speakers, and political thinkers in the business, and ends up with no defining moments (save maybe "global test"). That's his own fault. According to the Newsweek election retrospective, Kerry specifically directed his debate prep team to stay away from zingers. He didn't want any, he said.

But it's not just him, their seems to be a real unwillingness to go for the throat in presidential debates. Of the famous lines in the last decades, we've got Reagan's dismissive "There you go again" and Lloyd Bentson's putdown of Dan Quayle ("You, sir, are no Jack Kennedy"), they're both schoolyard comebacks, not West Wing closers. You'd think, after months on the campaign trail, that the combatants would know they needed some sound bites rather than just a solid performance. So why don't they call up Aaron Sorkin, or indeed Geoffrey Nunberg, and commission a few? Why don't they go in for the kill?

Chafee

Last week's New Republic features a Michael Crowley profile on Lincoln Chafee that, in its weird way, continues to convince me that NARAL is gaming this out:

Exasperated as they are, however, Republicans are now riding to Chafee’s rescue as he faces possible challenges from both his left and right. Conservatives are urging Cranston Mayor Steve Laffey, a hard-edged populist, to mount a primary challenge. (One Republican said to be egging on Laffey is Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe,who would like to be rid of Chafee’s dissident vote on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, which Inhofe chairs.) Laffey would be a tough foe:Rhode Island may be liberal, but its Republican primary voters are very conservative; internal polling by both parties shows Laffey trouncing Chafee.

But the Republican establishment, convinced that only a moderate like Chafee can survive in liberal Rhode Island, is trying to keep Laffey out of the race. National GOP Chairman Ken Mehlman has called Laffey personally to ask him not to run.

So let's take this step-by-step. Conservatives are trying to recruit Steve Laffey to run against Chafee in the primary. Internal polling is showing he'd win it. So the Republican establishment is trying to keep Laffey out and bolster Chafee's standing. So what does NARAL do? As the premier liberal organization, the platonic form of a group that enrages hard conservatives, they embrace Lincoln Chafee a year-and-a-half before the election. They give him the mark of NARAL.

Now, this is all probably in my head, but look what NARAL gains from the move if indeed it is devious:

• They symbolically slap the Democratic party for thinking about running the anti-choice Langevin.
• They supercharge Chafee's image as a social liberal, making him a more attractive target for a conservative crusader.
• They give said conservative crusader a rationale for entering the race. "I was going to stay out, but NARAL!?"
• By provoking a primary, they either take down Chafee and replace him with a wingnut who'll be shredded in the general, or they weaken Chafee for the general, thus strengthening whichever pro-choice Democrat emerges from the primary

Again, I can't say they're doing this, but it'd make an awful lot of sense. In reality, I have a feeling they're just being myopic. But I sure do hope that NARAL's really got some evil geniuses in an underground bunker somewhere gaming out moves like this one. This party, I think, really suffers from a paucity of evil geniuses.

MD Senate: Kweisi For You

As I suspected, Kweisi Mfume’s hat is in the ring. I have to say, even if Steele runs for and wins the GOP nomination, this may not be the old-school/new-school fight I’d been hoping for. Mfume’s opening salvos are distinctly Obamaesque:

"My goal is to give a new voice to the issues that affect every-day working men and working women and the families that they are a part of," Mfume said during a late morning press conference in a lounge at Camden Yards, where he was joined by five of his six sons.
…

He said his campaign would focus on "overcrowded and ill-equipped schools," health-care costs and disparities and fighting "low expectations" for some youths.

I am officially pleased. I like Mfume a lot, and in a race where the Democrat is a heavyish favorite anyway, this kind of rhetoric should make him more than competetive.

- Daniel A. Munz

Iron Candidate: Battle African-American

Political Wire reports that Paul Sarbanes is getting out of the legislating business. It's too bad; Sarbanes is a very good Senator. He's a strong liberal (he voted against Iraq, both tax cuts, and Ashcroft), but he works harder behind the scenes than Barbara Boxer does in front of the cameras. (Don't get me wrong: I love Barb. But she's not exactly a workhorse.) He was a lawyer, a Rhodes Scholar, and an economic adviser to Kennedy. I'll be sad to see him go.

In terms of replacing The Sarbanator, both parties have deepish benches. For the Dems, there's Reps. Elijah Cummings and Chris Van Hollen, and Montgomery County Exec. Doug Duncan. Republicans have Reps. Roscoe Bartlett and Wayne Gilchrest, '04 Senate candidate and "The Hobbit" character E.J. Pipkin, and maybe even Gov. Bob Ehrlich. But there are two candidates who would produce by far the most interesting race: Republican Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, and recently-retired NAACP President (and former Democratic Congressman) Kweisi Mfume.

For those unfamiliar, Lt. Gov. Steele is currently securing Colin Powell's vacated title of The Republican Black Guy. (Powell left after realizing that "compassionate conservatism" means hugging black people, not listening to them.) Unlike Powell, he is full-throatedly embracing the GOP's "compassionate conservative" message. Also unlike Powell, he is deeply politically ambitious. He represents the vanguard of the GOP's new minority strategy, which relies essentially on the claim that Democrats take black people for granted and have stopped pursuing policies that really help them. (Republicans, apparently, at least have the courage to openly not care.) They've also aggressively pushed a conservative social message, which resonates even with the black community's strongest economic liberals. Obviously, I'm not a fan, but it's an argument that we increasingly need to take seriously, especially if we're ever going to win in the South again. Next to their their push to recruit Latinos (which I suspect is somewhat exclusive to Bush the Texan), politicians like Steele represent the GOP's strongest attempt to cut into our traditional minority coalition. And, unlike the NDN's great outreach with Latinos, we're not doing a whole lot to address it.

Mfume, of course, represents everything opposed to this. There is no organization that more thoroughly embodies the old-school coalition that blacks have with the Democratic Party than the NAACP. Mfume was the one who excoriated Joe Lieberman for failing to speak to the NAACP during the primaries. He has worked to combat the GOP's taken-for-granted arguments, and to moderate his image, going so far as to nominate Condi Rice for one of his Image Awards. But basically, Mfume represents precisely the consensus that people like Steele are out to challenge.

That's what would make this challenge so epic: It would be the first electoral showdown, as far as I can tell, between the emerging Republican message for minorities, and the traditional Democratic strategy. This could have happened in IL or GA, but neither race was competitive enough for a real dialogue to develop between the candidates. MD is also an ideal place for something like this to go down. The state has a strong black community, but they don't vote as a bloc: Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley won a primary against two black Democrats with 53% of the vote. O'Malley has also given MD Democrats an unusually strong posture on Homeland Security, making it something close to a fair fight between Democratic economic liberalism and Republican social conservatism (accompanied, of course, by their good friend Cultural Resentment). Both candidates are eloquent speakers who are generally held in high regard, at least by their respective ideological camps. It'd be a fistfight.

Steele/Mfume is a battle I'd love to se