Matt Yglesias

Know Your Branches

I think this from Chris Bowers brings a much-needed perspective to the oft-cranky discussions of the Obama administration at Open Left:

It is becoming increasingly obvious that the Senate, rather than the Obama administration, is the biggest obstacle to progressive governance right now. If we were dealing with only the House and the Obama administration, there would be a noticeably more progressive government in America. From health care reconciliation, to 100% auction cap and trade, to a larger stimulus package, to bailout reform, to bankruptcy “cramdown” reform, and even to executive compensation, the Senate has moved to the right of both the House and the Obama administration. As such, it is the Senate, and not the Obama administration, against whom we should be directing more of our distrust and pressure.

Just imagine what we would have accomplished in terms of legislation without the Senate over the past few months. The stimulus would have had a hundred billion more in spending, 100% auctions would be on their way, hundreds of billions for new health care would be on its way, bankruptcy “cramdown” would be law, EFCA would be law, executive compensation limits would be far more severe, and on and on and on. However, if we had the Senate but there was no President, the legislative accomplishments would have been pretty much the same.

I think it’s crucially important to be aware of where the responsibility for disappointments lies. There are some important areas where the Obama administration really is the key actor. They are the ones taking positions on executive power that are at odds with what many people were hoping for from a new administration. And if you want to talk about strategy toward Afghanistan, the Obama administration takes full responsibility for whatever good or bad is coming out of that. But on basic domestic policy legislation, the essence of the matter is that the median member of the House of Representatives is more progressive than the median Senator and a lot more progressive than the sixtieth Senator you need to break a filibuster. Mark Pryor and Susan Collins are trying to unleash some torrent of liberal legislation that Obama is holding back.

Forecast

To the best of my understanding, the main leaders of the environmentalist movement have made a conscious decision that whipping people into a state of alarm and panic about the prospects of catastrophic climate change is not the right way to go. Instead, there’s a preference for focusing on the positive and trying to paint an appealing vision of the clean energy future. And though it’s not something I’ve peered into in great detail, the research in social psychology seems to me to back that conclusion up—it really is better to focus on the positive political message rather than trying to freak people out.

That said, the trajectory we’re on right now is actually really frightening. The weather seems like a banal topic, but if you study history it’s clear that systematic changes in the climate can have utterly catastrophic impacts on human societies. And it’s also clear that right now climate-related issues are having a significant negative impact on human lives. If you want to give yourself a good scare, Stephan Faris’ book Forecast: The Consequences of Climate Change, from the Amazon to the Arctic, from Darfur to Napa Valley is all about reportage on this sort of thing and the scary near-future we seem to be heading towards.

The Declining Significance of Reagan Voters

Reader J.C. emails in:

Your colleagues over at ThinkProgress have a post up talking about Limbaugh’s speech at CPAC. In his address, Limbaugh claims that Dems can’t “can’t accomplish what they want unless they appeal to Reagan voters,” and for years, I would have agreed with him; but it seems to me that younger voters – of whom I am one – are not nearly as enamoured with the cowboy president as our parents were. Public opinion of Reagan is gradually changing, and he seems to get more criticism for his mistakes now than he did during and directly following his presidency. All those calls for his head to be on Rushmore or the $100 bill have quieted as his domestic and economic policies appear more and more problematic.

So here is a question for you: How many of the Reagan voters have come out from under the spell of the Great Communicator? Perhaps more specifically, how many of the people who voted for Reagan are now dead, replaced by Obama voters? Some cold, hard numbers could help fight Limbaugh’s dictums, or at least our perception of the validity of those claims.

I think this nails the basic problem with nostalgia for the Reagan electoral coalition. When Reagan won in 1980, the younger people allowed to vote were born in 1962. In the last election, voters who are at least that old were somewhat more than half the electorate and John McCain did fine with this group:

Specifically, McCain won about 51 percent of the vote among the approximately 53 percent of the electorate that was at least 45 years old. But Obama won a decisive victory among Americans younger than 45—precisely none of whom were part of Ronald Reagan’s original coalition, and few of whom were part of his 1984 re-election campaign. Four years from now, Americans who were too young to vote in 1980 will be an even larger share of the electorate. Obviously, one could link this to other changes in the racial and ethnic makeup of the electorate and specific generational differences in point-of-view on environmental and gay rights issues.

The Ever-Bolder GOP

It seems that Republicans are feeling pretty good about themselves these days:

By citing reservations about the economic recovery package, Gregg reinforced widespread GOP criticism about wasteful spending that has less to do with reviving the economy than rewarding Democratic constituencies. And by noting his differing view on the census, Gregg breathed life into Republican charges of a White House power grab over a critical Commerce Department function.

Both issues are part of an emerging GOP case against Obama and the ruling Democratic Party: Strip away the new face, the lofty rhetoric and the promises of post-partisanship and you’ll find the same big-spending party of old, bent on politicizing government to consolidate its hold on power.

Even with the stimulus package on the verge of passing later this week, the unanimous GOP vote against the bill in the House and the near-unanimous opposition in the Senate revealed a Republican Party surprisingly united in direction and in message for perhaps the first time since losing its congressional majority in 2006.

This reminds me of what Eve Fairbanks wrote back on February 9 when she observed that they are “completely obsessed with winning the media “cycle” and getting the sexiest, most provocative quotes on TV, an attitude that yields the kind of overblown dreck RNC chair Michael Steele is now spouting.” She traces the origins of this mentality back to the summer’s “drill baby drill” outbursts “which Republicans cite constantly as the moment that will someday be recognized as the beginning of their rebirth, their A.D. 0: They mounted a lot of antics, their brazenly hyperbolic rhetoric ended up all over the news, and a frightened Pelosi backed down.”

At the time, what Republican optimism about the drilling issue reminded me of was Republican optimism about the immigration issue. At one point, conventional wisdom held that taking a moderately pro-immigrant, pro-immigration line was necessary for a political party hoping to appeal to Hispanic voters. But the conservative base didn’t like that idea and scuttled it. These things happen. But then as more and more congressfolks got swept-up in the far-right maw, they became convinced that this bit of base pandering was going to deliver them to electoral nirvana. Then in November 2006, they took it on the chin.

Then you flash forward to 2008. At one point, conventional wisdom held that offshore drilling was a bad issue for its proponents—the only people who really cared about it were the people whose livelihoods and lifestyles would be imperiled by it—which is why even friend of the oilman George W. Bush never previously campaigned on offshore drilling. But the base wanted to drill offshore. So “drill, baby, drill” it was. And this, too, was supposed to be not just base pandering but brilliant politics. Then in November 2008, they took it on the chin.

Now they’ve convinced themselves that lockstep opposition to economic stimulus is the way to go. And the press, which mostly keeps believing that the right is politically brilliant despite two blown elections in a row, is inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. But it seems hard to figure. Here’s some Gallup numbers:

And more:

I’ll be the first to tell you that none of this will matter very much if the economy is in the toilet in 2012. But the fact remains that what conservatives are doing is moving in lockstep opposition to a popular initiative backed by a popular congress and a Democratic congressional leadership that, while not particular popular, is still more popular than they are. And if you think back to what serious people thought Republicans’ electoral problems were two months ago, it’s very hard to see how complaining that the stimulus bill was insufficiently weighted to corporate and capital gains tax cuts is expanding the party’s appeal to non-whites or to the younger cohort of voters or demonstrating that it’s an effective custodian of the economic interests of lower middle class traditionalists.

Hoping for the Best Opponents Possible

I know some progressives who are cheering Sarah Palin on in the view that if the right nominates the most terrible and wingnutty possible leaders, it’ll be easier for progressives to win. And somewhat along those lines, Spencer Ackerman watches the virus of neoconservatism seeking to use Palin as its next host and remarks:

A segment of conservatism still loves Palin, even though it appears that Palin cost McCain support from independents who didn’t think her prepared to take over the presidency. Whether conservatives will embrace Palin when they have policy-heavy and deeply-religious young alternatives like Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal remains to be seen, obviously. But Palin needs a policy platform if she wants to run for president, and the neoconservatives desperately need a political force they can ride back into power. But look: to quote Napoleon, never interrupt your enemy when he’s making a mistake.

I think this style of thinking is misguided. Election outcomes are largely determined by the fundamentals, and there’s a large element of chance and uncertainty associated with the whole thing. The best way to become president is to (a) win a major party nomination and (b) hope for luck. In other words, anyone who secures a major party nomination has a decent shot of winning. And over the long haul, the tendency is for power to alternate between the parties. And under the circumstances, one wants both parties to nominate the best possible people. For example, any Republican would have won in 1988. We are fairly lucky, as a country, that we got George H.W. Bush who managed foreign affairs competently and on domestic issues proved willing to reach pragmatic compromises with progressive legislators on some fronts. If instead of Bush we’d gotten someone with more of a Newt Gingrich attitude, the whole situation could have been much, much worse. He could have, like his son, really trashed the country.

Meanwhile, legislatively almost nothing of consequence ever passes on a straight party-line vote even in the current era of heightened partisan alignment. Advancing progressive policy requires some members of the less-progressive party to be open to some elements of the progressive agenda. Indeed, in many ways building that kind of support is the most important part of driving policy.

What Might Have Been

Kevin Drum asks:

Now, suppose Kerry were running this year and therefore had the following three advantages over his previous self: (a) he was running after eight years of Republican rule instead of four, (b) the economy sucked, and (c) he had a fantastic fundraising advantage over his Republican opponent.

Question 1: how well do you think Kerry would do? Question 2: how well do you think Obama is going to do this year? Question 3: how big is the difference between the answers to Q1 and Q2?

I think (c) shouldn’t be added into the experiment. You can’t treat Obama’s spectacular fundraising success as exogenous to his individual appeal as a candidate or to his campaign’s particular organizational and tactical gambits. Rather, I think the way to specify the hypothetical would be to wonder what would have happened if instead of offering tepid support for the war and running for president in 2004, Kerry had offered mild opposition to the war and ran for president in 2008. I think he’d be doing pretty darn well, though presumably with a slightly different electoral coalition behind him than Obama has.

Going Pro-Life

Raymond Hernandez for The New York Times takes a look at pro-life Democratic candidates:

Kelli Conlin, the president of the National Institute for Reproductive Health, called the recruitment strategy misguided, saying that surveys conducted by her organization showed that even some Republicans express support for abortion rights when her group described the consequences of outlawing the procedure.

“The movement to recruit anti-choice candidates ignores the larger reality that this is a pro-choice nation,” she said. “It misses the larger point.” (Polls show a divided nation on the issue: A 2008 CNN-Opinion Research poll found that 53 percent of Americans characterized themselves as “pro-choice,” versus 44 as “pro-life;” a 2007 poll by the same organization showed the numbers reversed, 45-50.)

The Times uses Senator Bob Casey (D-PA) as the poster child for this trend, but he actually seems like an outlier example. Pro-choice Democrats regularly win statewide in Pennsylvania — Clinton in 1992 & 1996, Gore in 2000, Rendell in 2002 & 2006, Kerry in 2004 — and, indeed, pro-choice Republicans like Arlen Specter and Tom Ridge have a good record in the state as well. In a place like that, pro-choice voters are naturally going to have a strong preference for a pro-choice candidate. But the fact that Casey’s opponent was Rick Santorum nevertheless left Casey as clearly the more socially and culturally liberal candidate.

The main subject of the article is the rather different case of recruiting pro-life candidates to run in districts or states that are so strongly anti-choice as to make it highly unlikely a pro-choice candidate could win. To me, that seems like a very different calculation. What’s more, it’s clearly a calculation that makes national polling on abortion rights irrelevant.

The Fadeaway

The McCain plan:

Mr. McCain’s advisers said their hope was that the issue of the economy would recede somewhat from the public consciousness, now that Congress has passed a bailout plan, and open the way to try to turn the contest back into a referendum on Mr. Obama’s credentials. They argued that given everything that had happened, Mr. McCain remained in easy distance of Mr. Obama, evidence of what they said were underlying problems with his appeal.

That seems unlikely to me. The nature of the financial crisis certain did provoke a white knuckle tone to press coverage of the economy that’s unusual. But dramatic financial crisis or no dramatic financial crisis, the combination of job losses and near-universal agreement that we’re in for a recession would seem to guarantee a hefty focus on the economy. You could imagine something changing that — a terrorist attack or some kind of foreign crisis could easily push the economy off the front pages temporarily — but it’s hard to imagine it happening just as a process of fading.

Michigan No More

This is yesterday’s news, but I have to say that I was so surprised by the announcement that the McCain campaign is abandoning Michigan that I was initially inclined to believe it was some kind of fake-out. But it seems to be real enough. As a strategy, though, it’s a bit odd in my opinion. It’s true, of course, that currently McCain’s odds in Michigan are pretty long. But that reflects his currently poor national performance. Unless he does better overall, shifting resources around can’t save him. You have to ask about which states would be competitive if the national popular vote was about even and Michigan is a solid enough candidate. What’s more, it’s a state (unlike Colorado or Virginia or the 2nd Congressional District of Maine) with a history of tensions between a big city African-American political machine and the surrounding white majority — the sort of thing the McCain campaign could put to good use.

At any rate, Nate Silver has the provocative suggestion that McCain’s real problem is with his intertemporal resource allocation:

McCain’s problems ultimately stem back to the early summer, when his campaign decided to throw a ton of money into negative advertising rather than to build a robust field operation. That decision might have “worked” in the near term, as McCain chipped Obama’s lead down from about 5 points in mid-June to a virtual tie heading into the conventions. But, as with many McCain campaign decisions, it may have been one more engineered to win the battle rather than the war, as Obama’s position has bounced back with surprising vigor in the past two weeks, and the Britney Spears ads now seem like a distant and irrelevant memory.

Ultimately I don’t see much logic at all in investing heavily in early paid media. Until the conventions, gyrations in public opinion are basically meaningless and you might as well focus your time and energy on acquiring money and volunteers and building out your staff and field operations. The candidates can’t really control whether or not events in the real world set the stage for a close campaign in the fall, but they can control how well-prepared they are to win in the fall if the election turns out to be close.

The Bush Boom

In 1999, at the peak of the Clinton-era economic upswing, median household income in the United States was measured by the Census Bureau at $50,641. By 2000, it had sunk slightly to $50,557. From 2001-2005 that figure continued to slide downward. That was followed by two years of continued upswing meaning that, according to the new data released today, Bush-era incomes peaked in 2007 at $50,233 before the current wave of economic problems. I guess this is the kind of thing Mark Warner doesn’t want to talk about.

Some Recent History

As you may recall, several months ago it looked as if one of America’s two major political parties was going to have a serious “party unity” problem. Their nominating contest produced a winner who’d prevailed against divided opposition without ever proving himself to be a clear majority choice anywhere. What’s more, the party’s base was divided between a substantial element that strongly approved of the party’s unpopular incumbent president, and another substantial element that joined the majority of the public in disapproving of his job performance. What’s more, the winner had a long history of personal and professional tensions with key stakeholders in his party’s political movement and with leading party politicians.

And yet, these tensions were overcome! And not overcome, primarily, by endless hand-holding sessions in which the various aggrieved parties recited their complaints from one side of their mouth while talking of their admiration for each other out of the other side. And they certainly weren’t overcome by speaking in more detail about a policy agenda. Rather, though there was of course some hand-holding, unity was primarily achieved by shifting attention off the internally controversial of their nominee and his relationship to other party figures and on to the internally uncontroversial subject of how awful the other political party is.

Whether there may be any lessons in this for any other political parties is something I’ll leave to readers to judge.