Colorado: Denver Mayor More Electable than Blue Dogs?

Generally speaking, when determining the value of a legislator to his party, we'd want to consider two things: how much he advances his party's agenda, and how likely he is to win election or re-election in his state or district. There is oftentimes tension between the two criteria. For example, the Democrats could almost certainly find someone more liberal than Jim Matheson, their Congressman in Utah's second district, who only votes with his party about half the time. But any Democrat more than a pinch more liberal than Matheson would have a great deal of trouble getting elected in Utah, and would very probably lose his seat to a Republican (and a conservative one at that).

Sometimes, however, a legislator is superior along both dimensions: he's both more electable and would make for a more reliable vote than his alternatives. Such a situation appears to be in place in Colorado, where Governor Bill Ritter is responsible for making an appointment to replace Ken Salazar.

Public Policy Polling surveyed prospective 2010 matchups for two Democrats -- Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper and Representative John Salazar -- against two potential Republican opponents -- former Governor Bill Owens and former Representative Tom Tancredo. Salazar, though a clear asset to the Democrats in his Republican-leaning district, is a Blue Dog Democrat and has been among the handful of most conservative Democratic Congressmen outside the South. Hickenlooper, though a bit harder to pin down, is somewhere on the spectrum between a moderate Democrat and a liberal/progressive one.

The Democrat was leading in all four permutations of the poll. But the leads were several points larger for Hickenlooper. Hickenlooper also outperformed the retiring Ken Salazar, whom Public Policy polling tested against the same opponents over the summer; John Salazar's numbers were also superior to his brother's.

Candidate      vs Owens     vs Tancredo
Hickenlooper   54-40 (+14)  54-37 (+17)
John Salazar   52-43 (+9)   54-40 (+14)
Ken Salazar*   44-41 (+3)   49-37 (+12)

* Polls conducted in July-August.

Now, I'll be the first to concede that polling conducted 23 months out from an election doesn't mean very much. But Ritter needs to make his decision now, and in the absence of perfect foresight, Hickenlooper would seem to be the way to go.

As for Tancredo, the Republicans need to hire him an illegal immigrant nanny or something, as he'll do nothing but damage if he's on their ticket.

There's More...

Contract Post

Franken is Winning, and Coleman Knows It

Minnesota's Canvassing Board this afternoon completed the bulk of its review of challenged ballots. The Canvassing Board ruled upon 1,325 challenges, according to numbers prepared by the Star Tribune, including 852 challenges brought by the Coleman campaign and 472 brought by the Franken campaign. Among these 1,325 ballots, 758 were allocated to Franken, 319 to Coleman, and 248 ballots were assigned to third-party candidates or deemed to be illegal. This resulted in a net gain of 439 votes for Franken, giving him a nominal lead of 251 ballots.

Franken's lead is almost certain to diminish once the Canvassing Board reviews more than 5,000 withdrawn challenges, and defaults them to the rulings originally made at the county level. Franken withdrew considerably more challenges than Coleman: 2,806, by my count, to Coleman's 2,525. If all withdrawn challenges are assigned to the opposing candidate, this would result in a net swing of 281 votes to Coleman, putting him back in front by 28 ballots.

Not all withdrawn challenges, however, can safely be added to the opposing candidate's total. Fundamentally, there are two types of challenges:

Type 1: You can challenge an opponent's ballot that you were hoping to get excluded;

Type 2: You can challenge one of your own ballots that you were hoping to get included.

The first type of challenge will add to the opponent's total if and when it gets rejected, but the second type will not. The question, then, is the relative frequency of the different types of challenges in each candidate's withdrawn pile.

Suppose, for instance, that for both candidates 90% of the challenges were Type 1 and 10% were Type 2. If this is the case, Coleman would gain 2,525 votes from withdrawn Franken challenges, and Franken would gain 2,273 votes from withdrawn Coleman challenges. That would produce a net swing of 253 votes for Coleman, giving him a victory by 2 (!) ballots.

In practice, however, it appears that Franken's pile contains a relatively higher instance of Type 2 challenges. There are at least three reasons to conclude so:

1. Although this isn't necessarily meaningful, Franken had a higher proportion of Type 2 challenges among those challenges that were not withdrawn.

2. Prior to the challenge phase beginning, the Franken campaign claimed that it would gain ground if all challenges were rejected, pulling 4 ballots ahead of Coleman. A necessary implication of Franken's claim is that he had a higher proportion of Type 2 challenges. If I try and work backwards from the Franken campaign's math, I show that Franken now has a lead of something like 66 votes after accounting for withdrawn challenges.

3. The Star Tribune has a more direct way to account for withdrawn challenges. Specifically, they have projected them out based on the votes of their readers, thousands of whom sorted through each ballot individually on the Star Tribune's website. The Star Tribune projects a Franken win by 78 ballots based on these reader estimates, fairly closely matching my back-of-the-envelope math.

There is undoubtedly some uncertainty in these numbers. (Moreover, we are uncertain about how much uncertainty there is). It appears likely, however, that Coleman did not connect on his challenges at a high enough batting average, and that Franken will emerge with some sort of solid, double-digit advantage exiting this phase of the process.

Coleman, then, has two additional processes by which he couple hope to reverse that result, as well as a couple of hail marys.

Issue #1. Rejected Absentee Ballots. Minnesota's Supreme Court yesterday mandated that the campaigns must work with the counties in attempting to identify and count absentee ballots that may have been rejected in error. The process the Supreme Court established is unusual, in that each of the campaigns would have to mutually agree that a ballot is valid before it gets counted.

The problem for the Coleman campaign is that counting more absentee ballots will probably benefit Franken. Democrats made a push nationwide for early and absentee voting, and at least one pre-election survey also had Franken doing better among absentee voters. The behavior of the respective campaigns, of course, has been perhaps the strongest signal that such votes are likely to help Franken.

But now that he's (probably) no longer ahead, Coleman has conflicting objectives on the absentee ballot front. On the one hand, he might want to gamble and count as many of them as he can -- he has little to lose, and has to pick up votes somehow. But on the other hand, he knows it's more likely than not that a plurality of such votes will be for Franken. The dilemma is a bit like that facing the gambler who, having lost his shirt at blackjack, puts his last few chips on '00' on the roulette wheel hoping to get even.

Issue #2. Duplicate Ballots. The other legal issue is that surrounding duplicate ballots, which we addressed at length earlier today. In brief: the Coleman campaign believes that some ballots have been double-counted, and wants the Supreme Court to require that the counties check for any such instances and amend their counts appropriately.

Here too, however, there is no particular reason to conclude that identifying duplicate ballots would work to Coleman's benefit. The Coleman campaign presented more than 200 alleged duplicate ballots to the Canvassing Board. The Franken campaign, however, indicated to the Canvassing Board late today that it had more than 300 such ballots in its possession, but had withdrawn them from its stack of challenges. (EDIT: The '200' and '300' numbers reflect all types of 'incident' ballots, including but not limited to potential duplicates, although the duplicates make up a large fraction of these).

From my vantage point, it's pretty much a 50:50 proposition which candidate will benefit if the double-counted ballots can be identified (something, by the way, which is much easier said than done). If one campaign is making a lot of noise about the issue, it's because that campaign is losing and needs to gamble. In this case, that would be Coleman, who only today filed a petition with the court to address the issue. (Earlier in the recount process, in fact, the Coleman campaign had been admonishing the Franken campaign for challenging duplicate ballots).

Regardless, if Coleman trails Franken by something like 70 votes, it seems unlikely that there are enough potential double-counted ballots to allow him to make up his deficit. Collectively, the campaigns were apparently sitting on something like 550 potential duplicate ballots. Suppose that all 550 such ballots can be identified as duplicates, and that all are otherwise legal ballots cast for either Coleman or Franken. Coleman would need Franken to be identified on 56.4% of such ballots to make up a 70-vote deficit with with him. If such ballots are equally likely to help Franken and Coleman, the odds of this happening through chance alone are remote -- about 1,100-to-one against. And if Coleman has instead to make up, say, a 120-vote gap because Franken gains ground from the counting of absentee ballots, then good luck to him. It is possible that there is some sort of systematic reason why Franken is more likely to have been named on a duplicate ballot than Coleman, but as yet I am unaware of it.

Hail Marys. If the above processes fail to push Coleman past Franken, Coleman can always contest the election. There are nearly as many reasons for a challenge as there are lakes in Minnesota: Coleman could challenge the Canvassing Board's standards for counting challenged ballots, or the Canvassing Board's decision to give Franken credit for missing ballots in Minneapolis, and there might be other legal paths open to him on either the absentee ballot or duplicate ballot front. If the votes ultimately aren't there for him, however, Coleman is just treading water -- he could win his court case and lose the election.

Finally, Coleman could ask for a re-vote -- but the only agency with any sort of statutory authority to grant this is the Democratic-controlled U.S. Senate. Coleman would have better odds of filling Amy Poehler's shoes on Saturday Night Live.

There's More...

Contract Post

Coleman Sues on Duplicate Ballot Claim, Seeking to Prevent Certification of Recount

The Coleman campaign is back to court, this time filing a petition with the Minnesota Supreme Court that seeks to prevent Minnesota's Canvassing Board from certifying the results of its recount until an issue with what it claims to be duplicate ballots is resolved. In addition, Coleman requests that the court mandate that the individual precincts double-check for potential duplicate ballots in conjunction with their court-ordered review of rejected absentee ballots, which is set to proceed between now and December 31.

Duplicate ballots are created under the ordinary circumstances of an election when an original ballot cannot be read properly by machine scanners. This may be because the ballot is damaged in some fashion. Alternatively, some overseas ballots are sent by e-mail to the participants, printed out on regular paper, and then mailed to the state. A duplicate version of these ballots must be created because the machine scanners cannot read ballots on regular paper, requiring the thicker stock that ballots are printed on.

In creating duplicate ballots, the precincts are supposed to carefully match the duplicate ballots with the originals to ensure that such ballots are not counted twice (or, alternatively, not counted at all). In some cases, however, the duplicates and the originals have become decoupled from one another, and the Coleman campaign claims these ballots have been counted twice.

There is no particular reason to believe that this type of ballot particularly ought to favor either Coleman or Franken, as such ballots arise because of errors made by elections officials, rather than by voters. In addition, one significant source of duplicate ballots is overseas military personnel, who will often print out their ballot by e-mail and sent it to Minnesota on regular paper; military personnel generally vote Republican.

However, the Coleman campaign has been much more aggressive in identifying and challenging potential duplicate ballots, submitting approximately 200 such ballots to the Canvassing Board. The Canvassing Board ruled this morning that it does not have the jurisdiction to deal with the propriety of the duplicate ballots, instead telling Coleman he needed to go to court.

In a discussion before the Canvassing Board yesterday evening, Franken attorney Marc Elias claimed, among other things, that his campaign had specifically been prevented from challenging potential duplicate ballots in certain counties. Elias also produced an e-mail from Coleman lead attorney Tony Trimble, which admonished the Franken campaign for attempting to have such ballots challanged.

Coleman's petition is unfocused and haphazard, oftentimes citing precedents from other states and arguing that they should apply to Minnesota. It may be motivated in part by the Coleman's campaign wanting to avoid a circumstance in which the Canvassing Board certifies a recount total showing Franken ahead, would be damaging to Coleman from a public relations standpoint.

There are, however, undoubtedly some legitimate instances of double-counted ballots, and it would not surprise me if the Court seeks a mechanism to address them. But, it is not clear that such a review would benefit Coleman if a truly comprehensive review is made. That Coleman has been more aggressive in challenging such ballots does not mean that the circumstances in which they arise are intrinsically more likely to help Coleman.

There's More...

Contract Post

Franken Appears Likely to Lead After Challenge Phase

UPDATE (1 PM CST): As of 1 PM, I'm now projecting a Franken lead of more like 70 votes, which would bring my numbers closely in line with the Star Tribune's estimate.

_____
This is fuzzy, fuzzy math, but with Norm Coleman again converting only a very low percentage of his challenges in counting this morning, I am now projecting a Franken lead of something like 40 votes after all challenged ballots -- including ballot challenges withdrawn by both campaigns, and special circumstances ballots -- have been processed.

Specifically, I have Franken taking a lead of about 430 votes after all challenged ballots are processed this afternoon. This includes "blue folder" ballots flagged (mostly by the Coleman campaign) for special circumstances. The Canvassing Board ruled this morning that they will evaluate blue folder ballots based on the markings on the ballot only, and will not consider the special circumstances behind them, which are outside of its jurisdiction and instead the subject for a court challenge. As such, very few of these types of challenges are likely to be successful, at least in the immediate term. Coleman has significantly more blue folder challenges than Franken, and so this is likely to add to Franken's total.

I then have Franken losing a net of about 385 ballots once withdrawn challenges are processed, as Franken has more withdrawn challenges that Coleman, most of which are Coleman ballots. This would leave him with a small surplus.

These assumptions are calibrated off the Franken campaign's assertion that it was ahead by 4 ballots, assuming that all challenges would be rejected. This implies, for instance, that a slightly higher percentage of withdrawn Coleman challenges will be converted to Franken ballots than the other way around (not all withdrawn challenges will produce a vote for the opponent, since some were made to ballots deemed to be illegal that the campaigns were hoping to get counted for themselves).

If the Franken's campaign assertion is wrong, that will flow through to my assumptions, leading my math to be wrong too.

There's More...

Contract Post

In Minnesota, Six Inches of Confusion

A just-issued ruling by the Minnesota Supreme Court sets the stage for a scene similar to the one at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport right now: confusion, delays, heated tempers, and the possibility for everybody on the manifest to find themselves trapped.

The 3-2 ruling, issued at approximately 5:30 PM this evening, orders the following:

1. The counties are prohibited from sorting through or counting any rejected absentee ballots on their own, or under the recommendations of the state's Canvassing Board;

2. Instead, the two candidates, the Secretary of State, and the county auditors and canvassing boards should implement a process for identifying and counting wrongfully rejected absentee ballots. But -- and here's the kicker -- both of the candidates and the local elections officials must mutually agree that any given absentee ballot has been rejected in error. If such a consensus emerges about a particular ballot, it will be opened, counted, and the revised results will be forwarded to the state's Canvassing Board.

The Court further requires that this process be completed by 4 PM on December 31st. Nothing in the ruling, however, would appear to preclude either campaign from challenging the results of the election at a later date.

The process established by the Supreme Court is likely to be contentious and cumbersome. The sheer number of parties it involves in the process, when coupled with the lack of guidance it provides to them, creates an environment in which fatigue and partisanship are likely to prevail over Minnesota Nice. The most burdensome part of the process, of course, is the requirement that each individual ballot must be mutually agreed upon to have been rejected in error before it is opened and counted.

Nevertheless, while there are obvious incentives for gamesmanship in the process, I would suggest that the campaigns are at substantial risk if they try and play it too cutely in negotiating the fate of individual ballots. For one thing, the Court's ruling does contain some weak language suggesting that if the campaigns misbehave during the absentee ballot process, this may be held prejudicially against them in the (likely) event of an election contest.

Perhaps more importantly, however, there appears to be something of a trap waiting or a campaign that applies inconsistent standards in its acceptance of absentee ballots from county to county and precinct to precinct.

The trap is as follows. The campaigns can't know, in theory, which candidate a ballot might be counted for when they are negotiating whether or not it is a legitimate ballot. This is because absentee ballots are sealed. (I caveat this with "in theory, because the campaigns will undoubtedly be able to cross-check some fraction of the absentee ballots against their voter lists). What the campaigns can know, however, is which candidate is more likely to win that ballot based on the demographics of the precinct. In a heavily black precinct in Minneapolis, Franken would presumably be more inclined to open the ballot, and the Coleman campaign less so. Conversely, in a wealthy suburb of Rochester, the Coleman campaign might be more inclined to take the gamble and open the magic envelope.

The problem, it seems to me, is that if the candidates apply inconsistent standards from county to county and precinct to precinct, they set up an exceptionally strong Equal Protection argument for their opponent. In Bush v Gore -- a ruling cited extensively in the Coleman campaign's petition to Minnesota's court this week, the U.S. Supreme Court held as follows:

There is no difference between the two sides of the present controversy on these basic propositions. Respondents say that the very purpose of vindicating the right to vote justifies the recount procedures now at issue. The question before us, however, is whether the recount procedures the Florida Supreme Court has adopted are consistent with its obligation to avoid arbitrary and disparate treatment of the members of its electorate.

Much of the controversy seems to revolve around ballot cards designed to be perforated by a stylus but which, either through error or deliberate omission, have not been perforated with sufficient precision for a machine to count them. In some cases a piece of the card -- a chad -- is hanging, say by two corners. In other cases there is no separation at all, just an indentation.

The Florida Supreme Court has ordered that the intent of the voter be discerned from such ballots. For purposes of resolving the equal protection challenge, it is not necessary to decide whether the Florida Supreme Court had the authority under the legislative scheme for resolving election disputes to define what a legal vote is and to mandate a manual recount implementing that definition. The recount mechanisms implemented in response to the decisions of the Florida Supreme Court do not satisfy the minimum requirement for non-arbitrary treatment of voters necessary to secure the fundamental right. Florida's basic command for the count of legally cast votes is to consider the "intent of the voter." Gore v. Harris, ___ So. 2d, at ___ (slip op., at 39). This is unobjectionable as an abstract proposition and a starting principle. The problem inheres in the absence of specific standards to ensure its equal application. The formulation of uniform rules to determine intent based on these recurring circumstances is practicable and, we conclude, necessary.

The law does not refrain from searching for the intent of the actor in a multitude of circumstances; and in some cases the general command to ascertain intent is not susceptible to much further refinement. In this instance, however, the question is not whether to believe a witness but how to interpret the marks or holes or scratches on an inanimate object, a piece of cardboard or paper which, it is said, might not have registered as a vote during the machine count. The factfinder confronts a thing, not a person. The search for intent can be confined by specific rules designed to ensure uniform treatment.

The want of those rules here has led to unequal evaluation of ballots in various respects. See Gore v. Harris, ___ So. 2d, at ___ (slip op., at 51) (Wells, J., dissenting) ("Should a county canvassing board count or not count a 'dimpled chad' where the voter is able to successfully dislodge the chad in every other contest on that ballot? Here, the county canvassing boards disagree"). As seems to have been acknowledged at oral argument, the standards for accepting or rejecting contested ballots might vary not only from county to county but indeed within a single county from one recount team to another.

[...]

The question before the Court is not whether local entities, in the exercise of their expertise, may develop different systems for implementing elections. Instead, we are presented with a situation where a state court with the power to assure uniformity has ordered a statewide recount with minimal procedural safeguards. When a court orders a statewide remedy, there must be at least some assurance that the rudimentary requirements of equal treatment and fundamental fairness are satisfied.

Emphasis is mine. Basically, if a voter cannot have some reasonable assurance that her ballot would be treated uniformly from one county to the next, the process violates Equal Protection and is probably unconstitutional. Thus, if a campaign attempted to preclude a voter from being treated the same in Dakota County as she might be in Hennepin County, it could create exceptionally strong rounds for an election contest from its opponent. Such differential treatment would presumably be easy to demonstrate, as Minnesota has fairly simple and unambiguous rules for the counting of absentee ballots, and the same typologies of borderline cases are likely to arise from one county to the next.

Each campaign, then, is under some compulsion to develop and apply a consistent statewide standard. The Franken campaign, believing that counting more absentee ballots is generally to its advantage, will undoubtedly argue for a more liberal standard, and the Coleman campaign for a more conservative one. Since the Coleman campaign essentially has veto power over the matter, the more conservative standard will probably prevail.

What the Coleman campaign probably cannot get away with, however, is failing to establish any reasonable standards for the counting of the absentee ballots, or for applying such standards capriciously from county to county. The more arbitrarily the Coleman campaign behaves, the more it runs the risk of facing -- and losing -- an election challenge. The Nash equilibrium here, then, is probably a conservative but in fact fairly consistent standard for counting the absentee ballots. Still, it's liable to be a bumpy ride along the way.

There's More...

Contract Post

Minnesota Lunchtime Update: It's Gonna Be Close

UPDATE (3:45 PM): Note that the success rates cited below do not account for the dozens and dozens Coleman challenges that have gone into the "blue folder" -- these are challenges not to the marks on the ballot but "process" challenges related to its propriety (such as whether the ballot's duplicate is missing). If we count the blue folder ballots as unsuccessful challenges, then Coleman's success rate is more like 7% -- however, it would be premature to do that since we simply don't know enough about them.

UPDATE (3:30 PM): Coleman was having a really terrible run of things for an hour or so there after lunch, with something like 5 or 6 challenges upheld out of more than 100 ballots evaluated. Most of these ballots were from Minneapolis and other Democrat-friendly places in Hennepin County, so this is perhaps no surprise. Overall, his success rate is now closer to ~10-11% than ~12-13%.

Also, please do not take any of the numbers you see here as gospel. Everyone is working off some or another kind of best guestimate.

___
With the Canvassing Board today having begun ruling on ballot challenges made by the Coleman campaign, we may now have a slightly better idea of where we stand in Minnesota's recount process.

Through lunchtime today, by my highly unofficial count, Coleman has won 33 of his 265 challenges, or 12.5%. By contrast, on Tuesday and Wednesday, Al Franken won 115 of his 393 challenges, or 29.4% -- again, by my highly unofficial count. (That Franken's success rate is much higher is not surprising since he had significantly fewer challenges outstanding)

The guys at The Uptake reported earlier today that Coleman has 1,021 challenges presently outstanding to the Canvassing Board. If he continues to win challenges at his current rate, he'd wind up with 127 successful challenges.

Franken apparently has some challenges that have yet to be resolved too. These are so-called "blue folder" ballots that were challenged for process (e.g. the absence of a duplicate ballot) rather than a voter intent reasons. There are something like 20-30 Franken ballots in the blue folder, which at a 29% success rate would net to another 7 ballots or so, bringing his total to 122 successful challenges.

If Coleman wins 127 challenges and Franken wins 122, that would mean a net of 5 votes for Coleman. If the Franken campaign's estimate was correct that it was winning the re-count by 4 votes assuming that all challenges would be rejected, that would produce a Coleman win by a grand total of ... one vote!

However, there remain any number of contingencies that make these estimates highly imprecise:

1. There were some challenges made by each candidate that apparently ended in the opponent's pile ... some Coleman challenges, for instance, in Franken's stack of ballots. I am confused by these and have tried to avoid counting them for now, but they could certainly make a difference of 5-10 ballots at the margins.

2. Coleman in particular has had a lot of "blue folder" ballots, which will not be addressed until after Christmas. Although my hunch is that very few blue folder challenges are liable to be successful (they probably point toward issues that are outside of the Canvassing Board's jurisdiction), it is hard to know for certain.

3. Both campaigns are now talking about adding back challenges that they had previously withdrawn.

4. We don't know if the Coleman challenges counted so far are representative of his efforts as a whole. (For what it's worth, the Board has not yet addressed any Coleman challenges from Minneapolis, St. Paul, or Duluth, which are highly blue cities that may lower Coleman's success rate).

5. There is no way to independently verify the Franken campaign's estimate that it was ahead by 4 ballots assuming that all challenges would be rejected.

6. We have not accounted for "fifth pile" absentee ballots that, if and when they are counted, could produce a net gain of as many as 100 votes (or more) for Franken.

7. Pretty much everything that has happened so far, and everything that happens from here on out, can and quite possibly will be the subject of a court challenge.

But other than that, we've got it all figured out...

There's More...

Contract Post

Brett Favre Beats Lizard People

Yesterday, the Franken campaign challenged this ballot, claiming that "Brett Favre" was an identifying mark:



The Canvassing Board rejected the challenge and awarded the vote to Coleman.

Today, just moments ago, the infamous Lizard People ballot came up for the Canvassing Board's review!



This ballot was initially counted as a Franken vote. The Coleman campaign challenged the ballot, claiming "Lizard People" was an identifying mark. The Board voted to uphold the challenge, arguing that they couldn't be certain that "Lizard People" wasn't a real person's name.

So "Lizard People" might be a real person, but "Brett Favre" isn't?

Granted, there are other differences between the two ballots -- "Lizard People" is filled in several places on the ballot, including in the 'write-in' space in the Senate column, whereas Favre's name appears on the ballot just once. Still, one would not expect Minnesotans to show so much sympathy for someone who dared vote for the Chief of the Cheeseheads for President of the United States.

To top off the fun, another challenge just came through in which a Franken voter had appended "STIN" to "Al Franken", as in "AL FRANKEN-STIN" (sic). The Canvassing Board rejected that challenge and tallied the ballot for Mr. Frankenstin.

There's More...

Contract Post

88 Reasons Not to Move to New York

Governor Paterson wants to tax iPod downloads?

ALBANY - Gov. Paterson's proposed $121 billion budget hits New Yorkers in their iPods - and nickels-and-dimes them in lots of other places, too.

Trying to close a $15.4 billion budget gap, Paterson called for 88 new fees and a host of other taxes, including an "iPod tax" that taxes the sale of downloaded music and other "digitally delivered entertainment services."

"We're going to have to take some extreme measures," Paterson said Tuesday after unveiling the slash-and-burn budget.

The proposal, which needs legislative approval, did not include broad-based income tax increases, but relied on smaller ones to raise $4.1 billion from cash-strapped New Yorkers.

Movie tickets, taxi rides, soda, beer, wine, cigars and massages would be taxed under Paterson's proposal. It also extends sales taxes to cable and satellite TV services and removes the tax exemption for clothes costing less than $110.

iPod downloads? Cable television? Beer? What is a boy to do?

But seriously, folks. Paterson -- like most of his gubernatorial brethren around the country -- is in an unenviable position. Most states are facing budget shortfalls, and most of them are required to balance their budgets -- which means that essential services must be cut, or taxes must be raised. There are no two ways about it.

I'd tend to agree with Patrick Ruffini, however, that this is not the most politically savvy way to do it. One can imagine the campaign commercials now:

Governor Paterson signed into law over 88 separate tax increases on everyday goods like gasoline, clothing, beer, college tuition, soft drinks -- even music downloads! Paterson says 'yes' to tax increases for working families. It's time for New Yorkers to tell him 'no'.

Probably better just to hold your nose and raise income taxes.

I would also argue that it is not very economically savvy to raise sales taxes. In comparison to income taxes, sales taxes tend to encourage savings and capital formation in lieu of consumer spending. But for the time being, the consumption side is more of a problem. Consumers simply aren't spending any money, in part because they're scared, and in part because they're making rational adjustments to the fact that they have less job security, less equity in their homes, and less wealth embedded in their retirement portfolios. By contrast, capital is cheap right now, and there is plenty of it out there -- it isn't going anywhere because businesses don't think they can invest it profitably.* This is why the fed funds rate is 0.000001% right now -- the Fed wants to incentivize spending rather than saving.


* Yes, this is a gross oversimplification.

There's More...

Contract Post

Hold Your Horses, Minnesota

The State of Minnesota's Canvassing Board has finished adjudicating challenges brought to the Board by Al Franken. They will begin evaluating challenges brought by Norm Coleman's campaign tomorrow.

The Star Tribune has logged 391 challenges made by the Franken campaign. Among these, 225 ballots were counted for Norm Coleman (57%), 56 for Al Franken (14%), and 110 (28%) either for a third-party candidate or for nobody. (The Star Tribune did also identified dozen or so challenges apparently made by the Coleman campaign that had somehow found their way into Franken's pile; these challenges are not included in the totals above).

There seems to be something of a consensus that these results represent good news for Al Franken, as a fairly high number of his challenges were successful. For a variety of reasons, I am less than certain about this, and think that we haven't yet learned very much about the ultimate outcome of the recount.

For one thing, the information provided by the Star Tribune is incomplete. We now know something about how the challenges ended up, but we don't know anything about how they began. That is, we don't know what the initial ruling on the ballot was at the county level, nor the reason for the challenge.

To tackle this question, I evaluated 155 challenges brought to the Board by the Franken campaign, as available on the Star Tribune's website. (Why 155? Because this is about all I could handle before becoming deathly bored). We can classify these challenges into four groups:

I. 87 ballots (56%) appear to initially have been counted for Norm Coleman, and the Canvassing Board upheld that ruling upon review. These represent unsuccessful challenges.

II. 18 ballots (12%) were initially counted for Coleman, but were ruled as nonvotes by the Canvassing Board. These represent successful challenges.

III. 31 ballots (20%) were initially counted as nonvotes (or for third-party candidates), but were deemed to be Franken ballots by the Board. These also represent successful challenges.

IV. Lastly, 19 ballots (12%) were initially counted as nonvotes (or for third-party candidates), and the Canvassing Board also deemed them nonvotes upon its review. These represent unsuccessful challenges.

In total, about three in ten Franken challenges -- everything in Groups II and III -- appear to have been successful. This is a reasonably high success rate. However, we should have expected the Franken campaign's success rate to be reasonably high, because it withdrew the vast majority of his challenges. Taken as a percentage of the 3000 or so ballots that the Franken campaign challenged initially, its success rate is more like 4 percent.

A couple of other salient points from these statistics. Firstly, quite a decent fraction of the challenges did not concern potential Coleman votes that the Franken campaign was trying to get thrown out. Instead, approximately one-third concerned potential Franken votes that the campaign was trying to get included.

This distinction is important because, when the Franken campaign challenged a legal Coleman ballot, this resulted in a temporary deduction from Coleman's total in the Secretary of State's running count (essentially, such ballots were treated as guilty until proven innocent). By contrast, when Franken challenged a nonvote that he wanted to have counted for himself, this produced no immediate adjustment to the state's totals. Long story short, the greater percentage of challenges that were made to nonvotes rather than to Coleman votes, the better off Franken is relative to the state's accounting.

In addition, the different types of challenges were associated with vastly different success rates. From among the 105 Coleman ballots that the Franken campaign challenged, 18 challenges were accepted, or 17%. By contrast, from among the 50 nonvotes that Franken challenged, more than half (31 or 62%, to be precise) were counted for him by the Canvassing Board.

Even these numbers, however, are hard to place into context, because we don't know anything about the nature of the thousands of challenges that Franken withdrew. The state does not appear to have added the withdrawn challenges back into its totals; in fact, it does not appear to have done anything with them. We don't know, among other things, how many of these withdrawn challenges were made to Coleman votes (in which case, Coleman will now get credit for them) as opposed to nonvotes (in which case, they're basically irrelevant). The Coleman campaign has also withdrawn the majority of its challenges, although fewer than the Franken campaign has (in fact, yesterday Coleman unwithdrew about 200 of his challenges).

With these withdrawn challenges existing in a state of limbo, we have very little idea about where we stand. We might know now something about many votes a candidate has gained during the challenge process, but we don't really have a good idea of where he stood before the challenge phase began.

We also know nothing so far about the nature of the Coleman challenges. Since Coleman withdraw fewer of his challenges, does this mean that the challenges he retained are less likely to be successful? That seems highly probable -- but, we can't be certain. Also, will Coleman's challenges have a different typology from Franken's? For instance, will a significant fraction of them concern nonvotes, as opposed to Franken votes the campaign is trying to have excluded? We simply don't know.

I do consider Franken the favorite in the recount, but that is because it appears that erroneously rejected absentee ballots will be considered by many counties; these ballots could easily tip a net of 100 or so votes to Franken. Without those absentee ballots, the recount still appears to me to be too close to call. Until we learn more about (i) Coleman's challenges and (ii) the withdrawn challenges, I would be suspicious of overly-specific claims about the status of the recount that you might see elsewhere.

There's More...

Contract Post

NY-Sen: Where's Larry King When You Need Him?

Thus far, I've tried to avoid making any sort of editorial comment on New York's vacant Senate seat. This is not because I don't enjoy making an editorial comment from time to time, but rather because I find myself agnostic on the whole affair. Caroline Kennedy strikes me neither as patently qualified nor as patently unqualified to hold a seat in the United States Senate. On the one hand, I tend to think that preference should be given to elected officials when appointing replacement senators. On the other hand, Kennedy, while not an elected official, has been a prominent public figure.

Three agencies -- Siena, Marist and Public Policy Polling -- have surveyed New Yorkers about what they think should happen with the Senate seat. Marist and Siena surveyed registered voters; PPP surveyed Democrats only.



The surveys reveal little consensus among New Yorkers: Kennedy is preferred to Cuomo among Democrats in the Siena and PPP polls, but not in the Marist poll, and the two candidates appear to be about tied when the preferences of independents and Republicans are taken into account. A host of other candidates, like NY-27's Brian Higgins and Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown, draw considerably less support, but because their name recognition is much weaker statewide than Cuomo or Kennedy, this is not necessarily damning.

So where does Larry King fit into all of this?

Well, just because you don't have a vote for the seat doesn't mean that you can't have some elements of a campaign. Campaigns are good things; they do a pretty good job of vetting candidates, and sorting out public opinion. What bothers me about Kennedy -- and the rest of the candidates for that matter -- is that the process has been entirely confined to backroom dealings. Why does Kennedy need to call David Paterson to declare her interest in the position? Why can't she hold a press conference instead, take a few questions, and explain why she thinks she's the best woman for the position? Why can't Cuomo do the same?

What I am suggesting, then, is that Kennedy and Cuomo -- and ideally several of the other candidates -- have a joint appearance on Larry King sometime between now and New Years' Eve. You can call it a "debate" if you like; the advantage of someone like King is that he'd keep things fairly non-confrontational, which is probably a necessity since some of these people are allies and will not be inclined to tear each other to bits. Nevertheless, a joint appearance on King would provide for some minimal level of transparency and public scrutiny.

The joint appearance could be simulcast or co-produced with local PBS stations for New Yorkers who do not have cable television. CNN could then conduct a poll of New Yorkers both before and after the program, to see to what extent the appearance affected public opinion. What if Kennedy nails her appearance? What if Cuomo flubs his? What if a candidate like Higgins or Nydia Velazquez steals the show?

At a minimum, this would allow Paterson to make a better-informed decision. He would not necessarily be beholden to the results of the poll, but I think there is a reasonable chance that some sort of public consensus might emerge. There are dangers, certainly, in democracy-by-polling -- but it is probably an improvement over democracy-by-fiat.

There's More...

Contract Post

Coleman v. Minnesota Canvassing Board

This afternoon, Minnesota's Supreme Court will take up Norm Coleman's request (PDF) to stop the counting of so-called "fifth-pile" absentee ballots in Minnesota. These are ballots that initially were rejected by the counties, but that upon further review appear to have been rejected for invalid reasons. Finding some way to preclude these ballots from being counted might represent Coleman's best chance for victory, since the evidence points toward Franken picking up a significant number of votes if and when such ballots are included.

Coleman is making essentially two arguments in his legal brief:

1) That the Canvassing Board does not have the jurisdiction to count such ballots (rather, he claims, authority to do so rather rests solely with the courts), and,
2) That counting such ballots under the recommendation of the Canvassing Board would violate the Equal Protection clause of the Constitution, since the different counties are apparently using different procedures in attempting to count them.

Coleman's complaint is well-written and, on its surface, fairly reasonable. However, it is not clear how much good it will ultimately do him.

It seems clear enough that, as Coleman's complaint suggests, the Canvassing Board does not have the authority to require that the "fifth pile" ballots be counted. However, the Canvassing Board has not required that these ballots be included. Instead, it has merely recommended to the counties that they re-evaluate such ballots, and notified them that they will accept new vote tallies from them if they elect to do so.

The problem with this, Coleman's complaint alleges, is that the counties are applying inconsistent procedures in counting the "fifth pile" ballots. Most fundamentally, some counties are in the process of counting them, while others have chosen not to do so. Coleman contends that this violates Equal Protection, and cites Bush v. Gore as his principal point of case law. It is not fair, Coleman contends, that some counties might treat the same ballot differently from another one.

Coleman's lawsuit, however, runs into a couple of significant problems.

Firstly, if Equal Protection is being violated by the "fifth pile" process, then one can also plausibly argue that Equal Protection was violated in the initial accounting of such ballots, since some counties were apparently applying different standards to determine what did and did not constitute a legal ballot in the first place. In Duluth, for example, local officials had been rejecting any absentee ballots that did not have a date next to their signature, before discovering that this is not a valid reason for rejecting a ballot under Minnesota law.

Coleman's more fundamental problem, however, is that it is not clear what kind of remedy the court could provide him with. The most obvious remedy would not be to throw out the fifth pile ballots in their entirety, but rather to set up a process wherein such ballots are counted uniformly from county to county. One should remember that, in Florida in 2000, the recount was brushing up against a state-mandated deadline for certification of the vote (in Bush v Gore, the court did not rule against Gore so much as it declined to intervene as his clock ran out). In Minnesota, however, there appears to be no specific deadline for completing the recount, and so such a concern would not apply. If the state needs to take a little longer to see that every vote is counted, then it probably will.

It is also less than clear that Coleman would stand to benefit if such a comprehensive and consistent review of absentee ballots took place. On the contrary, to the extent that Franken expects to benefit from having the absentee ballots counted, he would probably prefer that more rather than fewer counties do so. Moreover, among the counties that have declined to count their fifth pile ballots is Ramsey (St. Paul), which is among the bluest counties in the state and a huge source of potential gains for Franken.

Coleman, then, seems to be adopting something of an underwear gnomes strategy:

1. Force Franken to go to court to get the absentee ballots counted;
2. ???
3. Profit!

Coleman could very conceivably win his lawsuit, but have it work to his ultimate detriment if the end result is a more complete and comprehensive review of the absentee ballots. Until and unless Coleman comes up with some arguments why the rejected absentee ballots should not be counted at all, he is likely spinning his wheels, regardless of what the court rules today.

There's More...

Contract Post

Are the Republicans Still a National Party?

I've been turning my attention recently to the House, which is almost certain to be the more active of the two chambers in the first 30-60 days of the Obama Administration. One thing I've determined is that the Democrats turned in a truly dominant performance in elections for the Congress this year, to an extent understated by the 79-seat advantage they now claim in the House.

We can calculate an aggregate popular vote for the Congress simply by adding up the raw vote totals from the 435 elections for the House of Representatives across the country. The Democrats won this year's House popular vote by 8.9 points, roughly matching the 7-8 point advantage they had in partisan identification on national exit polls.

That figure, however, tends to understate the Democrats' advantage. The reason is that in 40 of the 435 Congressional Distrcts across the country, the Republicans did not field a candidate. (This is actually a modest improvement for them; the Republicans failed to compete in 46 races in 2006). By contrast, the Democrats failed to field a candidate in only 14 races.

What happens when a candidate runs unopposed varies from state to state. Some states automatically award him the seat without putting him on the ballot or tallying his votes. The House popular vote total, therefore, will not give any credit to the Democrats when this happens. Other states will put the candidate on the ballot by himself (or against third-party opposition), let the voter punch the card for him, and then tally the results. When this happens, though, there is often a rather severe undervote, since there's not much reason to vote in a contest where you have only one choice.

The upshot of this is that the House popular vote tends to discount those areas where a party is so dominant as to discourage competition, because less competition in a district also means fewer votes in that district. Congressional Districts have roughly the same number of people as one another, and so a fairer way to evaluate the House might simply be take the average of the vote share received by each party across all 435 districts (giving a candidate credit for 100 percent of the vote when he runs unopposed). If we do things this way, then we find that the Democrats won, on average, 56.0 percent of the vote on November 4th, and the Republicans 41.3 percent. That's a difference of 14.7 points, far more formidable than nominal 8.9 point advantage that the popular vote total gave them.

Even in districts where the Republicans did compete, moreover, they were often not truly competitive. The Democrats had 126 districts that they won by 40 points or more (including races that they won uncontested); these are what I call Democrat-Dominant Districts (DDD's). These districts represent approximately half of the Democratic seats in the House, and nearly 30 percent of the House in its entirety. By contrast, the Republicans had only had 30 districts that they won by 40 or more points, of which 22 are in the South.





What characteristics did the DDD's hold in common? In general, they were more urban, younger and poorer (although not any less educated) than the country as whole, and contained a significantly higher share of minorities. But, with 126 such districts, there was quite a bit of room for diversity between them. Basically, the Republicans aren't competitive virtually anywhere on the Eastern Seaboard north of Washington, D.C., and virtually anywhere on the Pacific Coast north of Monterey. They aren't competitive in virtually any dense urban center, or in virtually any majority-minority district (such as the black belt in the South or Hispanic-majority districts in South Texas). Finally, there are a dozen or so districts where Republicans are virtually nonexistant because of the presence of a large College or University. Collectively, that adds up to a lot of districts -- almost a third of the country.

Conversely, the Democrats have very few districts in which they can't play some angle or another. Nearly all of the Republican-dominated districts fit into a particular template: white, Southern, rural or exurban, lower-middle class (but not usually impoverished), low-mobility, with poorly-diversified economies reliant on traditional sectors like manufacturing or agriculture. There are only a couple dozen such districts throughout the country.

One can argue, I suppose, that the Republicans' vote is distributed rather more efficiently than the Democrats. Indeed, they have far fewer wasted votes than Democrats, who have thousands of largely redundant voters in urban centers like Chicago and New York. On the other hand, I can think of at least four long-term structural advantages that the DDD's provide to the Democrats:

Firstly, the Democrats have a pretty strong buffer against Republican gains at the margins, which might be pretty useful to them since parties taking over the White House typically lose seats at the next midterm election. For example, suppose that Republicans gain 5 points across the board in 2010 (so that, for instance, a district which they lost by 3 points in 2008, they'd win by 2 points in 2010). If the Republicans managed to do this, the Democrats would lose just 15 seats, still holding 242 to the Republicans' 193. Suppose instead that the Republicans gained 10 points across the board. Surely that would give them back control of the chamber, right? Not really -- it only nets them 7 additional seats, giving them 200 to the Democrats' 235. Finally, suppose that the Republicans gained 15 points across the board. Even then, the Democrats would retain possession of the House by a narrow 219-216 margin. Put more succinctly, an outright majority of the House is now controlled by Democrats who won their elections by 15 points or more. Even if the political climate shifts back toward the Republicans, they may have trouble getting much bang for their buck.

The second advantage that comes into play is redistricting, which will take place after the 2010 census is completed. If the Democrats' voters are less efficeintly allocated now, they would seem to have more to gain once redistricting takes place and reshuffles them.

The third advantage is resource allocation. Seats that are won by 40+ points require next to nothing to defend, allowing the Democrats to concentrate their resources in more competitive areas.

Finally, there is a synergistic relationship between the vote margin in a particular district and the ideology of the congressman. That is, districts that are won by wider margins can support more progressive policymakers. The Congerssional Progressive Caucus now has 71 members, considerably larger than the Democrats' 47 Blue Dogs. Many congressional districts are so blue that the congressman is theoretically under more threat of losing to a primary challenge on his left than a Republican challenge on his right.

Although the Republicans face an arduous task in crafting a path to 270 electoral votes, finding 218 viable seats in the Congress might represent the more difficult challenge.

There's More...

Contract Post

Colorado's Salazar To Head Interior, Creating Another Vacancy for Democrats

Democrats have not had the best of luck with their senatorial vacancies this year. Caroline Kennedy’s potential ascension to New York’s seat is triggering a flurry of controversy in the blogosphere. We don’t need to remind you what’s going on in Illinois. Ted Kaufman, appointed to fill Joe Biden's shoes in Delaware, has been less controversial, although we criticized the pick for being too inside baseball.

And now the Democrats have another vacancy to fill – this time in Colorado, where Senator Ken Salazar, who was up for re-election in 2010, has apparently been selected to become Barack Obama’s Secretary of the Interior.

But this one has the potential to turn out a little bit better for the Democrats. With Colorado having turned bluer, Salazar’s moderation is no longer such a prize to the Dems, especially given that his approval ratings are no better than average. Basically, the Democrats ought to be able to wind up with either (i) someone just as electable as Salazar, but more liberal, or (ii) someone no more liberal than Salazar, but electorally untouchable. And just who might that someone be?

The Denver Post lists seven potential replacements for Governor Bill Ritter to pick from, and it’s a fairly strong group of candidates.

Rep. John Salazar – Brother of Ken Salazar and third-term Congressman. Moderate Democrat who aligns himself with the Blue Dog caucus -- probably more moderate than his brother, and would not be a certain vote for the Democrats, especially on pocketbook issues. Has overperformed in his district, winning re-election easily in an R+4 district, and for obvious reasons should hold most of Ken Salazar's electoral support. Basically, he would represent a sacrifice of ideology for electability.

Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper. Extremely popular in Denver. Has an interesting and salable background, with credentials ranging from geology to business development. Generally seems to be liberal, particularly on environmental issues, although he bought himself some credibility with moderates by opposing Denver’s marijuana decriminalization initiative (which passed anyway). Arguably the most upside of anyone on this list; however, there isn’t that much history of mayors of large cities transitioning into the Senate, as the two positions require fairly different skill sets.

Rep. Diana DeGette – Quite progressive Congresswoman who just won re-election to her 7th term. Entrenched/intimidating enough so as to no longer elicit serious Republican challengers in her Denver district. Is she too liberal to win statewide? Hard to say in Colorado, which tends to be more idiosyncratic and libertarianish than classically moderate. One downside is that her fundraising has not been terrific, although that’s not uncommon for someone who isn’t facing a serious challenger.

State House Speaker Andrew Romanoff -- Term limited, and so is departing the state legislature. Young and has a reputation for ambition; one gets the feeling that he’ll run for Congress someday if he doesn’t get the Senate seat. State legislative leaders tend to have skills that transfer pretty well to the US Senate and have a fairly good electoral track record. Ritter is undoubtedly used to working with him. Conservatives will try and paint him as something of a tax-and-spend liberal based on his positioning on past state budget disputes.

Rep. Ed Perlmutter – Mainline-to-liberal Democrat who was just re-elected decisively to his sophomore term in purple CO-7. Has a reputation for strong constituent services. A fairly safe, compromise pick.

Former U.S. Attorney Tom Strickland. The Democratic nominee for Senate in both 1996 and 2002; he twice lost to Wayne Allard, by about five points each time out. Politics are a little hard to discern, although appears to tend more toward the moderate side.

Denver Public Schools Superintendent Michael Bennet. Was on Obama’s short list to be Secretary of Education. That’s pretty much all that I know about him.

Final Thoughts: If he’s interested in the position – and who knows if he is – then Hickenlooper’s combination of resume, electability, and most likely being a reliable Democratic vote would seem to be something of a dominant strategy.

Strickland and Bennet are relatively untested electorally (actually, Strickland has been tested and twice failed that test). They would seem to be the most unorthodox choices.

That leaves the four legislators –- Salazar, Romanoff, Perlmutter, DeGette –- who probably run in that order from moderate to liberal, with a big gap between Salazar and the other three. Picking Salazar, when the Democrats have any number of well credentialed alternatives, would represent an awfully cautious choice on Ritter’s behalf; it's also one that he'll be under a lot of pressure to make.

There's More...

Contract Post

On Making Mitch McConnell Wet His Pants

User B.R. writes in:

In your discussion of the Bayh coalition today, you used the usual 60 vote marker as the line to break filibusters.

But why is that all that folks mention? I ask because everyone (media and blogs alike) are treating the filibuster as a far more commonplace occurrence than it should be. Part of the reason for this is that the GOP has learned to use the procedural filibuster (as allowed for them by Senate Rule 22 from 1975) for everything, and Reid gives in and calls for cloture.

Reid has the power as majority leader to require actual filibusters - you know, reading the phone book for 19 hours on the senate floor. It'd also make it clear to the media and the public who stopped a piece of legislation - meaning that the story line changes from "Reid unable to find 60 votes" to "McConnell reads phone book for 19 hours to stop vote."

Why does nobody talk about that option? Why doesn't Reid exercise that option? Everyone is so stuck on "60 votes" as if it means something, but 51 votes is all that matters to pass legislation.

B.R. raises several interesting points, but they ultimately point back to one thing: Harry Reid has been exceptionally ineffective as the Democrats' majority leader.

The number of cloture votes skyrocketed in the 110th Congress following the Democratic takeover of the Senate and Reid's assumption of the majority leader position. The Senate voted on 112 cloture motions in the 110th, exactly double the number (56) of cloture votes in the 109th Congress, and two-and-a-half times as many as the average number of cloture votes (44) over the previous nine Congresses. Of these cloture motions, 51 were rejected (meaning that opponents of a bill succeeded in blocking an up-or-down vote) and 61 were passed.



Not all of these cloture motions, it should be noted, were necessitated by obstructionist Republicans. In some cases, such as on FISA and on certain resolutions related to the Iraq War, a minority of Democrats were seeking to prevent a vote. Undoubtedly, however, a majority of these cloture motions were in fact triggered by Republican floor action, and the vast majority of them were also procedural filibusters -- the actual filibuster, in which Mitch McConnell wets his pants while reading from the phone book for 19 hours, is now exceedingly rare.

There are basically two mechanisms that a majority leader can employ to limit filibusters: firstly, he can threaten to block votes on certain of the opposition party's legislation (or alternatively, present carrots to them for allowing a vote to proceed), and secondly, he can publicly shame them. Reid managed to do neither, and the Senate Republicans did fairly well for themselves considering that they were in a minority and were burdened by a President with negative political capital.

I don't imagine the culture of the Senate changing in the new Congress so long as it's under Reid's direction, and Reid is highly unlikely to be replaced. There is some chance, however, that Obama rather than Reid will dictate the tone, particularly if Joe Biden is dispatched to Capitol Hill fairly often.

It should also be noted that a senator is perfectly well allowed to vote for cloture (allowing a vote to proceed) and then vote against the underlying bill; this is not all that uncommon. The opposite also happens occasionally -- on a lot of ethics-type legislation, for instance, senators know that they'll face public scorn if they vote against a measure, so they'll try and prevent themselves from winding up in that position by voting against cloture preventing it from coming up for an up-or-down vote.

So long as Obama's approval ratings remain strong, it's somewhat likely that he will exact enough public pressure on moderate Republicans like Susan Collins to force a majority vote on broadly popular issues like health care, whether or not Collins ultimately votes 'aye' on the underlying measure. In those cases, the 60 vote threshold may be overrated. On other issues like the Employee Free Choice Act on which Democrats have been less effective at framing the public debate, the 60-vote threshold may be more tangible.

The bottom line, however, is that the Republicans are filibustering more and more often because they can get away with it. If Reid can't get them to pay a greater public price, then the Democrats ought to find somebody else who can.

There's More...

Contract Post

Bayh's Blue Dogs: Bane or Boon?

From Roll Call comes the relatively unsurprising news that Indiana Democrat Evan Bayh is attempting to form a "Blue Dog" coalition in the Senate, one which would mirror the one that Democrats already have in the House. This group will presumably include some of the swing senators that I described last week, folks like Ben Nelson, Mark Pryor and Mary Landireu.

The practical upshot of something like this -- apart from making Bayh one of the ten most powerful people in Washington -- is that the Democrats in the Blue Dog coalition would presumably tend to vote as a group rather than individuals. That is the whole point of a coalition; if a coalition's members are not voting together, it really isn't serving any purpose. Let's say that there are seven Democrats in the Blue Dog group. In theory, this means that instead of having anywhere between zero and seven votes on a particular bill (but most commonly some in-between number like two, three or four), Barack Obama would tend to get either get exactly seven votes or exactly zero. Would this behavior be helpful or harmful to his agenda?

I would argue that it might be helpful, simply because of where the numbers tend to stand in the Senate right now. The Democrats will wind up with somewhere between 57 and 59 memebers in their caucus, depending on the resolution of Illinois and Minnesota. That means they will need somewhere between one and three Republican votes to break fillibusters -- and so every vote on the margin will tend to matter a great deal; he'll already need to achieve near-unanimity among Democrats. If Obama loses, say, three Democratic votes, then reaching a 60-vote threshold is already liable to be relatively difficult for him, and so losing seven Democratic votes instead might not matter very much. On the other hand, if Bayh can whip Mary Landrieu's or Ben Nelson's vote for him on a particular issue, that could potentially be pretty helpful. (If the Democrats had, say, 62 votes instead rather than 57-59, the reverse dynamic might manifest itself).

That’s the theory, anyway. In practice, coalitions like this are rarely successful in the Senate. Does, say, Mark Warner or Ben Nelson in increase his influence by partnering with Bayh? Quite possibly not, and thereby group discipline is hard to facilitate.

There's More...

Contract Post