Michael Steele's Got Game

I'm not going to pretend that I've followed this especially closely; Geraghty and Ambinder offer more informed takes.

I will say that Steele is pretty clearly a fairly talented guy. If you take the nine open-seat Senate races that have been held between the last two political cycles (2006 and 2008), and compare the performance of the Republican candidate against the partisan composition of the state, then Steele is something of an outlier: you'd have expected a generic Republican to get only about 35 percent of the vote in a state like Maryland in a cycle like 2006, but Steele got 44.2 percent.



Now, granted, Ben Cardin wasn't exactly the most inspiring candidate. But for a very conservative Republican to do this well in Maryland (and make no mistake: Steele is very conservative) takes some serious political intangibles.

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For Democrats, Best Choice May be a Republican

There doesn't seem to be much of a consensus about just whom New Hampshire John Governor, a moderate Democrat, might appoint to replace Judd Gregg in the Senate if Gregg, as now appears somewhat likely, is chosen to be Barack Obama's Commerce Secretary. The Hill is reporting, however, that sources to Gregg claim that he would not vacate his Senate seat unless a Republican were to be named in his place.

If Gregg's replacement must be a Republican, there is one name that would allow Lynch to come as close as possible to splitting the difference between the parties. That name is that of former State Representative Liz Hager, who has admitted to her interest in the position.

Hager is a Republican and says she would caucus with the Senate Republicans. Beyond that, however, there is a lot for Democrats to like. Hager, after being primaried out by more conservative opponents for her State House seat, endorsed Barack Obama, citing his pro-choice position. She is also a proud moderate, as the Concord Monitor reports:

Hager said she sees the loss as a victory by the more conservative wing of the Republican Party over moderates. But, she said, she does not envision the primary winners prevailing in the general election. "Clearly, the people who are now in control of the Republican Party don't want people like me in it," Hager said. [...]

Hager describes herself as a moderate who is "proudly pro-choice, proudly pro-government." She sponsored a bill in 1999 that would have established an income tax to pay for education. She says her major interest was in "good government and efficient, well-run state government."

Hager described her opponents as Republicans who are "right-wing, anti-government and want to control social issues."

Hager said she's saddened by the low turnout, with the winner getting 395 votes. "I think a lot of people that have been associated with the Republican Party for years are no longer Republicans," she said.

Hager, a longtime veteran in state government, is a true Rockefeller Republican, the liberal/moderate wing of the party which, until recently, had a fairly strong presence in New England. As the Republican party has gravitated toward conservatives, however, and as the Rockefeller Republicans have simultaneously been co-opted by New Democrats, they have become a dying breed, their vestige only apparent in a few remaining legislators like Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine. Hager, who has become an active critic of the Republican establishment, would probably legislate to Collins's and Snowe's left, and quite possibly to the left of several Senate Democrats, probably doing the most to upset the symmetry between party and ideology of any Senator since Zell Miller (whom, like Hager, was a relic of an older political tradition).

Hager's appointment would furthermore deprive the Republicans the opportunity to claim that the Democrats had a filibuster-proof monopoly on power. And yet, at a time when their party is struggling to formulate anything resembling a majority coalition, they would seem to have little choice but to accept her, as her appointment would be the result of a Democratic President and Democratic Governor each having taken the unorthodox step of reaching across party lines to select a Republican. The Republicans could, of course, complain with ample justification that Hager was a RINO, but in so doing they would appear immoderate and intolerant at a time when the pretense of moderation and postpartisanship is the name of the game. They might also risk alienating Snowe and Collins, without whose votes the Republicans already lack the power to sustain a filibuster.

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Could Roland Burris Be Re-Elected?

As the world bids good riddance -- the only thing I'll say is that I had the good sense to vote for Judy Baar Topinka in 2006 -- the question naturally arises: Does Roland Burris have a political future beyond 2010? This is a really a three part question:

1) Will Burris run for re-election? This is perhaps the easiest question to answer: Hell Yes. If you're crazy enough to be Rod Blagojevich's appointee and endure the media sh*tstorm that ensues, it's a relatively save bet that you're going to run for re-election as an incumbent. Nor is the possibility or probability of a loss likely to be much of a deterrent, as Burris ran quixotic campaigns for governor on no fewer than three occasions (1994, 1998, 2002), never advancing past the primary, as well as for Mayor of Chicago in 1995.

2) Will he win the primary? This is probably Burris' biggest hurdle, but it is not impossible to imagine him advancing. A new Research 2000 poll for Daily Kos gives Burris a 26 plurality of the vote against potential Democratic opponents Jan Schakowsky (12 percent) and Alexi Giannoulias (11 percent). On the other hand, 26 percent is not terrific for a candidate with near-universal name recognition, whereas Schakowsky and Giannoulias are much less known.

One critical question is whether Illinois' major stakeholders, particularly Mayor Daley and the unions, might endorse someone other than Burris. And this seems unlikely: Burris' voting record is likely to be quite liberal/progressive, and both the mayor and the unions would risk angering their African-American constituents by trying to primary out Burris.

Still, in a head-to-head matchup against either Schakowsky or Giannoulias, both of whom are reasonably charismatic opponents, Burris' unfavorables could catch up with him, and he would probably be defeated. The question, perhaps, is whether Burris will have to face just one of Schakowsky or Giannoulias, or perhaps as many as 3-4 credible opponents. My guess is that Burris will have trouble topping out at more than about 35-40 percent of the vote, most of that coming from Illinois' substantial African-American population. But in a multi-way race, 35 or 40 percent is sometimes enough to win.

3) Would he win the general election? Here, the Research 2000 poll presents more unambiguously good news for Burris: he leads Republican Mark Kirk 37-30 in a head-to-head matchup. There are, obviously, a lot of undecided voters there, but Kirk is well known among Illinoisans (78 percent of respondents were able to record an opinion about him) and not all that well liked (41 percent view him unfavorably) so the usual excuses about name recognition don't fly. Furthermore, it seems plausible that Burris' favorables are liable to improve as the circumstances surrounding his appointment fade from memory and he becomes more of a mundane, generic Democrat. Illinoisans tend to be a forgiving lot.

This is not to say that Kirk -- or another Republican like Peter Roskam -- wouldn't have a chance of unseating Burris. Depending on how much money the Republicans might throw into the race, they might have a pretty good chance. But the Republican brand in Illinois is every bit as damaged as the Democratic one (the most recent Republican governor now makes his home at the Federal Correctional Institution in Terre Haute, Indiana) and it's unlikely that they'd be the favorite.

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Should Democrats Beware Republicans Bearing Gifts?

Hmm:

There is a strong possibility that Barack Obama will ask Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) to serve as his Secretary of Commerce, Democratic Senate aides tell the Huffington Post.

The move would fill a vacancy that has lingered since Gov. Bill Richardson withdrew his nomination. And provided that Al Franken emerges victorious in the Minnesota recount, it would give Democrats in the Senate a 60th caucusing member, as New Hampshire's Democratic governor John Lynch would appoint Gregg's replacement.

Judd Gregg is up for re-election in 2010 and stands to face a vigorous challenge, most likely from 2nd District Congressman Paul Hodes, but remains reasonably popular and would be the favorite in that race. By Senate standards, he is a relative youngin' at 61 years old, but he's been in politics forever, having first been elected to the House of Representatives at age 33 in 1980. Joining the Obama cabinet, then, is probably not a matter of Gregg's political survival, but more likely would represent a sort of early retirement.

Then again, retirement seems to be a fairly attractive option for a lot of Senate Republicans these days. The fact of the matter is that:

(i) The Republicans will be in the minority in the Senate for at least the next four years. It is close to mathematically impossible for them to re-gain the chamber in 2010 given the seats that are up for grabs in that cycle. There is considerably more upside in 2012, when a lot of freshman Democrats elected in the 2006 wave will be up for re-election, but 2012 is also a year when Obama and his massive turnout operation will be on the ballot. Realistically, the odds of Republicans re-gaining control of the chamber before 2014 are low.

(ii) The working assumption in Washington right now is that Barack Obama will be re-elected in 2012. This is arguably shortsighted -- we know how much things can change in four years. But it's the working assumption being made by both parties for the time being.

(iii) The Republican party establishment wants no part of its senators, instead looking toward its governors and to a much lesser extent the House Republicans as its future.

(iv) While I know nothing about what sort of company Gregg keeps, a lot of Republicans that are close to him ideologically have retired or are planning to do so.

All of this makes the Senate a lonely place to be. If Gregg runs for re-election in 2010 and wins, he is more likely than not facing another six years under a Democratic President, and another four to six years in the minority party.

At the same time, I'm not sure that the Republicans are all that screwed over if Gregg leaves the Senate and a Democrat is appointed in his stead. Yes, it gets the Democrats to their magic number of 60. But 60 is an overrated, fuzzy number given that Olympia Snowe has sided with the administration on 26 of 31 roll call votes so far, and that Susan Collins, Arlen Specter, Lisa Murkowski and George Voinovich aren't far behind her. Moreover, if the Democrats actually get the 60th seat, it will be much harder for them to play the obstructionism card in 2010 -- and much easier, conversely, for the Republicans to play the divided government card.

Now, let's not be too contrarian here: if this happens, it is almost certainly a net gain for Democrats. But it might be relatively small one, given that:

1a) Gregg was voting with the Democrats reasonably often anyway;

1b) His replacement, conversely, would likely be someone fairly moderate who wouldn't vote with the Democrats 100% of the time;

2) Gregg, who has been a pretty reliable fiscal conservative, would presumably have at least some influence shaping policy from the Commerce Department;

3) The perceived benefit to the Democrats from getting a 60th seat is greater than the real one, increasing the risk that they will be seen as overreaching by the time that 2010 rolls around.

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The Republican Death Spiral, in Graphic Form

To add a little bit of rigor to the point I made this morning, take a look at the following:



This is a diagram of the partisan composition of the 109th and 111th Congresses. The 435 Congressional Districts are arranged from left (most Democratic) to right (most Republican) based on their PVI -- that is, partisan voting patterns in the 2000 and 2004 Presidential Elections.

We see that most of the damage to the Republican Party has come in moderate districts. Not a big surprise really, but -- the numbers are fairly jarring. There are 81 districts with a PVI of between D+3 and R+3: these are your prototypical swing districts. After the 2004 elections, Republicans controlled 54 of these 81 seats and Democrats 27. Following November's elections, however, the ratio had almost exactly reversed itself: 55 Democrats and 26 Republicans.

Framed differently: in the 109th Congress, about 3 out of every 10 Republican Congressmen came from swing or Democratic-leaning districts. Now, only about 1 in 6 does. The Republican conference is very very close, by the way, to being majority Southern. To the extent there are moderate voices in the conference, they are going to get drowned out. There is no possibility of revolt from the moderates; they don't have the ground forces.

I don't mean to suggest, by the way, that most individual Republican lawmakers were wrong in their decision to oppose the stimulus. On the contrary, from a tactical perspective, they had few incentives to compromise. And for cripes' sake: the stimulus does represent roughly half a trillion dollars in new government spending. If conservatives weren't going to oppose this, then what are they supposed to oppose?

But what purpose Boehner and Cantor thought they were serving by whipping votes, instead of letting their members come to a decision on their own, I don't really understand. Nor do I understand what the House Republicans thought they were accomplishing by coming out en masse against something like the digital TV bill, which is about as harmless as it gets -- precisely the sort of thing on which you offer an olive branch to build credibility for more important battles.

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The Republican Death Spiral

It's not just the goose egg that the House Republicans laid on the Democratic stimulus package yesterday: Boehner's Boys have been equally uncooperative on other matters. Case in point: a bill yesterday to delay the transition to digital TV. This measure was approved unanimously by the Senate; every Senate Republican gave it the green light. But 155 out of 178 House Republicans voted against it, which resulted in the measure's defeat since a two-thirds majority would have been required for passage under the House's suspension of the rules.

Or, take the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, a seemingly fairly popular/populist (if not inscrutable) piece of legislation on gender-based pay discrepancies. This was something that Barack Obama whacked John McCain on on the campaign trail, with McCain offering little rebuttal. In the Senate, five Republicans -- out of 41 -- voted with the Administration on Ledbetter, including all four Republican women. In the House, just three Republicans did -- out of 178.

Boenher and Eric Cantor have obviously done an impressive job of rallying their troops -- and Cantor, in particular, seems proud of his efforts. But what grander purpose does this strategy serve? The House Republicans are opposing popular legislation from a very popular President, and doing so in ways that stick a needle in the eye of the popular (if quixotic) concept of bipartisanship. They would seem to have little chance of actually blocking this legislation, since they are far short of a majority, and since the Senate Republicans, who can filibuster, have thus far shown little inclination to go along with them -- with moderates like Susan Collins of Maine and Judd Gregg of New Hampshire voting routinely with the Administration.

As I have opined before, the Democratic message will essentially be one of two things in 2010:

1. Obama's accomplished X, Y and Z and showed the country the way forward, let's give him leaders in Congress who can continue to deliver for the middle class, or,

2. Obama accomplished X, but he couldn't accomplish Y and Z because the Republicans obstructed those measures to protect the special interests ... let's put partisanship behind us and elect leaders in Congress who can represent the common good.

One can understand the Republicans betting against #1, which won't work unless the economy recovers. But in so doing, they seem to be writing the Democrats' taglines for them on #2, the partisanship message. Of course, this is not necessarily an easy hand for the Democrats to play: they at once have to maintain the continued pretense/appearance of bipartisanship while at the same time attacking them for their non-cooperation.

But surely the phrase "ZERO Republicans voted for the Recovery Package" is more likely to escape Democratic lips on the campaign trail in 2010 than Republican ones. If the stimulus bill proves to be unpopular -- and it might well -- a House Republican can tout the fact that he voted against the package. But with the unanimous vote -- as well as the near-unanimity on measures like the Ledbetter Act and Digital TV -- the Republicans remove the emphasis from their individual judgment to that of their party. It is not clear why they would want this: the Republican brand, even under the best of circumstances, is not likely to be significantly rehabilitated by 2010, especially when the Republicans do not have agenda-setting powers.

Perhaps there is some grander strategy here that, as a Democrat/liberal/progressive/whatever-you-want-to-call me, I'm simply not understanding. But one needs to remember that in the Republicans' most recent opportunity to display their tactical genius -- that of the McCain campaign -- the best and brightest Republican minds proved to be neither very talented nor very bright.

Most fundamentally of all, the McCain campaign radically overestimated the importance of appealing to the base. House Republicans may be replicating their mistake. Self-described conservative Republicans represent only about 20 percent of the population. This base is not necessarily becoming smaller; it's still alive and kicking. What is true, however, is that the (1) base has never been sufficient to form a winning electoral coalition, and (2) that there are fewer and fewer non-base (e.g. moderates, libertarian Republicans, Republican leaning-independents). As these moderates have fled the GOP, the party's electoral fortunes have tanked. But simultaneously, they have had less and less influence on the Republican message.

Thus the Republicans, arguably, are in something of a death spiral. The more conservative, partisan, and strident their message becomes, the more they alienate non-base Republicans. But the more they alienate non-base Republicans, the fewer of them are left to worry about appeasing. Thus, their message becomes continually more appealing to the base -- but more conservative, partisan, and strident to the rest of us. And the process loops back upon itself.

The other possibility, of course, is that John Boehner and Eric Cantor are not so much concerned about the future of the Republican party, but about the future of John Boehner and Eric Cantor. Cantor, in particular, is a media-savvy figure and someone with plausible presidential ambitions: one can easily imagine him trying to position himself as the new Gingrich. But the political climate is much different now than it was in 1993; he can't erase either the damage wrought upon the Republican brand by the Bush administration, nor -- at least in the near-term -- Obama's sky-high approval ratings. Perhaps the House Republicans voted against delaying the digital TV changeover because they don't want Americans to see the carnage.

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For House Republicans, Zero is the Loneliest Number

Is this really the Associated Press lede that the Republicans wanted?

WASHINGTON (AP) -- In a swift victory for President Barack Obama, the Democratic-controlled House approved a historically huge $819 billion stimulus bill Wednesday night with spending increases and tax cuts at the heart of the young administration's plan to revive a badly ailing economy. The vote was 244-188, with Republicans unanimous in opposition despite Obama's frequent pleas for bipartisan support.

Zero is sometimes a big number. If the stimulus bill had passed the House today with a handful of Republican votes -- six or eight or twelve or twenty -- the party would presumably have gotten its point across about the merit of the legislation. But the bill didn't get a handful of Republican votes -- it got none at all. You'd think there would be one Republican out of 178 who found his way to a yes vote based on the particular cadences of his political philosophy and the electoral politics of his district. But there was not.

The question is whether a result like this could have came about by accident -- or whether it must have been engineered by the party leadership. I'm not sure that the answer to that is obvious. The House does not cast a secret ballot. It seems plausible that there were a dozen or so Republicans who were on the fence, waiting to see how their colleagues would vote --- and when those votes started to come in unanimously against the bill, nobody wanted to be the ugly ducking.

But does it do the party as a whole any good for having opposed the bill unanimously? With headlines like the one in the Associated Press, it's hard to imagine so. Their unanimous opposition reads as an emphatic rejection of the President and the President's attempts at "bipartisanship". And the President is very popular right now.

But -- the base is happy, or at least reasonably so. Rush Limbaugh will be singing John Boehner's praises tomorrow. I'm just not sure what message this sends to the other 78 percent of the country.

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Stimulus Passes House With NO Republican Support -- Zip, Zilch, Nada

The House version of the $819 billion stimulus bill just passed 244-188. But in a minor surprise, the bill apparently passed without ANY Republican member voting for it. Twelve Democrats voted against the bill, meanwhile, based on the C-SPAN tally.

So here's the key question: do the Republicans, having shown this much unity in the House, actually have a chance of filibustering the bill in the Senate?

I think that remains unlikely, for three reasons:

Firstly, the House Republican Caucus has shown much greater party discipline (or, if you prefer, much more partisanship) than the Senate has. In looking at the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, for instance, just 3 of 178 Republicans (1.7%) voted for the bill on the House side, but 5 of 41 (12.2%) did on the Senate side. Similarly, on the TARP (bailout) extension vote, Republican members of the Senate were considerably more likely than those in the House to side with the Administration. These sorts of differences are not necessarily uncommon and may be a consequence of the cultural and structural differences

Secondly, the Senate will be voting on its own version of the bill, not the House's, and there has arguably a more bipartisan process in formulating the Senate version of the bill than in the House's (Barack Obama's meetings with House Republicans notwithstanding).

And thirdy, voting against a bill is one thing -- filibustering it is another. Maybe an Olympia Snowe or a Judd Gregg, residing in states that Obama won by overwhelming margins, can get away with voting against the bill. But preventing it from coming to the floor is another, particularly when Obama has the advantage of the bully pulpit.

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BAM! POP! POW! House Debates Stimulus Bill

UPDATE (4:25 PM): The Republican alternative bill (no spending, tax cuts only) was defeated 170-266 with extremely partisan voting patterns ... just 2 Democrats voted for the GOP version while 9 Republicans voted against their own version.

___
Just as a quick FYI: There's some modestly interesting viewing on C-SPAN right now as the House debates amendments to the stimulus bill; a vote on the entire package is expected early this evening. The most interesting amendment is probably one introduced by New York's Jerry Nadler to add $3 billion in mass transit funding to the bill. The amendment was adopted earlier this afternoon by voice vote.

My prediction: the overall stimulus package will pass by a margin of about 250-183, with 10-15 Republicans breaking ranks to vote for the bill and 15-20 Democrats voting against it.

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Just Five Red States Left?

Gallup is in the midst of releasing a series of data from the more than 350,000 interviews that it conducted over the course of its daily tracking in 2008. The first data they've released, on partisan affiliation, contains some sobering news for Republicans:



That's right: just five states, collectively containing about 2 percent of the American population, have statistically significant pluralities of adults identifying themselves as Republicans. These are the "Mormon Belt" states of Utah, Idaho and Wyoming, plus Nebraska, plus Alaska. By contrast, 35 states are plurality Democratic, and 10 states are too close to call.

Now then for a couple of caveats. Firstly, Gallup's numbers consist of interviews with all adults -- not registered voters, and certainly not likely voters. Depending on the particular application that we're using this data for, that may be helpful or unhelpful. What this perhaps indicates, however, is that even after all the millions of new voters that the Democrats registered and brought to the polls in 2008, there are still probably some marginal gains to be had, particularly in areas like the deep South that the Obama campaign did not really concentrate in.

Secondly, these totals include "leaners" -- independents who lean toward one party or another, but don't identify themselves as such. This tends to increase the Democratic margin by a couple of points.

Thirdly and perhaps most importantly is a point that both Michael Barone and I have raised at various times: one consequence of the Democratic coalition being larger, particularly as it tends to include a miscellany of groups that don't always see eye-to-eye with one another (African-Americans, Hispanics, coastal liberals, union workers, young voters, etc.), is that it is more difficult to harness the entirety of that coalition in national elections. A Democratic presidential candidate from the North might have trouble appealing to voters in the South. A candidate from the South might have trouble appealing to voters in the North and West. A theoretic "generic Democrat" might have a chance at a rather large majority -- but a "generic Democrat" is an abstraction, and most real Democrats will offend the sensibilities of some or another region. In Barack Obama's case, these were voters in Appalachian and "Highlands" states like West Virginia and Kentucky, states that remain highly Democratic at the state level but which have not recently voted for Northern presidential candidates.

Still, for things like gubernatorial elections and elections to the Congress, the Democrats' upside is very high, particularly if the party is smart enough to tolerate and accommodate a diversity of opinions within its umbrella. If party affiliation stays close to what it was in 2008, then giving the seats that are up for election, Democrats could very easily pick up another another 5-7 Senate seats in 2010, giving them not just a filibuster-proof majority but also a nearly veto-proof one. Party affiliation probably will not remain that way -- there is typically a shift back to the non-incumbent party after the Presidency changes hands -- but if it does we'll have a very blue Senate. In the House, by contrast, Democratic upside is limited by the presence of hugely Democratic urban and majority-minority districts, which suck up Democrats from the surrounding areas. The real fight in the House may be the redistricting that takes place after 2010 and not the 2010 election itself.

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Fili-Buster Watch

Which Senate Republicans have voted the most often with the Obama Administration so far?

Yes, the Senate is actually voting on stuff. Not a lot of stuff, but there are perhaps seven nontrivial votes for us to chew over. These include confirmation votes for Tim Geithner and Hillary Clinton, the bailout extension, both a cloture vote and an up-and-down vote the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, and both a cloture vote and an up-and-down vote on the Omnibus Public Land Management Act.

One Republican, Olympia Snowe of Maine, has taken the administration's position on all seven votes, as indicated by a blue square in chart below. Two, David Vitter of Louisiana and Jim DeMint of South Carolina, have gone 7-for-7 in opposing the administration (as denoted in red). A couple more thoughts follow after the graphic.



After Snowe, two Republicans have supported the administration on 6 of 7 votes: George Voinovich of Ohio and Judd Gregg of New Hampshire. Voinovich, who always ranks as among the most moderate Republicans, isn't really a surprise, but Gregg, who has a fairly conservative voting record, perhaps is. Such are the perils of running for re-election in a state that Obama won by 10 points.

All of the Republican women voted for Ledbetter, although they're also a fairly moderate lot with the possible exception of Kay Bailey Hutchinson; it would have been interesting to see how Elizabeth Dole would have voted on the measure. A bunch of western senators supported the administration on the Land Management vote, which may reflect regional considerations rather than partisan ones.

Susan Collins has broken with Olympia Snowe twice, on Geithner and on TARP. I don't know if anything in particular is driving this, although Snowe has two fewer years to go until re-election.

Arlen Specter has not been particularly helpful to the administration so far, nor really has John McCain. Lamar Alexander and the two senators from Utah, somewhat surprisingly, have been on some issues.

On the Ledbetter Act, there were quite a few more votes for cloture than there were for passage, a pattern that may tend to repeat itself on other fairly popular pieces of legislation. Might that include the stimulus? I don't know.

But overall, there aren't too many surprises here. If there's news, it's that Judd Gregg may have emerged as a top-tier potential filibuster-breaking vote.

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Time To Give Up on "Bipartisan" Stimulus?

Josh Kalven at Progress Illinois has the story on the somewhat fatuous claims made by Republican Mark Kirk against the Democratic Stimulus Package, which includes such gems as complaining -- you cannot make this stuff up -- that the stimulus package funds bars but not casinos.

The point is not really the message, however, but the messenger. Kirk is one of the more moderate Republicans in the House. He hails from Barack Obama's home state, and is one of the few remaining House Republicans to represent a district with a Democratic-leaning electorate (the PVI of Kirk's district is D+4). He is reportedly considering a run for the Senate in 2010 in a state not particularly known for its fiscal conservativism.

If there were literally any Republican in the country whom you think might support the stimulus -- or at least stayed out of the way until it came time to vote -- you'd think it might be Mark Kirk. But instead, he's leaking talking points to the Weekly Standard.

I don't necessarily think that Barack Obama should drop his bipartisan posturing, which might be important for positioning himself vis-à-vis the Republicans later on: by defining his position as the reasonable and centrist one, Obama (if he gets the optics right) allows the Republican position to become unreasonable, extreme and partisan.

But as a matter of practice, the elasticity of Republican demand on the stimulus package is liable to be very low. They have, as I noted weeks ago, few solid tactical reasons to throw their support behind the stimulus, and if the relatively high proportion of tax cuts in the administration's proposal kept them shell-shocked for a couple of weeks, that era of good feelings is now apparently exhausted.

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Alabama ♥s Obama

Missed this 14-state poll from SurveyUSA, which shows Obama with at least 60 percent approval in such traditionally nonfertile territory as Alabama, Kansas and Kentucky.

Not only is Obama popular in every state, in fact, but in every region of every state in SurveyUSA's crosstabs. The poorest numbers I can find are in central Virginia, where SurveyUSA pegs Obama's approval score at 55 percent (but against just 23 percent disapproving).

Semi-related thought: the downside to Obama's "Price is Right" strategy on the stimulus may be that, in having the Democratic Congress do his dirty work for him, the bill is starting to be labeled as the Democratic Congress Stimulus Package rather than the Obama Stimulus. Still, after seeing these numbers, one would tend to think that Republican bluster about the stimulus losing steam is indeed just that.

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So Just Who Did Vote For The Bailout?

I've been engaged in a little argument with the guys over at Open Left over the nature of the various bailout bills that have come before Congress over the past several months.

My position is essentially as follows: Legislators whom we usually think of as liberal or progressive have been more, rather than less, likely to support bailout legislation. It is therefore difficult to argue, as David Sirota does, that a vote against the bailout represents "a major victory for the progressive movement [...] against kleptocracy".

Chris Bowers has responded by suggesting that, while progressive congressmen may have been more likely to support the most recent bailout held over the past couple of weeks, this was not true of the original bailout bills last autumn, before Barack Obama took over the presidency, and was particularly not true of the "original" bailout bill last September 29th, which failed 205-228 in the House and infamously made the stock market very unhappy.

I find Chris's comments thoughtful, as I usually do. Undoubtedly, the bailout involved some incredibly complex political considerations. Imagine some of the issues that a Congressman must have been wrestling with when deciding how to vote on the bailout last September:

- The impact of the passage or failure of the bailout bill on the presidential campaign;
- The impact of the passage or failure of the bill on his re-election campaign;
- Pressure from leadership to vote for the bailout;
- Pressure from industry to vote for the bailout;
- Pressure from the blogs and talk radio to vote against the bailout;
- The long-run impact of creating hundreds of billions of dollars in additional debt;
- The long-run impact of creating (arguably/probably) a moral hazard for banks;
- The near-term impact of a credit market crash caused by the failure of the bailout;
- The near-term impact of a stock market crash caused by the failure of the bailout;
- The possibility that by voting against the bailout, a superior bailout bill could be facilitated;
- The particular impact of the bailout on the economy of his Congressional District;
- The Bush Administration's support for the bailout;
- The (then-tepid) support of Obama and McCain for the bailout.

That's a lot to chew on, and it's not surprising that whole sets of Congressmen who usually vote alike wound up splitting their votes on this issue.

Nevertheless, perhaps we can find some useful evidence in the fossil record. I went back to the bailout vote, compiled a whole bunch of relevant variables, and tried to find which of these variables best predicted voting behavior. These might be characteristics having to do with the Congressman himself (such as his race or his party), or characteristics having to do with his congressional district. After many permutations, here is the most coherent model that I came up with:



All right -- so, running raw regression output probably isn't going to endear me to very many of you. But basically, what we have is the following set of variables:

- 'voteshare06' represents the share of the two-party vote that the Congressman received in 2006; it is a measure of how electorally vulnerable the Congressman was. The higher the Congressman's vote share had been in 2006 -- meaning, the less vulnerable he probably was in 2008 -- the more likely he was to vote for the bailout.

- 'retire' is a flag indicating whether the Congressman had announced his intention to retire at the end of his term (but was not, at that time, still engaged in a campaign for higher office). Retiring congressmen were considerably more likely to vote for the bailout.

- 'banklobby' is the amount of political contributions that Congressman received from the banking industry. Congressmen receiving more of these contributions were more likely to vote for the bailout.

- 'demleader' and 'gopleader' are indicators of whether the Congressmen held a leadership position in the Democratic and Republican parties, respectively, either as a member of his party's floor leadership or as a chairman or ranking member of a permanent House committee. Leadership members of both parties were more likely to vote for the bailout.

- 'is_hisp06' and 'is_black06' indicate whether the Congressman is Hispanic or black, respectively. Hispanic and black Congressmen were less likely to vote for the bailout, all else being equal.

- 'libcons', finally, represents the Congressman's liberal-conservative score as provided by National Journal. The more liberal a congressman's voting record, the higher his score. More liberal members of congress were more likely to vote for the bailout, holding other variables constant. Interestingly, party affiliation did not appear to be a determinant of voting on this particular bill, except insofar as it was reflected in ideology.

To get some idea of how all of this works, here are the Congressmen predicted by the model to be the most likely to vote for the bailout along with their actual votes:

98.9%  Frank, Barney       D    MA-4    Aye
98.1%  Bachus, Spencer     R    AL-6    Aye
98.0%  Emanuel, Rahm       D    IL-5    Aye
97.5%  Rangel, Charlie     D    NY-15   Aye
97.5%  Hoyer, Steny        D    MD-5    Aye
97.3%  McNulty, Michael    D    NY-21   Aye
96.8%  Crowley, Joseph     D    NY-7    Aye
96.3%  Davis, Tom          R    VA-11   Aye
95.9%  Hooley, Darlene     D    OR-5    Aye
95.9%  Pelosi, Nancy       D    CA-8    Aye

Basically, this is the Democratic leadership in the House, plus a handful of Congressmen from both parties who received especially large contributions from the banking industry. And here, conversely, are the Congressmen deemed least likely to vote for the bailout:

6.1%   Diaz-Balart, Mario  R    FL-25   Nay
6.5%   Diaz-Balart, L.     R    FL-21   Nay
8.0%   Lamborn, Doug       R    CO-5    Nay
8.5%   Ortiz, Solomon      D    TX-27   Nay
9.5%   Franks, Trent       R    AZ-2    Nay
9.7%   Jordan, Jim         R    OH-4    Nay
10.3%  Westmoreland, Lynn  R    GA-3    Nay
10.7%  Pitts, Joseph       R    PA-16   Nay
11.0%  Souder, Mark        R    IN-3    Aye
11.2%  Radanovich, George  R    CA-19   Aye

There are a lot of cross-currents here. On the one hand, Congressmen clearly understood that the optics of the bailout bill were poor. Those most vulnerable to being voted out of office were inclined to vote against the bill, and those least vulnerable to electoral pressure -- especially those that were retiring -- were inclined to vote for it.

The banking industry -- Sirtoa's kleptocracy -- appears to have had its influence; members receiving a lot of contributions from the banking sector were significantly more likely to vote for the bill. Then again, we may be confusing cause and effect. Does Spencer Bachus tend to vote for bills that help the banking industry because he gets a lot of financial support from it? Or does he get a lot of support from the industry because he tends to vote in its favor? Or, might there be some characteristics of his Congressional District -- such as high employment in the banking sector -- that motivate both the contributions and Bachus' votes? This is a tricky problem to solve. I did, however, look at the number of employees in each district in the financial sector, as that data is available from the Census Bureau, and it was not a very strong predictor of voting. So money/lobbying from the industry a factor in some of these votes -- it was not simply a matter of Congressmen protecting local jobs in those industries.

Race was a factor; the Hispanic and black caucuses really did not get behind the initial bailout bills. The black caucus (though not the Hispanic caucus) did get behind the second bailout bill in October -- the one that passed -- perhaps as a result of Barack Obama's firmer support for the measure.

And finally, ideology was a factor. Holding all else constant, we still show more liberal/progressive members as being more likely to support the bill.

What I see, frankly, are some "bad" votes on both sides of the issue. On the one hand, the banking industry may have had some influence on certain of the 'yes' votes. On the other hand, I see demagoguery in certain of the 'no' votes, particularly as retiring congressmen -- those who are presumably freest to evaluate the bill on its merits -- were overwhelmingly inclined to support the bailout.

What I still don't see is much evidence that voting against the bailout tended to be the "progressive" position; in fact, the evidence seems to point in the opposite direction, although really the votes on the bailout seem to be more nonideological than anything else.

I am well aware, certainly, that there are other ways to define "progressivism" besides through the voting tendencies of the Congress. At the same time, certain of those definitions may be self-serving. I could make an argument, for instance, that "progressive" values should (as I happen to believe) include fairly strong support for Second Amendment rights, but that is not the generally accepted position. Terms like "progressive" lose their meaning if they tend to be defined as "whatever the particular blogger thinks about the world".

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Minnesota Recount Trial Begins Momentarily

I've been commenting a bit less on things in the Land o' Lakes as we've moved from the counting phase to the legal phase of the process, but the court case is beginning today at 1 PM Central time and I'll be monitoring the goings on. In the meantime, click below the fold to find a live video feed from The Uptake.

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Smarter than the Average Bears?

I've had the impression for some time that academic economists have become more pessimistic about the economy than commercial ones, and therefore are perhaps more likely to support a larger stimulus package. The Wall Street Journal's monthly economic forecasting survey may provide some evidence of this.

The Journal surveys 55 economists each month. I divided these economists into five groups; the number of economists in each category is in parenthesis:

1. Commercial or investment banks (16);
2. Investment firms, such as hedge funds (9);
3. Commercial sector, not qualifying under one of the previous two categories, such as large corporations or industry groups (9);
4. Economic consulting firms (14);
5. Academic or nonprofit institutions (6).

One economist, James F. Smith, had credentials listed under both the academic and investment categories and therefore was excluded. (He also might be excluded as a wacko, having predicted GDP growth to recover to 2.6 percent this quarter).

As you can see, the Journal's survey is not particularly well balanced. Academic economists seem to be underrepresented, as perhaps are economists in the commercial (but nonfinancial) sector. Nevertheless, let's take a look at the average quarter-by-quarter GDP estimates for the five groups listed above:



From among these groups, one stands out as bearish and another as bullish. The bullish forecasts belong to the investment firms -- whom, it might be noted, could have some institutional incentives to encourage investors that the water is warm enough to dip their toes back into again. This group forecasts GDP growth to recover to 2.72 percent by the fourth quarter of this year. The most bearish economists, meanwhile, are indeed the academic and nonprofit economists, who see GDP increasing to only 1.25 percent by the fourth quarter. The other three groups line up somewhere in the middle, although the banks seem to envision a deeper bottom than the others do.

For the record, here are how the economists were classified:

Banks (16)
Wells Fargo & Co.
Morgan Stanley
BNP Paribas
Societe Generale
Barclays Capital
Goldman Sachs & Co.
The Private Bank
PNC Financial Services Group
Deutsche Bank Securities Inc.
Comerica Bank
JP Morgan Chase & Co.
Bank of America
Nomura Securities International Inc.
Wachovia Corp.
Credit Suisse
National Bank of Kuwait

Commercial (9)
Mortgage Bankers Association
National City Corporation
Fannie Mae
FedEx Corp.
Swiss Re
Eaton Corp.
International Council of Shopping Centers
Perna Associates
National Association of Realtors

Consultancies (14)
Capital Economics
Global Insight
Econoclast
Wrightson ICAP
MFR, Inc.
Moody's Investors Service
Encima Global LLC
MacroEcon Global Advisors
Macroeconomic Advisers
RDQ Economics
High Frequency Economics
Decision Economics Inc.
Economic Analysis
Standard and Poor's

Investment Firms (9)
Combinatorics Capital
AllianceBernstein
UBS
Wayne Hummer Investments LLC
The Northern Trust
Ameriprise Financial
RBS Greenwich Capital
Mesirow Financial
First Trust Advisors, L.P.

Nonprofit / Academic (6)
RSQE, U. of Michigan
Vanderbilt University
UCLA Anderson Forecast
Economic and Revenue Forecast Council
California State University
The Conference Board

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Feingold Introduces 28th Amendment

I hope you'll excuse the hubristic headline. Constitutional amendments are introduced all the time in the Congress. Most of them are used to make a political point of one kind or another and stand little chance of becoming law.

On account of the trouble that certain Democratic governors had with making their senatorial appointments this year, however, a new amendment to be introduced by Wisconsin's Russ Feingold may prove to be an exception:

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Russ Feingold, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, issued the following statement today on plans to introduce an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to end appointments to the Senate by state governors and require special elections in the event of a Senate seat vacancy.

“The controversies surrounding some of the recent gubernatorial appointments to vacant Senate seats make it painfully clear that such appointments are an anachronism that must end. In 1913, the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution gave the citizens of this country the power to finally elect their senators. They should have the same power in the case of unexpected mid term vacancies, so that the Senate is as responsive as possible to the will of the people. I plan to introduce a constitutional amendment this week to require special elections when a Senate seat is vacant, as the Constitution mandates for the House, and as my own state of Wisconsin already requires by statute. As the Chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee, I will hold a hearing on this important topic soon.”

We've been on this bandwagon for some time. Appointed senators rarely win re-election -- perhaps because governors tend to do a poor job of choosing them, often choosing family members or cronies in lieu of people with superior qualifications, or using the appointment to advance their own well-being rather than that of their states or their parties. Vacancies in the House have long been chosen by special election; it's odd that vacancies in the Senate have not been.

Constitutional amendments require passage by two-thirds of each chamber of Congress and then subsequently by majorities of three-quarters of state legislatures. This means, naturally, that they need to be seen as advancing sufficiently nonzerosum objectives (e.g. Good Government) that do not clearly advantage one party over another. Does this one qualify? I think probably so -- but first a bit of context on how replacement senators are selected.



The four states that required replacement senators to be appointed this year -- these are Colorado, Delaware, Illinois and New York -- all did so by means of gubernatorial appointment as provided for under the 17th Amendment. The 17th Amendment, however, while providing for gubernatorial appointments, does not require them, and a number of states take a different approach. Twelve states call for "fast" special elections in the event of senatorial vacancies: these are Alaska, Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin. From among these states, eight allow interim gubernatorial appointments. Oregon, Wisconsin, Massachusetts and Oklahoma are the exceptions -- the seat simply remains vacant in these states until the special election is held -- although Oklahoma provides for gubernatorial appointments if the vacancy occurs after March 1st of an even-numbered year.

All of these states have a cut-off date beyond which point the special election is delayed to be held in conjunction with the next regular general election (as it is in other states without "fast" special elections laws). To take one practical example of how this works, we can look at Texas, where Kay Bailey Hutchinson is considering resigning her seat to run for governor. If she does so at some point in 2009, a "fast" special election will be held. If she waits until January 1st, however, the election will be delayed to coincide with the next midterms in 2010.

Cut-Off Points for Fast Special Elections
Arkansas: 12 Months from General Election
Mississippi: January 1st of Election Year
Texas: January 1st of Election Year
Oklahoma: March 1st of Election Year
Massachusetts: April 10th of Election Year
Vermont: 6 Months from General Election
Washington: 6 Months from General Election
Wisconsin: 2nd Tuesday in May of Election Year
Alaska: 60 Days from Primary Election (this probably translates to late June)
Alabama: 4 Months from General Election
Oregon: 61 Days from General Election
Louisiana: Your Guess is as Good As Mine

Beside these twelve states, two others (California and New Jersey) appear to provide for the option of a fast special election as determined by the governor -- although frankly I can't imagine these governors exercising their options unless under extreme political pressure.

The other form of restriction that some states place on gubernatorial appointments is that employed by Arizona, Hawaii, Utah and Wyoming. These states have some mechnaism for requiring that the appointed senator be from the same party as the departed one.

Now, then -- excepting the minority of states that either require special elections or fix the party of the appointed senator -- does either party stand to gain ground if the provision for gubernatorial appointment is removed?

Based on the present configuration of senators and governors, not really. There are now 14 Republican senators that could and presumably would be replaced by Democratic governors if they deceased or decided to resign from the Senate. The Republicans will be in a better position to hold these seats if the Feingold amendment is passed. These senators are: Grassley (IA), Brownback (KS), Roberts (KS), Bunning (KY), McConnell (KY), Collins (ME), Snowe (ME), Bond (MO), Burr (NC), Gregg (NH), Voinovich (OH), Specter (PA), Alexander (TN), and Corker (TN).

Likewise, there are 14 Democratic senators who would presumably be replaced by Republicans. The Democrats will be in a better position to hold these seats if the Feingold amendment is passed. These are Senators Boxer (CA), Feinstein (CA), Dodd (CT), Nelson (FL), Bayh (IN), Franken (MN), Klobuchar (MN), Conrad (ND), Dorgan (ND), Nelson (NE), Reid (NV), Reed (RI), Whitehouse (RI), Johnson (SD). (Joe Liberman (CT) would make 15, if you consider him to be a Democrat.)

So this happens to be a pretty good time to introduce this amendment -- in the near term, it is not as though one party stands to gain or lose seats if it is enacted. Nor do I see an obvious arguments why one or another party stands to gain in the longer term, although I'm sure one can be constructed.

Are their other, ostensibly nonpartisan arguments against Feingold's amendment? I suppose it will be objected that holding additional elections is expensive; Illinois officials estimated, for example, that the cost of appointing a special election to replace Barack Obama would be $31 million. But I don't see how this argument is persuasive; $31 million translates into about the cost of buying a Big Mac for every Illinoisan, hardly a prohibative price for better government. Besdies which, if the cost were such a problem, why hold special elections for the House -- or for that matter, any office at all?

So it seems to me that there is ample motive to enact this amendment: the disaster surrounding the appointment in Illinois and the melodrama over the one in New York. With neither party standing to be advantaged by it, there may also be ample means. And Feingold's bill provides for the opportunity.

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Obama: More Political Capital Than Reagan?

Although Barack Obama defied our prediction of starting his term with a higher initial approval rating than John F. Kennedy, his 68 percent approval score (versus 12 percent disapproval) is nevertheless noteworthy in comparison with his recent predecessors:



This chart tracks the initial Gallup approval and disapproval ratings following the inaugurations of newly-elected presidents since Eisenhower; Truman, Johnson, and Ford, who took over following the death or resignation of their predecessors, are excluded.

The green and red lines represent the time trends established prior to this year (that is, they don't include the Obama data point). While newly-elected presidents tend always to begin their terms with fairly high approval metrics, this has been decreasingly true in recent years, perhaps a reflection of increased partisanship. Obama's initial approval rating, indeed, is the highest of any president since Kennedy. His initial disapproval rating, meanwhile, is about half that of his two most recent predecessors, although higher than that of Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, Carter, and G.H.W. Bush, all of whom began with disapproval in the single digits.

Whether Obama's approval ratings qualify as ordinary or extraordinary depend on the point of comparison. It is not particularly surprising that Obama's approval significantly exceeds that of Bill Clinton, who won a three-way election with only about 43 percent of the popular vote, or George W. Bush, who won in the most controversial fashion imaginable after the Bush v. Gore decision.

In comparison with Ronald Reagan, however, Obama's approval is quite a bit more impressive. Indeed, it is hard to mount a credible argument that Reagan began his term with more political capital than Obama:



Reagan won considerably more electoral votes in 1980 than Obama did in 2008. As measured in percentage terms, his margin of victory over Jimmy Carter was larger than that of Obama over John McCain. On the other hand, Obama won a lot more popular votes than Reagan did. He also won a higher percentage of the popular vote, and his margin of victory was larger than Reagan's in absolute (rather than percentage) terms.

The Republicans made greater gains in both the Senate and the House in 1980 than the Democrats did in 2008. On the other hand, the Republicans were starting from a much lower baseline, and if one considers the previous midterm to be part of the same political cycle, the Democrats gained more seats in each chamber over 2006/08 than the Republicans did over 1978/80. The bottom line, perhaps, is that Obama's party controls considerably more seats in both chambers of Congress than Reagan's did in 1980 -- indeed, Republicans were still a considerable minority in the House in 1980.

And now we have these Gallup approval ratings showing Obama regarded quite a bit more favorably than Reagan was at the start of his term. So in comparison to Reagan, Obama comes out looking pretty good.

A skeptic could rightly point out, on the other hand, that Obama's initial approval numbers are about the same as Jimmy Carter's were in 1976 -- and Carter certainly did not prove to be a political heavyweight. I suspect that it was indeed easier for a president to begin with something closer to universal approval in past eras than it is now. I suspect also that the tone of the campaign makes a fair amount of difference -- the 1976 campaign was, by modern political standards, a relatively genteel one on both sides. The Obama campaign also played relatively nice in 2008, although they certainly did not always do so.

The interesting and probably unanswerable question is to what extent Obama owes his high approval ratings to his inclusive/"post-partisan" rhetoric, and to what extent his favorability might be eroded by a cantankerous debate over something like the stimulus. The administration's decision may be to what extent Obama wants to use up his political capital now as opposed to storing it for the next two, four or eight years. But Obama needn't be too thrifty, as he has a lot of political capital to spare.

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