A Challenge to Climate Change Skeptics

John Hinderaker at the popular conservative blog PowerLine reports that it's been cold, cold, cold in his home town of Minneapolis, Minnesota, going to far as to compare it with "The Year Without a Summer", 1816, when global temperatures were abnormally low as a result of the eruption of Mount Tambora:

I don't think things are quite so bad this year, but if something doesn't change pretty soon 2009 may go down in history, in some parts of the U.S. at least, as another year with barely any summer. Here in Minnesota and across the Midwest, temperatures are abnormally cold. I don't know whether the phenomenon is world-wide--data that will answer this question have probably not been assembled, and may not be honestly reported--but the current low level of solar activity suggests that the cooling trend could indeed be universal.

Indeed, it's been pretty cool in Minneapolis for the past couple of days; the temperature hasn't hit 70 since midday Thursday. But has it been an unusually cool summer? No, not really. Since summer began on June 21st, high temperatures there have been above average 15 times and below average 13 times. The average high temperature there since summer began this year has been 82.4 degrees. The average historic high temperature over the same period is ... 82.4 degrees. It's been a completely typical summer in Minneapolis, although with one rather hot period in late June and one rather cool one now. (Note: actual high temperatures can be found here and historical averages can be found here.)



Selective memory is a powerful thing. I'm not particularly certain when pointing out the fact that it might be cool or rainy in your hometown one afternoon became subject for worthwhile blog material, but you have started to see this all the time on certain conservative blogs, probably led by the example of Matt Drudge.

Therefore, because I'd like to see more accountability on all sides of this debate and because I'm tired of people who don't understand statistics and because I'd like to make some money, I issue the following challenge.

You are eligible for this challenge if:

1. You live in the United States and provide me with your home address and telephone number (I will provide you with mine) and,
2. You are a regular (at least once weekly) contributor to a political, economics or science blog with an Alexa traffic global ranking of 50,000 or lower.

The reason for the latter requirement is because I want to be able to shame/humiliate you if you back out of the challenge or refuse to pay, as I'd assume you'd do the same with me.

The rules of the challenge are as follows:

1. For each day that the high temperature in your hometown is at least 1 degree Fahrenheit above average, as listed by Weather Underground, you owe me $25. For each day that it is at least 1 degree Fahrenheit below average, I owe you $25.
2. The challenge proceeds in monthly intervals, with the first month being August. At the end of each month, we'll tally up the winning and losing days and the loser writes the winner a check for the balance.
3. The challenge automatically rolls over to the next month until/unless: (i) one party informs the other by the 20th of the previous month that he would like to discontinue the challenge (that is, if you want to discontinue the challenge for September, you'd have to tell me this by August 20th), or (ii) the losing party has failed to pay the winning party in a timely fashion, in which case the challenge may be canceled at the sole discretion of the winning party.

Any takers? You can reach me by clicking the 'Contact' button at the top of the page.

EDIT: No takers yet. Eligibility will remain open through Monday (the 20th). Limit three contestants within any one 100-mile geographic radius.

And sorry for all the typos, etc. Been a long week.

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On Health Care, Bipartisanship without Compromise?

My apologies that posting has been a little slow over the past couple of days. The bad part about working for myself is that I hate my boss. After scrambling like mad to meet a couple of deadlines earlier this week, Worker Nate basically decided to go on a sit-down strike against Boss Nate.

The big news of the day is the letter sent by a "gang" of six "bipartisan" senators (there was a sale on scare quotes at Target today) urging Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell (and by implication, the White House) that "taking additional time" on health care would be advisable. It's easy to read the letter cynically: "later" in senate speak quite often means "never". That might be particularly so on health care: odds are, frankly, that the Administration will continue to lose political capital until the unemployment rate improves, which even if a recovery in GDP growth is around the corner (which many economists think it is) is liable to take some time. Push this debate back to the autumn, and the effort could be being lead by a President whose approval ratings are in the low 50's or perhaps even the high 40's.

What's interesting, though, is who exactly is in this "gang". Five of the six are whom you'd expect: three conservative Democrats (Liberman, Landireu and Ben Nelson) and two liberal Republicans (Collins, Snowe). But then there's Oregon's Ron Wyden, who is not particularly conservative and in fact is usually thought of as being rather liberal.

Wyden, as you may know, has his own version of health care reform, which is entitled the Healthy Americans Act (HAA). The HAA is, in some ways, a more radical restructuring of the health insurance system than any of the other plans currently being contemplated by the Congress. It would completely remove the benefits tax exemption, create a national health insurance exchange (which would be open to everyone including those who opted out of their employer-provided coverage), and set some rather explicit cost-containment targets. I'm on record as being a fan, as are a lot of health care policy wonks like Ezra Klein. The interesting thing about Wyden's bill is that it has co-sponsors from all over the political spectrum: not just centrists but also fairly liberal Democrats like Jeff Merkley, Ted Kaufman and Daniel Inouye, and rather conservative Republicans like Idaho's Mike Crapo and Utah's Dick Bennett. If we plot the 100 senators from most liberal to most conservative (as determined from DW-NOMINATE scores), support for the HAA seems to be somewhat randomly distributed throughout the population:



It's very rare to see something like this and a reflection of the fact that Wyden's plan cannot easily be characterized as either liberal or conservative ... it's just different.

But what's this have to do with the letter that Wyden and his colleagues sent today? It's not immediately clear. While three of the six "gang" members (Wyden, Lieberman, Landrieu) are sponsors of Wyden's bill, the other three (Snowe, Collins, and Ben Nelson) are not.

My guess, though, is that Wyden wouldn't have signed onto this letter unless he thought there was a real chance to marshal support for his bill. And my guess is that the other five signatories probably understood that.

It's actually not completely clear that the Senate can't find 60 votes for the HELP Committee's bill once push comes to shove (much less 50). But those votes certainly won't be had easily, and Wyden's bill arguably represents an easier path. It begins with five Republican co-sponsors (Bennett, Crapo, Judd Gregg, Lamar Alexander and Linsday Graham) and would probably have little difficulty getting Snowe's and Collins's votes as well. The downside is that there might be a dozen or so Democrats who are extremely reluctant to touch the benefits tax exemption, which some of the AFL-CIO unions like AFSCME are very protective of. So the White House would either have to make some phone calls or find a few more Republicans to support the Wyden bill.

Ultimately, though, this presents an opportunity to find a bipartisan solution that doesn't have to be a compromise solution -- a lot of smart, progressive folks think Wyden's bill is better on its face than the "traditional" versions that have been drafted by the House and the Senate, much less what those versions will look like after they've been through the meat-grinder of the Senate floor. The White House doesn't need to take more time on health care: it may simply need more votes. Especially after this letter today, it ought to at least be actively considering whether Wyden's bill is the way to get them.

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The Obama Effect Considered

President Obama has been described as many things - a Rorschach inkblot; a movement; a new America; a fraud; a demagogue. For whatever it is that he ultimately represents to the world -- the United States living up to its ideals, perhaps -- he is incredibly popular.

Among major world leaders, he polls by far the best among the global community* :

Among countries where the United States has a very poor image, for example among six Arab states in the Middle East, Obama widely outperforms.


What still is not clear, however, is how much of Obama's popularity is due to his own efforts, or those of his predecessor. For many in the global (and U.S.) community, a considerable portion of his charm is simply not being George W. Bush. Whether softening the US rhetoric on Iran, Cuba and Russia, making highly public statements about reducing civilians casualities in Afghanistan, or committing to less interventionism in Latin America, popular opinion is that the foreign policy of the Obama administration is a huge turnaround on the Bush years.

The analysis of some observers, however, has suggested the Obama foreign policy approach is largely identical to Bush's, just packaged in a much more friendly fashion. By quantitative measures of foreign policy, limited as they are in their explanatory power, does tend to support this stance. By examining the two major financial investments that a government makes in its foreign policy application -- military spending and development aid -- we can roughly look at the application of hard and soft power in the implementation of foreign policy priorities.

For the last twenty years, the US approach to foreign policy application has changed little, by this measure, although the intensity of its application has. From the late 1980s through the Clinton administration, the drawdown from the Cold War meant a reduced engagement with many parts of the world. The more interventionist Bush policies pushed both spending areas back up through the 2000s. But throughout, each type of spending generally maintained its proportion of foreign policy outlays. The following chart illustrates this, showing development aid (ODA) and military spending (MIL) as percentage above or below their twenty-year average.

In fact, military spending between 2004 and 2007 is actually understated here, because the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were funded off-budget through “emergency” appropriations bill. The low 1989 figures for ODA are due to the US’s record 79% UN budget arrears in George H.W. Bush’s first year in office.

While the specific policy foreign priorities of the three Presidents included in this period (Soviet/post-Soviet transition & Gulf War; NATO driven actions & reduced spending in order to focus domestically; Aggressive intervention in select countries & aid to Africa) were quite different, their underlying spending strategies of high military spending and relatively low development aid were very much in unison.

As it turns out, the Obama plan is actually strongly in keeping with the US strategy of the last twenty years, with regards to military spending and development aid. In addition, in keeping with the George W. Bush administration’s escalation of spending in both areas following 9/11, Obama’s budget calls for increases in both military spending and development aid. This includes a more robust focus on multilateral diplomatic institutions (e.g. Susan Rice’s now cabinet-level post), but an even greater focus on the role of military allies in the U.S. strategy regarding Iran, North Korea, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan and continued military spending increases, even adjusting for the Bush off-budget moves.

While he is shifting the application of the strategy between locations and priorities, the overall Obama strategy reflects the more fundamental American idea of how to successfully deploy foreign policy ideas, which remains heavy on the military intervention, and light on the permission-asking. Indeed, the global public still see the U.S. foreign policy as a largely force-driven operation*.

The Obama team seems to be focused on ensuring that these aggressive military activities are now complemented with a robust and well-considered plan of discussion and dialogue, rather than unilateral action. And the Obama effect of acting also as bridge-builder-in-chief has mean that suddenly, the activities are being marketed to the world in a way that builds confidence more than resentment. Both based on identity, charisma, and downright shrewdness, Obama has been able to re-market the U.S. in an exciting, and likely more accurate, fashion.
-----

*These polls evaluated the aggregate popularity of world leaders and opinions in the following countries: China, India, the United States, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Russia, Mexico, Germany, Great Britain, France, Poland, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Kenya, Egypt, Turkey, Iraq, the Palestinian territories, and South Korea. The score from each leader's home country was excluded from the average shown.

note: Thanks to commenters for pointing out several typos.
---
Renard Sexton is FiveThirtyEight's international columnist and is based in Geneva, Switzerland. He can be contacted at sexton538@gmail.com

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"Conservative Activist Judge" is NOT an Oxymoron

One of the great successes of the legal wing of the conservative movement is the widespread connection in the mind of many citizens and pundits of "liberal" judicial philosophy with "activism," and "conservatism" with "strict constructionism." They'd have us believe that "liberal activist" and "conservative constructionist" are basically redundancies, and that there simply is no such thing as a conservative activist. This is patently untrue.


There is a very simple explanation for why a conservative may be activist and a liberal statist--the state of the law. The Warren Court wanted to overturn precedents, and so it ruled laws passed by Congress and (especially) state legislatures unconstitutional. And as the Court of that era slowly and sometimes not-so-slowly changed the law, the justices by definition needed to be less activist as the state of the law became more amenable to their views--precisely because they had changed the law.

But guess what? The Rehnquist Court did the same thing, as Republican-appointed justices found the laws passed by state legislatures and (especially) Congress during the years of the Great Society and thereafter to be out of line with the political and judicial philosophies they brought to the bench. Accordingly, they ruled to change the law too. Or--if we can pause a moment to act like adults and not be cowed by scary phrases devised by Federalist Society types to be used incessantly during hearings like the one presently underway to confirm Sonia Sotomayor--the Rehnquist Court trafficked heavily in "judge-made law."

The two figures in this post are created from data compiled by Syracuse University political scientist Thomas Keck for his book, The Most Activist Supreme Court in History.

That most activist Court? A: The Late Rehnquist Court, which in terms of the annual average number of federal statutes overturned by the Court ranks first. Though I only show data from the Roosevelt Court forward, Late Rehnquist has the highest score of any Court era going back to the days of John Jay. So much for modern conservatives' deference to legislatures and the disdain for "judge-made" law.

On the other hand, in the figure below we see that when it comes to rejecting state and local statutes, the late Warren Court was second most activist in American history. Here we see liberal activism, strongest in fact during the Great Society period and into the Burger period before fading as the (re)constituted Court slowly grows more favorable to the state of the law. But note that Early Rehnquist Court isn't far behind. Here we see the ideological back-and-forth of the modern Court as it reacted to new members. In perhaps the most concise summary of his findings, Keck writes in his book (p. 230), "[M]odern conservatives have tried to curtail the liberal activism they inherited from the Warren Court, while simultaneously seeking to develop a new conservative activism of their own."

Part of the sad kabuki dance of Supreme Court confirmations is the ritual denial by nominees that they will depart in any way from constitutional prerogatives, and that they will "respect the law" and venerate judicial precedents. Well, geez, if all the Court justices are reading the same Constitution, and the same laws passed by Congress and state legislatures, and the same judicial precedents, and never applying any judicial philosophy of their own, then the Court would never issue anything but unanimous decisions.

The whole point of the Court is to rule laws unconstitutional based on justices applying their philosophical interpretations of the Constitution, and to reverse bad precedents when they recognize them. And the point of presidents nominating justices of similar ideological ilk is to put them on the Court to do just that. If the standard really were that all precedents must be upheld, the Court might as well pack up and do nothing more than administer the judicial system and settle occasional disputes between the elected branches. (Oh, and the Chief Justice could still oversee presidential impeachments ... whooopee!) And, of course, by this same logic we'd still have Plessy v. Ferguson on the books, and no state-level protections for civil rights and liberties, and so on.

During confirmation hearings--whether for Sotomayor or John Roberts and Samuel Alito before her--the attempt to somehow disconnect what the justices actually do and what the nominees must promise they won't do is a magnificent farce that insults all of us.

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RGA's Ayers Responds to 538 Readers

Some Fivethirtyeight.com readers said my recent interview with Republican Governors Association executive director Nick Ayers left them wanting more. To his credit, Mr. Ayers read your reactions and contacted me to say he’d happily do a follow-up. As you’ll see, I asked him to expand on some of the topics we covered the first time, added some questions suggested by readers, and asked a few new ones of my own.

Fivethirtyeight: I’m not going to ask you to criticize any of the Republican governors, but I would like to ask you to assess the impact of their decisions on the party and the GOP brand. Starting with Sarah Palin, do you think she’s of more value to the GOP as a governor or as a former governor who potentially morphs into a conservative movement leader or media personality?

Nick Ayers: I’m not entirely an objective person to ask, because running the governors association my personal preference is that she stay governor, for selfish reasons. She was a great ally of the RGA and to her colleagues around the country.

Saying that, when I try to look at it objectively I can absolutely see a scenario in which she is able to be more effective for our candidates and the conservative cause. She was facing so much head wind in Alaska as it related to local politics and people spinning her agenda for purely political reasons, that in her own outside-the-box thinking she felt like she could make a bigger impact putting that behind her and playing a larger national role.

I think it’s entirely up to her. I think it’s too early to say which direction she wants to go. If she wants to play a large role, she’s going to be able to irrespective of the mainstream media’s disdain for her.


538: Turning to Mark Sanford, he joins a growing list of socially-conservative Republicans who look hypocritical because of their own marital infidelities. How much damage do episodes like Sanford’s inflict on the Republican brand, and specifically the Republican boasts about being the so-called “family values” party?

NA: What Mark said in all the years I’ve known him, is that the party is exactly that—it’s a brand. It’s no different than John Deere or Caterpillar or Chik-fil-A. Those are the three examples he would give. He would go on to say that when people were buying those brands they knew what they were getting, and they knew it was worth paying the price for the quality they got in return.

There’s no question that under [Sanford’s] analogy, his actions have inflicted pain upon the brand. And those are his words, not mine. Saying that, because he’s a friend and because I serve the Republican governors, I’ve adopted the policy of our new chairman, Haley Barbour, and I’m not going to talk about people’s personal problems—other than to say it was a huge disappointment for us, both professionally in his capacity as a Republican governor, and personally, because a lot of us were dear friends and still are.

That said, my job is to focus on governors’ races. We’ve got two this year and 37 next year and I don’t think Sanford’s poor decision will affect one vote in Virginia and New Jersey. And that’s the good news. These governors’ races this year, the one in New Jersey is going to be about Jon Corzine’s record. It’s one of complete failure and one of breaking promises. And in the race in Virginia, it’s really going to come down to whose policies most closely align with Virginia’s, and I’m overwhelming positive and optimistic that that’s Bob McDonnell. He’s for more energy that’s cheaper. Craigh Deeds won’t talk about an energy policy. He wants to punt and say it’s a federal issue. People expect governors to make decisions, and that’s not what Craigh Deeds is doing. He says he’s not taking any tax increases off the table. Bob McDonnell’s plan is to run an effective government with low taxes. No one believes that raising taxes in a recession or these economic times is a good idea.

I could go down the list of why I think Bob is more closely aligned with voters than Creigh, but the point is that these two races are going to come down to our candidates, and in New Jersey to Gov. Corzine’s record. And that’s not something that Sanford’s poor decision-making will affect.

538: I presume fiscal responsibility is a subject Republican governors will raise this year and next year as a counter-narrative to the Obama Administration’s policies. But many states are in financial trouble, too. So how should Republican governors or gubernatorial candidates discuss fiscal issues during the current economic recession?

NA:I can’t speak for all of them. The thing about governors is that, unlike congressmen or senators, they don’t caucus. They don’t have to come to a consensus. What Jan Brewer is doing in Arizona may be different than what Haley Barbour does in Mississippi.

One of the reasons that I’m so optimistic and confident that the comeback for the party begins with our governors’ races next year is that I don’t think the Republican Party can be rebuilt based on a slogan or a mantra created out of DC. It’s going to have to be built based on a number of different ideas and solutions that come from within the states. And what our governors propose that work for the people in the Northeast—in states like Connecticut and Vermont, where we have Republican governors—might look very differently than what Sonny Perdue and Bob Reilly propose to do in Georgia and Alabama.

So I don’t think that there’s any one issue set on how to handle the economic times in the right way. I think it’s about getting principled conservative leaders elected, and being clear about how they will handle situations in their respective states and trusting them to do that.


538: Without identifying the seven states where you think Democratic incumbents are vulnerable in 2010, I’m wondering if you would comment specifically on two states, New York and Massachusetts, where black Democratic incumbents are lagging in popularity in very blue states that in the recent past boasted Republican governors. What kind of Republican candidates can win back those states?

NA: I think I owe your readers a more clear response than the last interview, and I’m comfortable talking about it, even in some detail.

You mention the Northeast, but I’ve got to tell you, just in general we are more bullish than usual in several states in the Northeast. Because you have a history of Democratic legislatures and/or governors in the Northeast there are policies of high taxes and high debt that have resulted in astounding job loss and economic decline. So whether it’s Maine, Pennsylvania, New York or Massachusetts, we feel like if we recruit the right candidate we can make Democrats compete in some places that are traditionally blue.

My belief is that a well-run governor’s race isn’t overtly partisan as much as it is about hiring the right CEO. And that’s especially true of the Northeast, where there’s more big business and people are very familiar with the roles of CEOs. We think if we can field better candidates who fit the job description of CEO and deal with a budget situation, that we’ll have a great opportunity in places like New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and even Maine.

A great example of that is a candidate who announced last week, Charlie Baker in Massachusetts. He’s a CEO of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, has done a lot of nonprofit work in the healthcare, and is a brilliant business man and someone who I believe can cut beyond party and racial lines and say, “I’m willing to bring my experience from the private sector to help solve Massachusetts’ budget issues.” I think Charlie is the kind of ideal candidate that we’ve been looking for. We spent five months recruiting him, so we were very excited to see him get in the race there.


538: Let’s shift the regional focus a bit. You’re a southern white guy working for a southern white guy, Haley Barbour, in a party that’s retrenched significantly in the past two cycles to its southern, white base of support. How is the RGA working to combat the image that the Republicans are becoming a homogenized minority?

NA: I think my last answer deals with that, but look, I don’t discriminate against southern white guys. They’re an important part of the party, and we want to keep them and we want every one of them supporting us.

Saying that, we recognize that to build the coalition we need and win in the states we need, we need a lot more focus than just southern white guys, which is why we’ve spent a lot of time in our recruiting efforts in the Great Lakes, the Midwest and the Northeast. It would have been easier for us to say RGA’s stated goal is to hold our strength in the middle, really from Texas all the way to South Carolina, and we want to pickup Tennessee and hold Florida. But we haven’t said that. It is important that we hold those states and pickup Tennessee, but to us it’s more important that we expand our party’s boundaries in the West and Great Lakes and Northeast.

And I think the kind of candidates who we recruit will have more impact than even the enormous amount of money that folks like Gov. Barbour have raised. We’re 17 months out, and we’re not conceding any ground anywhere in America, and it’s because folks like Haley Barbour recognize that we need to expand our party’s boundaries. And I think we’ll do that in the 2009 and 2010 elections.


538: The minority party nationally tends to struggle with fundraising. For the 2010 cycle, how do you plan to stay competitive on the money front with the Democrats?

NA: I’m probably most proud of our financial focus. In the June 30 disclosures, when we had to disclose and the DGA (Democratic Governors Association) had to disclose. We outraised them, and we had $20.4 million cash on hand while they had just $12.5 million.

For the last two-and-a-half years, RGA has been operating on a four-year plan. Recognizing that our great opportunities would come in 2010, we wanted to avoid the temptation of splurging in the ’07, ‘08 and ’09 campaigns. So we have been very disciplined in our approaches to how we raise and spend money. Look, there’s no question with the DGA that right now, with both chambers of Congress and a supermajority of Democratic governors, you would have to assume their fundraising would improve. But I can only say that in the last two years I’ve been here—with folks like Haley Barbour, Bobby Jindal and Rick Perry, who signed onto this four-year plan—we’ve outraised them every reporting period for the past two-and-a-half years and have significantly more cash on hand.


538: If you win both the New Jersey and Virginia races this autumn, you and Gov. Barbour will rightly be able to point to those wins as signaling the start of the GOP comeback. I know it’s a hypothetical, but should you *lose* both, will the RGA have to rethink its strategy or messaging for 2010?

NA: It’s tough to predict hypotheticals. All I can tell you is Gov. Barbour, all of our governors, and our whole RGA staff wake up every day doing all we can to work toward victory in those states. Ultimately, it’s the voters in those states who will make that determination.

Since we began focusing on New Jersey and Virginia, we’ve said it was our responsibility to bring parity to these races from a resource perspective, and put our candidates in a position to win. That’s the most the national committee can effectively do. We’re not in charge of the candidates; we’re not running the actual campaigns. So I believe that a well-run national committee brings parity to the race from a resources perspective and puts candidates in a position to win. It’s not much different than a good crew chief for a NASCAR team: At the end of the day the driver’s going to drive that car across the finish line, but the pit crew and crew chief can put him in a position to win or not.

I don’t think anyone can make an argument that we haven’t effectively put our candidates in a position to win and bring a parity of resources to these races. And we’re going to continue to do that through Election Day. But ultimately it will come down to the campaigns that Jon Corzine and Chris Christie and Creigh Deeds and Bob McDonnell run.


538: Last question: Is there an up-and-coming young Republican politician—I don’t know, perhaps a county executive or state legislator—whom most of our readers have probably never heard of, but we ought to keep an eye on because he or she has the potential to become the next Bobby Jindal or Tim Pawlenty?

NA:Oh, boy. We have so many great candidates. Most are in primaries, and I’m respectful of the primary process. So the names I’m giving aren’t a reflection on their in-state competition. They’re just folks we think have gotten off to a good start in their primaries.

You’ve got to look at Charlie Baker in Massachusetts. You’ve got to look at a Tom Corbett in Pennsylvania, who I believe got about a third of a million more votes in 2008 than John McCain did, which is just incredible. You’ve got a guy named Josh Penry in Colorado who has created some enthusiasm there. He’s very young—only 32—and he’s running for governor. Newt Gingrich sent me an email last week just because he wanted to make sure Scott Walker was on our radar screen. He’s running for governor in Wisconsin, and Newt wanted to say how impressed he was with Scott.

Those are just four of the 40 or so great candidates we’ve got running for governor in 2010. And that’s what’s really exciting about the opportunity the RGA has. We’re blessed with the 22 governors that we have now. But what we’re really working toward is recruiting and electing the next generation of leaders for our party.

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Palin: All Tail, No Head

Sarah Palin's political action committee -- SarahPAC -- raised $733,000 in the first half of the year and is set to push past $1 million in the wake of the recent attention she's gotten herself. On the one hand, this isn't that impressive. Mitt Romney, for instance, has raised twice as much. Kay Bailey Huthcison, Palin's sometime rival who is now running for governor in Texas, raised nine times as much. For somebody with a political celebrity dwarfed only by Barack Obama's, that's just not all that much cashflow.

What is impressive about Palin's fundraising haul, however, is who it came from: the grassroots. Based on her FEC disclosures, I identified 406 donations worth $200 or more, which are worth a combined total of $289,932. That's nothing, really: Home Shopping Club can bring in that much in 15 minutes selling vacuums. That leaves, however, $443,608, or 60 percent of SarahPac's total, which came from small donors. That is a very high percentage -- higher than for any of the '08 presidential candidates but for Ron Paul -- as you can see from this chart where I've colored Palin's total in Misogynist Pink.



You don't wind up with a number like that unless two things are happening: you are raising a lot of money from small donors and you specifically are not raising a lot of money from large, establishment donors. That, in a nutshell, is Palin's story as she starts to compete against the GOP primary field. I'm not convinced that fundraising is actually going to be that much of a strength of hers in the primary: she's going to have too much of the country club money soaked up by Mitt Romney (the general election might be a different story). But as Barack Obama discovered, small donors have a way of turning into activists and, ultimately, voters.

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Blue Dog Districts Need Health Care More than Most

One thing I don't understand is the equivalence, such as in this Roll Call article today, between the health care debate and the climate bill that was passed by the House a couple of weeks ago. There are 48 Congressional Districts that were won by John McCain and that currently have a Democratic Representative. Most of those districts are rural and blue-collar. On the climate change bill, this might give those Representatives ample reason to vote against the initiative: 38 of the 48 have per capita carbon output rates above the national median, and 36 of the 48 have an above-median concentration of jobs in the manufacturing and agricultural sectors. But something the opposite holds true on health care.

Throughout last year, Gallup included a module on health and well being in their standard tracking surveys. This meant they had tens of thousands of interviews between all 435 Congressional Districts. One of the questions on the well-being module was about whether or not people had health insurance. Eric Nielsen at Gallup was kind enough, a while back, to send me these results broken down by Congressional District.

The median Congressional District has an uninsured population of 14.6 percent, according to Gallup's data (the average is slightly higher at 15.5 percent). Of the 48 McCainocrat districts, 31 (roughly two-thirds) have an above-median number of uninsured. A complete list follows below (actual Blue Dogs are denoted in ... you guessed it ... blue):



The bottom line is that the health care bill, among other things, is designed to help out the poor and the uninsured, and somehow or another will tax the rich in order to do so. I can understand if, say, Jason Altmire from PA-4 wants to vote against the health care bill. His district is suburban and pretty well off, and almost everyone there has health insurance. But Mike Ross of the Arkansas 4th, where almost 22 percent of the population is uninsured? This is a bill designed to help districts like his. And the same goes for most of the other Blue Dogs. A lot of the time, these guys are stuck in a tough spot between their party and their constituents. Here, those interests are mostly aligned. If a lot of the people on the top half of this list are voting against health care, first check the lobbying numbers, and then check to see if they're still in office four years hence.

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Will Kay Bailey Hutchison Play Texas Hold 'Em?

No, this is not a poker post.

Instead, it's one about Kay Bailey Hutchison, the Texas senator, who today announced that it's full speed ahead in her bid to challenge to Texas' incumbent governor, Rick Perry. The news comes to absolutely no one's surprise as Hutchison has been contemplating this race for years and long ago hired consultants and established a website toward her bid, while already having raised some $6.7 million dollars on behalf of it.

Hutchison once appeared to be the favorite in her primary fight against Perry, but it's not clear if that's any longer the case. The polling in this race has been a little bit sketchy, but seems to point toward momentum in Perry's direction. After trailing in the five previous polls of the race (including internal polls conducted by his campaign and by Hutchison's), Perry has pulled ahead in the last three:



Here's that same data in graph form:



This should be a fun race to follow -- especially if Sarah Palin, who seems to have a mutual grudge with Hutchison and has already endorsed Perry -- gets further involved.

Perhaps the more interesting question for our purposes however is when and if Hutchison will resign her seat in the Senate to concentrate on her pursuit of the governorship. This would trigger a special election in which Democrats could be quite competitive. We have been alert to this possibility for some time now, which is why you see Texas included on our list of potentially competitive Senate races.

Ironically, we had just downgraded the race on speculation that the turnaround in the polling might deter Hutchison from pursuing the governorship after all. Obviously, we were wrong about that. But the fact remains that there's nothing compelling Hutchison to resign her Senate seat until and unless she becomes governor. It's her decision when and whether she wants to resign.

The smart bet, though, is that the resignation is coming (to the great annoyance of Hutchison's colleague in the Senate, John Cornyn). For one thing, this is a pretty big prize that Hutchison is competing for: becoming governor of the nation's second-biggest state. If Texas were to secede, it would have a larger GDP than all but eleven countries (the U.S., Japan, China, Germany, France, the U.K., Italy, Russia, Spain, Brazil and Canada). Hutchison would also become one of the most powerful female governors in history. Of the country's five largest states, only Texas itself has ever had a woman governor (Ann Richards), and it's population was about 25 percent smaller then. And of course, being governor of Texas is an obvious jumping off point for anyone with presidential ambitions.

Also, if Hutchison is losing momentum to Perry, that could cut both ways in terms of her desire to remain in the Senate. On the one hand, she might have more to lose by failing to hedge her bets. On the other hand, it might be precisely that bet-hedging that is getting her into trouble. Perry has been able to grandstand by doing things like threatening to have Texas secede and refusing to take federal stimulus monies. It is harder to capture that sort of attention when you're one of 100 senators. And of course, Texans tend to be no fans of Washingtonians, which is how Hutchison might be perceived if she refused to give up her Senate seat.

Finally, even if Hutchison were to hold on to her Senate seat and win the governorship, she would not be able to punt the special election all the way until November 2012, when her Senate term naturally comes due. That is because Texas is one of a dozen states with a "fast" special elections law, meaning that an election in that case would be held in the Spring of 2011.

This does, however, give Hutchison some measure of control over the timing of the special election. If she were to resign soon, an election could be held this November. If she waited a little longer, it could instead be held in March. And if she kept her seat until the end of the year before resigning, the special election would be put off until November 2010. The conventional wisdom seems to be that the March timing would be most favorable to Republicans, since it would probably elicit the lowest turnout -- a boon to the party in a state where base voters are still very red. We would put our money on Hutchison going 'all-in' sometime this autumn.

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Protestants, Catholics, and Jews on the Supreme Court

The New York Times had a fun feature today in which they asked "seven legal experts" the questions they would like to ask Sonia Sotomayor in her hearings. The experts included four law professors, one historian, and two former government officials. I liked most of the questions--they go beyond silly gotchas and empty questions of "judicial philosophy" and raise important issues. Actually, it would be interesting to hear what the current justices on the court think about these questions.

This being a blog, though, what I'm going to focus on is the silliest of the proposed questions, from Ann Althouse, a professor of law at the University of Wisconsin:

If a diverse array of justices is desirable, should we not be concerned that if you are confirmed, six out of the nine justices will be Roman Catholics, or is it somehow wrong to start paying attention to the extreme overrepresentation of Catholicism on the court at the moment when we have our first Hispanic nominee?

I'm guessing that this question is a joke, but just in case it's serious . . . My impression is that, for about 150 years, an overwhelming majority of Supreme Court justices have been Protestant. I can't imagine that, when, say, Charles Evans Hughes was being nominated for his Supreme Court seat, that somebody asked him: "Is it somehow wrong to start paying attention to the extreme overrepresentation of Protestantism on the court at the moment when we have our umpteenth white nominee?"

To do a quick check on the numbers, I did a quick Google search and found this page with the religious affiliation of all 109 Supreme Court justices up to this point.

We've had 12 Catholics, 7 Jews, 1 unaffiliated, and 89 Protestants (in decreasing order of frequency, Episcopalians, Presbyterian, Unitarians, Methodists, Baptists, a few others with one or two each, and a bunch of Protestants not further defined):

(As noted on the linked webpage, there's some ambiguity as to whether Episcopalians should be characterized as Protestant, but for the purpose of ethnicity, I think the label fits here.)

Most of the Catholics and almost all the Jews on the court were appointed since 1930. All the data are on the linked webpage, so feel free to make your own fun graphs.

P.S. In response to some of the early comments:

1. By making this graph, I'm not "defending reverse discrimination." I'm just pointing out that we've had about 200 years during which white Supreme Court nominees could've been asked, "Is it somehow wrong to start paying attention to the extreme overrepresentation of Protestantism on the court at the moment when we have our umpteenth white nominee?" It just seems a little silly to start asking this sort of question right now.

To put it another way, I agree that intellectual diversity of opinions is a good thing, but I think Althouse's "Is it somehow wrong" formulation is just silly. If you want to ask about diversity of opinions, you can do it directly without talking about "extreme overrepresentation" in a historically context-free way.

2. One commenter asked about other religions. They are shown on the chart above.

P.P.S. To get to a more interesting statistical question hinted at by Althouse, it is indeed impossible for any collection of 9 people to be truly diverse. Beyond the ethnic and religious dimensions already mentioned, there's the division between politicians and non-politicians, lawyers and non-lawyers, lawyers with and without business experience, and so on. As noted above, I think it's a bit odd to suddenly be bringing up overrepresentation of Catholics now, given the historical record, but some of these other questions of breadth could be relevant.

P.P.P.S. Commenter John S. at my other blog linked to this excellent news article by Robin Toner from a time two years ago when questions arose about there being five Catholics on the Supreme Court. Oddly enough, nobody was asking, "is it somehow wrong to start paying attention to the extreme overrepresentation of Catholicism on the court at the moment when we have our umpteenth white nominee?"

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RGA Chief Had No Warning of Palin's Resignation

With two competitive governors races on tap this fall, and a slate of key, open-seat contests just around the corner in 2010, the Republican Governors Association finds itself in an unusual position: Holding a minority of governorships, but looked to by Republicans around the country as the place where the GOP can start a comeback. (The RGA's homepage uses theGOPcombeback.com as its address, where you can hear RGA chairman Haley Barbour talk about how it was Republican governors back in the early 1990s who pulled the GOP off the mat after Bill Clinton's 1992 victory.)

RGA executive director Nick Ayers was kind enough to chat with fivethirtyeight.com about what's in the works. Though playing it close to the vest on specific targets, and heeling the party line on questions about Sarah Palin and Bobby Jindal, Ayers has some not-to-be-missed, choice comments about the Virginia governor's race--especially the recently completed battle for the Democratic nomination. (Make sure you read what he says about Terry McAuliffe's failed bid....very ouch.)

Fivethirtyeight: First, please give our readers a bit of biographical background on yourself and how you came to be executive director of the Republican Governors Association.

Nick Ayers: I began my political career in Georgia during college by working for Sonny Perdue’s campaign against incumbent Roy Barnes. Governor Perdue upset Barnes to become the first Republican governor in the state since Reconstruction. I was Governor Perdue’s top political advisor during his first term and then managed his re-election campaign. Governor Perdue won 130 of 159 counties with 58 percent of the vote, defeating his opponent by nearly 20 points.

After the election, Governor Perdue was voted chairman of the Republican Governors Association and he asked me to serve as the executive director. At the RGA, we put together a four-year plan that would not only allow us to compete on a yearly basis but would also ensure we have the resources needed for 2010, when there will be 37 governors’ race. Part of that plan was to keep the same core political team in place.

538: There are two governors races this fall, and current polling indicates that both Republican candidates will be competitive. Let's start in the bluer of the two states, New Jersey. Can you talk about Chris Christie's chances and what it will take for him to win?

Ayers: In elections where a governor is seeking reelection, the races usually come down to one thing: the incumbent’s record. Jon Corzine’s record is the opposite of what he campaigned on in 2005. The number one issue in New Jersey is taxes, especially property taxes. But despite his previous campaign promises, Corzine raised the sales tax in his first budget and then hiked taxes by another $1 billion this year. Corzine knows there is nothing he can say or do to defend his record which is why he has already started attacking Chris Christie. As an incumbent, that’s not a position you want to be in.


538: Turning to Virginia, a state often cited as turning away from Republicans, the Democrats are trying to win the governors race for a third time in a row. How would you rate Bob McDonnell's candidacy thus far, and what will it take for him to prevent Craigh Deeds and the Democrats from posting a third consecutive win?

Ayers: This race is a rematch of the 2005 Attorney General’s race which McDonnell won by 323 votes so it’s no surprise that it’s been a tight race since the Democratic primary. The Democrats have already spent over $3 million trying to tear down McDonnell’s favorability rating and it’s been largely ineffective because of the quality campaign that McDonnell has run. As Virginia voters learn more about the two candidates, I think more and more will break towards McDonnell. McDonnell is fighting to keep Virginia’s right to work laws and keep Virginia business friendly. Creigh Deeds is a tax-and-spender who stands with Big Labor.


538: On a related note, were you surprised that Deeds won Virginia's Democratic primary over two candidates with bigger names and deeper pockets?

Ayers: Terry McAuliffe unquestionably hurt Brian Moran, who never seemed to put together a plan for how he could win. In regards to McAuliffe, while campaign money may be the mother’s milk of politics, it still can’t make an ugly baby pretty. The more voters saw of McAuliffe the less they liked him. That said, Deeds ran a great campaign.


538: A Minnesota blogger reported this week that some organization is apparently polling Minnesotans on the subject of a possible Norm Coleman run for governor. Would you care to comment on a possible Coleman bid for governor?

Ayers: What the PPP poll showed is that this will be a competitive race no matter who the candidates are, but it’s too early to speculate on who will be running on the Republican side.


538: Looking ahead to 2010, which open-seat states are the major RGA targets for possible pickups?

Ayers: All of them: Maine, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Michigan, Oklahoma, Kansas, Wyoming, New Mexico and Oregon.


538: Again for 2010, how about Democratic incumbents. Are there any you think are vulnerable enough to defeat?

Ayers: We don’t like to broadcast our strategy, but there are at least 7 incumbents who are vulnerable.


538: I have to ask about Sarah Palin. First, did the RGA have any advanced warning of her recent announcement that she would resign the governorship, and if not, were you surprised by her decision?

Ayers: We were informed about her decision to step down just before she announced it. I don’t think too many people were predicting it.


538: Although a rising star in the party, Bobby Jindals nationally-televised response to the presidents address earlier this year was widely panned, including by many conservative commentators. How much, if at all, do you think Jindal's rise as a national figure was set back by that speech?

Ayers: Over the long term, not at all. Governor Jindal is one of the brightest minds in our Party and has unlimited potential.


538: Having former Republican National Committee chairman Haley Barbour as RGA chair must be a huge networking and fundraising asset. What are your thoughts on a potential presidential bid by Gov. Barbour?

Ayers: Gov. Barbour has repeatedly said that the only thing that matters is the 39 governors’ races that will take place between now and the end of 2010. That’s what all of us are focused on right now.

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Senate Rankings, July 2009 Edition

Races are ranked in order of their likelihood of changing parties (by November 2010, accounting for all factors such as potential retirements, primary challenges, and so forth).

Likelihood of party switch has increased since last month's rankings.
Likelihood of party switch has decreased since last month.

1. Missouri (R-Open)
Steady as she goes for all-but-assured Democratic nominee Robin Carnahan, who begins with a slight lead in the polls, while Republican Roy Blunt is facing a potentially nasty primary (EDIT: Although it now looks like Sarah Steelman may run for the House instead).

2. Kentucky (R-Bunning)
Attorney General Jack Conway has thus far outfundraised intraparty rival Daniel Mongiardo. That is arguably good news for the Democrats, since Conway has tested slightly stronger than Mongiardo against extremely vulnerable Republican incumbent Jim Bunning.

3. New Hampshire (R-Open)
Some big news for Republicans in the Granite State, where popular AG Kelly Ayoette appears poised to enter the Senate race, a big upgrade for Republicans over a retread like John Sununu or Charlie Bass. Ayoette polled somewhat better than either Sununu or Bass in the only public survey to feature her name to date and also had a small lead over Democratic nominee Paul Hodes. There are lots of undecideds in this notoriously late-deciding state, so expect it to remain a toss-up long into the future.

4. Connecticut (D-Dodd)
Leading GOP rival Rob Simmons, who hadn't reported any fundraising in the first quarter, now says he brought in $750K in the second, a number that rates at about par in a wealthy state like Connecticut. Meanwhile, Simmons is starting to get more competition for the Republican nomination, as businessman Tom Foley, the former Ambassador to Ireland, claims to have raised $500,000 in less than a month, and stockbroker and contrarian economist Peter Schiff, who advised Ron Paul's presidential campaign, is testing the waters with internal polling. I personally think the Republicans' fortunes will take a big hit if they nominate a plutocrat like Foley or Schiff rather than Simmons, who while a bit underwhelming on the stump, is a former Congressman and lifelong public servant. But this being Connecticut, there are no shortage of rich guys hoping to get in on the action.

5. Ohio (R-Open)
Races #3-5 are pretty much interchangable. There are several more polls out showing Democrats Jennifer Brunner and Lee Fisher with small leads over former OMB director Rob Portman, but as Portman's name recognition lags behind that of the Democrats, this race still continues to rate as more of a toss-up.

6. Delaware (D-Open)
Will Mike Castle run or won't he? People are reading the tea leaves both ways. Right now, we're pricing in about a 50-55 percent chance that Castle does decide to enter. If he's in, this race will shoot up the list to at least #3 and possibly higher. If he's out, it drops from the top 15.

7. Colorado (D-Bennet)
I'm not really sure why this race isn't attracting more attention -- both from some of the stronger potential Republican candidates and from possible intraparty challengers to Michael Bennet. While Bennet has done nothing in particular to offend Coloradans' sensibilities, he's also mostly unknown to them; a Republican internal poll, for instance, found that 63 percent of the state has no opinion of Bennet. As we've said before, this is effectively an open-seat race -- and usually open-seat races attract busy fields of candidates.

8. North Carolina (R-Burr)
Multiple polls have shown incumbent Richard Burr with extremely low approval ratings, which has led to the somewhat unorthodox decision by the Burr camp to start criticizing the pollsters. This happens all the time in campaigns, but not usually 16 months before the election when you don't yet have a declared opponent. I doth think Burr protesteth too much, even though he caught a break in May when Roy Cooper decided not to challenge him.

9. Illinois (D-Burris)
It looked on Wednesday that Mark Kirk was in the running for Barack Obama's former senate seat, then it looked like he was out, and now -- nobody's quite certain. I'm not sure why Kirk, who also waited months until Lisa Madigan declined enter the race before declaring his interest, is such a delicate little flower, but running for statewide office in Illinois takes elbows and Blagojevich balls, and if he's not fully vested in the race, I wonder if he's going to be as strong a candidate as the Republicans are hoping. Meanwhile, the Democratic field may be clearing up a bit, as Roland Burris is officially retiring and as it's not clear that Chris Kennedy will challenge Alexi Giannoulias. This race is in one of those interminable holding patterns above O'Hare Airport for now, but should break one way or the other soon.

10. Louisiana (R-Vitter)
Charlie Melancon, the only remaining Democratic Congressman from Louisiana, now seems poised to challenge David Vitter; he trailed Vitter by just 7 points in a Research 2000 poll in March in spite of much inferior statewide name recognition. If Melancon confirms his interest, this is a pretty big coup for the Democrats and at the very least will force Republicans to spend a lot of money to hold Vitter's seat.

11. Nevada (Sr.) (D-Reid)
Earlier, I claimed that the new senate rankings would contain five Democratic-held seats in the top ten. I'm now backing off that after evaluating the landscape more thoroughly in Nevada, where the few non-corrupt Republicans like Jon Porter and Dean Heller seem increasingly disinclined to challenge Harry Reid. And who can blame them, when the John Ensign scandal has proliferated enough that they will almost certainly have the shot at an open seat in 2012 -- if not sooner?

12. Texas (R-Open?)
I'm giving this race a slight nudge downward because Kay Bailey Hutchison has fallen behind incumbent governor Rick Perry in the polls and it wouldn't completely shock me if she decides that the Senate is a pretty comfy place instead. One interesting wrinkle if Hutchison does decide to run for governor (as is still probable): Texas would hold a nonpartisan blanket primary for her senate seat, with the two leading candidates squaring off in the run-off. It's not entirely out of the question that those two leading candidates could both be from the same party.

13. Pennsylvania (D-Specter)
Most of the action here is on the Democratic primary side, where Joe Sestak is slowly but steadily closing his gap with Arlen Specter. Pat Toomey remains nominally within striking distance of the Democrats in the general election, but I think his numbers will plateau as Pennsylvanians realize how conservative he is.

14. Florida (R-Open)
I know that the Marco Rubio people are increasingly excited about their prospects of knocking off Charlie Crist. For our purposes, though, I'm not sure how much it matters, because Rubio would still be at least even-money (and frankly probably the slight favorite) against probable Democratic nominee Kendrick Meek.

15. New York (Jr.) (D-Gillibrand)
Here's the last in our trifecta of races where the primary battle should be more pitched than the general election one. To this point, I don't see any reason to think that the prospect of George Pataki running is anything more than wishful thinking on Republicans' behalves. The Gillibrand people I've spoken with, for their part, seem more focused on the primary battle against Carolyn Maloney. Gillibrand's approval numbers seem to be inching upward as voters get to know her better, although her getting by Maloney is by no means a sure thing.

16. Nevada (Jr.) (R-Ensign?)
A new addition to our rankings. John Ensign has not yet resigned his seat and probably won't, but it's our job to evaluate these sorts of contingencies. If the scandal blows up any further, one wonders whether he won't become tempted to ride off into the Vegas sunset, particularly when Nevada has a Republican governor who could name a Republican replacement. If that happens, though, the race is subject to a special election in 2010, and Democrats like Shelley Berkley, who are already licking their chops for 2012, could decide to descend on the seat.

17. North Dakota (D-Dorgan)
News to me: popular incumbent governor John Hoeven seems to be considering a challenge to popular incumbent senator Byron Dorgan. Hoeven was well behind in the only public poll of the race and has two years left in his term. To me, this feels mostly like a bluff, designed to force Dorgan's hand on policies like cap-and-trade. But I'd expect this to ultimately become a single-digit race if Hoeven did decide to enter.

18. Arkansas (D-Lincoln)

19. California (D-Boxer)
Carly Fiorina has had a rough couple of years, first getting fired by Hewlett-Packard (her company's stock jumped 7 points that day) and then getting mothballed by the McCain campaign after criticizing her party's own VP nominee. But she's apparently poised to run against Democratic incumbent Barbara Boxer. Boxer had a 30-point lead against Fiorina in a March poll and probably has no particular reason to fear her, but Fiorina is at least likely to be a good fundraiser, which should force Boxer to stay on her toes.

20. Iowa (R-Grassley)

21. Georgia (R-Isakson)

22. Arizona (R-McCain)
John McCain probably has nothing to fear from Republican wacko Chris Simcox, but what about this guy?

23. Hawaii (D-Inoyue)
There's actually a fresh poll of a prospective run by governor Linda Lingle against octogenarian incumbent Daniel Inouye (who won a Medal of Honor in World War II!) but it reveals the same thing that we knew before, which is that Lingle will probably have to wait for a retirement to have a real shot at a seat in Congress.

24. Wisconsin (D-Feingold)
Two new polls show Feingold with a double-digit lead over hypothetical Republican challenger Paul Ryan, who has denied any interest in the race and seems to be waiting for Herb Kohl to retire instead.

25. Oklahoma (R-Coburn)
After a few moments of doubt, the likes of which haven't gripped Oklahoma Barry Switzer announced he was leaving for the Cowboys, Tom Coburn declared he was officially running for re-election in 2010, and all was right with the world.

26. Alaska (R-Murkowski)
I'll take 50-1 that Sarah Palin somehow gets involved here and messes this thing up.

27. Kansas (R-Open)

28. Maryland (D-Mikulski)

29. South Carolina (R-DeMint)

30. Washington (D-Murray)

31. Alabama (R-Shelby)

32. South Dakota (R-Thune)
Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin, as expected, announced she'll run again for the Congress rather than challenging Thune or running for the open governor's seat.

33. Indiana (D-Bayh)

34. Vermont (D-Leahy)

35. Oregon (D-Wyden)

36. Utah (R-Bennett)

37. New York (Sr.) (D-Schumer)

38. Idaho (R-Crapo)

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Why Democrats Have No Time to Waste

The Wall Street Journal's has had its monthly economic forecasting panel attempt to predict what the unemployment rate will look like through the end of 2010. And the results are something that should make the Administration -- and Democrats in Congress -- a little nervous. The average forecast for the unemployment rate next December -- a year-and-a-half from now -- is 9.5 percent. That's no better than where unemployment is today. And only one economist out of 51 ventured a forecast below 7.6, which is what the unemployment rate was when Obama took office in January.

It's not that the Journal's forecasters are all that bearish overall. In fact the panel, which has a notoriously bullish track record, expects to see GDP turn positive quite soon: 70 percent expect the recession to end by the fall, and 90 percent by the end of the year.

The unemployment rate, however, has long been a lagging indicator, especially following recent recessions. Suppose that the recession ends in August. Perhaps six months from then -- in February or March -- the economy will actually have started to create jobs. But the employment picture will have gotten worse in the meantime; it will be creating jobs from a peak of, say, 9.9 percent if the administration is lucky, or say, 11.2 percent if it isn't. It will take some time to get the number back down to the 9.5 percent that it's at presently, much less to fall below the 7.6 percent number that would represent an overall gain of jobs during Obama's tenure.

The question is: how playable a hand would the Administration have at that point? They'll probably get some boost when (if?) the recession is declared over. But maybe not much of one. The Persian Gulf Recession officially ended in March 1991; George H.W. Bush was still suffering from the consequences of it 18 months later.

A more favorable precedent, perhaps, is that set by Ronald Reagan. His approval rating hit its trough in February, 1983, a mere three months after the 1981-1982 recession ended. Reagan, more than G.H.W. Bush, could claim to have inherited his recession from the previous administration. Although that recession started in July 1981, half a year into Reagan's term, it was in some ways a continuation of the January-July 1980 recession that began under Jimmy Carter. In this way, his situation is more analogous to Obama's, whom nobody can blame Obama for the start of the current recession -- although increasing numbers will become frustrated with him that it hasn't ended yet.

Reagan's Republicans nevertheless lost 26 seats in the House during the 1982 midterms. That is probably a reasonable over-under for the losses that Obama's Democrats might suffer. While on the one hand, Obama's timing may turn out to be somewhat better than Reagan's, on the other hand Republicans were losing ground from a much lower peak -- the only controlled 192 seats in the House before the midterms, whereas Obama's Democrats now have 257. I'd still take the under given that betting line, mostly because the GOP is poorly organized, both in terms of message and infrastructure. But anything from the Democrats gaining a few seats to losing their hold on the chamber is entirely possible.

The Democrats are in a much more fortunate position, at least, in the Senate, where even after a couple of recruiting coups, the GOP is playing more defense than offense. The over-under there may still even be in positive territory for the Democrats -- say a net gain of +/- half a seat. The Democrats are further fortunate that the Senate, not the House, is the legislative bottleneck right now. If hypothetically the Democrats lost 25 seats in the House, which would make their margin 232-203, but added one seat to improve to 61 in the Senate, it's not clear how much worse off they'd be, particularly if the losses in the House were mostly to conservative, Blue Dog seats.

Still, there is not much time for the Administration to lose in pushing forward the Democratic agenda. The recent sluggishness in the recovery reduces, if not altogether eliminates, the possibility that the Democrats will have some kind of golden window of opportunity prior to the next midterms. Suppose that the recession ends tomorrow, and that the jobs recovery begins sometime around the Holidays. That's pretty much the best reasonable case for the Democrats. But would you really want to be pushing, say, a climate bill in the summer of 2010, with unemployment still in the high 8's or low 9's and an election right around the corner? At that point, the better strategy might be to redouble the efforts to keep as many seats as possible in the House and gain a couple in the Senate.

These next couple of months -- the time just before and after the Senate recesses in August -- are precious for the Democrats. Sure, they'd probably have an easier go of things if the recession hadn't gotten quite so deep. But it's nevertheless likely to be their best time to play offense until the spring of 2011, and possibly much longer than that.

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