Health Care Bill Has Little Margin for Error in House

Last night, the Energy and Commerce Committee voted 31-28 to approve a compromise version of the Democrats' health care reform bill. As the Energy and Commerce Committee happens to be quite representative of the House as a whole, this vote is useful in forecasting the bill's overall prospects. Specifically, as it did in the committee, the compromise appears to be favored to win the support of the full House, although probably by a very narrow margin.

Memebership on the Energy and Commerce Committee consists of 8 Blue Dog Democrats (14%), 29 "regular" Democrats (47%), and 23 Republicans (39%). This is nearly identical to the overall House, which has 52 Blue Dogs (12%), 204 non-Blue Dog Democrats (47%) and 178 Republicans (41%). By contrast, the other two House Committees that had approved earlier versions of the Democrats' reform package -- Ways and Means and Education and Labor, underrepresent Blue Dogs, with just three and one Blue Dog members, respectively. Non-Blue Dog Democrats had majorities on these committees, which they do not on Energy and Commerce or in the overall House. (Note: the original version of this post incorrectly stated that there were seven, rather than eight, Blue Dogs in the Energy and Commerce Committee).



As suggested, then, that the bill received the approval of 52.5 percent of committee members (31 of 59) is probably a fairly good over-under for how the bill would fare when brought before the full House, which would translate to approval by a 228-206 margin.

It is worth, however, being a bit more exacting about this. To do so, I built a simple probit model that attempted to predict the outcome of votes on the Energy and Commerce Committee's markup based on two variables: a member's DW-NOMINATE score (these scores run from -1 for extremely liberal to +1 for extremely conservative; Freshman members have their scores extrapolated from Progressive Punch data) and whether or not they are listed as a supporter for the public option on Howard Dean's website. A variety of other variables that we tested were not statistically significant.

This model forecasts very narrow passage for the health care bill, with about 36 Democratic nay votes and 2 Republican yeas (most likely Joseph Cao of LA-2 and Frank LoBiondo of NJ-2), which would translate to approval by a 222-212 margin overall. Projections for individual members are contained at the end of this article.

There are relatively few swing votes on health care; 177 members (including 3 Democrats) are projected to have less than a 5 percent chance of voting yea, whereas 191 members (all Democrats) are projected to have greater than a 95 percent chance of doing so. Still, it's the 66 remaining Congressmen who will make the difference between passage and failure.

There is also the very real possibility that some liberal Democrats -- perhaps as many as 57 -- would vote against the Energy and Commerce Committee's markup if provisions on the public option are not strengthened. Because we did not see any liberal nay votes in the Commerce Committee -- Henry Waxman whipped them once it became clear that the overall margin would be close -- this possibility is not reflected in the numbers described here. While I won't editorialize on the progressives' strategy, what seems clear is that this bill probably cannot get substantially more liberal without risking failure on a floor vote in the House (indeed, even the current compromise is not assured of passing). If the progressives want a stronger public option than the one that the Commerce Committee passed, they should probably be prepared to make trade-offs in other areas, such as slightly weakening the employer mandate.

Projections for individual members are listed below. All Democrats not listed have greater than a 99.5% chance of voting for the Commerce Committee's markup; all Republicans not listed have less than a 0.5% chance of doing so. 'EC' indicates a member's vote on the Energy and Commerce Committee's markup; as you'll see, the model guessed wrong in a couple of cases, but the errors cancel out.

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Chavismo, Obama and the Monroe Doctrine

In the last few weeks, a few events have highlighted instability and strained relations in Latin America. The overthrow of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya has reopened discussions about the applicability of OECD-style democracy in the region, while the most recent spat between Colombia and Venezuela has re-illustrated the highly divergent foreign policies of the two countries.

Throughout the dialogue about legitimacy of government, economic policy, and foreign affairs, a constant storyline is with regard to the impact of U.S. influence (helpful assistance or dangerous meddling, depending on who you talk to) in the region. With a long history, inter-American relations between the United States and its southern neighbors has long been built on the Monroe Doctrine, a policy that regards "interference" from Europe or Asia in the hemisphere as an act against the US. Since its inception in the 1820s, however, critics have regarded this as a thinly veiled justification for a hegemonical attitude in Washington, a perception that the Clinton and Bush adminstrations were not able to shake.

Indeed, during his Presidential campaign, Barack Obama explicitly criticized the Bush adminstration's approach to relations with Central and South America -- not as being overly-interventionist, instead characterizing it as under-engaged.

[Bush's] policy in the Americas has been negligent toward our friends, ineffective with our adversaries, disinterested in the challenges that matter in peoples’ lives, and incapable of advancing our interests in the region.

After his election as President however, Obama taken a softer approach, while still maintaining that active engagement, including possible intervention, remains his goal.

While the United States has done much to promote peace and prosperity in the hemisphere, we have at times been disengaged, and at times we sought to dictate our terms. But I pledge to you that we seek an equal partnership.

Given the difficulties that have marked US foreign affairs over the last decade, particularly in the Middle East and Central Asia, many international relations experts regard Latin America, including the Caribbean, as a region where progress could be less difficult to facilitate. Inextricably tied to the issues of illegal immigration and regional economic integration (e.g. NAFTA and CAFTA), the dividends of tackling pan-American issues could be quite significant, both in terms of international goodwill, domestic political capital, and economic revitalization.

Returning to the issues of the month that drew our attention, we can examine the links between Honduras, Colombia and Venezuela, and the larger issue of US relations with Central and South America.

First, let's have a look at the recent history in Latin America in terms of two key indicators of well-being, first life expectancy, then national income per capita.

From 1980 to 2005, a dramatic improvement in life expectany was realized across the region, with even conflict and disaster stricken Haiti now at 60 years. Ousted President Manuel Zelaya has seen his country, Honduras, rocket from 58 to just under 70 years, though Honduras remains 5-10 years below most regional neighbors, including Venezuela and Colombia. Excluding Bolivia and Haiti, there has been a general convergence around the 70-78 range.

In economic terms, however, the past 25 years have seen a great deal of heterogeneity in terms of national income growth per capita. Mexico joined the OECD in 1994, a sign of its relative wealth, while Chile and Argentina have also seen significant income growth. Venezuela has long been near the top of income table in the region due to its oil wealth, but since the late 1990s, when Hugo Chavez became President, it has fallen to fourth overall. This has been due to a relative lack of diversification in the economy and the use of oil as a social rather than economic growth instrument. Honduras is again far at the bottom, a position it has maintained as instability and reliance on agricultural exports to North America have eroded growth opportunities. The chart tends to indicate two clusters, after a divergence in the late 1980s. Colombia sits in the middle, though more in line with the higher cluster than the lower.

Polling done by the market research and politics group CIMA have indicated that in 2009, two two areas dominate the region's thinking.

Like the rest of the world, economy is high on the list, with 27% of people in the region listing it as their top concern. However, though the global recession has acutely impacted the region, security concerns still top the list, with nearly 30% of respondents citing security or terrorism as the chief issue. With personal security a growing or continued problem in Mexico, Colombia, Bolivia, Guatemala and others, the role for the US as a actor for stability is clear. In poorer, more secure countries like Honduras, Nicaragua, Dominican Republic or Paraguay, however, the economic crisis has had a greater impact, and therefore yearn more for economic assistance.

Percent of respondents who have lost a job in their household as a result of the recession (CIMA 2009)

How to deal with more antagonistic counterparts has yet to be seen, however. Hugo Chavez has built his governing persona and style around an approach to socialism that explicitly repudiates the US political, economic and social model. Surging after the coup attempt in 2002, which was allegedly linked to the US, namely Bush adviser Otto Reich, Chavez rebuilt his base of support around the ideas of anti-globalization and anti-Americanism. Chavismo has taken a hit in more recent years, as some former political allies have begun to reject Chavez' claim on leftist ideas.

At the same time, Colombian President Uribe has maintained extremely close relations with US, working intimately to oppose the FARC rebels and associated weapons and narcotics -- exactly the issue that again wedged between Venezuela and Colombia. Nonetheless, both leaders maintain positive approval ratings, with Uribe outstripping his regional neighbors by around 10 points. Even Zelaya managed to rebound in early 2009, before his ill-fated attempt to change the electoral rules.



In the end, the "Obama approach" might work better in Latin America than elsewhere, in that results may be forthcoming in a way that they will likely not in other areas of interest, such as Russia, Iran, and Pakistan. However, if the current focus on dialogue and the rhetoric of cooperation continues in lieu of concrete actions on security and economic development in the region and immigration reform at home, the actual influence of the US may be eroded. In the case of a continued poor US reputation, countries like Nicaragua and Paraguay (and of course Venezuela) will likely continue to turn to other partners, like China, India, Russia, along with regional powers like Brazil and Mexico for key relationships -- the ultimate demise of the Monroe Doctrine thinking.

note: Full Barometro Iberoamerica by Consorcio Iberoamericano de Investigaciones de Mercados y Asesoramiento here

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On The Meaning of Jim Bunning

Jim Bunning announced his retirement last week, and I wrote a quick post noting his pending departure. At first, I didn’t think much of the news: Elder senator retires, creating open seat, yada yada, ho hum. Aside from the reports about his lucidity and the recent spat he had with his fellow Kentucky Republican in the Senate, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, I can't remember him making much if any news. There thus didn't seem to be much meaning to Bunning’s retirement beyond the simple storyline of man who followed 17 distinguished seasons as a baseball great with 24 rather undistinguished years in Congress before hanging up his cleats, so to speak.

I’m not attempting now to assign his political career or pending retirement any more importance than it deserves; Jim Bunning is no leading light in national politics or Republican Party circles. And that's just my point: Jim Bunning's long but undistinguished career in national politics is more meaningful than a cursory review suggests.

Bunning arrived in Washington in 1986, winning despite a bad Republican cycle that year. After 12 years in the House, Bunning won a senate seat in 1998--another bad midterm cycle for Republicans, despite bold predictions to the contrary by Newt Gingrich, whose meteoric speakership became the most notable casualty of the GOP’s House losses that year. Aside from his counter-trend victories, it's hard to find much about Bunning's career arc that stands out from the typical political arc of a Republican member of Congress during the course of the past quarter century.

Of course, the country has changed a lot since 1986, and even since 1998. By 2009, those changes reduced Bunning to an old, white southern man in a party that the national media today has finally recognized--despite early warning signals from some, including yours truly--is slowly yet avoidably retrenched into an older, whiter, southern and male-dominated rump party. Bunning didn’t arrive in Washington in January 1987, or to the Senate in January 1999, bursting with new ideas or a new agenda; he was instead something of a placemarker Republican who relied upon tired, retreaded, anti-government policy prescriptions and culture-war themes, both of which have lost significant traction in the decade since his rise to the Senate.

His governing legacy? Well, now. Perhaps I have overlooked something—and readers should pipe up—but internet searches and even a perusal of his official website reveal no major policy accomplishment of note. There is no Gramm-Rudman-Bunning or Bunning-Feingold Act. Nor, if memory serves, was the former pitching great a particularly prominent voice during the debates leading up to the Iraq war vote or as an advocate on behalf of George W. Bush’s income tax cut agenda. He did, of course, serve on the baseball-steroids panel, a good fit for a backbench legislator and former star major-leaguer. A few years ago, Time magazine called him an "underperformer" and rated him among the five worst senators. Whatever one thinks of their motives and methods, in far shorter Senate stints both of South Carolina’s senators, Lindsey Graham and Jim DeMint, have done more to distinguish themselves. (I would regret not pausing here to applaud Sen. Graham on his courageous, principled Judiciary Committee vote to recommend Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation to the Supreme Court.) One wonders how many politically-informed people, without any hints, can even identify the junior senator from Kentucky by name. As for those who do know him well, at home in Kentucky his approval ratings are positively Dick Cheney-esque.

In sum, as a senator Bunning has been largely invisible beyond casting a reliably partisan vote. He has provided no energy or new ideas for a party that quickly ran out of energy and new ideas earlier this decade. He didn’t express any unusual outrage about the excesses or blunders of the Bush Administration. He didn’t offer the promise of attracting any new voter blocs to the party’s declining demographic base. He provided little to no national media presence for conservatives during the past decade, a time when liberals were gaining tactical and message ground in the media, especially online. And, although I’m no expert on Kentucky politics, so far as I can tell Bunning won’t leave behind much of a political legacy or a pack of promising protégés in his home state, where he is rather unpopular.

I’m not trying to kick a man when he’s down and soon to be out; my intent here is not to personally indict Jim Bunning, Hall of Fame pitcher and retiring Republican senator from Kentucky. What I am saying is that in so many ways, Bunning’s political career and pending retirement is symptomatic of the larger problems presently facing conservatism and the Republican Party nationally: a grumpy, searching, direction-less, leadership-deficient, infighting band of naysayers offering few new ideas, too much feigned outrage, and opposition largely for opposition’s sake—all as they steadily lose their grasp on the attentions and imaginations of the American public.

With almost daily developments in the story of Michael Jackson's death and the Gates-Crowley-Obama drama--not to mention the national debate over health care--Bunning's retirement is a second-page story at best. But there are page one implications of his career, and its end, in regard to the state of national politics, especially on the Right and within the Republican Party. Enjoy your retirement, Senator.

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Yes, the GOP's Still Out of Touch

We've talked a little bit about the problems that Democrats are having on health care messaging. But just in case you needed a reminder that two can play at this game -- this is from Representative Tom Price (R-GA), in a Politico editorial unveiling the Republicans' "new" health care plan:

Thursday marks the anniversary of the most significant piece of health care legislation in our nation’s history. It was on this day in 1965 that President Lyndon B. Johnson signed Medicare into law, ensuring government health care for seniors. Forty-four years later, Congress is debating another monumental act that may affect the health coverage of every American.

Contrary to what the president has tried to convince the American people of, while we oppose his misguided ideas, Republicans are committed to positive health reform. No one in Congress finds the status quo acceptable. [...]

Going down the path of more government will only compound the problem. While the stated goal remains noble, as a physician, I can attest that nothing has had a greater negative effect on the delivery of health care than the federal government’s intrusion into medicine through Medicare. Because of Washington’s one-size-fits-all approach, its flawed coverage rules and broken financing mechanisms, seniors are increasingly having care rationed while federal health spending spirals out of control.

Emphasis mine. Medicare is one of the most popular "government intrusions" in the United States. About 60 percent of people participating in Medicare rate their coverage as a 9 or 10 on a 10-point scale (versus 36-40 percent for private insurance), and 84 percent rate it as a 7 out of 10 or higher (h/t Mark Blumenthal). In the most recent Kaiser Foundation tracking poll, moreover, 77 percent of Americans would like to see Medicare expanded to people aged 55 and older. Questions that refer to the public option as a "Medicare-like" program usually receive higher scores than those that don't. Questions that refer to single-payer as "Medicare-for-all" usually receive plurality or majority support: 58 percent, for instance, in the Kaiser poll. Yes, people have concerns about the long-term fiscal stability of Medicare -- but not about the care it provides.

To compare the President's current reform efforts to Medicare is for all intents and purposes a Democratic talking point. That Republicans saw fit to include it in what was surely supposed to be a boffo editorial outlining their new plan suggests that they may talk their way out of stopping health care reform yet.

More generally, there's not a lot of evidence that Americans have strong ideological dispositions about health insurance. Health insurance is about the three C's: (low) cost, (broad) coverage and choice of treatment and physicians. If Americans can be convinced that publicly-run insurance plans can help them achieve those things, they will happily support them.

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The Only Winning Move is Not To Play

It was another choppy day for health care reform. One step forward in the House, where the Blue Dogs appear to have been placated, and two steps back* in the Senate, where discussions have stalled out between Max Baucus and his committee-within-a-committee of six Very Special Senators.

There is a difference, of course, between these two negotiations: one is being held between Democrats and their fellow Democrats, and the other is being held between Democrats and Republicans. Almost every Democrat, Blue Dogs included, are going to be in a better position if health care passes than if it fails. Not necessarily a good position: as we've said repeatedly, there are some Blue Dogs who would probably be better off if Obama hadn't tried to tackle health care at all. But given that he has -- how dare he try and enact his campaign platform! -- they face a choice between getting blamed by only those people who don't like health care reform and getting blamed by everyone.

The Senate Republicans, on the other hand: With the retirements of George Voinovich, Judd Gregg and Mel Martinez, and the party-switch of Arlen Specter, there are only two Republican Senators running for re-election this cycle in states won by Barack Obama. One of them is Richard Burr of North Carolina -- a state where Obama won by a just fraction of a point and is now fairly unpopular. The other is Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who is one of Baucus's Special Six --- but Iowans approve his performance by a 2:1 margin and he is facing only token opposition. Neither of these guys are exactly risking getting booted out of office if they don't vote for health care.

Three other such Republicans will face re-election in 2012: first, John Ensign of Nevada, who is probably doomed no matter what he does, and Dick Lugar of Indiana, who is probably safe no matter what he does. Then there's Olympia Snowe of Maine, who along with her colleague Susan Collins, is the one place where Obama might have a little leverage: he won their state, after all, by 18 points, and although Snowe and Collins are quite popular, they are popular precisely because they will buck their party from time to time. But they really are probably the sole exceptions: in every other marginal case, the damage that the failure of health care would do to Democrats' messaging and morale probably outweighs any potential for backlash.

So what was Baucus hoping to achieve by negotiating with people who have an incentive to see the process fail? There are two basic cases here. Either the Democrats can muster all 60 votes on their own, and Grassley's vote would be the icing on top of Obama's victory cake and would only serve to improve the Democrats' electoral prospects in 2010 and 2012. Or they can't, in which case Grassley has it within his power to cause the Democrats a huge, potentially back-breaking headache. Either way, it's hard to see what Grassley has to gain by striking a deal. If the Democrats only had 58 senators, or 59, then there would be more downside to Republicans: the Dems' 2010 platform would instantly become -- Let's elect a few more Democrats to stop these Republican obstructionists! That's not a bad message. But since the Democrats do have 60, it will be hard for them to creditably blame Republicans for health care's failure.

There are two other reasons why someone like Grassley might be amenable to a compromise. One is if he simply thinks that health care reform is The Right Thing to Do. This is not intended (entirely) sarcastically: of the 100 Senators on the Hill, you can make a better case for Grassley than most as someone who is occasionally willing to vote out of something other than electoral expediency. Still, Grassley is at heart pretty darn conservative; it's unlikely that he's going to bed dreaming of gumdrops and the public option.

The other incentive is more perverse: if he thinks that Democrats can get 60 votes on their own, but that by inserting himself in the negotiations, he can ensure that a weaker bill is passed. Indeed, that would be a pretty good reason for Chuck Grassley to compromise. But it would be a pretty lousy one for Democrats to do so.

Or maybe it is the case that Democrats would be better off in the long run passing a weaker bill that gets some Republican support than a stronger one that doesn't. But if so, what interest do the Republicans have in assisting them with that? From a partywide perspective, this is pretty much a zero-sum game. It might not be so for individual senators -- you might have some individual actors who had strong incentives to compromise, even if this were against the overall best interests of their party. But as we've mentioned, there are almost no Republican senators who will be materially worse off if health care fails.

This is not exactly to suggest that Grassley is bargaining in bad faith. But he has almost no reason to compromise on any points of substance. At best, he's probably somewhat indifferent between a weak health care bill passing and the whole enterprise failing apart; that's a very dangerous person to be negotiating with. The same thing certainly goes for Mike Enzi, who is more conservative than Grassley and hails from a much redder state. Olympia Snowe is different: she is a de facto independent in a very blue state, who might even have some hopes of being on a Presidential ticket someday. (It will never happen, but would you really want to wager a lot of money betting against Snowe-Bloomberg, or Petraeus-Snowe, running on an independent platform?)

Instead of Grassley and Enzi, Baucus should be sitting in a room with Ben Nelson and Mary Landireu -- and maybe Olympia Snowe. Those are the swing votes -- the pressure points -- the people with whom there's actually something to be neogtiated. If Grassley wants to come in and snack on beef jerky and spitball a few ideas, then sure -- door's always open. But I don't know what good he's doing the Democrats by being given so leverage over the process.

___
* Or maybe two steps forward and one back. The compromise bill that had been floated earlier this week was a poor one -- weak enough that one can actually imagine Enzi and Grassley having signed on to it. I don't think they were in a position to make many more demands -- the bill was already on the precipice of triggering a minor rebellion within the Democratic caucus. If either Baucus/Bingman/Conrad balked after their trial balloon had burst, and reneged on previous compromises, or Grassley/Enzi got greedy and made yet more demands, the negotiations could easily have collapsed. The point is, these neogitations were not particularly likely to succeed in the first place, nor are they particularly essential to health care's success. Blame Baucus if you like -- but blame him for getting into the wrong negotation with the wrong people, and not for how they may have ended.

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Support for Health Care Reform: Is Public Opinion More Favorable for Obama than It Was for Clinton in 1994?

Bob Shapiro, author of two important books on public opinion (The Rational Public, 1992, with Benjamin Page, and Politicians Don't Pander, 2000, with Lawrence Jacobs) sent me this report he just wrote with Sara Arrow, comparing public opinion for Obama's health care initiative with opinion in 1993-94, when Bill Clinton's health plan crashed and burned. They write:

The increasingly favorable climate of public opinion for health care reform that Clinton had in 1993 eroded enough by 1994 to dissipate any strong push on the public’s part for reform . . . All signs on the surface were that Obama took office in January 2009 with the same--or an even greater--impetus for health care reform. . . . It would therefore not be surprising to find--and there was every reason to expect--that Obama would have behind him even a more favorably disposed public than Clinton had to help move reform legislation forward. But has this been the case? Our best estimate is, overall, probably not, and this explains the battle that Obama has faced in getting public support to help the reform effort along through Congress or to offer approval later of any landmark legislation that is passed and implemented.

Shapiro and Arrow look at 18 survey questions on health policy, comparing average responses in 2009 to those in 1994. They define change in opinion as a shift of six
percentage points in the balance of opinion in one direction or another. This is what they found:

* 5 questions where opinion was more favorable to health care reform in 2009 than in 1994: Does the health care system need to be rebuilt? Do you think the president's reforms will decrease the amount you'll pay for medical care? Do you think the Democratic party is more likely than the Republicans to improve the health care system? Do you approve of the way the president is handling health care policy? Do you favor the president's plan?

* 4 questions where opinion was less favorable in 2009 than in 1994: do you favor national health insurance, which would be financed by tax money? Would you be willing to pay higher taxes so that everyone can have health insurance? Would you be willing to pay more--either in higher health insurance premiums or higher taxes--in order to guarantee health insurance coverage for all Americans? Do you think the federal government should guarantee health care for all Americans?

* 1 question with a change whose direction is ambiguous: more people think that the country spends too much on health care, which is either in favor of Obama's plan (national health care as a cost-saving move) or against it (if national health care is viewed as an extra public expenditure).

* 8 questions where public opinion is essentially unchanged.

In balance, then, Obama has faced a public opinion climate similar to Clinton's in 1994.

As we're all aware, opinion is volatile on these issues: support of health care reform does not necessarily translate to support for any particular policy. And a lot depends on Congress, where the Democratic majorities have a strong interest in seeing their party succeed. When translating opinion to policy, though, Shapiro and Arrow seem to have a good point when they write:

While the reports in the press of public support for major changes have been accurate (though varying from opinion poll to opinion poll, depending on how the survey questions were asked), they did not examine fully how current public opinion compares to what Bill Clinton faced in 1993-1994.

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2010: It's All About the National Swing

Nate links to a Congressional Quarterly list of ratings for 2010 congressional races and concludes that, although these listings give a sense of which races are more likely to be competitive, the CQ chart doesn't really say much about the chance that there will be a "wave" election that would switch partisan control to the Republicans.

The same day, Matthew Yglesias links to a recent Congressional Quarterly report entitled, "2010 House Outlook: Democrats Look Secure" and concludes that, yes, the Democrats look secure to keep their House and Senate majorities.

What should we believe? For the purpose of campaign strategy, you need to look at the races in each district, but to get a sense of what's going to happen overall, I think the best approach is to look at the national vote. There's lots of variation, but, overall, swings occur nationally.

Here's a graph I made after the election, showing the average Democratic share of the two-party vote for the House of Representatives and for president for the past sixty years:



From this picture, it looks possible but unlikely that there will be a 6% swing toward the Republicans (which is what it would take for them to bring their average district vote from 44% to 50%). Historically speaking, a 6% swing is a lot. The biggest shifts in the past few decades appear to be 1946-48, 1956-58, and 1972-74 (in favor of the Democrats) and 1964-66 and 1992-194 (for the Republicans). I don't know if any of these would quite be enough to swing the House majority. A more likely outcome, if the Republicans indeed improve in next year's election, is for them to make some gains but still be in the minority.

The other factor helping the Democrats is incumbency, which helps lock in a congressional majority (as it did for the Republicans after 1994) by bumping up the vote shares of the new congressmembers elected in swing districts. In 2008, John Kastellec, Jamie Chandler, and I estimated that the Republicans would need something like 51% of the average district vote to have an even shot of winning a majority of House seats.

P.S. Beyond the particular issue of forecasting the 2010 election, both pundits make interesting points. Nate discusses some factors that could help the Republicans (a continuing economic slump) and, on the other side, the Democratic Party's advantage in organization and fundraising. Yglesias suggests that, "given the contrast between ironclad discipline on the GOP side and the 'anything goes' attitude on the Democratic side, it looks like for a while yet we may be in a California-style dynamic where Republicans can't win elections but Democrats can't actually pass a governing agenda."

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Obama, Democrats Flunking Health Care Sales Pitch

As I've made clear on a couple of occasions, I think there has generally been too much panic over the process of getting a health care reform bill before the Congress. Given a bill as expensive and complicated as this one, and the number of disparate constituencies both within and outside the Democratic Party, it is not surprising that the details are taking some time to negotiate. Efficient negotiating processes necessarily will involve a lot of brinksmanship, necessarily will tend to be resolved at the last minute, and necessarily will have their up days and down days along the way.

The one thing that might have sent things down a different course is if President Obama had tried to preempt the negotiations by taking a more hands-on approach and placing a particular bill before the Congress. I had thought this was a good idea, although the Beltway conventional wisdom would disagree, and there would certainly be risks to the White House in trying to loop the Congress out of the process. We'll probably never know who was right. But given that the White House didn't take that course, everything that has proceeded since has been fairly normal.

There are also debates about health care, however, taking place outside of Washington, in living rooms and convention halls and bowling alleys all across America. These debates will come to take on more import as members of Congress return home for the August recess and begin to speak with their constituents. I do not think the Democrats have been holding their ground in these sorts of debates. In fact, I think they are losing them rather badly.

There is a long history of support for the concept of major health care reform, something that has not really changed to this day. As recently as last week, a USA Today/Gallup poll found 56 percent in support of Congress passing a "major" health care reform bill this year, versus just 33 percent opposed.

However, that does not mean the particular bills being debated by the Congress are popular. Since Memorial Day, there have been ten polls that asked whether the public supported what was identified as the Obama, Democratic, or Congressional health care "plan". I put "plan" in quotation marks because there still isn't "a" plan; instead the Congress is debating between several different plans. With that said, what the public thinks of as the Obama/Democratic plan has been steadily gaining opposition:



The obvious thing to point to is the increase in the number who say they are opposed to the Democratic "plan". What may be just as important, however, is that the Democratic plan was never was all that popular to begin with. A GQR poll back at the end of May put support at only 46 percent -- although then, just 33 percent were opposed. The Democrats, indeed, may not have recognized early enough that some persuasion was going to be required in order to get a majority of the public on board. And they have since lost their plurality. The support numbers have held basically steady -- the problem is that virtually all of the undecideds have come around to oppose the plan.

About a month ago, Stan Greenberg and James Carville, who were bystanders in the Clinton administration when the 1993-94 health care effort failed, put out a memo outlining five things that Obama and the Democrats would have to do in order to sell health care. Let's evaluate their performance on each of these five planks, and assign it a letter grade:

1. Voters need to hear clearly what changes health care reform will bring. Never losing health insurance when you lose a job or get sick, power shifted from insurance companies to people, reduced costs for you and your family, business and country.

The key adjective in the above statement is "clearly". It certainly does not seem to me that there's been much clarity in the Democrats' explanations of what health care reform will mean for the average American -- how can there have been when key elements of the plan are still being debated? Grade: F.

2. Build a narrative around taking power away from the insurance companies and giving it to people.

There's been some of this from rank-and-file Democrats, but very little from Obama, who seems strangely resistant to populist rhetoric. I'd thought, frankly, this was one of the real advantages that Democrats had going into the legislative process: big business is very unpopular because of the economic collapse, and there might even have been some way to parlay negative sentiments about AIG -- an insurance company -- into skepticism about the motivations of insurers in general. But we haven't seen very much of this from the highest-profile Dems. Grade: D+.

3. The president and reform advocates have to explain concretely the changes that will mean lower costs.

There's been a lot of assertion of this, but then, there's that key modifier, "concretely". And the Democrats don't seem to be winning this argument. I know the Rasmussen polls have been pretty bearish on health care reform (and most other Democratic initiatives) in general, but their numbers on cost control are especially poor -- only 23 percent expect the cost of health care to go down under the Democratic proposals, versus 53 percent who expect it to go up.

It's not very difficult to understand why the public thinks as they do. They hear about cost control -- and then, they hear that the impact on the deficit is going to be a trillion dollars. Talk about cognitive dissonance. What Obama and the Democrats probably need to do is to delineate the two parts of the proposal: acknowledge that creating a guarantee of universal coverage will cost money, and laud it as a worthy goal -- a moral imperative, even. Then explain that the other parts of the bill will save money, although not quite enough to offset the costs of providing universal coverage. Maybe you need some Ross Perot-style charts and graphs to do this.

I think the public is sophisticated enough to comprehend this argument, and I think that it might be a winner. In this month's Kaiser Foundation tracking poll, 45 percent started out saying that $1 trillion is "about the right amount" or "too little" to be spending on health care, versus 42 percent saying "too much". When, however, Kaiser stipulated that "spending this amount would mean nearly everyone in the U.S. would have health insurance coverage", support rose to 57 percent. This argument was more persuasive to people than a another one Kaiser advanced about reducing long-term costs.

The White House clearly concluded somewhere along the way that arguments about cost containment were more persuasive than arguments about universal coverage. The problem, again, is that the arguments about cost containment won't make any sense to people unless you're also selling the arguments about universality -- not when the bill has a $1 trillion price tag. Grade: F.

4. Show all voters and seniors that there are benefits for them, including prescription drugs.

This probably has to count as another failure. Plans for health care reform are not very popular with seniors. Obama has talked in passing about closing the Medicare Part D "donut hole", but it hasn't been a central focus of the debate, nor is it clear if this will be addressed in whatever bill ultimately comes out of Congress. Having some kind of "prize" to show to seniors could be a big help. Grade: D-.

5. All of these points should be made with the dominant framework that continuing the status quo is unacceptable and unsustainable.

This is the argument we've heard most frequently from Democrats and one that they're probably winning. Indeed, all the Republican talk about the need for "bipartisan" reform somewhat reinforces this point: there are very few people will to go on record describing the status quo as acceptable.

However, none of this will necessarily encourage the public to have much confidence in the particular solution to the status quo that the Democrats are advancing. Winning this point, in other words, is a necessary condition for the passage of health care reform, but hardly a sufficient one. With that said, Democrats should probably be making more of the fact that Republicans have yet to offer their own version of health care reform. Grade: B+.

* * *

Overall, that works out to a grade point average of1.06, or a letter grade of a straight 'D'. And that frankly seems generous when looking at the situation more holistically. If this were a pass-fail class, the Democrats would probably deserve a failing grade.

The strategy from here, at least, seems relatively clear (although "clear" is not the same thing as "easy"). Firstly, the Democrats need a plan that will be the focal point of their sales efforts. It doesn't necessarily need to be the plan that will eventually be voted upon by the Congress, but it does need to have specific answers on key details like the public option, the employer mandate, and the funding mechanism. Until the Democrats have a plan, they are unlikely to gain ground with the public on health care reform. This, by the way, is why it is potentially a significant setback if the House in fact does not vote on health care before the August recess -- far more so than if the Senate hadn't voted. If the House approved a health care bill, that would give Democrats a plan to talk about through the recess, regardless of what the Senate chose to do later on. But without either chamber having approved a plan, they'll continue to be drowned in a sea of process stories.

If and when the Democrats are at the stage where they have a plan to frame the discussion, then President Obama needs to give a speech. Not a town-hall forum, and not a press conference. And not multiple speeches. A speech. A "big" speech, and probably a somewhat long speech. A make-or-break speech in prime time on a busy television night. Preferably one from the Oval Office, or perhaps in front of a joint session of Congress -- not some bullsh*t at a steel mill in Toledo. This is not as risky as it sounds, since the President is very good at delivering big speeches. But he's probably only going to get one shot.

Until then, I don't think Obama can go completely into hiding, but there is definite risk of overexposure. The President is not as popular now as he was a few months ago, and he's being associated with a still-unformed health care "bill" that definitely isn't all that popular and in fact may be dragging his numbers down. It might be better for the President to preserve some of that political capital and to rely on some of the more persuasive members of Congress, Joe Biden, Katheelen Sebelius, and under ideal circumstances the Clintons, to do his bidding for him in the meantime, in conjunction with a some grassroots action and a robust advertising effort.

The best thing that health care has going for it is that it doesn't necessarily need to be all that popular to pass. Congressional Democrats will simply have to acknowledge that, while the passage of a bill might not do them any favors in the near-term, its failure would almost certainly be much, much worse. But I'm not sure that Democrats had to find themselves in this lose-lose position in the first place. And I'm not sure that they can't find their way out of it, if they start to take more heed of what the public really needs to hear about their health care bill.

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A Harvard Professor Says Some Stupid Things

No, this is not about Henry Louis Gates. I'm not about to wade into that particular controversy.

Instead, it's about another Harvard professor, economist Martin Feldstein, who today penned an opinion piece in the Washington Post that is sadly misinformed on the health care debate.

Take a look at this:

Obama has said that he would favor a British-style "single payer" system in which the government owns the hospitals and the doctors are salaried but that he recognizes that such a shift would be too disruptive to the health-care industry. The Obama plan to have a government insurance provider that can undercut the premiums charged by private insurers would undoubtedly speed the arrival of such a single-payer plan.

Feldstein is simply mistaken here. "Single-payer" has to do with who pays for health care (in the case of single-payer, the federal government does). It has absolutely nothing to do with who provides health care. It's the difference between the Canadian system, in which private doctors and hospitals are paid by the Canadian government (and indirectly, Canadian taxpayers) to provide health care to its citizenry, and the British system, in which the providers themselves -- doctors, nurses, hospital administrators -- are actually in the employ of Her Majesty's Government. For that matter, it's the difference between Medicare -- a single-payer system for American seniors -- and the British system. The Canadian system is nationalized health insurance. The British system is nationalized health care -- or if you prefer, socialized medicine.

Obama has never expressed or implied any admiration for the British system of socalized medicine. Not that there aren't admirable elements of it -- but I doubt that you'd find even very many self-identified liberals who would suggest that it's the right system for America. Obama, rather, has expressed admiration for a government-run monopoly on insurance -- single-payer -- as do about half of Americans in opinion polls.

This is really basic stuff -- Health Care 101. For Feldstein to imply otherwise is to disqualify him from being taken seriously on the health care debate. He either has no idea what he's talking about or he's too ensconced in the Harvard Bubble to think that the truth matters.

Nor is that the only marginal assertion that Feldstein makes in his column. He also writes:

Although the president claims he can finance the enormous increase in costs by raising taxes only on high-income individuals, tax experts know that this won't work. Experience shows that raising the top income-tax rate from 35 percent today to more than 45 percent -- the effect of adding the proposed health surcharge to the increase resulting from letting the Bush tax cuts expire for high-income taxpayers -- would change the behavior of high-income individuals in ways that would shrink their taxable incomes and therefore produce less revenue.

This is the old Laffer Curve argument, which is not a coincidence since Feldstein worked alongside Arthur Laffer in Ronald Reagan's cabinet. I'm actually somewhat sympathetic to the idea of the Laffer Curve, but by no means would many or most "tax experts" agree with the assertion that increasing the top marginal tax rate from 35 to 45 percent would produce a net decrease in revenues. Most (though not all) of the academic evidence suggests that the threshold at which tax increases are revenue-reducing is much higher than 45 percent.

I don't understand why things which would never get by the fact-checkers on the Washington Post's news page are a-OK in editorial. The Laffer Curve argument, at least, can probably be understood to be weasel-worded opinion. But the confusion of "single-payer" and socialized medicine is an outright misstatement of fact.

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The Baucus Bill's Bad Math

The Associated Press has some speculative details of the "compromise" health care bill that looks ready, at long last, to emerge from Max Baucus's Senate Finance Committee:

[Any] legislation that emerges from the talks is expected to provide for a non-profit cooperative to sell insurance in competition with private industry, rather than giving the federal government a role in the marketplace. The White House and numerous Democrats in Congress have called for a government option to provide competition to private companies and hold down costs.

Officials also said a bipartisan compromise would not subject companies to a penalty if they declined to offer coverage to their workers. These businesses would be required to reimburse the government for part or all of any federal subsidies designed to help lower-income employees obtain insurance on their own.

Democratic-drafted legislation in the House includes both a penalty and a requirement for companies to share in the cost of covering employees.

So there's not a public option in the Finance Committee's bill -- which should come as no great surprise to anyone who's been following this debate. Instead, there's Kent Conrad's plan for regional, non-profit cooperatives. The real fight over the public option will take place when the HELP Committee's bill, which does include a public option, is reconciled with the Finance Committee's version, and/or when the Senate's version is ultimately reconciled with the House version.

The bigger news, rather, is that Baucus's bill will not contain an employer mandate -- a requirement that employers provide health insurance to their employees -- even though it does contain an individual mandate.

Does this look familiar to anyone?

-- No employer mandate
-- No public option
-- But yes, an individual mandate

It should -- because this particular permutation on health care reform looks an awful lot like the incomplete draft of the HELP Committee's bill that the CBO scored last month, which also lacked an employer mandate and a public option but contained an individual mandate. That bill, the CBO estimated, would cost about $1.0 trillion -- but would only cover a net of about 16 million people. In contrast, the revised version of the HELP Committee's bill, which did include both a public option and an employer mandate, would cost about the same amount but cover a net of 37 million people.

It's not quite right to say that the public option and the employer mandate would allow us to cover an additional 21 million people for "free". That's because the employer mandate represents a burden on businesses, and could in turn result in some additional costs in the form of lower wages and/or reduced employment. A recent study by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco found that in the state of Hawaii, which does have an employer mandate, wages dropped but by a "statistically insignificant" amount. It also found that there was an increase in the reliance on sub-part-time workers (people working fewer than 20 hours a week are not subject to Hawaii's requirement) but no overall drop in "employment probabilities". The upside, however, is significant: Hawaii has both the broadest coverage among adults aged 18-64 (only 11 percent are uninsured) and (!) the cheapest premiums. Although some of this has to do with Hawaii's climate, ethnic makeup, and diet, that seems like a pretty good trade-off.

Baucus's bill makes a different trade-off. In order to placate business interests on the employer mandate, and what are frankly ideological interests on the public option, it sacrifices coverage. If I'm reading this right, in fact, 16 million might be on the high end in terms of the net gain in coverage. That's because whereas the HELP Committee's unfinished draft subsidized insurance at up to 500 percent of the poverty line (meaning $54,150 for an individual or $110,250 for a family of four), the assistance in Baucus's draft would end for people making more than 300 percent of poverty ($32,490 for an individual or $66,150 for a four-person family).

The AP may be right that Baucus's bill will cost less than $1 trillion, but it accomplishes that by shifting the burden to middle-income families, some of whom have poor balance sheets and will face a really tough choice between paying for health insurance they can't quite afford and facing some kind of penalty. Odds are that many of them will take the penalty, which is why coverage probably won't expand very much. Or, the enforcement mechanisms could be more stringent, in which case they'll have to buy health care, at the cost of reducing their spending in other areas -- and in probably being very teed off at the Democrats who passed the bill**.

This is a pretty poor combination of attributes for a health care reform bill to have. If Baucus & Co. wanted to get the cost below $1 trillion, they could have chopped the subsidies down to, say, 350 percent of poverty, while keeping the employer mandate and the public option. As a very rough guess, a bill like that might insure another 30-35 million people at a gross cost of about $850-$900 billion. The actual Baucus bill is going to cost about the same but will be lucky to insure half as many.

The good news is that the math on this bill is so bad that I doubt it will survive intact. Personally, I think the public option is probably a goner, but that the employer mandate will probably be restored -- especially if Baucus dares to put his bill before the CBO and see what they think of it.

__
** Just to underscore this point: when it scored a similar bill, the CBO estimated that 15 million people would lose their employer-provided coverage. Most of these people are likely to be lower-to-middle income persons with somewhat tenuous employment situations, a group that tends classically to be swing voters.

Now, how are those 15 million people going to feel about health care reform when they find out that:

a) Although the bill was supposed to guarantee access to health insurance, they've in fact lost theirs;
b) They're required to buy an expensive, private plan on their own, or to pay a fine;
c) They're probably not getting any government assistance;
d) They certainly don't have any Medicare-like alternative to fall back upon;
e) All of this cost the country about $1 trillion dollars.

You think those 15 million people are going to vote for the Democrats again, like, ever?

EDIT: The Politico article on the subject implies a little bit more of a compromise approach toward the employer mandate.

Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) confirmed that the three Republicans and three Democrats negotiating the Senate Finance bill are moving away from a broad-based mandate that would force employers to offer insurance. The senators instead are leaning toward a “free rider” provision that requires employers to pay for employees who receive coverage through Medicaid or who receive new government subsidies to purchase insurance through an exchange.

This is better -- maybe a lot better -- than having nothing at all, although it potentially leads to some distortions in the market. Say that you're picking between a job candidate who has a family of five, and a job candidate who is single. The job pays $40,000 per year, but for whatever reason, you've decided that it's not cost-effective to provide your employees with health insurance. The former candidate, the one with the family of five, will be eligible for the government subsidy, which you will ultimately have to foot the bill for. The single guy will not be. Who are you going to hire?

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Bunning Bowing Out

Politico is reporting that Republican Sen. Jim Bunning of Kentucky will not seek a third term next year.

Bunning, one of that small but growing club of politicians to transition from earlier careers in sports or entertainment, was first elected in 1998 to Kentucky's Class 3 seat occupied previously by, among others, the legendary Henry Clay, 1860 presidential candidate John C. Breckinridge (briefly), and Vice President Alben Barkley.

Bunning's health and lucidity was first called into question more than five years ago after he apparently relied on a teleprompter during a debate in his 2004 re-election campaign, and a few months ago he used rather aggressive language in criticizing the leadership record of his fellow Republican senator from Kentucky, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Whatever the reasons, the Politico's Manu Raju and Josh Kraushaar say pressure was growing from within his party caucus to retire.

"Bunning has been under enormous pressure to step aside from senior Republicans in Washington, including from ... McConnell, who worried that the 77-year-old senator’s poor fundraising and rock-bottom poll numbers will ensure he loses reelection in 2010," they report. "But the senator had for months resisted overtures and became increasingly confrontational with McConnell, who learned about the news just moments before his announcement."

Not sure if this news will compel Nate to bump KY from second to first in his Senate race rankings, but we'll have to leave that to him to clarify.

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A Brief Note on the Safety of the Democratic Majority in the House

The Democrats currently have a 78-seat margin in the House of Representatives. That means they could lose a net of 38 seats (half of 78, less one) and still control a majority of the chamber.

CQ Politics, which does terrific work, has identified 59 competitive races involving Democratic Representatives. Conversely, there are 41 competitive races involving Republican Representatives.

At first, this math looks pretty decent for the Democrats. If each side won one-half of the other's competitive seats, the Democrats would lose a net of 9 seats, and their majority would be reduced from 78 seats to 60.

There are two things, though, to bear in mind. One, in "wave" elections, it's quite common for the "waving" party to defend nearly all of its competitive seats, allowing it to concentrate solely on offense. In 2006, the Democrats didn't lose any of their seats. In 1994, the Republicans lost only four of theirs, and all were cases in which the incumbent was retiring or running for higher office.

Secondly, in "wave" elections, at least a handful of seats that nobody is expecting to become competitive usually up that way. In a post a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned the example of Jim Leach's seat in IA-2, which he'd held for 30 years and which nobody was really monitoring -- except for poker players like me, who were watching the seat because of Leach's role in pushing forward anti-gambling legislation in the House. But that seat was won in 2006 by a virtually unknown political science professor, a Democrat named Dave Loebsack.

Of course, in both 1994 and 2006, the opposition party was tremendously well organized. We've seen nothing as smart as the Contract with America that the Republicans put together before 1994, and nothing as impressive as the 50-state strategy that the Democrats had working for them in 2006. On the contrary, the Republicans have something of a power vacuum and weren't done any favors by the McCain campaign, which put little emphasis on ground game and did not help to develop the party's voter lists. Also, the Democrats have pretty significantly outfundraised Republicans in House races so far, which is a pretty good leading indicator.

Nevertheless, in wave elections, things have a way of just happening. We don't know whether 2010 will resemble 1994 or 2006. But if health care falls apart and the economy remains sour, I wouldn't put too much limitation on the Republicans' upside.

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DGA Chief Says Ignore NJ Polls, Avoids Calling for Paterson to Run Again

A week or so after hearing from Republican Governors Association executive director Nick Ayers, our latest interview is with Nathan Daschle, executive director of the Democratic Governors Association. A Harvard-trained lawyer, Daschle formerly worked for the Natural Resources Defense Council and the law firm Covington & Burling. A few years ago, Washingtonian magazine named him one of the city's top 40 lawyers under 40.

The DGA is blessed with a majority of the nation's governors, but therefore must defend plenty of territory in 2010, and in two key races this fall--New Jersey and Virginia. Daschle was kind enough to take time from his busy schedule to speak with Fivethirthyeight about the DGA's prospects over the next two years.

Fivethirtyeight.com: According to Pollster.com’s tracking of the race, New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine looks to be in serious trouble. What will it take for him to hold this seat, and do you think his bio as a former Goldman Sachs executive is hurting him?

Nathan Daschle: Let me start with the last part of the question first. I don’t think his background is hurting him. To the contrary, Governor Corzine created the first economic recovery plan in the country. Things in New Jersey would be a lot worse if Governor Corzine wasn’t leading the state.

The reason Jon Corzine is going to win is because he’s demonstrated that he can make difficult decisions that will put his state on the right path when this global recession is over. He is a real leader, not just a politician, and that will come through as this campaign gets closer to November. Governor Corzine knows how to handle this economy, he knows the types of decisions he needs to make.

Chris Christie? He has no vision for the state. If you ask him questions about what he would do for New Jersey, he comes back with general statements of criticism about Governor Corzine. That’s not leadership. And I think the contrast on that count is stark and is one that voters will respond to.

Christie started his campaign wanting to talk about one issue—ethics. He’s spent more of his time trying to defend his record on ethics, giving multi-million dollar no-bid contracts to political allies, campaign contributors and the prosecutor who didn’t go after his brother for stock fraud. The more voters learn about Chris Christie, the less they like him. And I think you’re seeing that in the increases in his unfavorables.

I’m not gonna lie: I’d much rather be on the top than the bottom of these polls. But these polls in New Jersey have a history of being wrong.

Early public polls in the state traditionally overstate support for Republicans. In 2004, two polls showed [John] Kerry down 4 points to [George] Bush, and many others showed a close race. Kerry won by 8. In 2005, when Governor Corzine first ran, late polling showed him up by only 4 points. He won by 10 points. In 2006, through late September, public polls showed [Tom] Kean leading [Robert] Menendez for the Senate. Menendez won by 8.

We have to be cautious of early polling results in New Jersey.


538: Creigh Deeds is basically neck-and-neck in Virginia, probably trailing slightly. I’m sure you don’t like hypotheticals, but if Republicans win there and in New Jersey there will be a lot of buzz this autumn--some of it spin from the GOP, sure, but also from the media--about a Republican comeback happening on your watch. Care to respond about that possibility?

ND: If the Republicans win New Jersey and Virginia we’ll be disappointed, no doubt about that. National Republicans have elevated these races to must-wins for a party that has been in the wilderness for a while now. They are calling them the start of their comeback. But look, both of these races are going to be decided based on issues in these states.

In Virginia, I believe Creigh Deeds will win because he is the right candidate for Virginia. He’s right there in the mainstream and exactly the kind of leader people want.

He is the last guy the Republicans wanted to run against. I think they didn’t know what to do with his broad appeal, his governing style in the tradition of Governors Warner and Kaine, and his ability to attract Independents and moderate Republicans who are alienated by Bob McDonnell’s conservative views.


538: David Patterson’s approval ratings are worse than former Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s. Do you want Patterson to run again to hold the seat in New York or do you think Democrats would be better suited with another candidate?

ND: You know, I think right now we’re just trying to make sure he can lead the state through the present turmoil. He has strong support of the DGA, no matter what he decides to do. He’s gonna be focused on economic recovery and governing the state in the near-term.


538: Do you have any indication he may not run?

ND: I have no indications of that, no.


538: As you know, I recently interviewed your counterpart, Nick Ayers. He boasts that the RGA is keeping pace or even exceeding the DGA in fundraising. This is despite the fact you have more governors as surrogates and have more total seats to defend. Is the DGA struggling to raise money and if so, why?

ND: The RGA has outraised DGA in every election since Teddy Roosevelt was its chair. What Nick didn’t tell you is that for the first time ever, we are virtually tied with RGA at the halfway mark. On the June 30 filing, we were separated by only $600,000.

On top of that, we raised more in the first six months of this year than we have in any similar period in DGA history. The RGA raised less this year than they raised last year. So, our trajectory is upwards, theirs downward. I couldn’t be happier with our fundraising situation.

I’m certain that they will continue to outraise us, but we are winning more races despite being at a financial disadvantage. The bottom line is that DGA and RGA have gone head to head in four races since 2007, and DGA has won all four. They will always have more money, but we have better candidates, better ideas, and better strategies.


538: Minnesota’s Tim Pawlenty has announced he’s not running again, leaving open the possibility that Norm Coleman might get in that race. Do you have any comment about a potential Coleman bid and, with or without him in the race, what are the Democrats’ chances of picking up that seat?

ND: I don’t think it really matters. If the GOP recruits him into the race it’s a sign of desperation. Norm Coleman’s popularity after the unnecessarily long Senate fight is very damaged. In fact, when Public Policy Polling released their latest numbers, the headline on the press release was: “Recount Saga Hurt Coleman’s Future Prospects.” Not only that, Governor Pawlenty is leaving with less than stellar marks. We have a strong crop of candidates running. This is a state that trends blue. Frankly, no matter who runs we will be competitive.


538: President Obama has created some problems for you in plucking Democratic women governors out of office to put in his cabinet. I’m thinking specifically of Janet Napolitano and Kathleen Sebelius, who were popular Democratic governors in red states. With them gone, how do you plan to compete in increasingly competitive but still red-leaning states like Arizona or Kansas?

ND: Well, you’re right, I think President Obama has drawn on some of our ranks. Frankly, we find that to be a good development. That’s a compliment to governors that he wants so many of them in his government.

But you’re right it does create a different landscape for us. We need to find a way to replicate that the success of Sebelius and Napolitano. Gov. [Jan] Brewer is having a hard time; she’s beatable. She’s never been elected in her own right. And I think she’s finding herself unprepared for the rigors of being governor. And when she has a record next year to defend, especially with major education cuts, I think that Arizona remains an opportunity.

In Kansas, well, Kansas is going to be tough. We haven’t sorted out our candidate, but Governor Sebelius certainly showed us the path to electing a commonsense leader who can work across the aisle.


538: One technological, data-oriented question that’s of particular interest to me and surely many of our readers: How, if at all, will the DGA access or use the vaunted email and contact lists that the Obama campaign assembled during the 2008 presidential run?

ND: It differs state-by-state based on a number of considerations. I have frequent meetings with the DNC. And I can tell you the White House is very committed to winning these races. They know how important they are not only to the country, but to President Obama’s agenda.

President Obama and Vice President Biden have both traveled to New Jersey on behalf of Governor Corzine. Vice President Biden went to Virginia for Sen. Deeds, and President Obama is scheduled to be there on Aug. 6.


538: I want to ask a question I also posed to the RGA: Can you identify one or two up-and-coming state Democratic leaders we should keep an eye on and that may be 2010 gubernatorial nominees, but whom most of our readers living outside of those states have probably never heard of?

ND: Sure. I think there are couple of 2010 incumbents running for reelection. Gov Martin O’Malley of Maryland is our vice chair and he’s an incredible talent. He has the respect of his peers and has shown his ability to make tough decisions in tough times but without abandoning his principles.

Gov. [Deval] Patrick in Massachusetts is another who has a bright future, who is regarded as a leader in the party.

Gov. Jack Markell of Delaware is absolutely a governor to watch. He’s only in his first year but his peers have a tremendous amount of respect for his skills.

Alex Sink in Florida will be a strong candidate. She’s the chief financial officer, and has statewide appeal and will instantly have a national profile. She’s generated a lot of excitement in Florida, both for her reform-minded approach toward governing and for the way she demands results out of government.


538: Finally, does having a Democratic governor, Tim Kaine, at the helm of the DNC improve the party’s focus on governors? What I mean by that is, how if at all, is Gov. Kaine specifically an asset to the DGA?

ND: It does in a couple of ways. First of all, it’s a signal that the national party recognizes the value of governors. Until last year, governors were the only CEOs in our party, and that’s a really distinct brand. Having Gov. Kaine as party chair is a reflection of that, the value of leadership and executive experience.

Second, he has so many friendships among Democratic governors, and they with him. So there’s a real connection there and an ability to get things done.

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Governor Palin, You're No Hillary Clinton

Over at Pollster.com, Brendan Nyhan (whom you should be reading) espouses a fairly common sentiment: that Sarah Palin's favorability numbers, while poor, are not a whole heck of a lot worse than Hillary Clinton's were at the same point in the electoral cycle.

Hillary Clinton overcame numbers that were nearly as bad and almost won the Democratic presidential nomination, but she did so with a great deal of hard work and discipline -- qualities that Palin appears to lack.

Is this actually true though? (Not the bit about Palin's work ethic, which I'll address later in the post.) Are Palin's ratings nearly as bad Clinton's at the same stage of their political careers?

It depends on how you define "nearly as bad". But I'd say there's a meaningful difference in Clinton's favor, especially if we look at Palin's ratings since her resignation from Alaska's governorship earlier this month.



This chart takes a simple average of all publicly available polls on Hillary Clinton between the start of George W. Bush's second term on January 20, 2005 and the end of July, 2005. There are nine such polls, representing six different polling agencies. We compare this to Sarah Palin's numbers since Barack Obama's inauguration, both before (an average of nine polls) and after (eight polls) her resignation.

Clinton's numbers four years ago were about 7-9 points better than Palin's are now (or twice that if you're looking at these on a net basis). Although a fairly sizable amount of the country disliked Clinton, she was still in positive territory. Palin generally has not been. Since her resignation, her numbers have run from a +2 on the high end (PPP on July 16th) to about a -13 (in several different polls) on the low end. Palin has also had five polls since the start of the year, including three since her resignation, where her unfavorable scores were 50 or higher. Clinton did not hit 50 percent unfavorable at all in 2005 and 2006, and didn't do so until a USA Today/Gallup poll on April 13-15, 2007 (although she'd been there once or twice before in 2001). And this was a somewhat isolated incident: Clinton's favorability ratings have been taken about 190 times since her husband's term ended in 2001, and on only 7 occasions did she hit the 50 percent threshold, although you can certianly find plenty of examples with her in the mid-to-high 40's.

And we should bear in mind that Clinton, although she seems like a success story, ultimately did not become President. She came close, and undoubtedly could have become President in some parallel universe where a few things had turned out differently, but she did not quite get there. Perhaps if her favorability ratings had been a bit better, Clinton would not have run throughout 2007 on as facile a theme as "inevitability" (you might not like it, Democrats, but you're getting it!) and would have discovered some of the more positive tones that did her well in New Hampshire, late in the primary cycle, etc., a bit earlier.

Palin beings with a steeper hill to climb ... and to my view, I don't think she's likely to be as capable as Clinton of (almost) getting there. To Nyhan's point, there are differences in work ethic (although Palin's is not poor), political instincts (although Clinton's were not perfect -- she hired Mark Penn) and frankly (and most importantly) raw intelligence. Palin also begins with much less institutional support within her party than Clinton did, although she may have more grassroots support.

We're not in the business of saying "never" around here. Palin absolutely could become President someday. But it isn't very likely. If the Republicans nominate her (which is certainly possible), I think Obama could get away with having approval ratings in the low-to-mid 40's and still be at least even-money to win. That wouldn't be the case against Mitt Romney.

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