Likely Voters and Unlikely Scenarios

As I've been telling people all week here in Pittsburgh, there's ample reason for Democrats to be worried -- perhaps deeply so -- about 2010. Without major intervening events like 9/11, the party that wins the White House almost always loses seats at the midterm elections -- since World War II, an average of 17 seats in the House after the White House changes parties. Democrats have substantially more seats to defend than Republicans, particularly in the House. They appear to face a significant enthusiasm gap after having dominated virtually all close elections in 2006 and 2008. And the economy and health care are contingencies that could work either way, but which probably present more downside risk to Democrats than upside over the next 12-18 months, particularly if some version of health care reform fails to pass. While the Democrats are not extraordinary likely to lose the House, such an outcome is certainly well within the realm of possibility (I'd put the chance at somewhere between 1-in-4 and 1-in-3). The Senate picture is a bit brighter for them, but they are probably more likely now to lose seats in the chamber than to add to their majority, in spite of the spate of Republican retirements in Ohio, Missouri and other states. In a wave-type election, a net loss of as many as 4-6 seats is conceivable.

With all that said, I would reserve some healthy skepticism for polls that apply aggressive "likely voter" models to elections like the midterms that won't occur for another 16 months. In Pennsylvania, for example, Rasmussen now finds Arlen Specter a 12-point underdog to Pat Toomey among what they define as likely voters. Toomey also leads a more "generic" Democrat, Specter's primary rival Joe Sestak, by 8 points in Rasmussen's polling. By contrast, Research 2000, which in its polling for Daily Kos also uses a likely voter model (but evidently a less aggressive one), puts Specter 5 points ahead of Toomey and Sestak one point ahead of the Republican. These numbers represent big downward shifts for the Democrats, particularly in Specter's case, since Research 2000 last polled the race in May. But obviously, there is a big difference between Specter's -12 number under Rasmussen's likely voter model and his +5 under Research 2000's.

We can learn a little bit about these likely voter models by evaluating other polls that these firms conduct. Rasmussen's likely voter universe, for instance, trusts Republicans more not just on hot-button issues like the economy and health care, but also on traditional Democratic strengths like Social Security (by 4 points) and education (by 3 points).

If the electorate that goes to the polls next November is in fact one which trusts Republicans more than Democrats on education and social security, then Democrats will lose the Senate seat in Pennsylvania and undoubtedly almost every other competitive race -- it will be really, really ugly for them. But I just have a little bit of trouble accepting that as a likely scenario. In 2004 exit polling, voters who listed education as their top priority went to John Kerry over George W. Bush by a 3:1 margin. As of pre-Katrina 2005, when Social Security was being polled frequently in what was not a particularly great time for the Democratic party, Democrats led Republicans by an average of about 15 points on the issue -- and that was long before the market collapse that would seem to have undermined Republicans' calls to partially privatize the system.

Is it possible that the electorate which is voting in November 2010 will be so down on the Democrats that they trust Republicans more on issues like these? Sure, it is possible -- if the enthusiasm gap is wide enough, if Obama's approval is low enough, if the health care debate has been bungled enough, and if the economy is still hemorrhaging jobs. But I'd consider it something of a worst-case scenario. That's probably the best way to regard these Rasmussen polls for the time being.

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Yes We Did? How Blogging Can (and Can’t) Support a Field Campaign

This is the title of a panel being held at 1:30 this afternoon (eastern time) at Netroots Nation that I am moderating. For those of you in Pittsburgh, please come. For those of you elsewhere, there is a liveblog at Calitics and some live twittering, or, as Larry David would say at Starbucks, just give me a vanilla bullsh*t latte cappe thing.

The title is pretty explanatory. The panelists are people who know a lot about writing about elections, encouraging people to get active, and there are a lot of experienced offline organizers who have worked election campaigns and issue campaigns, and we’re discussing how this relationship does and doesn’t work effectively. How could it be improved?

Our panelists are: Pamela Coukos, a blogger who became an Obama regional field director in Northern California; Karl Singer, a 15-year old wunderkind who raised 65k for Obama through his online and offline activism, Janice Caswell, a super-volunteer who we interviewed in October in our travels through northeast Philly because she’d organized weekly canvassing trips from New York; Katherine Haenschen, a blogger whose work in the field generated 30,000 new voter registrations in Texas; and Jeremy Bird, current Deputy Director of Organizing for America and State Director for Obama in Ohio for the general election. Bird is there because we needed more guys who grew up in St. Louis besides me on the stage.

All of these people inspire me personally, and they’re all friends. They all have a lot to say about their experiences with the way they see blogging about elections and issue campaigns interacting with and supporting (or not supporting) field organizing. We have some questions to pose and answer, and we also hope our audience will interact with us and ask good (short, ha) questions. Please join us if you can.

A quick housekeeping note. I’ve gotten a few “hey where’ve you been hiding?” questions because I haven’t published here in a while, so let me give a blanket “personal reasons,” as in, unrelated to Nate or the blog. Everything is fine, and I probably won’t comment further. Instead, I have a much better story.

So – and this is just about the greatest thing ever – file-able under “late night Netroots Nation confessions,” the young Nate was quite the intramural basketball force of nature. Think: Ron Artest. I never got an actual statistic out of him, but from the sound of it, he may have set the technical foul record for his league. He apparently was a fan of throwing elbows, and at least once threw the basketball at the referee. That’s right. You can now picture wild man Nate Silver bullying referees and getting T-d up, kicked out, and overall hurting his team (as he freely admits). Knowing Nate as I do, hearing this story would be like having Sarah Palin relate to me her coming-of-age stories of how she used to be a community organizer in Alaska, going doorknocking to protect women’s reproductive rights.

Speaking of organizing, join us now if you can.

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Sestak, Corzine Closing

New polls out show Rep. Joe Sestak continuing to close the gap against turncoat Democrat Arlen Specter in the Pennsylvania Senate Democratic primary matchup, and incumbent New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine also narrowing his deficit in the general election contest with Republican nominee Chris Christie.

Let's start with Sestak, who this week sat for a televised interview at Netroots Nation. The Research 2000 poll conducted for DailyKos shows the Seventh District congressman now only 15 points behind incumbent party-switcher Specter, who has been taking his share of heat lately at town hall events. Looking also at the numbers for Republican Pat Toomey, Senate Guru notes the potential for even further upside for Sestak:

Perhaps most telling in the crosstabs are the three politicians' No Opinion numbers, the percentage of respondents still unsure or unaware of the particular candidate. Specter's at a scant 8%--after decades in office, he's a known quantity. Toomey's at 29%--largely known, but still a little room to grow. Congressman Sestak, however, is at 44% unknown. He's polling well and still has plenty of room to grow those numbers. Looking good for Congressman Sestak.

It would be very good for Pennsylvania Democrats and Senate/national Democrats if Sestak won the primary and held the seat in the general. This is not quite the bloody battle to oust Joe Lieberman, but it's important for the Democratic Party at the grassroots level to demonstrate that a party-switch endorsed by the Senate Democratic Caucus and even the president is not necessarily what they want or what's best for representation in the state. Specter is past his sell-by date, and having Sestak win now would prevent the potential long-term loss of this season once Specter does at some point retire--assuming he can hold the seat next year.

And, given that Sestak is almost as competitive right now in a potential general election pairing against Toomey--he's down 42% to 41%, to Specter's 45% to 40% edge, despite being still relatively unknown statewide--suggests that nominating him presents no added risk in the general for the Democrats, and, potentially, lots of upside. Sestak has a great bio, too, and that could matter in a year that might be tough nationally for Democrats at every level. A final note: If you look at the "no opinion" results, it is clear that black Pennsylvania Democrats could be crucial in this primary, if for no other reason that they have yet to make up their minds between the senator they know (and have mostly been voting against for years) and the congressman they don't know who is challenging him.

As for Corzine in neighboring New Jersey, he seems to be getting some traction with his negative campaign against Christie. Trailing just five points, according to a new Greenberg Quinlan Rosner poll, Corzine is cutting into Christie's lead by, well, cutting into him: Christie's negative are growing. (We heard from executive directors of both the Republican and Democratic governors associations about this race here previously on 538, and it's clear this will get downright nasty right down to the final week--just as New Jersey voters have come to expect from their political campaigns.)

The GQR poll summary report reads, in part:

As voters learn more about Chris Christie, his negative ratings appear to be rising. His negative ratings are now as high as his positives—32 percent view him favorably, 31 percent unfavorably.

Meanwhile, the Republican brand continues to carry negative connotations in New Jersey. The Democratic Party generates a more positive reaction than their Republican counterparts, receiving a favorable-unfavorable rating of 40 to 39 percent compared to a favorable-unfavorable rating of 29 to 43 percent for the Republican Party.

Elections are about candidates and campaigns, but what's most interesting about the NJ contest--moreso than the Virginia governor's race--is that the demographic situation clearly advantages Corzine, all else equal. If he loses this race against Christie, it will rattle national Democratic cages more, and possibly a lot more, than if Creigh Deeds comes up short against Bob McDonnell. Also, Corzine is an incumbent, so his fate is a better referendum on voter dis/satisfaction with Democratic leadership than the open seat contest in Virginia. Not to mention, following consecutive gubernatorial wins by Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, plus the flipping of both U.S. Senate seats there, a McDonnell win can be cast as a partisan correction--whereas a Corzine loss will be hard to explain as other than a partisan rejection.

In that regard, the Corzine numbers must be particularly soothing for the DGA and the White House. And, of course, Gov. Corzine.

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Occam's Razor and Health Care

I hate to say it, but I'm generally feeling a less optimistic about health care after having some smart conversations today with some very smart people here in beautiful (not kidding!) Pittsburgh, where I'm here for the next couple of days for Netroots Nation.

Occam's Razor would suggest that a decent number of Congressmen will be scared sh*tless after seeing some number of their constituents yell at them. Yes, there might be a few who feel greater solidarity for the cause in the face of all the misinformation and screaming. Yes, there might be a few who feel repelled by the incivility of the protests. Yes, there might be a few who recognize that, even if the health care bill is fairly unpopular at the time of its passage, a failure to pass a bill would be worse for both political and policy reasons.

But Congressmen are, by and large, not the deepest people on earth. They like being popular. They don't like getting yelled at. They don't like taking risks. I still think health care reform is more likely than not. Nancy Pelosi's skills as a vote-whipper are way underrated. But after seeing the Gallup polling on the protests, after seeing the how Democrats turned and ran today on the end-of-life counseling provision, I think any bill is (1) likely to pass by the skinny-skin-skin of its teeth in both chambers; (2) going to require compromise on key provisions like the public option; (3) perhaps going to require a "big" leadership/regrouping moment by Obama in early September.

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Afghanistan Election Heating Up

August 20th, 2009: save the date. The second round of post-Taliban elections in Afghanistan is slated to take place on this day -- next Thursday -- and expectations are mounting. Though the war in Afghanistan (as well as combat in Iraq), has largely taken a backseat to domestic issues in the Obama Adminstration's rhetoric and the views of the public about threats to national security, key observers have identified this round of polling as an important benchmark for overall state-building progress in the country.

The International Crisis Group, a respected Brussels-based advisory organization on conflict and instability, put what is well understood in this way:

"The weakness of state institutions, the deteriorating security situation and the fractured political scene are all highlighted by – and will likely have a dramatic effect on – the electoral process...Rather than once again running the polls merely as distinct events, the enormous resources and attention focused on the elections should be channelled into strengthening political and electoral institutions, as a key part of the state-building efforts required to produce a stable country."

Indeed, though Hamid Karzai appears posed to again emerge victorious, his position domestically is significantly weakened as compared to years past -- a situation that has required significant concessions to political opponents. This arrangement, often in the form of political posts, influence and so forth, while maintaining apparent unity of the government, also entrenches a level of fragmentation into the government from day one. How serious these divides are will dictate the efficacy of the reform, capacity-building and security improvement that has been promised throughout the political leadership of all alliances, including the US and NATO.

Afghanistan sits in a unique position ethnically, geographically, politically, and economically. Devestated by thirty yers of conflict that began with the Soviet invasion in 1979, and still leading the world in opium production, Afghanistan remains a country split by ethnic groups, language and livelihoods. However, though many elements pull the country apart, a distinctive identity as a "Afghan" is still strong.

In addition to the strong national identification, there is a growing dissaproval of the conduct of the international community in Afghanistan, particularly the US, and a similar drop in confidence in the country's direction.

Taken at the final twilight of the Bush Presidency, the ABC/BCC polling indicates a remarkably dubious Aghan population, something that the Obama administration clearly understood coming into office. Anchored in his March address, the explicit US approach has undergone some significant changes. Five elements are key:

1. More troops: Supported by most military and civilian advisors and buoyed byUS public opinion, 21 thousand have been committed, and the door is open for more

2. Focus on fewer civilian casualties: As part of the shift to less military solution, the US hopes to reverse some of the rapidly eroding public support.

3. Change in cooperation strategy with Pakistan: Though not clear in detail, there has been a committment to stabilization and capacity building in Pakistan as well.

4. Narrowed set of operational goals: Dispensing with the lofty (and by many measures quite naive) ideals that previously marked the US approach, the Obama team has opted for a smaller, but more clearly defined set of objectives, namely security and state capacity.

5. Additional "Hearts and Minds" activities: While again difficult to assess in detail, the Obama administration has pushed the revision various policies of engagement, namely detention policy, USAID activities, and new directions to the military regarding how to engage at the causes rather than symptoms of instability and violence.

With violence rising and intimidation rife, you can never be certain the outcome of such an election. Both internationals and nationals have been targeted in the widely expected rise in attacks. Violent, state-skeptical elements, led by Taliban, have promised to disrupt the elections as much as possible. However, unless something radically changes, we can expect a relatively narrow Karzai bloc victory, as compared to his past resounding success. With the arrival of additional US forces, and a new Afghan government, we will see over the next five years if either change is afoot or stagnation is setting in.

A key part of this challenge will be, as it is in other regions of the world, whether the Obama administration's rhetoric for strategy adjustment can actually be implemented in practical terms, and similarly if the impacts are as profound as suggested. While the President has done a remarkable job of managing expectations of the US public regarding foreign policy, in part by focusing strongly on his promises of domestic reform, the political impact of non-delivering policies could be seen by 2012. Tangible benefits for both the Afghans, in terms of security and stability, and for the Americans, in terms of clear benchmarks towards exit, will therefore be key to the Obama communications plan of 2011 and 2012. It is not yet clear what profile Afghanistan will have in the 2010 elections either, something that we will see first by the US political reaction to the elections next Thursday.

Note: Thanks to commenter who noted an important typo in the previous ethnicity chart.

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Are The Health Care Protests Working? And Are Liberals Helping Them?

It's been interesting to digest the interaction between liberal and conservative blogs on the issue of the health care protests. If you take a look at a service like Memorandum, you'll find that stories about the protests have almost always been the lede in the blogosphere over the course of the past 10-14 days. There are daily, and sometimes even hourly, ebbs and flows in who seems to be pushing the stories -- conservative blogs one day, liberal blogs the next. But both sides seem to feel as though they have something to gain. Quite frankly, I've felt a little lost here. The coverage has been so intensely partisan on both sides that it's hard to get any real idea about what the protests are really like on the ground: who is protesting, how many are protesting, what they're protesting about (the answer is not as obvious it might seem), in which sorts of districts the protesters live, and how all of this is affecting the views of average Americans on the health care reform bills pending before Congress (and more importantly, the views of the 535 Congressmen who will ultimately have to vote on the package).

The closest thing we have so far to objective evidence is a Gallup poll that came out today. The poll finds that 34 percent of Americans say the protests have made them more sympathetic to the protesters' views, 21 percent less sympathetic, and 46 percent unsure or indifferent.

Polls of this nature, however, are notoriously slippery. If there were some protest in favor of a policy that I supported -- like expanded stem-cell research -- I'd probably tell a pollster that the protest had in fact made me more sympathetic to the cause, even though my mind on the issue was already 100 percent made up and was not going to be swayed. The real question, then, is how many minds are being changed on the issue. And it may not be all that many. Three relevant polls have come out on this subject in August: a Rasmussen poll found some further erosion in support for the bills pending before Congress, but a Gallup poll did not find any further decline in Obama's approval on health care since mid-July. Nor did a CNN poll find any decline in support for the Democrats' health package, although that poll is now about a week old.

Still, there are some good numbers for the protesters, like the fact that independents, by a 35:16 plurality, said the protests were making them more sympatathetic to the cause. And I have no doubt that the protests are tending to make views on health care reform more entrenched.

Ultimately, while the upside is debatable, I certainly don't see much downside to conservative blogs in advancing stories about the protests. For liberal blogs, the matter is a little trickier. On the one hand, some amount of pushback is necessary -- you don't want this to be a one-sided debate. On the other hand, the pushback is certainly propelling the protests -- which are being carried out by ultimaetly a very small fraction of the electorate -- further into the public spotlight, which may encourage the mainstream media to cover them. So maybe on CNN, instead of getting a 2-minute, largely sympathetic story on the protests for every hour of coverage, you're instead getting a 6-minute, somewhat-to-mostly sympathetic story on the protests (that seemed to be about the ratio when I was watching the network during an airport delay today). It's not clear to me that this is such a good trade-off for liberals.

At the end of the day, health care reform is liable to succeed or fail based on the extent to which Americans -- and the Congressmen they elect -- are informed about the true nature of the bills pending before the House and Senate. We're in a somewhat peculiar situation in that the idea of health care reform overall remains popular, and moreover, the views toward most of the particular elements that are actually contained within the health care packages (like the public option or the surtax on the wealthy) are also pretty popular. And yet, when you ask people about the "plan" being contemplated by the Congress and/or the President, it is not very popular. There are a lot of reasons for this, many of which are the Democrats' fault -- they haven't settled on a particular plan, and the President's messaging, although better of late, has not been terribly effective.

But the real upside to the protests is that they perpetuate misinformation about the Democrats' bills. Forget the birthers -- I want to know how many Americans believe in the "death panels". (I also want to know whether Chuck Grassley, since he seems to be one of them, would accept the following trade: Democrats will drop the "death panels" if you'll drop your opposition to the public option.)

Ultimately, the message that Democrats need to be getting across is not that the protesters are protesting in the wrong way or for the wrong reasons, but that they're protesting, in some substantial measure, about the wrong things: that what they seem to think is contained in the health care package doesn't necessarily match the reality.

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Looking Forward to 2010

As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, the Republicans need something like a 7% swing in the national vote to take back the House of Representatives in 2010.

From Erikson, Bafumi, and Wlezien, here is a graph predicting the Democratic party's vote share in midterm elections, given their support in a generic party ballot from polls taken during the 300 days before the election:



The higher line in each graph (in red) corresponds to elections where the incumbent president is a Republican, and the lower line (in blue) corresponds to elections such as 2010, where the incumbent is a Democrat. The difference between the two lines reflects the traditional bounce away from the president's party.

As John Kastellec, Jamie Chandler, and I have discussed, the mapping from votes to seats is not perfect--for 2010, I'd guess that the Republicans need an average district vote of about 51% to win a House majority. Also, we're still half a year from the very first time point of the above plot (241-300 Days Before Election). But these graphs are something to keep in mind a few months from now, when the generic House polls start to appear.

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Bayh, Blue Dog Senators Becoming More Conservative; Lieberman more Liberal

The August break, when members of Congress go home to their districts to be screamed at (or to escape to the beach), seems like a good time to examine the broad scale of Congressional votes cast this year, comparing senators’ voting behaviors this year with how they’ve voted over their entire careers. Today we’ll look at the Senate. We’ll use as contrasting data points the 2009 Crucial Vote Scores and the Lifetime Crucial Vote Scores from ProgressivePunch.org.

Progressive Punch uses an algorithm to identify ideologically polarized votes in Congress as well as ascribe a progressive or conservative value to each yes or no position. The Crucial Votes are a subset of Progressive Punch’s compendium of all ideologically polarized votes, those in which a shift in three Senators from one side to the other would have changed the result of the vote and/or votes in which the progressives were on the losing side of the vote. 46 votes in the Senate this year have qualified as Crucial Votes using Progressive Punch’s methodology out of the 270 total. We’ve eliminated Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd from the list because they’ve missed so many votes this year.

The quick and dirty: 67 Senators, or two-thirds of the Senate, are voting within +/- 5% of their Lifetime Crucial Votes progressive scores this year. Thirteen senators are voting this year with the progressive side at a rate more than 5 percent greater than their Lifetime scores, i.e. their voting records are moving in a leftward direction. And 18 senators are voting with the progressive side at a rate more than 5 percent less than their Crucial Votes Lifetime scores -- their voting records have become more conservative this year.

First, the list of senators whose 2009 Crucial Votes progressive scores are at least 5 percent lower than their lifetime averages:



Interestingly, all are Democrats, except John McCain. Russ Feingold is the leading civil libertarian in the US Senate (although someday Al Franken may give him a run for his money) and he’s an ardent opponent of most military intervention in other countries. But he’s also tight fisted when it comes to spending cash and many of the ideologically polarized votes this year have been around spending (multiple bailout votes, TARP, etc.) and when it comes to spending money Feingold will cheerfully line up with the Republicans. As many people in the blogosphere have observed Evan Bayh seems to have appointed himself to be the new Lieberman, regularly carping about Democratic positions in the Senate in public every chance he gets. His Lifetime Crucial Votes score was low to begin with, and at 45.65% this year he’s siding with Republicans more than Democrats on votes where the Democrats need every single Senator they can get. Both Senators from Montana, Arkansas and North Dakota make this list. There have been votes this year prompted by the NRA that cause Senators from predominantly rural states such as these to scramble to show their allegiance to the principle that Americans should be able to carry any kind of weapon, anywhere, any time. It’s certainly possible to argue that they’re representing the majority of their constituents’ views on these votes. But these Senators’ scores wouldn’t be as low as they are if they weren’t siding with the forces that oppose significant limits on the behavior of corporate America. Baucus of Montana and Conrad of North Dakota are leading negotiations with Republicans in the direction of eliminating a public option from the final health care bill that will emerge from Congress. As the Democrats have gained 15 seats in the last two elections, the sSenators from these three states along with similarly conservative Democratic senators such as Claire McCaskill have formed a new drag-their-heels fulcrum in the Senate. Collectively they represent a force that their more liberal colleagues can’t ignore. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell of Washington are still social and environmental liberals. But when the rubber meets the road and it looks like some of their votes might directly or indirectly cause their most affluent constituents (think Microsoft millionaires) to pay more taxes, they’ll defect and vote with the Republicans.

Now for their counterparts -- the list of Senators whose 2009 Crucial Votes progressive scores are at least 5 higher than their lifetime scores, meaning that they've become more liberal:



Based on his last reelection where the Republican got less than 10% of the vote and Democrat Ned Lamont almost defeated him, “Independent Democrat” Joe Lieberman apparently views his left flank as his most vulnerable one and has shifted accordingly. Inouye is voting strongly with the hometown Hawaiian favorite, Barack Obama. He’s a Democratic party loyalist, at least when there’s a Democratic party president and his voting record reflects that. Kerry is showing up to vote more than he has in the past. His missing of votes in previous years had dinged his Lifetime score. Nate Silver has already examined Arlen Specter’s changed voting behavior in great detail – he’s more afraid of Sestak than Toomey. Christopher Dodd is a garden variety liberal Democrat who at the same time has always displayed great allegiance to some of the major industries whose headquarters and/or large facilities are located in Connecticut, e.g. aerospace and insurance. His name has been so tarnished by his receiving special favors on the interest rates he pays on his home mortgages etc. that he seems to be making a concerted effort to vote a liberal/labor line on all economic issues in contrast to his previous voting record. Voinovich and Bond would appear to be liberated from the need to placate right wing voters who dominate in Republican primaries by the fact that they’re both not running for reelection. I have no explanation of what’s going on with Thad Cochran; any readers’ ideas would be welcome.

The remaining 67 Senators are voting pretty much in line with their career averages (or, in the case of the freshman senators, their lifetime scores are necessarily the same as the same as their 2009 ones.)



Go here to view Progressive Punch's ratings for all ideologically polarized votes in the Senate. And if you’re in Pittsburgh for Netroots Nation later this week, come by the Progressive Punch booth and say hello and tell us what you love (or hate) about our methodology.

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My Own Pet Conspiracy Theory

Now that we're talking conspiracy theories (and see also this striking graph), I thought I'd offer my own favorite, which is that Richard Fuld of Lehman Brothers caused the stock market crash in order to benefit the Democrats.

My theory was inspired by this note by John Cassidy in the New Yorker a couple of months before the election:

If Barack Obama is victorious on November 4th, someone on his transition team should send inauguration tickets to Richard Fuld, the chairman and chief executive of Lehman Brothers.

This was meant to be ironic, I believe: Fuld was the straw that broke the camel’s back and brought down the house of cards that was the American banking system etc etc.

But this got me wondering . . . could Cassidy’s statement be literally true??

I remember from talking with Tom Ferguson that, while the superrich generally favor the Republican Party, the financial sector is one area that leans Democratic. So I looked up Richard Fuld and--hey--here he is:

Richard Fuld, Lehman Rothers – Chairman, CEO 1994-present
Total donations since 1978: $208,550
To Democrats: 63%
To Republicans: 16%
To Special Interests: 21%

In 07/08, he was hedging his bets: $10K each to the Republican and Democratic Senatorial Committees, $4600 to Hillary Clinton, $2300 to Barack Obama, $4600 to Chris Dodd, $2300 to John McCain, $2000 to John Reed in Rhode Island, and $10K to the “Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association Political Action Committee.”

I was kinda hoping Fuld had only contributed to Obama-–that would make a more interesting story. (Or I suppose if he’d only contributed to Republicans all his life, then there’d be an even better story of Richard S. Fuld, Jr., as a sleeper agent for the Democratic Party.) Still--63% of contributions to Democrats. Makes ya wonder, huh?

P.S. No, I'm not seriously advancing this as a conspiracy theory. It's more of a reminder of where a lot of the political money is coming from.

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Emerging Democratic Majority Also Emergent in State Legislatures

With the seating of Al Franken and the switch of Arlen Specter, the Democrats have 60 percent of the 100 U.S. Senate seats, plus a solid 59 percent majority of U.S. House seats. Not bad, right?

But an oft-overlooked story is the considerable growth of late in the Democratic share of state legislative seats.


In just the past three cycles, Democrats have gained a net of 374 state house seats and 68 state senate seats nationwide, moving them from slight minority status following the 2002 cycle--49.8 percent of two-party# share of house seats and 49.9 percent of senate seats; the first time Republicans had such an advantage since before the New Deal--to reasonably comfortable majority status in just six years. Democrats now control 56.8 percent of state house seats and 53.4 percent of state senate seats.

When was the last time the Democratic state legislative shares were that high?

You guessed it: In 1992-93, prior to the 1994 "Republican Revolution" cycle. Before the rise of Newt Gingrich, the Democrats simply dominated the state legislatures--although, it must be said, many of those Democrats were southerners who, by contemporary national ideological standards, we might today call "DINOs", or Democrats in Name Only.

Though I will be looking closer at state legislative partisanship data* on a regional level and even specific-state basis for a series of posts later this month, there are several things that can be said about the general trend and recent Democratic uptick:

1. Some of this improvement reflects larger partisan changes, to be sure, especially in response to growing Bush Administration dissatisfaction during the second half of this decade. But it also resulted from a significant commitment to downballot races by key elites ranging from former Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee chairman Mike Miller of Maryland in his official capacity, to pro-gay rights activist Tim Gill and cohorts acting on their own.

2. State legislatures are natural farm systems for higher office, particularly the U.S. House. So the recent gains portend a deeper Democratic bench in the future as House seats become open or competitive.

3. A lot of the recent Democratic gains are coming outside the South. (But more on that later.)

*I want to thank Tim Storey of the National Conference of State Legislatures, one of the if not the top expert in the country on partisanship and other political features of state legislatures, for providing me NCSL's dataset on partisan state legislative control.

#Two notes on the reporting of the data: first, I calculated two-party shares to simplify the percentages, if at the expense of the occasional third-party or independent state legislator; and second, the data reflect partisanship as of January in the year following the election, and do not account for party-switchers, deaths, retirements, and so on that occur during the ensuing two-year period.

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Not All Socialist Countries are Alike

This is Canada:



It's a big, pretty country to our north where they like hockey and talk like that weird uncle of yours from Minnesota.

This is the United Kingdom:



It's a small, crowded country to our east where they have wizards and giant clocks.

Some people are having trouble keeping these countries straight!

I can't say I really blame them. Canada was once, in fact, a British colony. They both have red in their flags. They both have lots of really gross food!



One area where Canada and the United Kingdom don't have so much in common, though, is in health care. In Canada, they have a system called "single-payer". This is where the government pays for your health care. Need your tonsils removed? Some chemotherapy? Viagra refill? Great news! Johnny Canuck is footing the bill! Just make sure to bring some reading material for those long waits in line!



The really weird thing about Canada is, even though the government is paying the bill, they aren't actually providing the health care itself. Instead, they have private doctors for that, just like we do here.

I know this might be confusing for some of you, so let's try an analogy. This is a VISA card:



This is how you pay for things!

These are some things:



This is what you buy with your VISA card!

In Canada, the government is like the VISA card, and the health care is like the things. Kinda crazy, eh? ('Eh' is the Canadian word for 'huh'). We'd never do something like that in this country, except for old people who don't know any better.

But that's not what they do in Britain! Instead, they do something a whole lot crazier! Not only does the government pay for the things, they also make the things!



This is what they call "socialized medicine". If you're in Britain, your doctor is probably a socialist. Just kidding! But he does work for the government. The government pays his salary and buys all his tongue depressors and urine cups. Even old people wouldn't fall for that one over on this side of the "pond", so we only do it to our veterans.

Let's review:



See? They're actually pretty different!

It turns out that when you take a poll, most Americans don't want the government to provide health care coverage. But the idea of goverment providing health care insurance: a lot of folks think that's a pretty swell idea!



When someone confuses these two things, you can be pretty sure they're just ... well, confused. Just like this woman or these people. Nobody would ever, not in a million bajillion infinity years, ever mix these things up on purpose! Just send 'em over here and we'll get 'em straighted out! And if they're crossing through Canada, have 'em pick me up some poutine along the way. Eh?

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W's Other Legacies

Unless he some day realizes his dream of being the first Jewish Speaker, Rahm Emanuel will likely be best remembered as Barack Obama's first chief of staff. But he is also a Bill Clinton legacy who ran for and won public office after serving in the administration of the forty-third president.

Will the forty-fourth president, George W. Bush, leave behind a similar platoon of political legacies?

According to The Hill, the first wave of Bush43 Administration veterans will be seeking office in 2009 and 2010. Former Bush staffers and appointees are running for state legislative seats, the U.S House and, in two cases, U.S. Senate (Rob Portman, Ohio; Tom Foley, Connecticut).

Having served in the Bush Administration can be a mixed blessing, according to one candidate:

“Working in the White House under any administration is a privilege, and I had a great experience there,” added Tim Nank, who is running for a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates. Nank worked in the White House on nuclear nonproliferation and counterterrorism issues.

Having the Bush White House on their résumés is both a political positive and a negative for candidates. On one hand, Nank said, it could help him with his right flank and encourage the base to turn out for him. On the other, he is not going out of his way to advertise his work for President Bush.

“President Bush’s popularity rating is obviously very low, and I think the people in my district would probably not look favorably on that,” Nank said, adding, “I haven’t had a lot of people ask me where I worked. They usually ask where I work.” (emphasis added)

Many former Bush staffers took traditional jobs in consulting and government relations, though some struggled at first to find any work. I cannot help but add that there is a certain ironic justice here, given that they had jobs while other Americans were losing theirs during the late stages of the Bush era.

Political scientist Mo Fiorina has argued that, all else equal, elected office is more attractive to liberals not only because they tend to believe in government but because the opportunity costs of seeking office for conservatives--what with their better business connections--are presumably greater and thus an added deterrent to running. But former administration officials, regardless of their party affiliation, tend to have ample opportunities to cash in after their presidential service. Those who do run are thus likely to have pretty strong political ambitions of their own, given the other opportunities available to them.

What will be interesting to see, as The Hill piece suggests, is just how much taint, if any, prior service in the Bush Administration carries. In conservative districts it might not matter at all, and could even help. As for Ohio and Connecticut, there are other, demographic reasons to suspect that those two Senate contests will break Democratic, regardless of whether the Republican nominees are former Bush appointees, but it will fun to see how the political resumes of the two Republicans in those races affects their chances if Portman and Foley win their respective GOP nominations.

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Can a Republican Take Obama's Old Seat?

Might the next senator from the Great State of Illinois be a Republican?

Nathan Gonzales of the Rothenberg Political Report ponders that question for Illinois, and also Delaware, the other state with a Senate vacancy created by the Obama-Biden victory last November. "Over the past century, half of the dozen seats vacated by a new president or vice president have switched partisan control in the next election," writes Gonzales. "In 2010, Republicans have open-seat opportunities in Illinois and Delaware and could win both seats vacated by a president and vice president in the same cycle for the first time in U.S. history."

OK, six of twelve historically. But that's a small and idiosyncratic data set. Still, it's worth asking: Can the GOP really dream about picking up senate seats in either or both Illinois and Delaware, two of the bluest states in the country?

Let's start with Delaware. As Gonzales points out, the only real possibility for a Republican winning there is if the state's at-large congressman, Mike Castle, decides to risk his House seat to take on Vice President Biden's son and current attorney general, Beau. But even that would be a tough challenge for Castle, because the young Biden will have not only the family name and the White House to bank on, but he will be a returning Iraq vet. If Castle runs, whatever happens you'd have to give him props for having the guts to take on the Bidens.

As for Democrats losing Obama's former seat, to entertain this notion you first have to believe that the Rod Blagojevich fiasco and the bizarre case of Roland Burris have soured a significant number of Illinoisans on the Democrat brand there, and you further have to believe that the president will have little to no political juice in his home state. Not likely. Both Illinois senate seats are reliably Democratic of late; aside from Peter Fitzgerald's lone term (1999-2005), Obama's seat has been in Democratic hands since 1970, and the Democrats have controlled Dick Durbin's seat since 1985. Only a handful of other states (Maryland, Massachusetts, etc.) have been this solidly Democratic in the Senate during the past two or three decades.

Gonzales is correct that Republican Congressman Mark Kirk could be formidable--he's young, attractive, and represents the Chicago suburbs rather than some rural district downstate, and he can boast of a decidely moderate voting record. In fact, the National Journal ranks him 190th, amost right down the middle, in its conservative-to-liberal House rankings (1 = most conservative, 435 = most liberal). And heck, any Republican who can get Michelle Malkin's dander up because-gasp!--he not only voted for cap-and-trade but dared to hold a job fair in his district, deserves a hearing, even in Illinois. Though he hemmed and hawed a bit, Kirk is officially in the race for sure and, now that he's committed, he may very well run a great campaign.

Still, I wouldn't bet on Kirk. Though the 2008 presidential results in Delaware and Illinois are an unfair indicator of Republican competitiveness, the Democratic nominee won both states by at least 8 points in each of the four previous cycles, 1992 through 2004. To find a Republican victory you have to go back to 1988, when George H.W. Bush carried both states. And electoral politics is increasingly about electoral demography. Candidates and campaigns matter, of course, and demography is not destiny. Yet, and even with the Blago-Burris taint on the seat, the contest to take Obama's old seat--especially since it will look very bad politically for Obama, who will undoubtedly make sure whomever the Democrats nominate has whatever s/he needs--remains an uphill climb for Kirk and the GOP.

UPDATE: MSNBC is reporting that former Blago aide Cheryle Jackson will enter the Democratic primary against state treasure Alexi Giannoulias.

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Why Unemployment (Probably) Won't Hit 10 Percent

In spite of last week’s better-than-expected jobs report, many intelligent observers seem convinced that the unemployment rate, which fell nominally to 9.4 percent last month, will nevertheless almost certainly hit 10 percent or higher before the situation really rights itself. Here’s the New Republic’s Noam Schieber making the case. Here’s the White House. Here’s Intrade, where you can make about 2:1 on your money if the unemployment rate is below 10 percent in December.

Although it’s foolish to try to predict economic indicators, I think these observers are probably wrong: the recession likely does not have enough gas left to get us to 10 percent unemployment.

Principally, I think these analysts may simply be underestimating how much impact last week’s numbers should have on our expectations for going forward. After four straight months in which the rate of job losses had declined, the number jumped abruptly upward in June, accelerating to what was then reported as a net of 467,000 lost jobs. It wasn’t clear whether the jobs situation was still improving fairly rapidly, was improving but only slowly, or in fact the momentum was entirely sideways or was even getting worse:



After getting the July numbers, however – which included downward revisions to the reported job losses for May and June – the situation would now seem to be much less ambiguous: the jobs picture is steadily brightening, and within a couple of months, the economy will in all likelihood begin to actually create jobs:



In order for unemployment to hit 10 percent, a net of roughly 1 million more people would need to become unemployed, assuming no change in the size of the labor force (which is a big assumption and one we’ll examine in a moment). This almost cetainly won't happen. Last month, 247,000 jobs were lost according to the payroll survey, and 155,000 more people became unemployed according to the household survey. (What’s the difference between these two numbers? We’ll discuss that too in a bit.) Given that the numbers are improving, it’s hard to see how you can squeeze another million or so job losses of 150-300K per month -– you’d need the employment picture to completely flatline for another 4-5 months, or for what now seems to be a fairly robust trend to actually reverse itself.

Note, however, what I stipulated earlier: assuming no change in the size of the labor force. Ordinarily, about 125,000 additional people each month enter the economy. So it’s not enough merely to break even on the job creation numbers; you have to be slightly into positive territory to avoid seeing the unemployment rate go up as a result of these new job-seekers.

In July, however – as well as in June – the size of the labor force actually declined, according to the household survey. This is what caused the unemployment rate to decline: although the numerator (the number of people who have jobs) in fact slightly decreased, the denominator (the size of the labor force) decreased more, causing the metric to improve. Some of this is because of so-called discouraged workers – people who do not have a job but have given up on looking for one, and (for reasons that I do not entirely agree with) do not meet the Department of Labor’s definition of being "unemployed". This discouraged workers story has been a bit oversold though: U-4, the measure of unemployment that includes discouraged workers, went down too. Most of this, rather, is a matter of people finding somewhat longer-term alternatives to seeking employment: going back to school, early retirement, joining the Army or the Peace Corps, etc. In addition, both legal and illegal immigration are declining, which takes some pressure off the growth of the labor force. There may also be some reversion to the mean, since these metrics are subject to measurement error and since the labor force had supposedly increased by higher-than-usual amounts in April and May.

What observers like Scheiber are worried about is that as the economy shows some signs of life, the labor force will begin to increase again, perhaps even at a greater-than-normal rate, as discouraged workers have their morale boosted and go out and look for jobs. I agree that the labor force is more likely to return to growth than to continue declining – however, I think these concerns are overstated. If we look back at past recessions, we find that the labor force grew by an average of 0.44 percent in the six months after they were declared over. This compares to an average of 0.77 percent growth for all six-months periods since 1948:



People do not jump right back into the labor force the moment a recession is over. Oftentimes, indeed, they can’t, because they’ve made somewhat long-term commitments – good luck ditching the army because the local bank is having a hiring fair back at home in Topeka. These effects are fairly strongly lagged, probably by at least 3-9 months, and usually occur only once the jobs picture has gotten to the point where it’s actually pretty darn good – not just when it’s merely improving. Where we’ll see these effects is in, say, January of 2011, when the employment rate might not budge much even if a couple hundred thousand new jobs are created. But the unemployment rate should already be safely clear of 10 percent long before that.

If the labor force grows at its typical post-recessionary rate of 0.44 percent over the next six months, that means that the economy will need to avoid losing 375,000 more jobs between now and January for unemployment to stay below 10 percent. While there will almost certainly be some additional job losses this month and probably in September, I’d take about even odds on the economy gaining or losing jobs in October and November, and expect it to probably be creating jobs in December and January. In other words, I think it will win the race against the growth of the labor force. The most likely scenario is that the unemployment rate will flirt with 10.0 percent but not quite reach it.

I've also built a simple model that attempts to predict what the unemployment rate will look like based on lags of two variables: the unemployment rate from the household survey, and the net payrolls number from the establishment survey. These numbers measure two slightly different things: the household survey measures the number of employed people (as well as the size of the labor force) whereas the establishment survey measures the number of jobs. Someone who held down multiple jobs would theoretically be counted twice in the establishment survey but only once in the household survey. In addition, the household survey accounts for some types of employment (farm work, self-employment) that are not reflected in the establishment survey.

More to the point, though, these surveys are just that – surveys – and therefore they’re subject to the usual types of distortions and measurement errors. The establishment survey tends to be more reliable than the household survey – if they’re giving you contradictory information, that's the one you should trust. But both provide some useful, non-redundant information.

With this admittedly rather simple model I show the unemployment rate rising slightly, but peaking at 9.6 percent in October and November. I then show it beginning a steady, and actually fairly robust decline, with about 400,000 jobs being created each month by next summer.



Don’t take this that seriously – although you can say the same thing of almost any economic forecast -- but what’s interesting is how different the forecast would look if we had run it based on June’s numbers. That would have showed an unemployment rate that hit 10.0 percent in September and remained there until February, peaking at 10.2 percent around Thanksgiving. The seemingly small amount by which last month’s numbers beat expectations – the economy did between 75,000 and 200,000 jobs better than anticipated, depending on whether you look at the establishment or household numbers – makes a rather large difference in terms of what we might anticipate for the next 18-24 months. This could have some fairly huge political implications too. The September 2010 unemployment rate, which is the last one voters will see before they go to the polls for the midterms, would have been projected at 8.6 percent based on last month’s data; it’s now projected to be 7.9 percent.

(By the way, this model is decidedly more optimistic about the velocity of the jobs recovery than are most mainstream observers . I wouldn’t necessarily believe in the prospect of a more rapid, robust recovery in employment simply because this silly little model says so – but I also think the consensus forecasts are unduly pessimistic, for reasons I’ll explain in another article.)

Overall, the conventional wisdom seems to be that the odds are about 2:1 in favor of unemployment hitting 10.0 percent in at least one month between now and next spring. While that’s certainly possible, I’d posit that the actual odds are more like the reverse – 2:1 against double-digit unemployment. That doesn't mean that I'd run out and buy stocks, which are already trading at a price that would imply they've fully priced in something between a U-shaped and V-shaped recovery, or that I'd cancel my plans to go back to school to go out and find work. But I think we've grown so accustomed to bad news that we've forgotten how to recognize good news when we see it; leading indicators have been turning upward for months now, both in the United States and in other countries, and now we finally have a jobs report that reflects that optimism. A lot of folks think I'm making too much of Friday's employment numbers; I'll take 2:1 that they're making too little of it.

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