Is The Public Option Un-Un-Dead?

Having underestimated the resilience of the public option before, I'm naturally a bit reluctant to do so again. But with three or four Senators threatening to filibuster a bill that contains a public option, it's time for a review of the landscape.

The fundamentals of the public option are, in some sense, still fairly strong. It polls well. Perhaps more importantly, the CBO seems to think that it would save money. For this reason, I don't think we can completely rule out the possibility that Lincoln, Nelson, et. al. could be persuaded about its merits. Also, importantly, the bill that will be reported to the Senate floor will contain a public option, which leaves it with a certain amount of inertial momentum.

But I do think it's going to have to be a matter of persuasion -- and not strong-arm tactics. The two strong-arm tactics that people seem to be excited about are reconciliation -- a procedural maneuver to pass the bill through a majority-rules environment -- and a "progressive block" strategy in which progressives threaten to vote down the health care bill unless a reasonable public option is included. I don't think either of these are liable to have their desired effect.

What's wrong with the progressive block strategy? For one thing, it's not clear that the threat is credible. Technically speaking, the bill that the House passed did not contain what had initially been defined as a "robust" public option -- meaning one pegged to Medicare rates. But only one or two progressives wound up voting against it for this reason, even though many had threatened to do so.

But suppose that the threat were credible -- that Bernie Sanders and Roland Burris, say, were prepared to carry it out. And suppose that you're Blanche Lincoln. Don't you now have something close to the best -- or perhaps the least bad -- of both worlds? Now you can vote against a bill which is unpopular in your state and dodge some of the blame for doing so, insisting that it was those no good socialists lib'ruls who were responsible for torpedoing the bill's chances.

As for reconciliation, it has a whole host of problems. First of all, nobody is quite certain what provisions might be excised from the bill if reconciliation were the chosen path. The public option might not survive anyway. Or the public option might survive, but other provisions might be struck from the bill so as to make it untenable from either a political or a policy perspective.

Secondly, I expect that the reconciliation maneuver would play extremely poorly with the public. The health care bill is somewhat (although not overwhelmingly) unpopular to begin with. And believe it or not, the filibuster actually polls fairly well, at least in a theoretical sense. It might be one thing if the Republicans indeed exercised the filibuster to prevent a bill from coming to an up-or-down vote -- then you might score some rhetorical points. But it's another if you actively try to circumvent it via reconciliation or some sort of nuclear option. When you adopt a procedure that a majority opposes on process grounds in order to enact a bill that a plurality opposes on policy grounds, you're asking for a world of hurt.

Thirdly, it's not obvious that you'd be guaranteed 50 votes for passage under reconciliation. Any Democrats with misgivings about the bill itself or about the legitimacy of the reconciliation process (like Robert Byrd of West Virginia) could be expected to vote against the bill under reconciliation, which might leave it shy of a majority.

So what can advocates for the public option do? To be frank, I'm not sure that they can do all that much. This is mostly a matter of how Lincoln, Nelson and Lieberman wrestle with the politics of the issue. They hold almost all of the cards, and those that they don't hold are mostly held by the White House.

The reason I hold out some hope are because their objections to the public option are to varying degrees irrational. The health care bill isn't especially popular at the moment. But the public option is making its numbers better, and not worse.

And rightly or wrongly, progressive activists have adopted the public option to be the sine qua non of a "good" health care reform bill. I think that they're (mostly) wrong. The Senate's health care bill, even without a public option, would do a lot of good for a lot of people. And the public option, as currently constructed, would only enroll 3-4 million people, according to the CBO. It's a relatively minor provision, and one that, in its present, already-compromised state, I'd happily trade off for more comprehensive subsidies for the working poor, or a more robust Free Choice Amendment.

But I can't prevent other people from coming to their own conclusions. And rightly or wrongly, one of the greatest upsides to the Democrats in passing a health care bill is that it will help to activate the liberal base, in order to counteract the (already very active) conservative base in 2010. That upside will be diminished if the bill that Obama signs does not contain a public option.

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Lincoln To Vote for Motion to Proceed, But Threatens Filibuster on Public Option

Mostly just stealing someone else's copy here -- in this case, Politico's:

Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) said she’d deliver the deciding vote to push forward with a sweeping health reform plan in the Senate Saturday, ending days of speculation over whether President Barack Obama’s signature priority would proceed to the floor or suffer a debilitating blow.

As with several centrists before her, Lincoln’s yes vote to start debate came wrapped in series of serious concerns about the current bill – and she said it would require major revisions before she could cast a similar vote in favor of final passage.

"I'm prepared to vote against moving to the next stage of consideration as long as a public option is included," Lincoln said, adding that she specifically would vote against the version of the public option in the current Senate plan.

Needless to say, it would have been very, very bad news for the Democrats if the motion to proceed to debate on their health care plan had failed tonight. But I'm not sure how newsworthy this really is. The potential hold-outs, like Lincoln and Ben Nelson, are going to have much greater leverage later on, when the bill nears its second major procedural hurdle: the cloture motion to proceed to the final vote.

And there's some bad news for Democrats too: Lincoln has joined Senators Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman in making a fairly explicit threat to filibuster a bill that contains a public option. Mary Landrieu, on the other hand, sounds a little bit more open to compromise. But this impromptu Gang of 3 -- Lincoln, Nelson, Lieberman -- could be a tough one for progressives to penetrate.

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I Read Through 160,000,000 Bytes of Hacked Files And All I Got Was This Lousy E-Mail

It's the global warming scandal of the century, says Michelle Malkin!

The exposure of the warmist conspiracy, says Andrew Bolt!

The final nail in the coffin of anthropogenic global warming, bleats James Delingpole!

A stunning tour de force -- four stars, says Leonard Maltin!

OK, so that last quote is made up. But the others aren't. What is it these conservatives are so excited about?

Apparently, the networks of University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit were hacked into last night. Approximately 160 megabytes of files, containing hundreds or thousands of e-mails and documents were leaked as a result of the security breach, reports The Guardian.

The conservatives are mainly zeroing in on one particular e-mail from the center's director, Phil Jones, dated from November 16th, 1999, which reads as follows:

From: Phil Jones
To: ray bradley ,mann@[snipped], mhughes@
[snipped]
Subject: Diagram for WMO Statement
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:31:15 +0000
Cc: k.briffa@[snipped],t.osborn@[snipped]
Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,

Once Tim’s got a diagram here we’ll send that either later
today or first thing tomorrow. I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature
trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20
years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd [sic] from1961 for Keith’s to
hide the decline. Mike’s series got the annual land and marine
values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land N of 20N.
The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999
for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for
1999 with data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.

Thanks for the comments, Ray.

Cheers, Phil

There you have it! The smoking gun! Irrefutable proof of the Anthropogenic Global Warming Super-Duper Major-Mega International Socialist Conspiracy!

If you see Al Gore parking his Ford Fusion hybrid near any major bridges, make sure to call the police!

Actually, what you have is a scientist, Dr. Jones, talking candidly about sexing up a graph to make his conclusions more persuasive. This is not a good thing thing to do -- I'd go so far as to call it unethical -- and Jones deserves some of the loss of face that he will suffer. Unfortunately, this is the sort of thing that happens all the time in both academia and the private sector -- have you ever looked at the graphs in the annual report of a company which had a bad year? And it seems to happen all too often on both sides of the global warming debate (I'd include some of the graphics from An Inconvenient Truth in this category, FWIW.)

But let's be clear: Jones is talking to his colleagues about making a prettier picture out of his data, and not about manipulating the data itself. Again, I'm not trying to excuse what he did -- we make a lot of charts here and 538 and make every effort to ensure that they fairly and accurately reflect the underlying data (in addition to being aesthetically appealing.) I wish everybody would abide by that standard.

Still: I don't know how you get from some scientist having sexed up a graph in East Anglia ten years ago to The Final Nail In The Coffin of Anthropogenic Global Warming. Anyone who comes to that connection has more screws loose than the Space Shuttle Challenger. And yet that's literally what some of these bloggers are saying!

Incidentally, 2009 is shaping up to be the 5th warmist year on record, according to the conspiracists at NASA.

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It's [Still] The Economy, Dumbass

All right -- this is my favorite graph in quite some time. Let's show the picture first and ask questions later.



What we have is a comparison of Barack Obama's approval ratings on the economy to his approval ratings overall. It includes all polls in the Pollster.com database that asked about both approval of Obama on the economy and his overall job performance -- a total of 109 polls dating back to the start of his term. I've then drawn in some LOESS curves to illustrate the trend.

The two lines track each other uncannily well. From the very start of Obama's term, there's been about a 5-6 point gap between approval of his performance on the economy and his performance overall, with the latter figure consistently being somewhat higher. Although Obama's approval has declined in both departments (particularly during period between about April 1 and August 1; it may not be declining any further now), the magnitude of the gap has been exceptionally steady over time.

The economy, I suppose, is sort of boring to talk about: it's a slow-moving sort of thing, and one over which the President has only a certain modicum of control. And so you'll have pundits attributing Obama's slide to all various and sundry sorts of things -- Health Care! Henry Louis Gates! Torture Trials! -- when really it's just been very much about the number of people who have come to blame Obama about the economy has tended to accelerate faster than perceptions of the economy itself.

Let's now add a third variable, which is Obama's approval on health care. We'll look only at those polls that asked about health care in addition to the economy and job performance, in order to create a truly apples-to-apples comparison:



For the most part, the health care numbers are following the same trend, although you can perceive a bit of a secular drop during August, the Month of a Million Town Halls (followed by partial recovery in September, after Obama's address to a joint session of Congress). Although this is not easily provable -- and certainly not proven by this data -- I suspect that much of the anxiety over health care reform also stems from anxiety about the economy, in ways that are both general and specific.

Indeed, the most troubling problem for the Democrats may be that government interventions into the economy -- meaning the bailout and the stimulus -- are increasingly perceived as having failed, which in turn increases skepticism about government intervention overall, in health care and other areas. I'm just not sure where this is headed: perhaps when the jobs picture recovers, so too will perception of these other programs, which will rob Republicans of much of their ammunition (although since employment is unlikely to recover significantly before 2010, they'll have plenty of fun in the shooting gallery in the meantime). But perhaps instead, the damage will be medium or even long-term: if the economy takes too long to recover, it may be perceived as being in spite of, not because of, programs like the stimulus. If that's the case, the 2010s could be a lost decade for liberalism.

To channel my Inner Krugman: it's a political imperative for the Democrats of the highest order to get some sort of jobs bill to Obama's desk -- the sooner and the bigger the better. Suppose you could create jobs at a price of about $40,000 per, which is higher than the figure suggested by empirical research on highly targeted jobs programs. A $200 billion bill would then create 5 million new jobs, which would reduce unemployment by about 3.3 percent (e.g. from 10.2 percent to 6.9 percent).

It's not that easy, I'm sure. But the Republicans -- who have been clamoring for such a bill for months -- are liable to find themselves on the wrong side of the politics of the issue. And even if the jobs bill isn't especially efficient at reducing unemployment on its own, it would have a bit of a wind at its back between the existing stimulus efforts and the organic recovery in the economy.

Might it even be worth tabling health care to get the jobs bill passed? Probably not when health care is so close to the finish line, and when the House can start working on a jobs program while the Senate deliberates health care. But if it looks like health care doesn't have the votes, this would be the exit strategy for the Dems -- for Obama to intervene and say: "we need a jobs bill first." Either way, a couple million more jobs would make everything much smoother for the Democrats; the economy remains the primary way that the public evaluates their success.

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Dems Lucky There Aren't More Lincolns

How can Democrats expect to get 60 votes for their health care bill in the Senate when it barely garnered a majority in the House? It's a good question that has a number of good answers. For instance: the Senate's bill is more moderate than the House's. And the 60-vote threshold applies only to procedural matters and not to final passage, meaning that Democrats could hedge their bets by voting for cloture but against the bill itself.

But perhaps the most fundamental difference is this one: only a third of the Senate is up for re-election each cycle. Not only that, but the Democratic senators who are up for re-election happen to come from mostly liberal states. Take a look at the following chart:



These are the 13 Democratic senators who represent states that John McCain won last November. Of the 13, only two -- Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota -- are up for re-election in 2010.

Dorgan remains quite popular and does not yet have a credible Republican opponent. Governor John Hoeven has threatened to enter, but with Dorgan already having accumulated almost $4 million in cash and time running short, Hoeven's curiosity is looking mostly like a bluff. Even if he did face a re-election threat, moreover, my guess is that Dorgan would not cause a serious problem for the Democrats on health care, as he's something of a policy wonk, and chairman of the Democratic Policy Committee, a possible stepping-stone to a majority leader or majority whip position.

Lincoln, on the other hand, appears to be in real trouble, and the health care bill, which is opposed 2-1 in her state according to Public Policy Polling, undoubtedly isn't helping matters much. Now, you can certainly construct a case that it's in Lincoln's best interest to vote for the health care bill anyway: the feeding frenzy that will ensure if Democrats fail to enact health care reform will have consequences for incumbents everywhere, and a procedural vote against health care would rob Lincoln of much of her fundraising and institutional support. But clearly, it's not an easy decision for her.

There are other Democrats, like Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, who are also tenuous votes on health care, but none of them face the same near-term electoral pressures. Health care reform, it's clear, has become relatively unpopular in the near term, but it would be speculative at best to guess at what impact it might have in 2012 or 2014, by which point the economy will probably have recovered, the provisions of the bill itself would be coming online, the tea party zeitgeist may have faded, and their could be a different President in the White House. Nelson and Landrieu, therefore, aren't taking the same tangible risks to behave as team players.

As for Lincoln, she's arguably the vote that Democrats have the most to worry about (perhaps along with Joe Lieberman, whose motivations for opposing the health care bill are irrational). But since Lincoln and only Lincoln is under substantial electoral pressure for 2010, the Democrats still ought to have pretty good odds of wrangling her in. Imagine, on the other hand, if in addition to Lincoln, two or three other red-state Democrats (say Nelson, Lincoln, and Mark Begich of Alaska) were also up for re-election. Under those circumstances, opposition to the health care bill would probably have calcified into a critical mass, and the measure would either be dead on arrival or headed back to the drawing board.

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Senate Handicapping One Year Out

The 2010 Senate contests, I submit, will tell us more than either the House or gubernatorial results next year about the relative status of the two parties and their competitiveness. Why?

For one, historically the president's party loses an average of about 16 House seats in his first midterm cycle, but there's really not much of a Senate correction. (The average is less than one seat.) Obviously, the Democrats could still over- or underperform the 16-seat benchmark. But the House results, if the GOP overperforms, are not likely to dethrone Nancy Pelosi. Second, gubernatorial results are likely to be more of a reflection on tough state-level circumstances and the quality of the respective candidates and their campaigns, as we saw in both New Jersey and Virginia. If so, the Republicans may have another Christie/McDonnell-like night to celebrate, even if those victories are not indicative of a national partisan backlash against the Obama Administration and the Democratic Congress. Third, Senate races are statewide federal contests with more heterogeneous, non-gerrymandered electorates that are less directly affected by localized issues. Finally, as The Cook Political Report's Jennifer Duffy noted in her analysis two weeks ago, there are lots of open-seat Senate races next year. Although candidate effects do matter in Senate races, in open seats the candidate effects are reduced because there are no direct incumbency effects (positive or negative), and so they more closely approximate, though of course are not identical to, partisan referenda.

That said, the Senate results will provide a much clearer barometer of voter support for, or antipathy toward, the Obama Administration and unified Democratic control of Washington. Remember the 2004 results? Bush inched up his popular vote margin, gained a mere one net state in the Electoral College (losing NH, picking up IA and NM), the House Republicans' gain of three seats was entirely accounted for by the Texas re-redistricting, and the GOP lost ground in the state legislatures. What made it overall a good night for the GOP was the net pickup of four Senate seats. Granted, those four net pickups were more than accounted for by five southern Democrats retiring and the GOP picking up all five of their seats, but still. (The net non-southern Democratic gain of one senator resulted from Tom Daschle's loss and wins by CO's attorney general Ken Salazar and a certain state senator from Chicago.)

The good news for Democrats is that there are a lot of Republican-held, open-seat races. Looking at the table above, of the six GOP-held seats Duffy lists as either toss-up (5) or leaning Republican (1: Vitter), five of the six are open seats (LA's Vitter, who has other, post-scandal worries is the exception). Of course, this is why races in states like Kentucky and Texas are considered competitive in the first place. As for seven seats Duffy rates either toss-up (5) or leaning Democratic (2: Lincoln, Boxer), there are just two open-seat contests: the Delaware and Illinois seats vacated by vice president and president and presently occupied by weak Democratic placeholders. The fact that the Democrats have more states in play despite fewer incumbents testifies to their general vulneraability this cycle, as well as specific problems, notably Chris Dodd's post-economic crisis popularity decline in Connecticut and the inherent skepticism toward Arlen Specter after his party-switch earlier this year.

What you also see is that Democrats are defending competitive seats in more solidly blue states and Republicans in what are generally more toss-up states, at least if you look at presidential results. This pattern has a potentially good news/bad news storyline for each party as well. If team Obama can figure out a way to utilize the president, their databases and appeal to mobilize enough of those so-called "Obama surge" voters from 2008, the Democratic registration and performance margins should pull these incumbents across the finish line. On the other hand, the fact that the GOP seats in play are in more competitive states in the first place would suggest that the GOP is going to be on offense more than defense.

I suspect the net gain for either party will not exceed two seats. There are some primaries yet to determine nominees, so it's too early to say either way which party should come out ahead. And, as I suggested before, these races will be an important test of the White House political operation.

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American Politics and International Soccer: Who's the Ref?

The rhetorical link between sports and politics in the U.S. has been widely documented, with sports providing a treasure trove of analogies, quotes and other trinkets for politicians. At the same time, pundits have long enjoyed the usage of sport as a foil for political commentary. In many ways, it makes intuitive sense, with both fields defined by highly adversarial relationships, impassioned periods of training and execution, large quantities of public exposure and critique, and intense love-hate relations with the media.

Therefore, that we could draw political parallels from last evening's blatant cheating by iconic French national soccer squad striker Thierry Henry with the role of the media in American politics is not surprising. "La main de Diable," as put by writers at the French newspaper Le Figaro, led France to a squeaking overtime victory in over underdog Ireland by way of a flagrant hand-ball that was simply missed or ignored by no less than four officials, including the referee. And, as compared to its namesake from the 1986 World Cup, Henry's foul was substantially more obvious to the observer than Maradona's, though the original arguably had more pressing implications (both resulted in the elimination of the loser, though the former was in a World Cup quarter-final).

While Henry has received major criticism for his actions -- which he maintains were accidental and were admitted to the opposing squad as well as the officials -- the most withering accusations have been launched at the referee, Martin Hansson of Sweden, and his assistants. Because the officials failed to call the foul, France advances to next year's World Cup Final in South Africa, with the Irish now relegated to waiting for the 2014 Cup. At the same time, FIFA, who "watch the watchmen" so to speak; have been lambasted for not incorporating instant replay into international ball, and for alleged systemic bias toward traditional western European soccer powers like France, Germany, Italy, etc.

In American politics, it is the mainstream media that are often credited with the 'refereeing' and 'vetting' role during political competition. Indeed, it is a role that the big producers have strongly embraced, with various brands of neutrality being marketed. Ranging from Fox's "No-spin zone," to "fact-checks" by ABC and others, and perhaps the most symbolic role of media achors as the moderators for electoral debates, the media can "call foul" on false claims, scrutinize policy decisions and give positive coverage to good ideas.

But like the Henry case of last night, what happens when the refs fail to call a foul when it is matters most? (Or alternatively call one where it isn't).

The most common answer is that political journalism and analysis are self-critical and self-governing fields, with rigorous peer review. A recent case in point is the harsh critique that has been leveled by many in the field regarding the U.S. MSM's conduct in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion. At the same time, a healthy oversight community of NGOs, think tanks, academic institutions and so forth spend many hours dissecting the way the media operate. But is this really enough?

In cases of flagrant, high-profile and costly mistakes, it seems that the system works reasonably well. In 2004, the sacking of Dan Rather by CBS over his highly flawed reporting on President Bush's National Guard career illustrated a commitment by the network to dispose of discredited reporting. In a similar fashion, many are calling for the head of referee Hansson, suggesting a suspension or ban.

But the fundamental problem remains in both circumstances is that high-profile scapegoating in cases of obvious poor practice does not address the underlying issues that challenge those in the umpire's seat. In the case of international soccer, the impression of big-country euro-centrism remains, and the lack of instant replay nor box review both undermine the credibility and accuracy of officials and administrators. In US politics, the fact that incentive structures for media folks are focused toward advertising revenue and subscriber bases, with few coercive structures beyond self-policing and public scrutiny, has turned political refereeing from analytic scrutiny to basic entertainment.

While the metaphor breaks down when moving much farther, the consequences are clear. Last night's failure of judgment was a well-documented warning to those for whom good, reasoned judgment is important.

What is the difference between a minor human mistake and a human-made catastrophe? A catastrophe is a mistake made where there was no room for error.
---
Renard Sexton is FiveThirtyEight's international columnist and is based in Geneva, Switzerland. He can be contacted at sexton538@gmail.com.

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Senators and Health Care

Nate, Daniel, and I write:

Lawmakers' support for or opposition to reform generally has less to do with the views of their constituents and more to do with the issue of presidential popularity. . . .

For instance, Senator Blanche Lincoln, a Democrat who has been a less-than-strong supporter of the present health care bill, recently told The Times, "I am responsible to the people of Arkansas, and that is where I will take my direction." But where does she look for her cue? Hers is a poor state whose voters support health care subsidies six percentage points more than the national average. On the other hand, Mr. Obama got just 40 percent of the vote there. . . ..

Public opinion is certainly relevant to the health care debate, but not in the direct senator-follows-the-state way that it is sometimes imagined.

Further discussion (including pretty maps) here.

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The Palin Calculus: A Rejoinder

I had hoped to respond to Nate's initial post explaining our Sarah Palin bet before he wrote a second one. But I guess I'll just have to write a rejoinder to both.

Let me preface the following by conceding that many of Nate's arguments are quite persuasive. Most compelling is his observation about the media's love affair with Palin. For all her complaints about the supposedly liberal national media, the media want to sell ads and Palin attracts eyeballs, holds listeners, and generates clicks. The media is the best thing she's got going for her. Nate's also right about the 2012 GOP field potentially being small and/or weak; if either Mike Huckabee or Newt Gingrich opt out--and certainly if both do--Palin's path to the nomination is made easier.

That said, herewith 10 additional reasons why Palin either won't run or, if she does, will have a hard time winning the GOP nomination:

1. She's unqualified to be president. That's a normative statement, but it's also one that most Americans happen to agree with. Now, it may be no surprise that 90 percent of Democrats feel that way. But a CNN poll out this week shows that, amazingly, about four in nine Republicans concur and, most damning, about seven of 10 Independents do, too. Sarah's got legitimacy issues.

2. Nobody's ambivalent about her. People know who Palin is, and almost all have developed opinions about her. If those opinions were overwhelmingly positive, that would be one thing. But they aren't. (See #1, above.) And once a politician loses core support, they have to do something extraordinary to reverse the public's view of them. (An exception who defied this rule with exceptional behavior is Al Gore, who tripled his public approval numbers between 2002 and 2007.) In short, there's just too much Palin needs to do to reverse the opinions of voters, including Republican voters.

3. There should be at least one certifiable social conservative in the GOP field, maybe more, and she'll be eating from the same bowl as this person(s). Palin isn't the only person going rogue--the whole damn party is. Nate's right that there aren't many moderates left in the party, but there aren't many moderate elites left, either. Although Gingrich did some damage to his conservative cred by failing to rally to Doug Hoffman's defense in the NY23 special election, he's still the guy from the southern suburbs who led the GOP to its 1994 majorities and he's not some recent convert to social conservatism like Mitt Romney. And then there's Huckabee, who is already ideally positioned for the nomination after his underfunded but impressive late-stage showing in 2008. Throw in Haley Barbour and there's even less room for Palin to dominate among conservative GOPers.

4. She is politically homeless. Though few true-red conservatives bought into Mitt Romney's 2008 conversion from his socially-liberal days as the Massachusetts governor who pushed through statewide health care reform, the Mormon Romney would again fare well in Palin's natural geographic base: The West. Remember the map of victories in the 2008 GOP primary contest? If Romney eats into her support there and either Huckabee or Gingrich do the same in the South, where is she going to find the votes? The Midwest, maybe, but not in the Northeast. She's a candidate without a natural, geographic base of support.

5. The fam. I'm sorry, but if John Kerry had Sarah Palin's family we would still be enduring non-stop lectures about the depravity of liberal values. The Palin family situation is messy, and smart Republican primary voters (more on that in point #10) must recognize that there are too many potential landmines here. I mean, the father of Palin's illegitimate grandson is about to appear semi-nude--sorry gals, no full frontal--in Playgirl magazine. 'Nuff said.

6. There's a good chance Palin loses her cool. Nate says my fatal error is assuming Palin is thinking through this big decision rationally. OK, he's got me there. But if her irrationality is reason to suspect she may run despite her negatives, it's also reason to suspect that, if she does run, she's going to make at least one if not more fatal errors. Palin was in the national spotlight during the 2008 campaign, but only for a little more than two months. A presidential run for her would generate far greater pressure--and continuously so for a period eight times longer as a presidential contender than she had to endure as second banana in 2008.

7. She has serious policy weaknesses. I'm not talking here about her policy positions, I'm talking about her grasp of the issues. Just read the stuttering, vapid answer she gave to Barbara Walters when asked about Israeli settlements. This is not a politician ready to run the White House. I realize she has a lot of time to bone up on the issues in the next 18 months. But, c'mon: If people thought George W. Bush was a dolt who could only repeat stock, memorized phrases, compared to Palin Bush is a Rhodes scholar.

8. Her media career. I may be proved wrong, but I see a media career in Palin's future: TV, radio, maybe both. She could wait until after 2012 to pursue that course. But, like a collegiate sophomore who's also a top-5 draft prospect, she runs the risk of injury if she doesn't go pro when the money is there. If not already in the works, once the book promotional tour settles down she's gonna have some big offers. On the Right, where Michelle Malkin and Ann Coulter are the best conservative media has to offer in terms of female stars, Palin could burn brightly. And once she goes that route, her presidential ambitions will dim quickly.

9. Todd Palin is not First Gentleman material. Fairly or not, candidates' spouses matter--in the White House and on the campaign trail. Fairly or not, they quite possibly matter more for female presidential contenders. What does Todd Palin bring to the equation? Not much, so far as I can tell. He would be dwarfed by Michelle Obama in more ways than one.

10. GOP primary voters are interested in electability, not message-sending. Nate is right that for Republicans in 2012, against incumbent Barack Obama, it might be tempting to send a 1964-like message. But if that were the case, given the bottom the party reached in 2008, they should have nominated somebody like Huckabee instead of John McCain. They didn't. Bob Dole in 1996 and McCain last year weren't great candidates, but they were the best option available, which is exactly the candidate sober Republican primary voters choose every four years. It's not clear to me who the best general election candidate in the field of potential 2012 contenders is--my hunch runs toward Gingrich, maybe Romney if he can get evangelicals on board--but Palin ain't it.

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10 Reasons That Sarah Palin Could Win the Republican Nomination

1. Enthusiasm. People tend to see electorate through a one-dimensional lens, in which a fixed number of voters are trying to decide between two or more candidates. But that's not really how politics works, especially in primaries. Rather, the playing field is (at least) two-dimensional: people are not merely trying to decide whom to vote for, but also whether to vote at all. Because of the reach of her brand, Palin has the ability to engage the sorts of voters who might ordinarily stay at home. In the general election, that will include some voters who turn out to vote against her -- but that's less of a concern in the primaries.

2. 2010. Next November will probably be a happy night for Republicans and my guess the emergent c.w. will be that it occurred because of, rather than in spite of, the Republicans eschewing moderation in favor of (re)building their base. In reality, that case is likely to be highly circumstantial at best -- it might be that Republicans gain, I don't know, 26 House seats, but would have gained 33 if they'd run more to the center. But that won't prevent people from leaping to conclusions, and I expect those conclusions to tend to play favorably for Palin.

3. The other candidates are flawed. Mitt Romney has limited appeal to the evangelical base and is an unapologetically establishment candidate in a primary where anti-establishment sentiments are liable to prevail. Newt Gingirch has never been especially popular, has never won an election for any office higher than the U.S. House, and lost some street cred among conservative activists with his failure to endorse Doug Hoffman. Tim Pawlenty is unpopular in his home state, barely registering as a national candidate, and appears to suffer from Romney's flaw of running away from his record. Mike Huckabee, I think, is underrated, but the Club for Growth crowd will never like him, and his hokeyness could grow a little tiresome in the face of a year-long primary campaign.

4. The other candidates might not run. Although I doubt that Palin can clear the conservative half of the GOP field, someone like a Huckabee could very well decide to go ahead and let Palin run her course, re-entering the field in a 2016 climate that is liable to be more favorable to Republicans.

5. The media will be rooting for her. She's good for the bottom line; off the top of my head, I'd guess that an Obama versus Palin election would generate at least 20-30 percent higher ratings than Obama against Mystery Republican X. Also, some players in the liberal media may be rooting for her because they'll assume that a Palin win in the primary could give Obama an easier path toward re-election.

6. She's tough to campaign against. Why? Because any perceived or real slight against Palin is taken by her supporters as an example of sexism, elitism, or media bias; just wait until Huckabee or Romney makes their first impolitic comment about Palin in a debate or an interview and watch the sparks fly.

7. There are virtually no moderates left in the Republican base. Although, there may be a significant number of independents voting in some of the primary states, which makes things marginally harder for Palin than in election where many independents were sucked into the Democratic primaries.

8. Attempts by the Republican Establishment to neuter her may backfire. This is a corollary of #6 above. If the Establishment, owing to electability concerns or whatever else, tries to put hurdles in her way by re-structuring the primary or delegate allocation process, it may only play into the victimization complex of Palin and her supporters.

9. Parties tend to nominate more extreme candidates in elections against incumbents. This tendency is not all that robust, but you can find plenty of examples of parties nominating extremely liberal/conservative candidates in elections against incumbents, such as George McGovern, Ronald Reagan, Walter Mondale, and Barry Goldwater. There are some counter-examples too -- Bill Clinton, arguably, and someone like Thomas Dewey if you want to go back that far -- but on balance, parties seem to nominate more extremist candidates in elections against incumbents than in open seat contests.

10. She gets new media; new media gets her. Conservative blogs love Palin, as do most of the shock jocks; they matter a great deal and may help Palin to overcome what I expect will prove to be a relatively shoddy traditional infrastructure.

* - *

Now then, do I think Palin is the favorite to win the Republican primary? Not necessarily. She's certainly not the majority favorite and perhaps not the plurality favorite, depending on who runs. And you could fairly easily come up with a set of ten bullet points to argue against Palin's chances. But I think she'll run, and I think it would be a mistake to discount her chances too significantly given the makeup and mood of the Republican primary electorate.

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Handicapping Governors Races One Year Out

Continuing a series of posts handicapping the 2010 elections one year out—made some general observations here, did some House handicapping here—I’ll turn next to governors races, the vast majority of which are held in midterm cycles. The added significance of the 2010 midterm is that the winners in most states will have a role in the drawing of state legislative and/or US House districts for the coming decade. For all of the focus on Congress, there’s a lot on the line in the battle for statehouses.

Again, I'll start with the Cook Political Report's Jennifer Duffy, who covers gubernatorial races and US Senate races and was on hand to talk about both during CPR's recent political briefing. "I think being governor right now is the worst job in American politics,” said Duffy, for openers, citing budget deficits, layoffs, and furloughs governors and state legislatures are having to make in the face of declining revenues. Duffy said the environment in state capitals is so bad it is probably no coincidence that retreads are surfacing, including four former governors--Jerry Brown in California, Roy Barnes in Georgia, Terry Branstad in Iowa, John Kitzhaber in Oregon, and possibly a fifth, Maryland's Bob Ehrlich--running for their old seats. (I discussed the possibility of an Ehrlich candidacy in my Baltimore Sun column last week.)

Duffy pointed out that 20 of the 37 races slated for next year are open-seat contests--10 for each party--and Duffy thinks there could be more. Her final, general observation was that, looking at the current partisan control of statehouses, "you realize how many seats each party had that didn’t really belong to them" from the standpoint of partisan expecations and presidential behavior of those states. "There’s going to be a lot of [party] trading" in 2010, she predicts. Overall, in terms of net gains, she hinted that Republicans could have the edge, saying that about four out of every five times she has made a rating adjustment it has been to move a seat from a more probable Democratic position to a less probable one (e.g., from leaning Democratic to toss-up, or from toss-up Republican to Republican leaning).

Looking at the table I created above of Duffy's toss-up races--they are her rankings as of 12 days ago; the only part I added was last column, showing the 2006 gubernatorial results--what can we say about these races?

Well, to begin, it would appear that the Democrats have fewer seats in toss-up races. But what this chart does not show are the four state races Duffy rates as either "Republican leaning" (OK, TN, WY) or "Republican likely" (KS) which Democrats currently occupy; she has no such solid/likely/leaning Democratic forecasts of Republican-occupied seats. And it remains to be seen whether having two incumbents running in those four Democratic-held toss-ups is an advantage or disadvantage. A poll out this week has bad news for Iowa's Chet Culver, trailing Branstad by a whopping 24 points. Ritter's approval-disapproval ratings are about even, and an August poll showed him either tied or trailing possible GOP nominees Josh Penry and Scott McInnis.

Meanwhile, the downside for Republicans is that they have a lot of currently-held open seats for which they strong candidates and some of these are in Democratic-leaning states like California, Hawai'i, Rhode Island and Vermont. The most compelling race may be in Minnesota, however, where Tim Pawlenty won narrowly four years ago and might be distracted by presidential politics. Losing re-election would scotch any White House ambitions he has, making him a ripe target for the Democratic Governors Association. And that made me think that maybe--just maybe--Sarah Palin knew what she was doing by getting herself safely out of the way of anti-incumbent fury that may dominate the 2010 cycle.

*AZ Republican Jan Brewer is seeking re-election, though she was of course appointed to fill the seat won in 2006 by Democrat Janet Napolitano, which is why the margin in negative (for Republicans, that is).
^Douglas' margin in Vermont, which has two-year terms, is from 2008. Because an Independent and Democrat split the non-Douglas vote, to provide a more useful result I summed their vote shares and subtracted it from Douglas' 53 percent winning total.

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Why Palin Will Run for President in 2012

As you may know, 538 co-captain Tom Schaller and I have made a couple of bets regarding whether Sarah Palin will run for and win the 2012 Republican nomination for the Presidency. I’ve got the Palin side of both wagers: even money that she’ll run for the Presidency, and the 3-1 odds that Tom has given me on her actually emerging with the nomination. The second wager is not conditional upon the first; I’m responsible for paying Tom provided that Palin does not become the GOP nominee, whether or not she runs for it.

Tom provides two pieces of evidence against Palin running for the nomination. The first is that 2012 is a year when an incumbent, Barack Obama, will almost certainly be running for re-election, and incumbents seats are much tougher to pick up than open ones. The second is that Palin's polling has gone somewhat sour against her potential GOP rivals, which might deter her from entering.

For starters, I'd somewhat dispute Tom's unspoken assumption that Palin is liable to be looking at this decision through such a narrowly rational prism. Was quitting the Alaska governorship -- particularly in the sudden and disorganized way that Palin did it -- a decision characteristic of someone who carefully ponders all the facts and circumstances before jumping to a conclusion? Not hardly. Palin is impulsive, impatient, ambitious, thrill-seeking: not the type of politician to prudently wait for a better moment.

But assuming that Palin is rational, and that her goal is to maximize her chance of someday becoming President (or at least winning the nomination), it's not clear that 2012 is a worse bet for her than 2016. Yes, the GOP, as a whole, is likely to have a better shot at winning the Presidency in 2016 than in 2012. But Palin may also face stiffer competition within her own party in 2016. In part that's precisely because non-incumbent races end to attract stronger candidates – witness, for instance, the poor quality of the Republican field in 1996 – and in part it's because the present field of GOP rivals (Romney, et. al.) seems almost preternaturally weak. By 2016, there is more chance of a fresh face emerging, be it someone relatively new to the national scene like Bob McDonnell of Virginia, someone like Bobby Jindal who stumbled out of the gate but has a good chance to work out some of his kinks, or someone that none of us have even heard of yet.

Another motivator for Palin to run is that her opportunity cost is not very high. Having quit her governorship and apparently declining to challenge Lisa Murkowski for her Senate seat, Palin's next opportunity to run for some sort of high-stature elected office wouldn't come until 2014, when Mark Begich's seat is up in the Senate. Is Palin, who already has a reputation as a quitter, likely to run for that seat, only to have to quit again if she wants to run for the Presidency in 2016? Not hardly.

Until she runs for office again, rather, Palin's role is basically that of a celebrity on her own behalf, and a rabble-rouser on behalf of the GOP. Although each of those things can occupy a goodly amount of one’s time, the media is likely to tire of Palin if she’s not actually making news, and Palin herself may grow tired of not being the center of attention. Moreover, there’s not any evidence that laying low seems to help Palin’s standing with the public; on the contrary, her numbers seemed to have have declined a lot during the past several months, a period during which (until recently) she was not making much news.

The reason I suspect this may be the case is because Palin’s popularity seems to stem not from any particular attributes that she possesses as a candidate, but rather from the reactions that she seems to induce from other people. Only by being in the spotlight can Palin induce liberal pundits to say rude things about her, fellow candidates to behave awkwardly around her, etc. Only in this way can she be the martyr and the underdog, qualities that conceal some of her potential inadequacies. Oddly, the more attention Palin gets, the more of a Rorschach blot she becomes -- which is good for a candidate who most people don't think is qualified to be President on her own merits.

As for the polling, that's something will look at in more depth tomorrow, when I consider Palin's odds of actually winning the nomination. But even if one takes seriously polling conducted 2-3 years in advance of an election, Palin is running at the very worst in a solid second or third place, against candidates who themselves may or may not run for the White House. That's hardly an impossible position. What were Chris Dodd's odds of emerging with the Democratic nomination last year, in a field that was likely to include some combination of Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, and Barack Obama? What are Tim Pawlenty's in 2012? (Hint: not very high.) The vast majority of candidates running for a Presidential nomination have done so facing substantially longer odds than Palin. And arguably, being incumbent senators or governors (insert crack about "actual responsibilities"), they've given up a lot more in order to do so. Palin has the means, motive, and opportunity to run for the Presidency in 2012, and I'd be surprised if she fails to do so.

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Monday Miscellany

-- Recruitment efforts are becoming seriously problematic for the Democrats. Take North Carolina, for instance, where former State Senator Cal Cunningham now says he won't run to challenge Richard Burr, the latest in a long line of Democrats to do so. Democrats still have a reasonably decent candidate in Secretary of State Elaine Marshall, but this a big step down from Roy Cooper or possibly Heath Shuler, neither of whom were tempted to enter the running. Even if there's some late swing of "momentum" back toward the Democrats next summer as a result of an improving economy or whatever else, they will probably have squandered a couple of opportunities based on fears about the 2010 environment that emerged earlier in the process.

-- Another disappointment for the Democrats: Kay Bailey Hutchison is not going to resign her seat to run for governor, at least until/unless she wins the primary. This is a defensive, and probably smart move for KBH, who appears unlikely to defeat incumbent Rick Perry -- but for all intents and purposes it takes another second-tier pickup opportunity off the board for the Dems.

-- Bill Belichick is not dumb, provided that his goal is to help the New England Patriots win football games. Instead, much of the NFL's conventional wisdom on when to go for it on fourth down is horribly, horribly wrong -- teams are way too conservative and punt way too often. This is the one case where 9-year olds playing Madden -- it's no fun to punt in a video game -- quite literally make better decisions than most NFL head coaches. With that said, since the same flawed conventional wisdom can govern hiring and firing decisions, there may be a price to be paid for unconventional (if statistically correct) playcalling; see also Marty Mornhinweg.

-- Never, ever, for as long as you live, rent a car from Thirfy, who are every bit as cheap as their name implies. Our rental car here in San Francisco got broken into over the weekend and -- while fortunately all of our luggage was out of the vehicle -- the GPS unit that we'd rented with the car was taken. Even though we were paying something like $200 in insurance coverage, the GPS unit was apparently not covered. Not only that, but the replacement cost they want to charge us for the unit ($500) represents something like a 100% markup off what it would cost to buy an equivalent device at Best Buy, which they say we can't do since it won't contain their "custom" software. So these guys are turning burglary into a profit center. Skip over the Thrifty counter the next time you're at the airport rental counter. And by the way, think twice before you buy insurance for your rental car -- the coverage will often be duplicative of what you're already getting through your credit card company or through your existing auto insurance.

-- More on Sarah Palin later today, as I'm preparing my rebuttal to Tom's piece.

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Why Compact, Contiguous Districts are Bad for the Democrats

Jonathan Rodden and Jowei Chen argue that Democrats are underrepresented in Congress and state legislatures because they tend to live in high-density areas. Geographically-compact districting plans will tend to pack Democratic voters into districts where they have 80% of the vote or whatever, thus wasting their votes. They do a voter- and precinct-level analysis of recent elections and find:

In contemporary Florida, partisans are arranged in geographic space in such a way that virtually any districting scheme favoring contiguity and compactness will generate substantial electoral bias in favor of the Republican Party. This result is driven largely by the partisan asymmetry in voters' residential patterns: Since the realignment of the party system, Democrats have tended to live in dense, homogeneous neighborhoods that aggregate into landslide Democratic districts, while Republicans live in more sparsely populated neighborhoods that aggregate into geographically larger and more politically heterogeneous districts. This phenomenon appears to substantially explain the pro-Republican bias observed in Florida's recent legislative elections.

I have just a few things to add to their analysis:

1. More fundamentally, I guess this might be considered a pro-rural or pro-suburban bias, or an anti-urban bias which would fundamentally alter the representation of different parts of the state, no matter which parties happen to represent them.

2. If more Democrats tend to win in super-safe districts where they get 70% or 80% of the vote, does this imply that they will be more free in their voting patterns to indulge their personal preferences, compared to Republicans who (on average) might be under more electoral pressure and have to worry more about reelection?

3. Maybe multimember districts would be a way to balance the playing field. Is this a proposal that Democrats in Florida (or elsewhere) should be making?

Further discussion here.

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