The 2010 Elections
Over the weekend a commenter on my South Dakota post remarked that I had been “almost uniformly wrong” on my political race blogging for the last two years. That was an interesting claim, since I’m fairly sure that when it comes to House races my assessments of the special elections since Obama’s inauguration have been reasonably accurate. It’s true that it didn’t take great insight to recognize that Jim Tedisco was blowing an easy Republican win in NY-20. There were plenty of other people remarking on how poorly the GOP had to do to allow NY-23 to slip away for the first time in over a century. It was even easier in PA-12 to see that the Republican candidate was not going to win. It’s true that I never saw the Massachusetts Senate upset coming, but then the same might be said for the vast majority of observers.
When it comes to looking at House races during the past two years, I believe I have been correctly identifying the unifying theme that connects Republican failures in special House elections, and this is the tendency of the Republican candidate to run on a national party platform and to ignore or neglect local issues and interests. In NY-20 and NY-23, and again in PA-12, Republicans keep wanting to nationalize House races, and when they try this they are unsuccessful. Democratic candidates have been successful in these races because they have been resolutely parochial and preoccupied with their respective districts’ local concerns. If I understand Republican strategy for the midterms, it seems that they would like to nationalize the election and imitate their repeated failed attempts to hold or pick up seats in the last two years. Maybe that will work better during a general election. The GOP had better hope so. They now have the overwhelming majority of the media and the pundit class analyzing their impending victory almost as if it has already happened, so falling short will look even worse than before.
Most of the claims about the midterms we are hearing now continue to be based on the gaudy, seemingly incredible Republican advantage on generic ballot polling. As a matter of analysis, I find the obsession with the generic ballot poll to be something that unites Republican enthusiasts and Democratic doomsayers in their complete obliviousness to the variety of House races. The closer one looks at many of the individual races, the harder it becomes to see where the Republicans pick up all these seats they’re supposedly going to take over.
Obviously, an advantage in money isn’t everything, but when I see (via Weigel) the 8-to-1 money advantage belonging to Tom Perriello, the presumed dead man walking from VA-05, it makes me want to question my own assumption that he will lose. Of course, Perriello is probably finished because of the political leanings of his district, but most others can’t be taken for granted.
Walt Minnick in Idaho has an enormous 16-to-1 cash-on-hand advantage over his Republican challenger, and his seat is no longer seen as being all that vulnerable. If there is a tsunami coming, shouldn’t Democrats in Idaho (even if they are former Republicans who opposed every major piece of legislation for the past two years) be among the first swept out to sea? It did Jon Hostettler and Jim Leach no good to be antiwar, anti-Bush Republicans in 2006, but Minnick seems to have protected himself against the backlash. Why won’t other Blue Dogs be able to do the same thing?
I know I keep coming back to Travis Childers in MS-01, but he represents exactly the sort of district Republicans must win this year, and he is not doing that badly. Childers has a four-to-one cash-on-hand advantage, and he ran 17 points ahead of Obama in his district in 2008. According to the latest poll from there, Childers currently leads his opponent by five points, and he has positive favorability and job approval ratings. Presumably a GOP tsunami should be swamping a Democrat in northern Mississippi in a district that gave Roger Wicker almost 66% of the vote in 2006, but it doesn’t seem to be happening. At the very least, the race is so competitive that Republicans cannot assume that they will win MS-01, and if they can’t win there they are fast running out of easy pick-ups.
The point is not that Republicans aren’t going to gain a large number of seats. Gaining 25-30 seats is still significant. 35 or 38 would be even more impressive, but it still won’t be enough. My point here is that Republicans will have to win every single one of the seats I have mentioned here to manage a takeover of the House. As well as they are polling on the generic ballot, they are not doing nearly as well in several of the races that they must win.
Update: Buried in the new ABC poll is an interesting result. When asked whether their vote in the midterms will be to express opposition to or support for Obama, 25% said support and 27% said opposition, and 49% said that Obama is not a factor. Compare that to poll ahead of the ’06 midterms in which 35% said opposition and 18% said support. That is what a backlash against a President looks like.
Come on Daniel you’ve been slow on the uptake wrt the Republican resurgence since spring 2009 (in fact it seems like you’re willfully staying behind the curve out of animosity toward the GOP establishment). I’m thinking in particular of Christie, Scott Brown, McDonnell, Specter, etc.
Especially that last one. It should be clear at this point that the GOP is better off with Toomey every which way. He’s more likely to win, he will do a better job if he gets there, he’s a better symbol for the GOP win or lose.
Overall, the lay of the land is different now than it was at the time Obama was elected. The American people have far more enthusiasm for limited government, and the GOP is far more credible to represent that aspiration. If you can’t consider that, even as a hypothetical, you’re going to stay behind the times.
Koz, you’re the one that’s not getting it. “The American people have far more enthusiasm for limited government.” That is a hypothetical because it has no support to back it up at all. Above all, Daniel has done well in sticking to verifiable facts about the individual races. If he is behind the times in regard to the fact-free pundit (and dittoheads) class, then more power to him.
Is that so? Well wrt the PA Senate race (more precisely Specter’s party switch in anticipation of it), Daniel wrote:
“A health care entitlement is the obvious piece of legislation that, if passed, will work to destroy the right politically for 20 years at least and permanently shift the political spectrum to the left. Pushing Specter out the door helps make that more likely, and making the stimulus into some great litmus test made Specter’s defection possible.”
(www.amconmag.com/larison/2009/04/28/specter-flips/)
which is wrong 8 ways to Sunday. For the purpose of the current political environment, the GOP has hard earned credibility in fighting for limited government. Daniel (and yourself perhaps) seem to definitively rejected any possibility that the American people might actually want limited government or that the GOP might actually fight for it. You don’t have to be blind to previous GOP mistakes or venality to see this is not the case.
Koz,
Where is your proof that the GOP “”has hard earned credibility in fighting for limited government”?
When asked how they would cut the budget deficit, all Republicans can say is “tax cuts”, as if that were going to do something other than grow the deficit.
Daniel,
Do you have any thoughts on JD Lawson on NC-4? Dr. Lawson seems to have a lot in common with another Dr. that some folks in these parts are fond of.
And Koz…oh that I wish it were so. Looks like a lot of anti-Obama sentiment out there…not as much real anti-government sentiment.
Peace be with you.
Are you betting on InTrade? And for people who aren’t and make different predictions, why should anyone think that person is more accurate? Embrace the betting norm!
I think that many people are more enthusiastic about the idea of limited government than they were in 2008. After all, they elected Democrats, the big government party, almost two years ago and the economy still sucks. Which is what people care about the most.
As the saying goes, when the team is doing poorly, the backup quarterback is the most popular guy in town.
But, it’s hard to say how popular limited government, as opposed to the idea of limited government, really is. Lots of things that require personal sacrifice — and drastic cuts in Federal spending will negatively affect many people — are popular right up until the time that the sacrifices made apparent. Further adding to the theoretical popularity of cutting spending is that many people have only a vague idea of how much Federal money is actually spent on things like popular entitlements instead of unpopular things like foreign aid.
I think that the Republican establishment understands this pretty well. It’s why Paul Ryan’s plan is not publicly talked about all that much by Republican politicians. It’s why you see ads on TV attacking Sestak for cutting Medicare (I live in PA) and why many Republicans are in a quandary when it comes to repealing the health care bill (parts of the bill are fairly popular, and 13% (according to one poll) of people oppose the law because it’s not liberal enough).
The Republicans are not the party of limited government. The Democrats are not the party of big government. These are stereotypes and they are essentially meaningless in an era where both parties want to drastically increase governmental power.
Some of them may spout platitudes about limited government or whatever, but seriously guys, these are meaningless cliches. With the very rare exceptions of people like Ron Paul, virtually every member or would-be member of the government wants to expand government power regardless of party affiliation. Look at the actions, not the words, and you’ll find that the disagreement is not in power but instead merely in placement – the Republicans just are a bit more naked about wanting government expansion via the military-industrial complex.
“Where is your proof that the GOP “”has hard earned credibility in fighting for limited government”?”
Well the main things are the opposition to the health care bill and the stimulus package. As a result the Americans out there who oppose such things (and there are a lot of them) have a plausible path to preventing them or rolling them back, ie, vote Republican.
“Looks like a lot of anti-Obama sentiment out there…not as much real anti-government sentiment.”
Hmmm, I actually think it’s the other way around. Obama’s policies are almost universally disliked but Obama himself is much more popular and more popular than the nadir of George W Bush for that matter.
Hmmm. I’m torn. On the one hand, as a Democrat . I am expecting a 1994 size blowout victory for the GOP. On the other hand, I think Larison has been fairly accurate in the past with his predictions. Moreover, like many Democrats, I feel pretty confident that Obama’s healthcare measure will become more popular as more and more voters come to rely on it. Further, I have a perhaps naive expectation that jingoism, racism, and blatant appeals to fear will fail over the long haul.
Respecting the immigration issue, I am well aware that there are many reasons to support severe measures beyond those of mere racism. Conversely, I would hope for some acknowledgment that a large segment of that support is truly due to racism as is some of the anti-Obama sentiment. A lot of Republicans seem to want to believe that the racists are just a small element among their numbers. Well, I think it is pretty clear that they are not a small number and that they are also the most energized element.
“Well the main things are the opposition to the health care bill and the stimulus package.”
Given that if either had been proposed by a Republican President, and pretty much all of the stimulus package and a good deal of the health care bill could have been, the GOP would have automatically lined up in support…I’m not sure the opposition proves what you think it proves.
Mike
Let’s take this step by step. First, I am happy to acknowledge that I was very wrong about the NJ governor’s race. I assumed that people in New Jersey were willing to tolerate more corruption in their government than they were, and I assumed that the state had drifted so far into the D column that Christie couldn’t win. That was definitely an error.
On Specter, it’s not clear to me what I’m supposed to have been wrong about. Writing sixteen months ago, I was arguing that Toomey would not be competitive and that Specter had a much better chance of holding the seat. When I wrote that and for most of the next year, that still looked right. Right now, it appears that I was apparently wrong about Toomey’s ability to compete, but otherwise I think that argument holds up fairly well. And, no, Toomey is not more likely to win than Specter would have been had Specter stayed a Republican. Toomey may end up winning, and he will have proved me wrong on that point, but his challenge took a safe seat and made it into a toss-up. That decision looks great right now, but for most of the last year it looked extremely risky.
If Specter hadn’t felt compelled to jump to the Democrats, he wouldn’t have become their 60th vote, and if he had remained a Republican he stood a better chance of winning than Toomey did. As it turned out, becoming the 60th vote wasn’t as important as everyone initially thought it would be, but it is conceivable that without Specter giving them that extra vote they would not have proceeded as far as they did with health care legislation. My point last year was that it was folly to give the Democrats a gift of that extra vote in the Senate for the sake of taking a stand on a far less important matter of his vote for the stimulus. It was folly.
Sestak beat Specter in the Democratic pimary (as I said he would) because Specter’s opportunism was simply too obnoxious, but what if Specter didn’t change parties? Does a sitting Republican Senator lose in Pennsylvania under present conditions? Not very likely. His nice polling lead aside, Toomey could still lose. Now I was wrong to doubt Toomey as much as I did. According to the polls, he can compete statewide, and clearly the conditions that created Santorum’s massive defeat are not being repeated. Regardless, by effectively forcing Specter out Pennsylvania Republicans made an easy hold into a toss-up. If the goal is to retain and gain seats in Congress, that seemed foolish last year. It still does.
As for my claim about the health care entitlement, it’s obviously too early to know how much of an effect it will have. What we are seeing from the public is not an encouraging sign that support for limited government is on the rise. Much of the hostility to the health care bill comes from a desire to defend existing entitlement spending. Had the Democrats not bothered with the pretense that they were trying to pay for the new entitlement, and had they not threatened cuts to Medicare as part of that, most of the opposition from 65+ voters would never have materialized.
Much of the antagonism towards the Democrats in Congress comes not from the belief that the government has been doing too much, but that it has been insufficiently active in somehow magically “fixing” the economy. For most voters, discontent with the stimulus has not come from anxieties about rising debt or out of a belief that the government cannot spend its way out of slow growth. The frustration that voters are feeling comes from the belief that the stimulus was insufficient. The impatience and anger coming from much of the public are products of an entitled, dependent mentality. This mentality insists that the government has to make high unemployment go away, and make it go away right now. That is a very different mentality from one that says that the government should be doing less and spending less. Right now Republicans and conservatives are riding that wave of discontent, pretending that it represents something other than what it is, and then will claim to have a mandate for something that people didn’t actually want. That means that they are going to end up doing exactly what they think the Democrats have done for the last two years.
“As for my claim about the health care entitlement, it’s obviously too early to know how much of an effect it will have. What we are seeing from the public is not an encouraging sign that support for limited government is on the rise.”
There’s a lot to disagree with here, so let’s start with this.
There is no way the D’s could have finessed this. Their bottom line was to create a federal guarantee for the provision of health care services in general. Well guess what, that’s a new entitlement, which has to be paid for. The oldsters figured out (faster than I did fwiw) that creating new entitlements undermines the financial stability of existing entitlements. Mainstream conservatives oppose the creation of new entitlements in general.
It’s not at all too early to take stock of the political consequences of this. Not only have the Republicans got some benefit for being on the right side of this issue, the way it played out made it clear that there is nothing at all inevitable about the welfare state rachet. Ie, if the voters out there want to stop or reverse it, there is a plausible path to get there: vote Republican.
“Well guess what, that’s a new entitlement, which has to be paid for. The oldsters figured out (faster than I did fwiw) that creating new entitlements undermines the financial stability of existing entitlements. Mainstream conservatives oppose the creation of new entitlements in general.”
George W. Bush and virtually every Republican in the House created a prescription drug entitlement under Medicare and didn’t even make the slightest pretense of paying for it.
Mike
“The frustration that voters are feeling comes from the belief that the stimulus was insufficient.”
There two prominent Democratic economists (Brad DeLong and Paul Krugman) who have been banging on this drum since before the first stimulus passed. They have gotten absolute zero traction for that idea outside themselves. Substantial parts of the Administration don’t believe it. The voters clearly don’t believe it, and I defy Daniel to produce evidence to the contrary.
This leads to,
“The impatience and anger coming from much of the public are products of an entitled, dependent mentality.”
No, this is severely stunted reading of the American people. In postwar America, we have a strong folk tradition for supporting an ever-expanding welfare state. We also have a strong folk tradition for opposing such. I usually call these folk-Marxism and anti-folk-Marxism in comments at Ordinary Gentlemen. What these words lack in elegance they make up in accuracy, because they get at the key driver of how economic policy is created in political sphere. Ie, the basic aspirations of the American people relative to the state.
As things stand, the anti folk Marxists are on the upswing. This is pretty much undeniable unless you’re Daniel, who I suspect either doesn’t believe it or more likely, refuses to countenance the possibility that there ever could be a significant anti-folk-Marxist presence in America in the first place.
In any case, the challenge for the mainstream Right is pretty clear. Instead of amusing ourselves by pissing on Jonah Goldberg or Mitch McConnell or whoever, we should be playing the game that counts. Ie, we should harness and amplify the anti-folk-Marxist presence in America and fight the big-picture cultural and political fights.
And guess what? We’re doing that right now, and we’re winning. We’re not going to win every day of course. But even on the days when we’re not winning, it’s still not an excuse for not fighting.
“In postwar America, we have a strong folk tradition for supporting an ever-expanding welfare state. We also have a strong folk tradition for opposing such.”
But one of those traditions has essentially won every single battle that’s ever been fought.
Mike
I’m with Koz on the first quote re: insufficiency. And this quote is wrong, but for different reasons: The impatience and anger coming from much of the public are products of an entitled, dependent mentality.
It’s dead wrong actually. The impatience and anger is coming from the middle class, the only class that doesn’t have a shred of an entitled and dependent mentality. They are pissed that “losers” are being helped to keep their homes (doesn’t matter that it’s not true) and they are pissed that the rich have the game rigged in their favor. They aren’t getting social or corporate welfare and they despise that – not because they don’t like being the only ones not on welfare, but because they want all welfare to end. They see it as un-American. [I'm channeling, not speaking from personal feeling]
And I think this shoots the messenger when the message is true: This mentality insists that the government has to make high unemployment go away, and make it go away right now.
Indulge a liberal rant: Whoever doesn’t insist in making high unemployment go away as fast as possible is a cretin. There is absolutely no benefit to high, long-lasting unemployment. It is an unmitigated disaster. And not just for the unemployed, but the entire society. The private sector on its own is not even adding enough jobs to employ new entrants into the labor force. Thus government spending is the only option to end high unemployment. Demand-side economics works.
Finally, no one thinks that this can be accomplished quickly. But plans and actions do need to be done right now. Every day of delay is a tragedy for more Americans.
“George W. Bush and virtually every Republican in the House created a prescription drug entitlement under Medicare and didn’t even make the slightest pretense of paying for it.”
Actually a significant number of the House Republicans opposed that as well as most of the mainstream conservative pundit class.
More than that, the fiscal irresponsibility of that bill was based on the fear of provoking an entitlements/debt crisis like the one that we’re in now. For good or ill it’s much more credible to oppose new entitlements to prevent adverse consequences that we know for certain will happen as opposed to adverse consequences that we’re afraid might happen sometime in the future.
“But one of those traditions has essentially won every single battle that’s ever been fought.”
Uh, no. Check the tape.
The anti folk Marxists have scored some real wins in our lifetime. Kemp-Roth, 1996 welfare reform, Gramm-Rudman, deregulation of trucking, etc.
Just because the other team has won most of the time doesn’t mean they’ve won all the time or will continue to win most of the time in the future.
“Indulge a liberal rant: Whoever doesn’t insist in making high unemployment go away as fast as possible is a cretin.”
There’s some short-term answers for this and there are plausible reasons to pick and choose among them based on one thing or another. But the long term answer is clear: reject folk Marxism and the Democratic Party symbiotic to it.
Koz, on September 8th, 2010 at 11:39 am Said:
Actually a significant number of the House Republicans opposed that as well as most of the mainstream conservative pundit class.
I may have the wrong bill, but i’m counting only a little over 8% of Republicans in the house opposed the MMA. Hardly a significant number. Additionally, there was a lot of arm-twisting on the part of the White House and Republican leadership in the House to change votes.
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2003/roll332.xml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicare_Prescription_Drug,_Improvement,_and_Modernization_Act
“If Specter hadn’t felt compelled to jump to the Democrats, he wouldn’t have become their 60th vote, and if he had remained a Republican he stood a better chance of winning than Toomey did.”
First of all, Specter wasn’t compelled to do anything of the sort. This gets a little bit complicated and needs to be sorted based on whose pov we’re looking from. From Specter’s pov assuming that his only motivation is to stay in office, he obviously made the wrong choice in retrospect. But there’s no guarantee that it was right choice at the time that he made it.
To the extent that Specter felt that his political career was in jeopardy, it was the Republican primary voters not the Republican political establishment, that did it.
From the Republican primary voters perspective, it’s obvious that Toomey is the best choice. He represents their views, and the idea that Specter is more electable was true in the past but not at all clear any more. Finally, it’s important to note that we have an interest that’s aligned with the PA Republicans in this case and that goes beyond policy. We believe or ought to believe as lower-case-r republicans in the sovereignty of the citizens. Such sovereignty is undermined by maneuvers such as Specter’s which have become all common in the political class so we have a rooting interest in hoping they don’t work.
The polls over-represent the last group of people with land lines who answer the phone without looking at caller id, old people. I haven’t answered a call from a strange # in 10 years, and 99% of my friends and acquaintances are cell-only. None of us are ever polled.
Old people as a group are more conservative and thus push polls to the right. While the apathy of the youth to Obama (largely because of the continuation of the wars/Gitmo/etc) will help Republicans this cycle, it’s a huge mistake to use the now largely-irrelevant polling as indicative of large swings in public sentiment.
Polling is going to get even more unrepresentative as even people in my cohort of 30-40 somethings give up our little-used land lines for cellphone-only. Good riddance in my opinion. Maybe leaders will finally lead for things that are right and not just popular. Kind of like the supposed 70% of religious bigots that a majority of politicians are all too happy to wipe their butts with the Constitution on the Park 51 bullcrap.
“The anti folk Marxists have scored some real wins in our lifetime. Kemp-Roth, 1996 welfare reform, Gramm-Rudman, deregulation of trucking, etc.”
To what extent did any of those things actually produce a smaller or more limited government?
Mike
“For good or ill it’s much more credible to oppose new entitlements to prevent adverse consequences that we know for certain will happen as opposed to adverse consequences that we’re afraid might happen sometime in the future.”
We’re not talking about OPPOSING new entitlements. We’re talking about Republicans creating a massive new entitlement.
Mike
Well yes the Republican political establishment under George W Bush created Medicare Part D. But even they can learn.
If we blame them for creating an expensive new entitlement that might cause or exacerbate an entitlements/debt crisis sometime in the future (as we should), we should at least give them credit for opposing an expensive new entitlement during an entitlements/debt crisis.
Koz,
I appreciate your optimism, but I stand by my previous statement. If the 2003 Prescription Drug Bill was being pushed by Pelosi/Reid/Obama, my inbox would be on fire with emails from NewsMax, Glenn Beck, et. al. warning (rightly) about how the government was taking over health care. However, since Dubya was in charge, there was this lukewarm, ‘compassionate conservatism’ feel to the whole thing. Sure there were some detractors, but it was passed by a Republican Congress, and signed by a Republican President (i.e. the leader of the Republican Party.)
This should come as no surprise since most politicians value party loyalty above almost any other trait (save fundraising prowess.) It also aligns nicely with Randolph Bourne’s aphorism about war being the health of the state. We saw it with the growth in federal programs during WWII, the War on Poverty during Vietnam, and this white elephant during this decade’s disastrous wars. Essentially, the debate for guns OR butter becomes a debate for guns AND butter.
Next time you go to a local town hall meeting for your Congressperson or Senator, ask them how they plan on reducing the size of government…and don’t let them play the waste/fraud/abuse card. Ask them for specific programs/agencies/departments they are willing to cut off funding for.
I’d be curious to hear what they say.
Peace be with you.
Frankly, worrying about entitlements and deficits with our economy on the lip of a serious double-dip is like deciding to focus on credit card balances while your house burns around you. Our economic house is on fire, and eventually the heat will reach the rich people that overwhelmingly make up our pathetically out-of-touch political and media class. They’re all for “tightening our (poor peoples’) belts” for some “fiscal responsibility”.
Contrast this with China, where their extremely aggressive stimulus of around 4 trillion yuan has produced nearly 10% growth in 2010. But according to GOP orthodoxy, which are the rules all “serious” media and professional politicians reflexively follow, gov’t stimulus doesn’t work, even when we can see it with our own lyin’ eyes.
“we should at least give them credit for opposing an expensive new entitlement during an entitlements/debt crisis.”
1. Our current situation isn’t an entitlement crisis.
2. They don’t get any credit if their opposition is based on only mindless partisanship. You can accidentally do the right thing for the wrong reason, but you’ll do the wrong thing far more often.
Mike
“1. Our current situation isn’t an entitlement crisis.”
Oh but it is, and you should be able to be see why it’s perceived to be if nothing else. If you can’t the people who can won’t be able to trust you.
Old people as a group are more conservative and thus push polls to the right. While the apathy of the youth to Obama (largely because of the continuation of the wars/Gitmo/etc) will help Republicans this cycle, it’s a huge mistake to use the now largely-irrelevant polling as indicative of large swings in public sentiment.
Your hypothesis sounds plausible, but you’re not the first one to think of it. Where did we hear this before? Right: every time a poll showed that McCain and Obama were close. What did the polls say then? Let’s look at the RealClearPolitics composite:
Obama: 52.1
McCain: 44.5
Now the actual results:
Obama: 52.9
McCain: 45.6
The pollsters know what they’re doing. Your landline/mobile hypothesis is false.
“Your landline/mobile hypothesis is false.”
Indeed it is. More specifically, it is a known issue that the pollsters have adapted to.
“Frankly, worrying about entitlements and deficits with our economy on the lip of a serious double-dip is like deciding to focus on credit card balances while your house burns around you.”
Well the reason our house is on fire, so to speak, is because of entitlements and more broadly the folk Marxist mentality underlying them.
I hardly think tax-cuts that benefit the wealthiest 1% and a disastrous war of choice count as an entitlement crisis.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2543224/posts