Jay Cost looks at Obama’s television advertising buys, and notes that the campaign has so far opted not to advertise in several states that Clinton won in ’96 (and in ’92 for that matter):

Compare the ad buys to the 1996 results, and you’ll notice that there are six states Clinton won that Obama, who is flush with cash and could spend anywhere, has chosen to leave off his list. Obviously, Arizona is easily explained, as it is McCain’s home state. However, there are five other states not included in the buys: Kentucky, Louisiana, Tennessee, West Virginia, and Arkansas. We can make three points about them.

First, they have been more supportive of successful Democratic presidential candidates than North Dakota et al. Bill Clinton won all five in 1996 and 1992. Jimmy Carter won them all in 1976. Until recently, West Virginia was solidly Democratic – voting for Carter in 1980 and Dukakis in 1988.

Second, with the exception of Kentucky, all of them were more supportive of Kerry in 2004 than North Dakota et al.

Third, they generally remain Democratic in their partisanship.

As Cost notes, the campaign has not been running ads in these states because these were states where Obama was particularly weak in the primaries.  Three of them are in Appalachia, and four of them belong to what I once dubbed “the Casey belt,” because of the prevalence of so-called “Casey Democrats” in these states.  The phrase refers to states that still tilt towards the Democrats in many local and state elections and continue to have greater Democratic than Republican registration, while their Democratic voters tend to be socially conservative.  So it was no accident that Obama fared quite badly with white Democrats in all of these states and lost the primaries in four of them.  There is tremendous resistance to his candidacy among many of these Democrats similar to the resistance Kerry faced, but as Cost observes the states where Obama is making unconventional ad buys demonstrated even greater resistance to Kerry.  

Except for Indiana, which is a natural target for an Illinois candidate, most of the “map-expanding” moves that Obama is making right now make little sense.  I know that the Montana, North Dakota and Alaska polls show a very close race, and at least one has shown Obama leading in Montana, but there are structural reasons that these states almost never vote Democratic in the presidential race, just as there are structural reasons why “the Casey belt” states are more likely to vote that way.  Many of the latter would be reverting to previous voting patterns, while the newly targeted states will have to break with long-established patterns.  Put another way, if these states even voted for Bob Dole, odds are they will still end up voting for Dole Mk II McCain. 

What makes this strategy even more odd is that Georgia, North Dakota, Alaska, Montana, and Indiana add up to 33 electoral votes, while Kentucky, Louisiana, Tennessee, West Virginia, and Arkansas add up to 39 electoral votes, and the first five are much less likely to flip to the Democratic side.  Winning the latter five may not be easy for Obama, but it should by all rights be easier than winning the others, and even if he is entirely successful in winning the traditionally “red” states the payoff is not as great.  What is still more puzzling about the strategy is that it is unnecessary.  Colorado and New Mexico are much more likely to vote Democratic this year than these others, and so long as Obama holds all the Kerry states and wins these along with Iowa he will narrowly win the election.

Consider that the GOP’s best performance in recent years among voters with postgraduate degrees, the heart of the mass upper class, came in the 2002 midterms, when they backed Republican congressional candidates by 51 percent to 45 percent. Had the GOP gone wobbly on abortion or suddenly embraced gay marriage? Of course not: It was the difference between the two parties on national security, suddenly reasserting itself after a decade of abeyance, that made all the difference.  ~Ross and Reihan

It’s an interesting detail and one I wasn’t familiar with, but for one thing I’m not sure that there was as much significant difference here as Ross and Reihan claim.  The differences between the parties on national security were emphasised even more sharply in 2004 (e.g., Howard Dean’s candidacy) and still more in 2006 (e.g., Jim Webb et al.), but most voters (and certainly a much largermajority of post-graduates) found the national security vision of the GOP to be unattractive.  Emphasising differences makes sense, but if it requires one party to go fairly crazy in order for it to make the necessary distinctions it may not be desirable for both party and country.  For that matter, to the extent that there was significant difference between the parties on national security it revolved around the all-together disastrous plan to invade Iraq, but even here the leadership of the opposition very deliberately caved in to sided with the administration.  In any case, I’m not sure that the 2002 campaign offers a desirable or practicable model for the future, since it requires the extremely unusual circumstances of an immediate post-9/11 climate, heavy doses of jingoism and preparation for an unnecessary war.  What this detail from the 2002 midterms tells me is that in an unusually nationalistic mood all segments of the population are more likely to vote for the more robustly nationalist party, and the political pressure in such an extraordinary moment is such that the opposition party feels compelled to imitate the majority by having its leadership throw in its lot with the President’s policies.

Arguably, what has alienated the managers and professionals and caused suburbanite flight to the Democrats is the demonstration of unbelievable incompetence in the prosecution of the war as much as the war itself, but it’s not clear that the two can be usefully separated.  Viewed another way, the devil-may-care approach to postwar occupation and reconstruction is the flip side of the GOP’s more sanguine attitude towards exposure to risk, which is also related to the “economic optimism” that Ross has recently discussed in relation to the Gramm gaffe.  Republican leaders are themselves fairly insulated from economic insecurity, which is what causes the Gramms of the world to whine about national whining.  What these leaders are even more oblivious to is that globalisation has started to create economic anxiety among professionals and managers, just as it has been doing for working-class voters for years and years.  Economic anxiety is related to the desire to shield oneself and one’s family from significant risks, and the inability of Republicans to speak the language of voters who are experiencing this anxiety is directly related to their preference for policies that increase exposure to risk.  That suggests that there may be another way to look at those 2002 results: in the fairly alarmist post-9/11 months of 2002, the party that seemed most capable or willing to reduce exposure to the risk of catastrophic attack prevailed, but in subsequent years this same party has failed to understand and respond to other forms of insecurity and has monomaniacally fixated on antiterrorism as the only kind of security it can talk about with even minimal coherence. 

There is another aspect to this issue that came to mind when I first read the passage quoted above.  In Grand New Party, Ross and Reihan describe the rise of the mass upper-middle class and the resulting cultural polarisation in the country, and they have a particularly astute observation here:

The more that elites kept patriotism at arm’s length and treated national pride with a sophisticate’s tolerance, the more the breach was filled by Sean Hannity-style jingoists.

However, if my interpretation of the ’02 elections is right, it seems as if Ross and Reihan are arguing that one way to win over the heart of the upper-middle class is to engage in jingoism and demagoguery on national security as the GOP did in 2002.  That does not seem to add up.  Fortunately, their actual policy proposals for winning over the upper-middle class are entirely domestic and are far removed from the spirit of ’02.

Newsweek has a new presidential poll out, and not surprisingly the results have changed radically now that they have corrected their methodology with respect to party ID.  Instead of Republicans making up 22-23% of all respondents, they are now 25% (and 28% of the RV respondents), and suddenly Obama’s lead is three points instead of fifteen.  It’s hard to know how much movement in the poll is simply the result of making this correction, and how much the race has tightened in recent weeks.  At first glance, it would appear as if all of the change has come from previous Obama supporters switching sides or reverting to undecided, but again this may be nothing more than fixing the glaring problems of the last poll.  The large undecided figure and the reasonably small Obama lead are much more in line with several other surveys. 

In one potentially telling crosstab, Obama receives just 36% white support, and he is still pulling in just 70% of Clinton supporters.  All in all, though, this new result is much more in line with Newsweek polls from before June, but it also shows an increase in undecided voters compared to both April and May, while I would have thought the opposite would be true now that both nominees are known.

One thing that being a convert to Orthodoxy in America teaches you is that there is no necessary relation between adhering to strong theological conservatism and adhering to political conservatism, and another thing that it teaches is that what you thought was political conservatism may have been woefully lacking in wisdom.  The two do tend to reinforce one another, but theological conservatism can draw one to hold views very much at odds with what conventionally passes for political conservatism in Western countries.  I say this by way of introduction to the question of whether theological conservatives who are defending scriptural authority and tradition must eschew language that is, in political contexts, normally associated with the left without being found intellectually bankrupt.     

That is not to say that Demophilus, one of James’ new cohort of pomocons, is wrong when he critiques the anti- or post-colonial language of conservative Anglicans when they reject Canterbury’s primacy as a “colonial structure.”  Then again, considering that a huge number of conservative (or, perhaps more accurately, traditionalist) Anglicans now hail from what is sometimes euphemistically called “the global South” and usually live in former British colonies in Africa and Asia, they would be more inclined to use such a language in defense of their religious traditon.  There is also some truth to the claim that global Anglicanism has had a “colonial structure,” not least since the existence of Anglicanism in most of the countries where most theological conservatives reside is a product of British colonialism, and Demophilus acknowledges this history as well. 

You might say that this is an exceedingly literal way to take this statement, and certainly the phrase is intended as a rebuke as much as a description, but one should also consider the audience that the conservatives are addressing.  They are not simply talking to themselves, but are appealing to their fellow Anglicans in language that the latter may find persuasive or at least reasonable, and nothing induces feelings of shame and remorse in liberals, whether theological or political, than to suggest that they are acting in a neo-colonial fashion.  Respect for history and contingency is valuable, but I don’t think it follows to say:

To not go through Canterbury would be, simply, to no longer be Anglican. 

If communion with Canterbury is “the basic principle of being Anglican,” I would have to suggest that “the basic principle of being Anglican” does not mean very much.  It seems to me that conservative Anglicans today are seeking to understand how to be fairly orthodox while remaining in their theological tradition, and they are concluding reasonably enough that remaining in communion with a see that puts little store by such orthodoxy may not be compatible with their own respect for scriptural authority and the ecclesiastical tradition they have received.   

Demophilus’ post also reminds me of last week’s Spectator, which carried a lengthy article on Anglicanism and what the clash within the “global” Communion has done to the Church of England.  The article seems especially relevant to this discussion, since, in addition to its reference to the Gafcon meeting, it starts off with a telling anecdote:

Some years ago a vicar gave a sermon in which he tried to explain the latest developments in the Anglican Communion to his congregation. Afterwards an old lady came up to him, a bit bemused. ‘How does all this stuff about Anglicans affect us?’, she asked. ‘Well,’ he replied, smiling warmly at the old biddy, ‘we’re all part of the global Anglican Communion, aren’t we?’ She looked still more bemused: ‘I thought we were Church of England.’ [bold mine-DL] 

Of course, to be CofE is to be Anglican in a very obvious etymological way, but as the CofE has enmeshed itself in global Anglicanism conservative Anglicans have become increasingly frustrated with ties to the CofE, because Canterbury seems to embrace or tolerate all of those trends within the Communion that they find intolerable.  Indeed, conservative Anglicans should receive some credit for pursuing what is probably an ultimately thankless task of trying to maintain some measure of theological orthodoxy in an inhospitable ecclesiastical tradition.  They are to be given credit precisely as conservatives for attempting to persist as Anglicans despite the failings of many existing Anglican institutions.  If the problem really is Anglicanism in itself, as Demophilus proposes, this necessarily defines Anglicanism to be at odds with any serious scriptural orthodoxy.  Now I am not party to the dispute, but it seems to me that this is an extraordinary claim to make when half of the Anglicans in the world believe that orthodoxy and Anglicanism can in some way still coexist.

Freddy notes Andrew Roberts’ strange review of The Post-American World, but Freddy missed what was by far the strangest remark when he talks about Zakaria’s supposed gloominess:

It’s a pretty gloomy analysis from the man who is advising John McCain on foreign policy [bold mine-DL]…

This CFR page, which is a copy of this Newsweek article, includes a mention of Zakaria’s harsh critique of McCain’s Los Angeles foreign policy address in the passage discussing “analysts not affiliated with McCain’s campaign.”  If he is acting in any formal advisory capacity, it isn’t listed on his bio page.  He is “advising” McCain in the same way that any number of pundits and public intellectuals “advise” candidates to agree with them. 

As for the review itself, it is pretty useless.  Before making the programmatic warnings about “isolationism” and “protectionism,” Roberts concedes that an Indian hegemony wouldn’t be so bad, but Chinese hegemony would be, but this completely misses the point of Zakaria’s book: no other power is going to attain to the sort of unipolar dominance of the world that the U.S. has enjoyed, but the U.S. will not enjoy it in the future, either.  That is a far cry from making declinist arguments that America is doomed to become even a second-tier power, but then perhaps the rest of us are insufficiently “pro-American” to understand these things.

Ridiculing Bernard-Henri Levy is usually more Michael’s hobby, but I’ll take a crack at it.  Citing reasons why Obama is likely to win, he had this howler in his new article:

In Florida, another swing state, he [Obama] is already campaigning against the prospect of offshore oil drilling, which has been imprudently supported by his rival.

Perhaps BHL is unaware of this, but a majority of likely Floridian voters supportsoffshore oil drilling and, perhaps not entirely coincidentally, McCain leads fairly comfortably there.  There are many other things he seems to be unaware of as he delves into American presidential politics.  He writes breathlessly:

Not to mention the setting up of a special committee (partly presided over, if you please, by Caroline Kennedy!) to help choose Obama’s future vice president. Will it be the former governor of New Mexico [bold mine-DL]? Governor Strickland, in a nod to blue-collar voters?

Bruce King has made Obama’s VP short-list, and no one told me?!  Ahem.  Bill Richardon is, alas, still the governor of New Mexico and, for our sins, will continue to be until early 2011.  As most people following the election closely in this country know, Strickland very clearly took himself out of the running.  Obama should hope that BHL is no more accurate when he describes Obama as a “meteor,” since these are things that burn up in the atmosphere or crash to earth.

On the main blog, Patrick Ford notes the latest Krauthammer column, in which he uncontroversially lauds the Colombian rescue of hostages held by FARC, but Krauthammer then refers to Colombia’s (illegal) raid into Ecuador as “your standard hard-power operation duly denounced by that perfect repository of soft power, the Organization of American States.”  If by “standard hard-power operation,” he means an illegal cross-border military action forbidden under the OAS Charter and denounced by most of the Western Hemisphere, then, yes, it was pretty standard.  From there he goes on to rattle off many of the world’s most miserable lands, as if the reality of their misery makes it obvious what outsiders, and in particular Americans, should do about them.  Throughout there is an opposition between “hard” and “soft” power, as if any state uses only one kind.  In certain circumstances, “hard” power is necessary and unavoidable.  “Soft” power may often be ineffective, at least when exercised only through the passing of resolutions and the making of speeches, but then “soft” power includes everything from both public and official diplomacy to economic relations to cultural exchanges to humanitarian aid. 

For that matter, “hard” power is not always defined by unnecessary land invasions that throw a country into chaos or ineffectual air strikes that destroy a country’s infrastructure.  Those just happen to be Krauthammer’s preferred forms of “hard” power, or so one would gather from reading his columns over the last few years.  “Hard” power can sometimes be used intelligently in a limited fashion to much greater effect, and this is probably even more true in an era of guerrilla wars and nonstate actors.  The relevant questions to be asked when deciding whether or not a state should employ “hard” power are these: does the state have interests at stake that compel it to use force, and have all other less costly, less dangerous, reasonable alternatives been exhausted?  Pretty clearly, in each of the cases Krauthammer mentions (i.e., Darfur, Burma, and Zimbabwe), America has no interests at stake, so talk of armed intervention is absurd.  Such calls for intervention are in their way as worthy of mockery as passing powerless resolutions, since they represent their own kind of unrealistic moral preening.

Speaking of Colombia, I see via Raimondo that Michael Moynihan recently wrote what one might almost call an apology for Alvaro Uribe, which makes me wonder why certain democratically-elected allied leaders who engage in heavy-handed–but effective–tactics in attempts to impose order on a fairly lawless country receive his praise and other foreign elected leaders receive withering scorn as harbingers of “Sovietization.”  Uribe’s 80% approval rating is taken as proof of solid public support, while Putin’s old 70% approval ratings were either irrelevant or proof of dictatorship.  Apparently in Latin America, we must judge local political leaders on a “steep curve,” unless their name is Chavez, for whom the usual condemnations are appropriate, but on other continents different standards are applied.

In the wake of the black Wednesday that saw the Fourth Amendment eviscerated, the ACLU is going ahead with its legal challenge against the new legislation that Mr. Bush signed this week.  Chris Hedges makes an important point about the impact the new surveillance powers will have on journalism.  While international communications of all kinds are now theoretically exposed to surveillance without meaningful oversight, Hedges applies this very specifically to the destructive effect this will have on journalists’ relationships with confidential sources.  Even if these communications are not used against the sources in some way, the fear that they could be might very well keep many of the media’s foreign sources from communicating with American reporters here.  Of course, as with every government usurpation, the point is not even a matter of whether such power will be used in such an abusive way, but that the government should not have such a power to engage in surveillance without cause and without oversight at all.  The very existence of such a power is an invitation to abuse, and in the coming years some future administration is going to remind us of this basic truth by using these powers against its critics and political opponents.

Their rationale for doing that [approving surveillance bill] is that it prevents the Republicans from depicting them as “weak,” because nothing exudes strength like bowing. ~Glenn Greenwald