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The political wisdom of opposition

By Fester:

Let's imagine that you are a member of the minority party in the US government.  The President of the opposite party is fairly to very popular.  He is pushing a big, hard to reverse program with uncertain outcomes that has strong support from the Senators and Representatives of his party.  The program has strong but not overwhelming public support.  There is a bit of undefined unease about the program, but the public, after a bit of a PR blitz and publicity whipping will most likely fall in line with elite opinion.  The big area of cleavage in public opinion is between your strong supporters (as this is not an "Ice Cream is Delicious" Sense of The Senate resolution) and everyone else.

How do you vote if your vote is not the marginally decisive vote (either #218 in the House of #51/60 in the Senate)

Am I talking about the AUMF for Iraq in 2002?  No, although the superstructure of the political calculation is the same.  I'm talking about Republican votes for any stimulus package.

Nate Silver lays out the decision tree:

you have essentially three options.

1) Try to pressure Obama into some kind of compromise, and vote for that compromise;
2) Let the stimulus pass as the Democrats choose to construct it, over your strong objection;
3) Yield to Obama, and vote for the stimulus in the name of national unity.

The third choice probably isn't very appealing to you. It might be appealing to Newt Gingrich, who is telling you that you don't have the credibility right now to pick a fight. Better off rebuidling and rebranding the party for the long term. But rebuilding and rebranding means someone other than you is in charge -- someone, for example, like Newt Gingirch. So that option is out.

So let's think through the other couple of choices. First thing first: if the economy improves substantially by the midterm elections, you're screwed. It won't matter whether you voted for the stimulus or voted against it, and it won't matter whether you achieved some kind of compromise or you didn't. If, by the summer of 2010, GDP growth has miraculously recovered to 4% per year, that's all the public is going to think about. Obama Save Economy!! Me Vote Democrat!! They aren't going to care about whether you snuck some sort of capital gains tax cut in there.

But let's say that the economy still sucks in 2010 -- which, frankly, is a pretty good bet. That's going to work much, much better for you if you've voted against the stimulus. Not only can you pin the blame on the donkeys, but you can campaign on tax cutting and fiscal responsibility -- the stimulus will "prove", once and for all, the wisdom of conservative economic principles. And then think about this: the Democrats are going to be trying to spend $800 billion in taxpayer dollars as quickly as they can possibly get away with it. Somewhere along the way, they're going to wind up funding a Woodstock Museum or a Bridge to Nowhere. Somewhere along the way, an enterprising contractor is going to embezzle.....

The stimulus has non-symmetrical political pay-offs.  Seeing positive impacts of the stimulus package and voting for or against it still leaves the GOP rep SOL.  The big project is a Democratic Branded project, almost all benefits will accrue to the Democrats.  Voting for the stimulus and seeing a fairly crappy economy in the summer of 2010 deprives an incumbent of a good sledge hammer.  The only positive political outcome is to oppose the bail-out and be proven right about your wisdom. 

And guess what, that is a healthy choice for both democracy and program design.  It is in the best interests of the Democrats to not be proven wrong.  Being embarrassed, and being harassed by reporters to explain the ties of one of your major contributors built a baby-barbecue pit with stimulus funds on shadily acquired public land is not fun.  It is something that most people will actively avoid by taking  pro-active measures to avoid these types of problems.  Opposition increases the cost of stupidity which means, all else being equal, there should be less stupidity. 

Caving and hoping that the popular opponent screws up without destroying your own credibility as a critic is amazingly stupid political strategy (Hi John Kerry, Dick Gephardt, Hillary Clinton, Tom Daschle etc) as well as a predictor of crappy results. 

Palin '12 a rerun of Clinton '08?

By Fester:

These is a new round of analysis by both bloggers I respect and the professionals that the McCain campaign is beginning to see incentive divergence.  As Kyle Moore at Comments from Left Field notes, the probability of a loss means a widely variant future for the different staff members on the McCain team. 

On this last point, what I mean to say is that when a campaign begins, most staffers will agree that a win for the campaign will be good for them. But when it begins to appear that the campaign can no longer win, what is good for them is no longer necessarily good for the campaign. This causes more in-fighting as well as encourages a break down in campaign discipline.

For instance, when we look at the end of the Clinton campaign, we started seeing an awful lot of post mortem articles......

Marc Ambinger outlines the CW argument for Palin 2012 ---

With Republicans completely out of power, and President Obama running what is likely to be a bigger government that spends more on social programs, Republicans are likely to run the most anti-government, anti-Washington campaign this side of Barry Goldwater. Again, Palin is perfectly positioned for this campaign. Republicans tend to pick the next guy in line. Strangely enough, the next guy in line is now Sarah Palin, by virtue of her being the VP nominee this year...

Her main obstacles to the nomination are Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee....

The Republicans are going to want someone willing to really go for Obama's throat, and be able to do it with a smile. Depending on the outcome of the GOP's War of the Roses, the evangelical community might be a stronger force in 2012 than it was in 2008, at least when it comes to dominating the GOP nominating process. They are a solid bloc of voters and footsoldiers amidst a rapidly splintering coalition.

This is all interesting speculation, but the first analogy that comes to my mind for a hypothetical Palin 2012 run would be Hillary Clinton.  Each will be coming into an election cycle with a divided party split between those who want something different and those who think the same thing can be tweaked.  There is no natural successor, and there is a significant base and elite split.  Each candidate will lock in a fairly significant portion of their respective party's primary electorate at a fairly early point. 

However Gov. Palin probably shares the same basic problem that doomed the Clinton campaign.  Looking at Pollster.com, the problem for the Hillary Clinton campaign during the 2007-2008 primary season was that she had minimal space to grow her coalition.  She started off in the high 30s and never got past 45%.  Pretty much anyone who was willing to vote for her had declared their support very early on.  Everyone else rolled down their preference list to any other surviving candidate until Obama built a slightly larger winning coalition.

Mitt Romney will lock down the money-cons, Newt Gingrich would make a hard play for the neo-cons and Mike Huckabee can play for the Southern theo-cons while Bobby Jindal will attempt to be the hot new thing that is not corrupted by being too close to Washington and power. 

She may start with a decent size base but there is not a whole lot of natural growth areas for her to win.  Much like Hillary Clinton, her best shot would be to face a sustained divided field as she has a good chance of being the top candidate in a contest of five but the anti-Palin cascade buries her in a one on one contest. 

Red Sox Democrats needed

By Fester: Nate over at FiveThirtyEight compares national Democrats to Cubs fans:

So I've spent the past couple of days at meetings of various kinds in New York, and there was certainly a sense of impeding doom among many Democrats here. The cute analogy that I've come up with are that Democrats are like Cubs fans -- they assume that something will go wrong until proven otherwise

The recent spate of positive polling for Obama is creating a national sigh of relief, but I think Nate is highlighting an interesting potential generation/memory gap within the Democratic operative/opinion leader universe.  There are the Cubs fans and then there are the Red Sox fans. 

I’m a Red Sox fan Democrat.  I’m also a Red Sox fan in general.

What do I mean by this? 

Simple, until 2004, both Red Sox fans and Cubs fans expected their teams to lose.  They often lost in amazingly bizarre ways.  Please, don’t let me go down this memory lane of Pedro being kept in for one extra inning or worse, Bill Buckner’s fielding.  The pain is too great.

Since that pain is to great, panic and uncertainty along with dread fulfilled the fans of these two teams whenever it looked like they could blow it again.  August and September were never fun months no matter how much hope there was in May or June. 

And then the Red Sox won the World Series.  WHAT THE HELL! Millions of world views had to change as Boston fans became use to winning (the Patriots success has help also).  This realization that the Red Sox could and can actually win the World Series without blowing it despite a setbacks has split the Sox fans from the combined miserable commiseration with Cubs fans.  Sox fans now expect to win.  (I have doubts about the bullpen against the Rays though this year.)

So what does this have to do with Democratic politics?  Older, and more experienced Democratic opinion leaders are Cubs fans --- they are used to losing and they are used to blowing it on dumb things --- sighs, windsurfing, voting for the damn war in 2002 so they can talk health care.  So a natural convention bounce and then a bit of a lag appearance in the state polls re-affirms their past experience of Democrats operating in a conservative leaning environment where the default assumption is to lose.  Gnashing of teeth, breaking out the sackcloth and cooking up some ashes ensued.

Younger Democratic activists and opinion leaders are used to winning. We supported Herseth in South Dakota’s special election in 2004, Chandler’s special election in deep red Kentucky in 2004 as well.   We lost at the Presidential level in 2004, but we won the intra-party fight of 2005 for the DNC.  Our strategic vision of challenging 435 seats in 2006 worked.  Not every fight has been a win (see Dean ‘04 and Paul Hackett in OH-2) but there is an expectation that winning is a reasonable goal.  Daily fluctuations are stressful but are not the signs of a collapse. 

These same fault lines opened up in the primary.  During the Democratic Primary season, it was noted that Obama’s Congressional super-delegates were much more likely to be elected to Congress before Reagan or after 2002.  Hillary Clinton’s Congressional super-delegates were more likely to be elected during the conservative tide of Reagan, Bush or during the Gingrich years in the House.  Those two decades of Republican and conservative ascendancy were traumatic experiences for Democrats much like 1986 was traumatic for Red Sox fans.  And this defensive crouch still permeates Cubs fans and Chicago Cub Democrats.

We need more Red Sox Democrats :)

Hillary delivers, Schweitzer shines

By Libby

Of course the big buzz this morning is about Hillary Clinton's speech. It was a great speech. Probably one of the best she's ever given, but if she wasn't the headliner last night, this speech would be the talk of The Village today. Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer was brilliant.

In cruising the intertubes, it seems just about everyone to the left of Fox News is praising Clinton to the heavens. A rare dissenter is Anonymous Liberal who is taking a fair amount of flack for his less than enthusiastic response.

He makes a good point though. It was a great speech, and she gave a strong endorsement to Obama's candidacy but she did stop short of endorsing Obama's character and didn't really do much to negate the "he's not really ready to lead" meme that she helped push during the primaries. So while the prevailing charaterization of her having "knocked it out of the park" is true, without that additional talking point, it wasn't really a four run homer.

A sense of entitlement and a temper tantrum?

By Ron Beasley

The Democratic convention is under way and like the Republican convention that will follow next week it is little more than a scripted campaign ad.  In an attempt to find a story where there really isn't one the media is trying to play up the PUMA story.  I suggested the other day that this is a non story and a talking head I'm gaining respect for, NBC's Chuck Todd agrees:

That's right, there are PUMAs in Denver and if they are the only ones you interview you can make it look like a story.  TPM also interviewed Clintonite Paul Begala who when asked about the alleged riff said this:

The classic definition of inflation is to many dollars chasing too few goods and services.  What we have here is too many reporters chasing to few stories.

Although they are far fewer than the McCain campaign and the media would like you to believe there are some PUMAs.  What drives them to this wacky and suicidal behavior?  Over at The Moderate Voice Jill Miller Zimon has an excellent post I suggest you read on the media-whipped PUMA phenom but I'm going to jump right to the comments section and this from DLS:

....there is a threat by many Clinton voters to defect to McCain because "their" candidate didn't get the nomination, and in many cases it smacks of a sense of entitlement and a temper tantrum.

That is how I have seen the PUMA movement all along.  Most of the Hillary supporters have been able to move on a few have not and they are the story.

Update

The always acid tounged Jack Cafferty weighs in:

Some of Hillary Clinton's supporters had threatened to disrupt the proceedings if their candidate wasn't shown the proper amount of respect. They're called PUMAs, an acronym for "Party Unity My Ass." They appear to be a humorless lot who cannot come to terms with the fact that the country didn't want Hillary Clinton to be president. So they have been throwing a hissy fit ever since the primaries ended.

For these people there will never be unity unless Hillary Clinton is president. For the rest of the Democratic Party, logic suggests that when it comes to a decision between Barack Obama and John McCain, they would be more inclined to stick needles in their eyes than vote to perpetuate the abysmal situation we find ourselves in courtesy of George W. Bush and his merry band of country-wreckers.

Hillary Supporters

By Ron Beasley

We see the Republicans are going after the Hillary supporters. 

McCain Tries to Rile Up Clinton Voters Against Obama

SEDONA, Ariz. -- A new television ad by Sen. John McCain aims to tap into anger at Sen. Barack Obama among the legions of Hillary Clinton supporters by suggesting that the Democratic nominee dissed his one-time rival.

Erasing any doubt that McCain has his sights set on Clinton voters, the new ad uses Clinton's own words to suggest that Obama passed her over because of the tough campaign she waged. The ad is titled "Passed Over."

"She won millions of votes. But isn't on his ticket," an announcer says. "Why? For speaking the truth."

The ad then shows Clinton criticizing Obama for speaking generalities ("You never hear the specifics); for his connections to Tony Rezko ("We still don't have a lot of answers."); and for being too negative

The announcer comes back on. "The truth hurt. And Obama didn't like it."

And of course the man who has been wrong about everything, Bill Kristol, weighs in with The Democrat's Glass Ceiling.  Well let them waste their money.  Sure there are a few bitter dead-enders but how many Hillary supporters are really going to vote for someone who is against everything they are for?  Not many I would guess.  A good example is Taylor Marsh.  It would have been difficult to find a more enthusiastic and vocal Hillary supporter a few months ago.  I became so upset with her that I dropped her from the MEJ blogroll.  But when it was over Taylor Marsh knew it was over and gave her support to Obama.  When it was announced that Joe Biden would be Obama's VP she praised the decision.  Taylor Marsh puts the country first and knows that means John McCain must never set foot in the White House.

She picks up on something I felt  yesterday as well - Biden is the McCain campaign's worst nightmare.

The truth is that Lunch Bucket Joe Biden is the biggest threat to McCain's candidacy since Hillary Clinton wasn't chosen as veep. They didn't expect Lunch Bucket Joe to come out swinging on economic populism. With roots in Scranton, PA., plus a long record of fighting for cops and firemen, as well as women, having authored the Violence Against Women Act, Lunch Bucket Joe has a natural affinity with the blue collar crowd, like me and my husband, as well as Catholics and a whole host of voters the O-Biden ticket needs in order to win. You know, HRC supporters who get the importance of this election.

If Republicans are fighting this hard to attack the Obama - Biden ticket on the first day, one thing is clear. Lunch Bucket Joe scares the McCain crowd. He's got the right kind of stuff, adding to what Obama already brings.

Less Competent than Bloggers

By Fester:

 

The Clinton campaign deserved to lose when they can’t even figure out the rules of the game.  We first heard about this problem when it was leaked that Mark Penn did not realize the delegates were proportionally allocated. He believed the Democratic delegates were allocated on a winner take all strategy.  So his recommendation was to win California and not worry about anything else.  And now this!

From Five Thirty Eight regarding the Clinton campaign’s strategic stupidity:

Clinton National Field Director Guy Cecil’s January 19 internal memo discussing February 5th’s congressional districts and the threshold numbers from gaining or defending the gain of an extra delegate is replete with error….

Cecil specifies a 59% threshold for 22 critical run-up Clinton's or hold-down Obama's score districts – 16 strong Clinton districts and 6 strong Obama districts…

Not one of Clinton's 16 favorable districts that Cecil cites were 6-delegate districts. In 14 of them, there were four delegates, the extra-delegate threshold for a 3-1 split being 62.500%....

Out of all 22 districts where Cecil cited “59%” as the critical threshold, only one – GA-4 – was actually such a district. Obama won it, with 79.441% of the vote, and got a 5-1 split.  [emphasis in the original 538 post]

 

Obama really is the Magical Unity Pony!

By BJ

Because magic is about the only explanation I could come up with for this when I read it. John Cole, today:

Should we set up an ActBlue account to try to offset some of the debt, or will that not go to retiring the debt? Does anyone know? If it does, maybe if we start an ActBlue account, perhaps others will follow. It certainly seems like Clinton has been acting in very good faith, and we should as well. If anyone can definitively state that money donated today will pay down her debt, I will set one up ASAP.

I can’t believe I am contemplating fund-raising for the Clinton campaign.

You can't believe it? I'm still trying to come up with a reasonable explanation for the folks at work for why my chin was dragging on the floor all afternoon!

I mean, this is the guy who, when "bittergate" broke, ran a not inconsiderable number of posts with some variation of "F--K Hillary" in the title!

This is the guy who said things like:

I will say this one more time. All the times over the past few years when the Republicans would repeat their mantra that the “Democrats are worse,” they were not talking about the Democrats, they were talking about the Clinton family.

And they were probably right.

And

As a personal aside, I found that the self-immolation of the most narcissistic campaign ever washes down really fucking well with a Pinot Noir. Fuck off and good riddance.

And

Obama is giving mad praise to Hillary. Good thing he is the nominee and not me, because I would wave a giant foam middle finger and then moon her.

That last all of a week ago, as part of an entire category he created for the purpose: I Can No Longer Rationally Discuss The Clinton Campaign.

Now, Cernig pointed me to a site where they'll exchange old Clinton signs for new Obama ones, which is a nice little gesture, and part of what I see as numerous attempts to reach out to Clinton supporters to help unify the party behind Obama, a decidedly large task. As Will Durst puts it:

Unifying Democrats is like trying to herd a clew of worms over a chicken wire walkway onto an electric waffle iron. Like nailing lime Jell- O with carrot shreds to a tree. Reconstituting the original ingredients of a bouillabaisse. Unburning a bridge.

What Cole is suggesting here goes far beyond that, though. He's not suggesting ways to reach out to Hillary's supporters, he's actually looking to help out Hillary herself, the main source of much of the anger and rage he and others have spewed across the intertubes these last few months, myself included. (Seriously. Looking through the buildasign site above, I saw "wooden stakes" under accessories and my first thought was, "For Clinton?" I've apparently some ways to go before I'm over the primaries.)

Given recent history, it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise that Cole has come under some fire from his comments section, (My personal favourite so far, "Are you trying to cure your CDS by taking part in some new drug experiment?"), though not nearly as bad as I might have thought. While more than a few have less than sympathetic comments regarding Clinton, the biggest stumbling block seems to be the possibility that Mark Penn might benefit, a sentiment I can't disagree with. For the rest, Cole had this to say:

. . . a lot of you have laughed when I pointed to pro-Hillary bloggers and noted that they have a lot of work to do walking their bloggers back from the cliff. Apparently that is a two-way street. I don’t like a lot of the stunts Camp Clinton pulled in the primary (and I hate Mark Penn), but it is over. She is on the right side now. If helping her pay off her campaign debt quickly gets her out there stumping for Obama every day, I will be the first one to chuck in 50 bucks. Paying down her debt now is not a validation of her campaign tactics- the loss invalidated them.

Something for you to think about when you lash out- you look to Clinton supporters much like the weirdos in the Taylor Marsh comment section look to us.

Nothing less than the truth, and it is going to take a fair bit more time before many of these people remember that they're on the same side again. I think this sort of gesture should help considerably.

Clinton's Golden Handcuffs

By Fester:

Hillary Clinton is operating under a severe set of future political constraints that should create an incentive set that rewards good behavior.  Her campaign debt is large and constrains her future course of action as the New York Times reports today:

Besides the $11.4 million of her own money that Mrs. Clinton lent her campaign, she had about $9.5 million in unpaid bills to vendors at the end of April...

her campaign must liquidate more than $23 million in contributions set aside for the general election. They can do it by either returning it to donors or designating it for her Senate re-election campaign in 2012, provided she obtains permission from her donors to do so.

Mrs. Clinton could simply shutter her presidential campaign committee and transfer her remaining debt to her Senate campaign fund and continue to raise money to pay it down...

Mrs. Clinton could also whittle down her debt by re-negotiating what she owes with her various creditors, but the Federal Election Commission would have to sign off to ensure that a good-faith effort was made to pay off the debt. It also must be satisfied that the renegotiated bills do not amount to an in-kind donation from a corporation to Mrs. Clinton’s campaign.

The article states that the Clinton fundraising over the past week has been sufficient to cover operating and shut-down costs but not a whole lot more.  And this places her in an unenviable position.  She needs massive funds from either her general election donors or new money to pay off her debts and to build up a warchest for her 2012 Senate race.  Her political fortunes will greatly differ if she is still five or more million in debt by the summer of 2011 as she could see both a serious general election challenge and a decent primary challenge versus having her account in the black and growing at that point. 

Her fundraising pitch will have to be different than it has been.  She is no longer the heir presumptive for the White House in a very favorable Democratic environment; instead she is 'just' a powerful Senator from a very powerful state. National actors no longer will be viewing their max limit contributions to Hillary Clinton as a ticket to the Inauguration Ball and a place on the Rolodex of senior advisors of the next  administration.

I think the incentives already had aligned for Hillary Clinton to work hard for the Obama ticket as I do not see 2012 as a viable option for her for numerous reasons if Obama was to lose this election.  The golden handcuffs of needing to fundraise twenty million dollars before being able to effectively bank a single dollar will further this incentive set.   

Hillary delivers

By Libby

I'm still not feeling quite up to blogging speed yet so I've pretty much dithered away the day but I did watch Hillary's concession speech this afternoon. I'm told it's the best speech she ever made but I haven't seen many of them in their entirety so I'll have to take their word on that. I thought this one was very good. Not brilliant in the sense of soaring rhetoric, but she's a wonk, not an orator. Nonetheless, she did a very good job of balancing the acknowledgement of her own, and her supporters', acheivements in the course of the campaign and calling for everyone to join together in support of Obama.

This was the speech I expected her give on Tuesday and I still think the delay robs it of some of its impact, but as not as much I initially thought. Overall she did what she had to do and she did it really well. I'm proud of her today. She delivered my pony and I'm glad to feel good about her again.

Of course there are still too many who aren't as forgiving as me. Judging from the chitchat in the comment sections I cruised today, old resentments die hard and not everybody is ready to ride the unity pony just yet, but I think they'll mostly come around -- eventually. In the end, who doesn't love a pony ride?