2016 Republican Presidential Brackets

Charlie Cook has done a pretty good job of breaking down the 2016 Republican presidential contest into four brackets. Its helpful because the field is so crowded right now that it's hard to sort out - especially if you only think in terms of establishment vs non-establishment. I'd place a couple of candidates differently, but otherwise (just for fun), here's how I see it playing out.

1. Establishment candidates - obviously this one is a battle of Jeb Bush vs Mitt Romney. Since voters in this category aren't going to be concerned about the whole "political dynasty" thing, my money would be on Bush.

2. Governor/Former Governor candidates - I suspect that the voters this group appeals to are those who are skeptical of the whole dynasty question, but aren't ready to go full-on tea party. Scott Walker wins this bracket.

3. Tea Party candidates - no questions here, Ted Cruz wins this one - hands down.

4. Social/Cultural/Religious candidates - this one is also pretty easy to call. Its Mike Huckabee's bracket.

One place I part with Cook is that he puts Rand Paul in the Tea Party group to compete with the likes of Ted Cruz. I know it messes up the symmetry of a bracket analogy, but I'd but Paul in a 5th bracket and make him the winner of the Libertarian candidates (of course, because he's the only one).

What my picks give us is a contest between Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee and Rand Paul. With the amount of money Bush and Romney will be able to tap into - they will likely continue to compete as other candidates drop out. But the battle between the two of them could provide an opening for someone from the other brackets to break through. I suspect that's why Scott Walker got so much attention coming out of Rep. Steve King's clown show.

To be honest, this is all just fun and games right now. If history is any guide, we could forget about all this and simply assume that the nominee will be Jeb Bush. But I suspect that this contest is going to be a bit more unpredictable than that.

Image of the Day: Schrodinger's Candidate

OMG - he's serious!!!

Key theme Romney quietly making in convos w/ conservatives: He'll run to right of Jeb http://t.co/WYLnR5waeV
— Robert Costa (@costareports) January 12, 2015

Seeing as how Mitt plans to run to the "right" of Jeb, let me be the first to resurrect this golden oldie.

How We Choose Presidents

In the midst of an article about Mario Cuomo, James Fallows addresses something that gets too little attention.

National office in the modern United States—the presidency, or a serious candidacy for it—requires a broader range of skills than any real human being has ever possessed…

To succeed fully in national leadership a person would in principle need to be as shrewd a manipulator as Lyndon Johnson, as confidently patient a commander as Dwight Eisenhower, as quickly intelligent as John F. Kennedy; as publicly sunny as Ronald Reagan; as fundamentally sane as Gerald Ford—you get the idea.

When choosing a president, we usually assume that we should simply support the candidate that most closely aligns with the policies we support. But it is often the mix of skills each candidate possesses from the list Fallows identifies (as well as others) that determine whether or not they will be successful in implementing those policies.

Back in 2007 when the Democratic primary looked to be a contest between Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards, Mark Schmitt wrote a fascinating article along these lines suggesting that we were witnessing the first “Theory of Change” primary.

This is not a primary about ideological differences, or electability, but rather one about a difference in candidates’ implicit assumptions about the current circumstance and how the levers of power can be used to get the country back on track.

I’ll let you read the rest of the article to see how he perceived the difference between those three candidates’ theory of change. But he was right - they had radically different approaches based on their own unique personalities and set of skills.

We don’t know yet who will enter the 2016 presidential contest. And the first screen is always about how their policies align with our own preferences. But I would suggest that is a necessary - but insufficient - test for how they will perform in office.

The Changing Role of Money in Politics

The 2012 presidential election was the first to be held in the aftermath of the Supreme Court's ruling on Citizens United. Too many of us have forgotten that the results of that election were the opposite of what the megadonors had hoped for.

Can't buy me gov.

That line neatly sums up the dismal showing on Election Day for the fundraisers, super-PAC strategists, and big-dollar donors of the Republican Party. Outside groups spent north of $1 billion this campaign season—bankrolled mostly by a small cadre of wealthy contributors—and yet they and their funders, especially on the Republican side, were left with little to show for it when the sun rose Wednesday morning. The GOP's flagship super-PAC, Karl Rove's American Crossroads, had an abysmal 1 percent return on its $104 million investment. Megadonor Sheldon Adelson and his wife, Miriam, invested $57 million in 2012 races; only 42 percent of the candidates who received Adelson support won. Other big donors—say, Romney super-PAC backers—got nothing for their money.

Perhaps we forgot about all of that because the 2014 midterms turned a lot of it around (with a few exceptions, i.e., Eric Cantor).

The 100 biggest campaign donors gave $323 million in 2014 — almost as much as the $356 million given by the estimated 4.75 million people who gave $200 or less...

And the balance almost certainly would tip far in favor of the mega-donors were the analysis to include nonprofit groups that spent at least $219 million — and likely much more — but aren’t required to reveal their donors’ identities.

The numbers — gleaned from reports filed with the Federal Election Commission and the Internal Revenue Service — paint the most comprehensive picture to date of an electoral landscape in which the financial balance has tilted dramatically to the ultra-rich. They have taken advantage of a spate of recent federal court rulings, regulatory decisions and feeble or bumbling oversight to spend ever-greater sums in politics — sometimes raising questions about whether their bounty is being well spent...

Taken together, the trend lines reflect a new political reality in which a handful of superaffluent partisans can exert more sway over the campaign landscape than millions of donors of more average means.

With sweeping victories for the Republicans these megadonors financed, it appears as though that success overshadows their previous failure in 2012 to influence the election outcome.

But it does raise a couple of questions: Are megadonors more effective at influencing midterms than presidential elections? And if so, why? One possible answer to those questions comes from turning our gaze away from who gives the money in order to focus for a moment on how it is spent.

Over the last few decades, as the amount of money in politics has exploded, the vast majority of those dollars have been spent on media - particularly television advertisements. Recently we've been learning more about what audience those ads reach. Derek Thompson reported it this way: Half of Broadcast TV Viewers Are 54 and Older - Yikes. As Cecilia Kang pointed out, younger viewers are trending away from traditional television in favor of subscription-based channels and streaming options.

And so it should probably not come as a surprise that a midterm election focused on turning out older voters in local elections is more fertile ground for expensive television advertising.

It will be interesting to see how all this plays out in the 2016 presidential election. I would simply note that all of Karl Rove's millions of dollars in TV advertising were no match in 2012 to a simple recording by a catering staff at Mitt Romney's famous 47% event. In the meantime, the Democrat's largest megadonor - George Soros - has "shifted his giving away from pure politics, preferring to fund causes devoted to building up progressive infrastructure."

At least until the laws are changed, megadonors are legally able to use their millions of dollars in an attempt to influence elections. The question will increasingly be...what do they spend it on?

A couple of questions that Hillary Clinton (or any other Democratic '16 candidate) must answer

Do you think that the Republican commitment to total obstruction will continue if you are elected president? Or was that simply a strategy they employed against our first African American president?

If you think it will continue, what strategies will you use to implement the agenda you are proposing?

These questions are critical because - if we are going to have an honest discussion going forward - we have to be clear that the gridlock we've seen in Washington over the last 6 years is the responsibility of the Republicans.

To assume that the obstruction this President faced will end with his tenure is to affirm its racist roots. If a candidate wants to be direct about that, so be it. Lets have that conversation.

But any suggestion that Clinton (or any other candidate) can simply overcome it because they have a history of "reaching across the isle" is irrelevant. President Obama reached...and reached...and reached. It didn't matter.

Pundits: Please start paying attention to white people again!

The success of the Southern Strategy for Republicans can be chronicled by the narrative that developed in the 1980's which suggested that the only way for Democrats to win the White House was for them to nominate a Southern governor (i.e., appeal to southern white people). Then along came Barack Hussein Obama - a black man who came from Illinois and Hawaii. All of the sudden, everyone was talking about the Obama coalition and the way the country's changing demographics benefited Democrats.

And so its been interesting to watch pundits try to change the narrative that developed after the 2008 election based on the 2014 midterms - in which we saw the lowest voter turnout in 40 years. What I hear when I listen to people like Charlie Cook and NBC's First Read is: "Please start paying attention to white people again!"

It probably shouldn't surprise us that Cook (who recently wrote that passing Obamacare was a horrific choice) feels vindicated by Sen. Schumer's recent comments. But what IS amazing is that he can go on to talk about how - in the Obama era - Democrats have lost support among white working class voters without ever once mentioning the impact racism has had on that reality. Given the constant challenges to this President's legitimacy coming from the backers of the confederate insurgency, any rational discussion simply has to put that one in the mix. The failure of Cook to do so is a classic example of white privilege.

And, of course, the white folks who write NBC's First Read picked right up where Cook left off.

Earlier this week, our friend Charlie Cook made a great point: While Republicans are struggling with minority voters, Democrats have a problem with working-class whites. In the 2014 midterms, they made up 36% of all voters, and they broke Republican, 64%-34%. Yes, long-term demographic trends are in the Democrats' favor -- the minority population in this country is growing and growing. But ask yourself what is more likely in the immediate future: Republicans winning Minnesota and Wisconsin in presidential contests, or Democrats winning Arizona and Georgia. You've got to go with the former, right? In 20 years, with the country's growing Latino population, the presidential map appears tilted toward the Democrats. But in the short term, the Democrats could find problems in states with lots of white voters.

That one prompts me to make a "new rule:" Any pundit who even suggests that the 2014 midterms can be used to predict what is going to happen during a presidential election has just declared themselves an idiot.

But what those authors also fail to mention is that - while "the minority population in this country is growing" - the group of people they think is so determinative, working-class whites, is on the decline. One way demographers define "working-class" is to track those who do not have a college education. In 1940, only 5% of the population had a four-year degree. That number has grown steadily over the years and by 2007, it was 29%. Those with some college (but not a degree) added an additional 25%.

Given all these trends, its not like we are going to wake up 20 years from now and all of the sudden notice that the political landscape has changed. It is in the process of changing right now! But the good-ole-white-boys that populate so much of our media just can't/won't see it.

What Hillary Clinton Could Learn From Al Gore

Now that the 2014 midterms are over, it is - of course - off to the races for 2016. I find myself amused by a lot of the "advice" that Hillary Clinton is getting about how to position herself for another presidential run.

For example, Dylan Scott suggests that Sec. Clinton faces a dilemma between distancing herself from President Obama and appealing to what has become known as "the Obama coalition."

They are of course linked: If Obama is unpopular, a Clinton campaign will be tempted to present a sharp contrast. At the same time, the President will likely remain popular with the core Democratic base that she needs to harness. But the record tells us that, however the Obama presidency is faring like in its final months, it's going to influence his aspiring successor's White House ambitions.

Former Clinton staffers Douglas Schoen and Patrick Caddell make no bones about where they come down on that one. They weigh in with: Obama is Damaging Hillary's Chances.

I am reminded of the fact that Vice President Al Gore faced the same dilemma when he decided to run in 2000. President Bill Clinton had actually been impeached by the House of Representatives and it was unclear whether his involvement in a Gore campaign would help or hurt. As we all know now, Gore chose to "position" himself by staying mum on the issue.

What I think Hillary Clinton could learn from all of this is to avoid the whole idea of "positioning" yourself based on how the electorate might react. An awful lot of us cringed at the lack of authenticity in Al Gore's presidential campaign. That's why - whether they were true or not - stories about advice he got from Naomi Wolf about being a "beta male" rang true.  And when, in 2003, Gore let loose of all that and gave a barn-burner speech on how the Bush administration was trampling on civil liberties, we all wondered "Where was this guy in 2000?"

Of course running a presidential campaign requires positioning. But rather than catering to what someone thinks the electorate wants to hear, it has to be based on an answer to the question "Who is this candidate?" Looking back on how she ran in 2008, I'm not sure that Hillary Clinton has answered that question. That was highlighted by the fact that some people even thought that the tears she shed on the trail in New Hampshire were contrived.

If Hillary Clinton can find her core and speak to us from that place, she can toss out all the advice she's getting from folks about how to position herself vis a vis President Obama and his coalition. Whether or not she can do that...we'll see.

With pundits like this...

Charlie Cook is pretty revered amongst the class of prognosticators/pundits. And so he's a good example of much that is wrong with our media when he writes: Bad Decisions Came Back to Haunt Democrats in Midterms. Nope, he's not talking about the "bad decision" too many Democrats made to distance themselves from the very policies that have been successful. The bad decision he zeros in on is the one he thinks they made back in 2010 to pass health care reform. But according to Cook, it wasn't just a bad decision, it was a "horrific choice."

This horrific choice, to focus on the Affordable Care Act rather than the economy, besides costing Democrats their House majority—not to mention platoons of Democratic governors and state legislators who would have been handy in drawing the congressional redistricting maps the next year—created scar tissue that remains to this day.

When he suggests that the Democrats focused on the Obamacare RATHER than the economy, he must be ignorant of the fact that - at the time of its passage - health care was the number one reason why Americans were going bankrupt. And perhaps he's unaware of the fact that health care reform slowed the rise in health care costs substantially (more good news on that today!) In other words, he's not paying attention to the fact that Obamacare WAS a way of focusing on the economy.

But the bigger picture is that Mr. Cook is limited to ONLY seeing things like this through the lens of how it affects elections...not the millions of people who now have affordable health care. Given the ubiquity of that lens, one has to assume that Cook and his friends would have suggested that passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 was a "horrific choice" for Democrats.

Now, don't get me wrong. The reality is that politicians have to walk a tightrope between pushing for reforms and not getting ahead of the public. After all, you can't get anything done if you can't get elected. That's democracy. But I agree with President Obama...the scales on that one have become unbalanced.

What’s most important to the American people right now, the resounding message not just of this election, but basically the last several is: Get stuff done. Don't worry about the next election. Don't worry about party affiliation. Do worry about our concerns.

Perhaps if pundits like Charlie Cook were to pay at least some attention to the concerns of the American people - rather than always focusing on elections - things would fall more into balance.

Republicans comparing 2014 midterms to 1966...think about that

Yesterday I was taken back a bit when I saw this tweet from conservative pundit Robert Costa.

Ran into Rumsfeld on 15th NW. He's upbeat about GOP gains, said they remind him a bit of 1966.
— Robert Costa (@costareports) November 10, 2014

To get an idea of what Rumsfeld is celebrating here, lets take a look at some of the history leading up to the 1966 midterms.

The Civil Rights Movement in this country began with the death of Emmett Till in 1955 and the Montgomery Bus Boycott that was launched that same year. It all culminated with the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965. Along the way, thousands of black people were killed and/or injured. Most well-known are the Montgomery Church bombing in 1963, the assassination of Medgar Evers the same year, the killing of Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner in 1964, the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965 and of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968. Events like Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama took place in 1965.

Those are the events that formed the lead-up to the election Rumsfeld is referring to. Certainly protests of the Vietnam War were occurring as well. But they didn't reach their peak until the late 60's/early 70's.

It has been reported that when President Johnson signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, he told an advisor that the Democrats had lost the south for a generation. It was the midterm elections of 1966 that began that process. Republicans gained 3 Senate seats and 47 House seats. The next presidential election in 1968 looked like this (yellow states went for George Wallace).

To sum it all up - the midterm election of 1966 was the beginning of the end of the Second Reconstruction. The backlash against Civil Rights gains was the fodder for what Republicans eventually launched as a Southern Strategy. 

That Rumsfeld sees a similarity with the midterm results of 2014 is telling. Just so you know, he's not the only one.

What must Republicans do to win back West Coast voters?

One of the narratives that has come out of the 2014 midterms is the idea that Democrats need to figure out how to appeal to southern white voters. What occurs to me is that this is very similar to what I remember hearing prior to the Clinton/Gore years. It became convention wisdom that the only way for Democrats to win national elections was to nominate white southerners. That's because it looked like the only way to break through the stranglehold Republicans had gained on the presidency from Nixon through Reagan (minus an assist from Watergate), was to run with Southern Governors (Carter and the Clinton). As a son of Hawaii and Illinois, Obama broke that narrative. But it seems like lately we've returned to it again.

And so this morning I've been spending some time studying this page with pictures of presidential election maps in the United States. I'm not a historian, so there's probably a lot of specifics I missed. But overall, what I see during "modern" times is a country that was very blue during the FDR years and began to turn pretty red during the Nixon/Reagan years. That's what Bill Clinton was facing in 1992 when he ran against George H.W. Bush. How did he win? Here's the map.

That seems to validate the idea that Clinton won because he had appeal in the south, doesn't it? 

But what I noticed this morning is something I've never heard anyone mention before. It wasn't until the Clinton election in 1992 that Democrats won the west coast states (California, Oregon and Washington). For example, prior to that year, California had only gone blue once (1964) in over 40 years. Beginning that year, those 3 states turned blue and have been solid ever since. They provided Clinton with 17 more electoral votes than he won from southern states (72 vs 55).

I'll have to leave it to others to answer the question about why the west coast went blue in 1992. My point is to wonder why pundits never developed a meme about asking Republicans what they need to do to win back the west coast. I don't have the answer to that either. But its a perfect example of how a narrative (i.e., story) shapes our conversations. 

P.S. I recognize that the talk lately about Democrats appealing to white southerners is in the context of midterm Congressional elections - not presidential elections. As I've said before, Democrats have some big challenges to face when it comes to midterms. So I agree...we need to have that conversation. I'd just like to suggest that the answers to those challenges could be more broad than conventional wisdom suggests.

Democrats: Now is NOT the time to abandon the Obama coalition!

Any pundit who attempts to comment on our current political climate while ignoring the role of race and racism is simply blind - most likely by their own white privilege. While I have had some issues with his approach lately, Tim Wise nailed it a few years ago when he talked about the current "perfect storm" for white anxiety.


To ignore that is to miss a big part of the picture. The factors Wise outlines are exactly why we are currently living in - as Rev. Barber articulated - a Third Reconstruction. That struggle isn't limited to the battle over voting rights. It is also captured by things like the nativism that has been stirred up over immigration reform and the tension that is building between law enforcement and communities of color (i.e., Ferguson). 
Today I woke up to a story about how that is playing out in my own community. Yesterday, the local ABC affiliate in the Twin Cities ran a story titled: Mpls Mayor Flashes Gang Sign with Convicted Felon; Law Enforcement Outraged. 

As it turns out - this "convicted felon" is not a gang member, but has a job working as a canvasser for a local GOTV organization while he is on probation. He and the Mayor were celebrating their door-knocking work last weekend by pointing at each other. KSTP (the local ABC affiliate) was quite clear that they based their story on the "outrage" of law enforcement - who just so happen to be fighting the Mayor on the reforms she is proposing to the Minneapolis Police Department to end disparities. 

So the back story is that law enforcement thought they could discredit the Mayor by tapping into the racist idea that she is convorting with (black) criminal gang members. One officer in the clip of the newscast that I linked to above even goes so far as to ask "Is she going to support gangs or us?"

But folks are fighting back. If you want to see how, just check out the twitter hashtag #pointergate - the story is going national.

In conclusion, the point I want to make with all of this is that lots of pundits and political strategists are in the process of suggesting that - as a result of the midterm losses - Democrats should abandon Obama's efforts to expand the electorate and instead focus on how they can win support from southern white working class voters. I read that as: "Standing up for civil rights is not going well with white voters, so its time to abandon that one." You can FOR SURE count me out on that idea!!!!

President Obama: Please proceed, Senator McConnell (updated w/ video)

If you didn't get to watch President Obama's press conference this afternoon, I encourage you to do so.


He made a point of saying that he looks forward to hearing from McConnell and Boehner on what their agenda for Congress will be. And that he's willing to work on those areas where they can agree.

While some will undoubtably view this as pre-capitulation, its actually an amazing power play as well as a reprisal of conciliatory rhetoric as a ruthless strategy.

One way to deal with that kind of bad-faith opposition is to draw the person in, treat them as if they were operating in good faith, and draw them into a conversation about how they actually would solve the problem. If they have nothing, it shows. And that's not a tactic of bipartisan Washington idealists -- it's a hard-nosed tactic of community organizers, who are acutely aware of power and conflict.

Over the last 6 years, Minority Leader McConnell has been able to embrace a "post-policy" approach focused on total obstruction.  Now that Republicans control both chambers of Congress, President Obama is basically saying "puts your cards on the table and let's see what you've got."

After last night's election results, both National Review Online and Rush Limbaugh are counseling McConnell to keep up the obstruction. Jonathan Chait pretty much nailed what McConnell will see as his most effective strategy going forward:

McConnell’s next play is perfectly clear. His interest lies in creating two more years of ugliness and gridlock. He does not want spectacular, high-profile failures that command public attention — no shutdowns, no impeachment. Instead, he wants tedious, enervating stalemate. McConnell needs to drain away any possibility of hope and excitement from government, so that the disengaged Democratic voters remain disengaged in 2016.

So if you were President Obama, how would you chose to counter that? The truth is, no matter what you do, you're not going to get liberal policies enacted with Republicans in control of both chambers. If you simply yell and scream about obstruction, you look like a weak ineffective victim.

Today the President simply called on McConnell to "put up or shut up." That's his best way of undermining McConnell when/if the gridlock continues. In other words, its the best power play he has now - given what the midterm electorate did yesterday.

I also think that long before he decided to run for president, Barack Obama diagnosed what he thought was our biggest problem. No matter how daunting the challenges, what has kept us from tackling them has been our inability to do this:

Our goal should be to stick to our guns on those core values that make this country great, show a spirit of flexibility and sustained attention that can achieve those goals, and try to create the sort of serious, adult, consensus around our problems that can admit Democrats, Republicans and Independents of good will.

Until we can get there, we won't be able to move forward on much of anything else.

So...please proceed, Senator McConnell :-)

What does it mean?

First things first. Its always important to admit when you were wrong. And I was wrong. I thought this midterm was going to me more of a tie than a wave. It was a wave.

With that clear, its time to look at what happened and develop the story about what it means. That's what almost everyone is doing today. I'll be no exception. But with these caveats: (1) the results of yesterdays election cannot be summed up as "one thing," in a country this large and diverse, its way more complicated than that and (2) developing an accurate story will take time. We still have a lot of information to digest and so our immediate responses are likely to be more emotional than factual.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that the story Republicans will try to tell is that the results are a statement about the failure of President Obama. That's what they ran on - so that's what they will want us to believe. But that's not what midterm voters said. Exit pollsters asked the question: Was one reason for your vote today:

• To express support for Barack Obama - 19%
• To express opposition to Barack Obama - 33%
• Barack Obama was not a factor - 45%

When Republicans try to tell that story - they're only speaking for their base (the 33%). 

I think there's some merit to the idea that - by distancing themselves from President Obama - Democrats diluted their policy message and fed into the Republican frame of "its all about Obama." Allison Lundgren-Grimes decided that she couldn't run on the benefits of Obamacare to voters in Kentucky because its..well...Obamacare.

But there's also a lot of conflicting data about that. For instance, in my home state of MN, I cringed as Senator Franklin became unintelligible during a debate with his opponent on issues like foreign policy and immigration because he was working so hard to avoid supporting President Obama's positions. And yet he won by 10%. In other words, it didn't seem to hurt him. 

I doubt you'll find anyone who makes a better case for blaming the media than BooMan. 

...the polls were way off, basically eight or nine points too favorable for the Democrats. We cannot explain this polling error by reference to bad messaging. Something deeply emotional was going on with the electorate that caused them to break sharply against the Democratic Party beginning around the time of the first beheading by ISIS and then turning again sharply against us in the last days of the election, possibly related to anxiety over the Ebola virus.

The media are how these images and fears were primarily transmitted to the voting public, although the Republicans also made it part of their campaigns.

As he goes on to say, this one is almost impossible to capture with data.

In yesterday's case, it may be that a lot of people simply were influenced by a pervasive environment of (essentially) media-induced terror and it caused their brains to go reptilian. There is plenty of research to support the fact that people gravitate to the right when they feel physically threatened. This process goes on on a subconscious level which is not conducive to verbal articulation.

But even as he uses the Wilder (or Bradley) Effect to explain this subconscious process, he fails to mention how the media-induced terror collaborates in the reptilian portion of our brains with the notion that President Obama "isn't really one of us," thereby heightening our distrust and fear. In other words, this is how racism played a role.

A place where we DO have data is in the story of turnout. The members of the Obama coalition who showed up came through and voted for Democrats. For example, African Americans voted for Democrats at the rate of 89%, Latinos 63%, women 56%, young people 54% and LGB 67%. The trouble is...not enough of them voted.

If Democrats were going to hold off a Republican tsunami, they needed their base voters to come out to the polls and pull the lever for the president’s party. That didn’t happen where Democrats needed it to. Especially with young voters. Nationally, Democratic base groups -- young voters, single women, African-Americans and Latinos -- posted numbers that looked more like the Democrats’ 2010 midterm “shellacking” than Obama’s 2012 re-election victory. Most strikingly, voters 18-29 nationwide were only 13% of the electorate in 2014 (compared with 22% for GOP-leaning seniors.) In the 2010 midterms, young voters made up 12% of the voting public. In contrast, during Obama’s re-election victory in 2012, 19% of the electorate was under 30.

In the end, this is something Democrats MUST find a way to counter. Jonathan Cohn takes a pretty deep dive into the structural challenges.

A cardinal fact of American politics that has emerged during the Obama years is that demographic forces are slowly and inexorably driving the electorate leftward. But the Republican Party has its own corresponding advantages. Its voters turn out for elections reliably, not just in spasms of quadrennial excitement. They are dispersed efficiently in rural and exurban House districts, and reside disproportionately in the states that have disproportionate representation in the Senate. All these things give the Republican coalition, even as it remains unable to muster a presidential majority, unassailable control of Congress.

At this moment I don't have a lot by way of answers to these challenges. Let's just start by recognizing that simply pointing the finger at President Obama (who was actually able to expand the electorate when he was on the ballot) is self-defeating as well as wrong.

If you've read this far, let me point out that what I've said up until now is a pretty good example of yet another challenge that Democrats face. What I'm describing is a complex set of circumstances that contributed to "the Republican wave." It certainly doesn't provide hysterical link bait or an inspirational statement that will fit on a bumper sticker. It just happens to be a pretty comprehensive view of the political reality that is in the process of unfolding. So sue me :-)

It may all come down to Iowa

Of course I'll be watching the election results tonight and - due to the very real possibility of runoffs - into the next few months. But the states I'll be focusing on when it comes to control of the Senate are Colorado, Alaska and Iowa.

I am not convinced the polling is accurate in Alaska or Colorado. Here's why:

Alaska

1. Almost no one trusts the polling there. This article about St. Paul Island is a pretty good description of why.
2. That article is also informative about the incredible ground game that has been deployed by Begich - the Democratic candidate. 

Colorado

1. This is the first year that all registered voters received a mail-in ballot. That will likely change the "fundamentals" that many poll aggregators cook into their books.
2. As Nate Cohn documents, pollsters have not found a way to accurately incorporate Hispanic voters. In a state where they represent 21% of the population, that could make a difference.
3. Colorado is the state where the Democratic ground game (Bannock Street Project) was invented and is the reason Bennet won his Senate seat in 2010 - a year that was notoriously bad for Democrats.

If Begich and Udall defy the polls and win - its very likely that control of the Senate will come down to the race in Iowa. That's as far as I'm comfortable going with a prediction. But be sure and check out BooMan as he dives a little deeper into prognostication. 

Had enough? VOTE!

Ferguson, MO - VOTE on Nov 4th, 2014 from MENTALiTY on Vimeo.

The stories we tell: pre-midterm edition

As I've been saying lately, I'm pretty fascinated by the way we create meaning from events by the stories we tell ourselves about those events. So I'd like to take a look at two stories prognosticators are already telling us about what will be "historical" in this election.

First of all, there is Stu Rothenberger - who says that Obama's midterm loss record could make history.

President Barack Obama is about to do what no president has done in the past 50 years: Have two horrible, terrible, awful midterm elections in a row.

In fact, Obama is likely to have the worst midterm numbers of any two-term president going back to Democrat Harry S. Truman.

Notice how this story affirms the Republican narrative that midterms are a reflection on the current president rather than Tip O'Neill's suggestion that "all politics is local."

When it comes to control of the Senate, Speaker O'Neill would have noticed that in this particular midterm, Democrats went into it with the deck stacked against them based on the fact that many of the races involved Democratic incumbents or open seats in solid red states. The "local" nature of this election has always favored Republicans. Hence, initially most pundits predicted a Republican wave.

In light of that, here's the story Sam Wang is telling about the historical nature of this election: In state races, as much suspense as 2006 and 2010 combined.

 

State-level elections in 2014 have the largest number of close races in the last 10 years. This chart shows the number of gubernatorial and Senate races that have been won by three percentage points or less in midterm and Presidential-year elections since 2004. For 2014, the bars indicate races where polling margins are as small. There are 11 close gubernatorial races and 7 close Senate races, totaling 18 in all. This is equal to the last two midterm years, 2006 and 2010, combined.

In other words, an election that favored a Republican wave has turned into the closest election in recent history.

And so - before any ballot is cast - its clear that the meaning of this midterm depends on the story you tell about it. Does it, as Rothernberg suggests, reflect on President Obama's failed leadership?

...is the president at least partially to blame because he failed to show leadership on key issues and never successfully moved to the political center?

Or does it show that - even in a year when the deck is stacked in favor of Republicans - the best they can do is come up with a tie?

It all depends on the story you tell.

Calling out Krathammer's lies and hypocrisy

While the rest of media punditry is almost entirely focused on "optics," Charles Krauthammer makes a bold move by suggesting that the midterm elections are all about competence. But he has zero to say about the lack of competence being shown by Republicans. This is all about throwing bombs at President Obama.

Of course he mentions things like the "disaster of the Obamacare rollout" (yeah, fixed that one) and the non-scandal "scandal" at the VA. But this is what I found amazing.

Beyond mere incompetence is government intrusiveness and corruption, as in the overreach of national security surveillance and IRS targeting of politically disfavored advocacy groups.

We'll leave the whole thing about the IRS alone for now because I'm pretty gobsmacked that Krauthammer has the gall to complain about national security surveillance overreach. Not only did Bush, Jr. conduct surveillance on people in America - until 2006 he did it sans warrants. And Krauthammer defended him for doing so. Just another example of how "its only a problem when Obama does it (with warrants)."

But then here's the money quote:

Most voters don’t care about the details of Ukraine, the factions in Libya or the precise battle lines of the Islamic State. But they do have a palpable sense of American weakness.

This was brought home most profoundly by the videotaped beheadings of James Foley and Steven Sotloff. It wasn’t just the savagery that affected so many Americans but the contempt shown by these savages for America — its power, its resolve. 

So I suppose that "most voters" (read: Krauthammer) had a "palpable sense of American weakness" when terrorists bombed a U.S. military base in Lebanon on President Reagan's watch and that 9/11 demonstrated al Qaeda's contempt for America's lack of power and resolve during George Bush's presidency.

No?

I can only see two reasons why Krauthammer thinks he can get away with this kind of idiocy:

1. He thinks Americans are too dumb to remember recent history, or
2. He thinks Americans will accept a whole different measure of accountability for the black President (i.e., anything bad that happens in the world is his fault).

Or perhaps its a good helping of both. Either way, lets call Krauthammer out for his lies and hypocrisy. Competence...my ass. This one is all propaganda.

When a media pundit nails it!

Since I've focused a lot on how the media fails these days, I think its also important to point out when they get it right. Recently Justin Sink did just that with an article titled: The shiny object election.

The short-attention span generation has birthed the shiny-object election.

The theme of the 2014 midterms — to whatever extent one is discernable — has been an explosion of one crisis after another, each of which demands an enormous amount of media attention before fading for the next one.

The result is that - with an assist from the media - Republicans have managed to fear-monger every challenge that's come along...resulting in a mindset amongst the public that amounts to "this country is going to hell in a hand basket." Sink also correctly articulates the Obama administration's response to this shiny object syndrome:

“We should be focused on the problems because we have a government and leadership in this country that’s focused on solving them,” press secretary Josh Earnest said.

But Earnest did note that previous crises — like the flood of unaccompanied minors across the southern border that dominated attention earlier this summer — were examples of where the administration had worked hard to solve a problem, only to see attention divert elsewhere.

“The president and his administration at the direction of the president comes in and, through a lot of hard work, puts in place a solution. But by the time that solution is put in place, everybody has sort of moved on to something else,” Earnest said.

As we've seen recently, by the time this administration had solved the problems with healthcare.gov,  the freak-out about unaccompanied minors crossing the borders began. And before anyone noticed how that problem had been solved, we were on to ISIS!!!! But by the time President Obama had convinced Iraq to form a more inclusive government that cut off support for ISIS in that country and rallied our friends as well as foes to fight them, the great freak-out about Ebola had begun.

You simply have to think about how many stories in the media you've read/heard about how this administration solved those problems (almost none) to realize how shiny object syndrome works. All the attention is focused on the "crisis" and none on the solution.

Of course the Republicans love this shiny object syndrome because it puts all the focus on President Obama and none on their embrace of post-policy politics. But Sink is right...the Democrats have mostly reacted to the shiny object rather than being pro-active in talking about policy and solutions.

Strategists and experts say the result has been bad news for Democrats, who have had a tougher time underscoring their preferred campaign messages on their party’s support for women and the middle class.

Instead, each shiny object captivating a media that craves the hottest story has helped Republicans making the elections for the House and Senate all about President Obama...

Vulnerable Democrats are put in the unenviable position of either backing the president or lobbing criticism at their party’s leader.

I certainly understand that the Republicans are going to play whatever hand they have - that is to be expected. The real fault here lies in the media's obsession with ratings and link bait. Crisis fear-mongering apparently sells. Solutions don't.

If we ever needed to vote!

I don't know about you, but I sure wouldn't mind if this video went viral right about now.



Make it so :-)

Is GOP obstruction coming back to bite them in the ass?

Back in 2011, retired Republican congressional staffer Mike Lofgren wrote this:

A couple of years ago, a Republican committee staff director told me candidly (and proudly) what the method was to all this obstruction and disruption. Should Republicans succeed in obstructing the Senate from doing its job, it would further lower Congress's generic favorability rating among the American people. By sabotaging the reputation of an institution of government, the party that is programmatically against government would come out the relative winner.

It worked. According to Gallup, Congressional approval - 14% in September - is at an historic low. The media is constantly telling us about the low approval ratings for President Obama. We don't hear as much about this side of the story. Its true that the public isn't enamored with the Democrats, but the "pox on both your houses" has Speaker John Boehner's approval rating at 28% (only 46% amongst Republicans).

I would suggest that this is why, as we head into the final stretch before the 2014 midterms, Republican candidates in the deeply red states of Kansas and South Dakota are facing substantial challenges from Independent candidates. If these these candidates do well, I'd predict lots more of this kind of thing in 2016. We could be witnessing the early stages of a new party that would attract Southern Blue Dogs as well as more moderate Republicans. There have already been suggestions that if these Independents win, they might caucus separately from Republicans and Democrats in the Senate next year.

Ever since the Republicans embraced the obstruction Lofgren describes above and fanned the flames of tea party lunacy in their own ranks, many of us have wondered how all this would end. We still don't know for sure. But the Senate races in Kansas and South Dakota will tell us a lot - along with how the GOP reacts to the outcome.