Open Thread and Diary Rescue

Tonight’s rescue team is dadanation, grog, HansScholl, jlms qkw, sunspark says, and vcmvo2, with srkp23 editing.

• A Siegel writes in detail about the need for legislation to be passed like, H.R. 3021 the 21st Century Green High-Performing Public School Facilities Act, so that aggressive action can be taken in Greening the School House. (vcmvo2)
• Civil Writes Activist reports some new details in the case of the 8-year-old accused of murder in All I Want For Christmas is My Two Front Teeth and a Stay of Execution. (vcmvo2)
• Andrew Ekud reports on an innovation in electric car development, pay per mile, not per gallon, in The Generation That Never Bought Gasoline. (grog)
• JohnnyRook continues his analysis on climate change and highlights how a change in US leadership will significantly help in Climaticide Update: Take Action Now, Public Tells Governments and Business. (grog)
• Tom Joad and his Traveling Road Show analyzes the decline of Big Labor, Big Business, and Big Government in The Era of Weak Labor Department Must End! (vcmvo2)
• barflyer figures It Can’t Be Happening Here. Unfortunately for one of his fellow church members, unemployment and homelessness can. (grog)
• KingOneEye finds a major case of potential bias in The Media Will Make BILLIONS On The Government Bailouts. (jlms qkw)
• RfrancisR ’s examines yet another negative outcome brought about with the passage of Prop 8 in California in The Psychological Harm of Anti-Gay Initiatives. (dadanation)
• desiunion has fond memories of one of the hotels attacked in Mumbai, and explains its importance in Indian culture in My memories of The Taj. (HansScholl)
• The Republicans have raised propaganda to a fine art, exploiting the prestige of leading generals like Barry McCaffrey, as srkp23 shows in One Man’s Military-Industrial-Media Complex, and exporting their tactics to fellow Kool Aid drinkers in Canada, as kanuk shows in Conservatives caught red handed passing word for word talking points! (HansScholl)
• Are you sick of Sarah Palin yet? If not, Celtic Diva has uncovered the Alaskan’s apparent modus operandi: Gov. Diva’s World: “I will model myself after those I once denounced as corrupt”. (sunspark says)

jotter brings High Impact Diaries: November 29, 2008 and the Week’s High Impact Diaries: November 22-28.

sardonyx serves up Top Comments: Impending Elections Edition.

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Pakistan Maintains a Position of “Plausible Deniability”

The question for the Indian government is to what extent it should hold the government of Pakistan responsible for the unprecedented invasion and assault on its territory, citizens and tourists. The gunmen in question all came from Pakistan and were trained in Pakistan, however the government of Pakistan denies any responsibility and maintains a position of “plausible deniablity”. It maintains that it should not be held responsible for the unauthorized actions of its citizens who invaded and murdered from its territory (and not for the first time), in the same way that Lebanon denies responsibility of the actions of Hezbollah who infiltrate Israel from Lebanese territory.

This allows Pakistan the best of both worlds: Their radicals can use Pakistan territory as a base of operation against India and others without fear, while the government of Pakistan can maintain respectability, claiming ignorance and washing their hand of any actions emanating from their territory. That is an insufferable and untenable position that cannot be allowed to stand.

India now must decide how to respond. No response at all will only embolden the enemy and send the message to Pakistan that it’s business as usual. A non-response will eliminate any shred of deterrence or possibility that Pakistan will take action against its own radicals.

On the other hand, an all out war between the two nuclear powers would be a risk that no one can take. India needs to engage a few high-profile selective targets that will satisfy public demands for action and send the message that such deeds do not come without a heavy price, without triggering an all out war. It’s a fine line to walk with many variables and unpredictable outcomes. Interesting times lay ahead for South Asia.

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Next Year’s Model: 2010 Races, Florida through Kansas

In the second instalment of our look at coming 2010 races, we look at potentially hot races in Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa and Kansas.

Florida

The Sunshine State ought to have one of the most exciting, highest-profile, and most expensive U.S. Senate races in the nation in 2010, when freshman Republican Mel Martinez is expected to seek reelection.

Martinez is considered one of the most vulnerable Republicans on the 2010 slate. He won election just 51% to 49% in 2004 over Democrat Betty Castor, and his approvals and reelects are in the toilet:

Public Policy Polling did three surveys over the summer looking at Mel Martinez’s job approval rating and how some potential opponents would fare against him.

In June his approval rating was 23%, in July it was 24%, and in September it was 23%.

We found that in hypothetical 2010 matchups Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink would lead Martinez 37-31, Congressman Robert Wexler would be tied with him 31-31, former Senator Bill Graham would lead him 51-31, Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz would lead him 38-37, Congressman Allen Boyd would lead him 37-33, and Congressman Ron Klein would lead him 37-33. Martinez is probably the most endangered incumbent in the country for 2010 and given his lack of popularity even with Republicans is ripe for a strong primary challenge.

“Bill Graham”, I assume, refers to Bob Graham. He’s not running, but it’s very possible that any of the others – Reps. Wexler, Klein, Boyd and Debbie Wasserman Schultz – might give it a go, and so might Rep. Kathy Castor, Betty Castor’s daughter and a rising star in the state party.

Sink is the biggest name in current state Democratic politics and the best equipped for a statewide run. As the polling numbers indicate, she’d start the race in the best position against Martinez, but whether she runs will depend somewhat on whether she decides to run for Governor, either now or in the future.

Martinez is the big target for 2010, but there’s also a Governor’s race to be held. Unfortunately, Republican Governor Charlie Crist enjoys exceptionally high approval ratings, and is likely not to draw a particularly strong opponent. Alex Sink and State Sen. Dan Gelber (who gets a free shot at the race, as his term expires in 2012) are the only ones rumored for the race, and it certainly seems that Sink would be best served either running against Martinez, or waiting until 2014 to run for Governor.

In the House, there are three races which look especially promising for next cycle (because of Florida’s ridiculous gerrymandering, there’s always a race that can be won somewhere, if only because Democrats start from such a position of disadvantage.

FL-10 is home to ancient Republican Rep. C.W. “Bill” Young. C.W. Bill has been around for several generations, having been first elected in 1970, and he’ll turn 80 years old in 2010. He’s bound to retire some day, and he holds a district which leans slightly Democratic at the presidential level (with a PVI of D+1.1).

Democrats have a built-in candidate just waiting for Young to hang up his spikes – State Senator Charlie Justice (and if ever there was a great name for a politician, it is “Charlie Justice”). He’d have to resign his Senate seat to run for Congress, but that should be a fairly easy call given the opportunity.

FL-16: Sex scandals have flipped this R+2 district twice in the past two cycles – once from Republican Mark Foley to Democrat Tim Mahoney, and once from Mahoney to Republican Tom Rooney. (Foley, Mahoney, Rooney…apparently being Irish is a prerequisite to holding this seat).

Rooney should get a fairly strong challenge his first time out of the gate, before he gets too entrenched, and there’s one especially strong Democrat to take him on. That would be State Senator Dave Aronberg of Greenacres. Aronberg lives just outside the district, in the 19th Congressional District, but his Senate district overlaps considerably with the 16th.

Aronberg is young (37), considered fairly moderate, has a base of support in his Senate district, and is exceptionally intelligent. The DCCC would do well to try and recruit Aronberg into the race, although he is not, in fact, Irish.

FL-25: Orange to Blue candidate Joe Garcia came exceptionally close to knocking off incumbent Republican Mario Diaz-Balart in 2008, losing just 53% to 47%.

With a seemingly strong base of support in Miami-Dade County, Garcia seems fairly well positioned to take another crack at the race. Garcia is only 40, and has a bright future in electoral politics if he wants to stay in the game. It doesn’t look as though redistricting will help much (the Republicans will control it), so 2010 seems as good a time as any.

Georgia

Democrats caught a nice break here when incumbent Sen. Johnny Isakson decided against a run for Governor in 2010, choosing instead to run for reelection.

Had Isakson run, he would very likely have won, and certainly would have been favored. With redistricting around the corner, and the Republicans in control of the Georgia legislature, the Governorship is a big prize for Democrats, perhaps bigger than the Senate seat.

And a Senate vacancy may not have been that appetizing even if Isakson did leave his seat, as term-limited Gov. Sonny Perdue would have been positioned to run for Isakson’s seat.

Instead, while the battle against Isakson in the Senate will be somewhat tough, the Governor’s race is wide open. For the Republicans, the front-runners are Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine, Lieutenant Governor Casey Cagle, Secretary of State Karen Handel, and perhaps a Congressman or two like Lynn Westmoreland.

On the Democratic side, Gen. David Poythress (the former Secretary of State, Labor Commissioner, and Adjutant General) is already running. Potentially in the mix are Attorney General Thurbert Baker (one of the most prominent potential candidates), Congressman Jim Marshall (who also might run for Senate), and Labor Commissioner Michael Thurmond.

Any of these folks could run, as could a few more – it’s a wide open field. The biggest name of all is former Governor Roy Barnes, who has been polled (and does fairly well) against Oxendine and Cagle.

The Senate race (against Isakson) ought to have more or less the same cast of characters, with the addition of Jim Martin (should he lose his current race against Saxby Chambliss), and wealthy Atlanta attorney Jim Butler. It’s likely the open-seat Gov race will draw better Democratic talent, although both Baker and Jim Marshall have been competitive in polling.

Marshall is one of the most conservative Democrats in the House (though he’s pretty decent on labor). His seat is perennially endangered, and should be the most hotly contested House seat in Georgia in 2010. Should Marshall run for Senate or for Governor, expect to lose the seat.

His partner in conservative-Dem land, Rep. John Barrow, also may be hunted, though his district is a lot more Dem-friendly than Marshall’s – Kerry won it.

Hawai’i

There are two big questions here:

1. Will venerated Democratic Senator Daniel Inouye retire, enabling Republican Gov. Linda Lingle to run for the Seat?

1. What Democrat will attempt to succeed the term-limited Lingle as Governor?

The hot Democratic names for the Gov race are those of Representatives Neil Abercrombie and Mazie Hirono (the former Lieutenant Governor), Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann, and State Senator Colleen Hanabusa. If Abercrombie or Hirono runs, you could see an interesting race for their Congressional seats (both of them safe for Democrats).

For the Republicans, Lieutenant Governor James Aiona will presumably run, but the Democrat will be favored.

If Inouye retires (indications are he won’t, but you never know), expect the same cast of characters, plus former Rep. Ed Case (who is, suffice it to say, not exactly a progressive).

Whoever is the nominee will have a crazy pitched battle against Lingle if she decides to run for Senate. She might run even if Inouye sticks around, but I suspect there’s no beating the legendary Inouye in Hawaii.

The Congressional races will depend on whether Hirono or Abercrombie runs for higher office. They’re both all set if they stay put.

Idaho

Democratic freshman Rep.-elect Walt Minnick will be one of the most hunted Dems in the country after knocking off Bill Sali in an R+19 district this year. No Democrat holds a more Republican district than Minnick.

Chances are good that senior Sen. Mike Crapo (it’s pronounced “Cray-po”, get your minds out of the gutter) will be perfectly safe, as will Governor Butch Otter. Idaho Democrats will likely focus exclusively on keeping Minnick in office, and for good reason.

Illinois

Ugh. No one knows what to expect here, because no one has any idea what Governor Rod Blagojevich will do to replace former Senator and now President-elect Barack Obama.

The list of possible names is a mile long: Reps. Jesse Jackson, Jan Schakowsky, Danny Davis and Luis Gutierrez, VA Secretary Tammy Duckworth, Congressional candidate Dan Seals, Comptroller Dan Hynes, Attorney General Lisa Madigan, Lieutenant Governor Pat Quinn, Senate President Emil Jones, and a partridge in a pear tree.

Blagojevich being Blagojevich, he could also appoint a trained dolphin, and it would surprise no one.

He also seems to think he has a shot at being reelected. Personally I don’t think that’s true, but he’s going to try, anyway. Hynes, Madigan, and State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias are expected to take a crack at him in the primary.

So who runs on the other side? Reps. Mark Kirk and Peter Roskam seem to be fairly well positioned for runs for Governor or Senate, Kirk especially.

Uh, the rest of the Republican bench in Illinois is kind of thin. You never know when a previously little-known state senator proves to be a great candidate for statewide office – Kay Hagan was such a one in 2008 for the Democrats – but it sure looks like Kirk or bust for the Illinois GOP.

At the House level, the GOP may take a crack at freshman Debbie Halvorson (IL-11) or third-termer Melissa Bean (IL-08). Meanwhile, the Democrats will jump all over the open seat in IL-10 (Mark Kirk) if Kirk does run for higher office.

Indiana

If Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh runs for a third term – and as yet, there’s no indication he won’t – he’s a virtual lock to be reelected. Even if he didn’t (suppose he got some appointment in the Obama administration), Dems would have a decent chance of keeping the seat with someone like Rep. Baron Hill.

Speaking of Hill, the Republicans may just put up former Rep. Mike Sodrel again to run against him (for their fifth matchup). He doesn’t seem to have much else to do.

Republican Mark Souder has had two tough challenges in a row, putting up 54% in 2006 and 55% in 2008. He’d be out of a job if his district weren’t so overwhelmingly Republican.

All the other Republicans should be favored to win reelection. Barring a retirement, don’t expect much action in Indiana at the House level.

Iowa

It’s possible that incumbent Republican Sen. Charles Grassley could get his first serious opposition in years. He had been considered pretty safe, but following a big win in Iowa, Democrats smell blood.

Former Governor Tom Vilsack could take him on, as could second-term Rep. Bruce Braley or Lt. Gov. Patty Judge.

Alternatively, Grassley might retire, a scenario which could lead Republican Rep. Tom Latham – who holds a slightly Democratic-leaning district – to run for the seat.

Democratic Governor Chet Culver appears well positioned for reelection, though that will depend largely on the quality of his opposition.

Kansas

Incumbent Republican Sen. Sam Brownback is retiring, and Rep. Jerry Moran is already running to replace him. He’ll likely be joined by Rep. Todd Tiahrt.

Term-limited Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, should she be available and inclined, would be the strongest Democrat in the field by far if she decided to run. There’s a huge dropoff after that. Lt. Gov. Mark Parkinson is likely to run to replace her as Governor, while former Rep. Nancy Boyda would be best served running for her old seat.

Suffice it to say that we don’t have a great bench in Kansas.

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Midday Open Thread

• The U.S. Senate could intervene in the Minnesota election.
  

  “Ultimately, the Senate has complete authority to determine who was elected,” Washington University political scientist Steven Smith told the broadcaster, citing the canvassing board’s decision this week to disallow disputed absentee ballots that Franken had urged be counted.

  The board’s move was “a cause for great concern,” Reid said this week, and those comments may indicate his willingness to start a Senate investigation of the Minnesota recount, Smith said. And if so, it’s possible that Franken’s argument regarding rejected absentee ballots could be reconsidered by U.S. senators.

  Under the constitution, the Senate is the final arbiter of its membership, MPR noted.

• A U.S. interrogator speaks out about interrogation methods used by the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan.
• The Department of Defense is increasingly concerned about cyber warfare after combat zone computer networks were recently hacked.

Reporting from Washington — Senior military leaders took the exceptional step of briefing President Bush this week on a severe and widespread electronic attack on Defense Department computers that may have originated in Russia — an incursion that posed unusual concern among commanders and raised potential implications for national security.

Defense officials would not describe the extent of damage inflicted on military networks. But they said that the attack struck hard at networks within U.S. Central Command, the headquarters that oversees U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, and affected computers in combat zones. The attack also penetrated at least one highly protected classified network.

Military computers are regularly beset by outside hackers, computer viruses and worms. But defense officials said the most recent attack involved an intrusive piece of malicious software, or “malware,” apparently designed specifically to target military networks.

• Arkansas has experienced five earthquakes this month and scientists are beginning to ask whether there might be a previously unknown fault line in the region.  Scientists caution the smaller quakes could be a precursor for a larger quake.

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Indian Nanny to Be Welcomed in Israel as Hero

When the shooting started she ran to grab two year old Moshe Holtzberg and escape. Moshe’s parents were gunned down in cold blood but their son has survived thanks to this courageous Indian Nanny who’s first instinct was not to save her own skin, but to save the child. She will receive a hero’s welcome in Israel.

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Polls and The Election – A Revisit

This is a good day to reflect and look back (there’s a winter advisory here in CT), as we move into the holidays and look to January 20th and beyond (is Bush still here? Damn.)

One of the hot topics of this election, and a perplexing one, was poll performance as a reflection of where the electorate’s head was at. We know the polls did well, at least the final polls. From pollster.com’s Mark Blumenthal:

How did the polls do last week? Quite well. While we worried about the many challenges, the telephone survey again defied the odds and delivered mostly accurate results.

We know that Nate Silver at fivethirtyeight.com and the algorithm at pollster.com, our go-to sites, performed well, as did our own R2K poll. For example, as of now the provisional popular vote is Obama 52.7 McCain 45.9, with more to count):

For this post, however, I’m going to concentrate on the pollster.com graph, because an ongoing discussion thoughout the latter part of September through election day was “Why aren’t the pollsters all saying the same thing?”.

It’s a tough thing to accept some degree of uncertainty. If we have 95% confidence, that means that one out of every 20 polls might be a bit of an outlier. That’s why we’ve gravitated to the polling aggregate sites (and learned to look at trends within a poll.) But at the same time, we can’t hold snap elections in September and October to check our polling assumptions.

So how does this compare to previous elections? What’s the norm? In mid-October, pollster David Moore addressed this in a post entitled Different Polls, Different Trends, in which he pointed out an observation from 2004:

All the results were well within the polls’ margins of errors in comparison with the actual election results.

However, the interesting point is that during the month of September, these very same polls showed dramatically different dynamics. As shown in the next graph, there were three basic stories: ABC, Gallup, Time and ABC all showed Bush gaining momentum in the weeks following the Republican National Convention, and then falling toward the end of the month. Furthermore, although these pollsters all agreed with the general pattern, at the end of the month Gallup showed Bush with an 8-point lead, CBS and Time had him at one point, and ABC at 6 points.

The second story, reported by Fox, Zogby and TIPP, showed very little movement over the month of September, with the margin varying from a Kerry lead of one point to a Bush lead of three points.

Finally, Pew had its own dynamic, not found by any of the other polls, showing a significant surge for Bush after the convention, followed by a dramatic decline, then another significant surge.

Now we have data from AP to support the idea that in 2008 it wasn’t so much the polls missing what the voters thought, it was that many of the voters couldn’t decide.

Inch by inch, voter by voter, Barack Obama and John McCain labored for more than a year to lock down supporters and woo defectors. It turns out, though, that the nation’s voters were a lot more fickle than commonly expected, and far more prone to switch allegiances.

An Associated Press-Yahoo News poll that tracked the same group of about 2,000 adults throughout the long campaign reveals a lively churning beneath the surface as people shifted their loyalties — some more than once.

More about voter behavior:

Those abandoning one candidate were often canceled out by others gravitating to him, resulting in little net change in the candidates’ overall support. Yet the frenetic, beneath-the-radar movement helps explain why the two political parties spent hundreds of millions of dollars this year. They needed to constantly woo new supporters while keeping those they thought they already had from defecting.

Stephen Ansolabehere, a Harvard University political scientist who has studied voting behavior, said such movement has been especially pronounced lately. He cited Republican defections because of unhappiness with President George W. Bush and the war in Iraq, uncertainty over which party could best address the economic meltdown and this year’s influx of young and other first-time voters.

Now, if you’re a fan of labels, you can look here (from Pew) about who calls themselves what.

Democrats, on balance, describe themselves as either liberal (34%) or moderate (37%) and the proportion labelling themselves as liberal has risen in recent years. Republicans, on the other hand, are not only largely conservative (68%) but, as their share of the electorate has declined somewhat, a higher proportion now say they are conservative than in the past. The ideological balance has been more stable among independents.

But don’t get carried away by labels. Many voters prefer the term “progressive” (Rasmussen) and, in any case, the label doesn’t always reflect policy (Pew):

Yet, even within ideological groups there are disagreements over major issues. Liberals are divided in their views of offshore drilling — 49% favor and 48% oppose allowing more oil and gas drilling in U.S. waters as a way to address America’s energy needs.

Conservatives are about equally split when it comes to the U.S. government guaranteeing health insurance for all citizens. Half of those who describe their political views as conservative favor government-backed insurance even if it means raising taxes, while 47% oppose it.

All of that is important in the context of deciding whether or not this really was 1932 and a realignment, or merely 1980 and a late-deciding “throw the bums out”. From the WaPo, a story entitled Pollsters Debate America’s Political Realignment:

Conservative analysts have insisted that although the Democrats achieved a sweeping victory, it does not indicate a fundamental change. “America is still a center-right country,” as Rep. John A. Boehner (R-Ohio, the House Republican leader, insisted soon after the votes were counted. Liberals call that argument nonsense. The election, wrote John B. Judis in the New Republic, heralds the arrival of “America the liberal,” provided that the Democrats play their strong new hand effectively. This election was “the culmination of a Democratic realignment that began in the 1990s, was delayed by September 11, and resumed with the 2006 election.”

It’s very likely the voters haven’t decided, either. The potential is there, especially with younger voters who this year rejected Republicanism, giving Obama a historic 34 point advantage (usually the 18-29 year olds vote similarly or off by a few points relative to everyone else, but certainly gains were made across all age groups.) But deciding those things before Obama is even President yet still seems a bit premature. After all, fighting over the independent voter never goes out of style, and this year, that’s the segment of the voter pool that really grew.

But any way you slice it, this remains an across-the board Dem-leaning electorate right now, with the middle (whatever it is defined as) reasserting itself.

First, the middle asserted itself. This was not a base election. Independents broke decisively for Obama, favoring him by a 52%-to-44% margin over John McCain. Obama also won an overwhelming 60% of self-identified moderates. By comparison, John Kerry carried 49% of independents and 54% of moderates four years ago.

Second, the political landscape shifted, mirroring pre-election polls that have shown increased Democratic party-affiliation since early 2006. While in 2004 the electorate was equally split along partisan lines, this year it was dramatically more Democratic (39% Democratic vs. 32% Republican).

Claims of this being a center-right country are nonsense. Policy-wise, we are a moderate-pragmatic nation. The trick is going to be to stay there, given that the middle is a moving target.

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Can the GOP Find the 97 Electoral Votes It Needs?

John McCain pieced together just 173 electoral votes this year. That’s the 8th-worst showing by a Republican since 1916. (Interestingly, all seven weaker GOP showings came at the hands of just three men: FDR, LBJ and Bill Clinton.) To win in 2012, the GOP needs to get to 270, of course, so they’ve got to scrape together another 97 EVs. How likely is this?

(Sidebar: Why 1916? In 1912, the electoral college expanded to 531 votes, which is close enough to today’s 538 to make pure EV comparisons meaningful. In 1908, by contrast, there were just 483 EVs. Also around and shortly after 1916, you had the realignment of the two major parties, the extension of the franchise to women, and the direct election of senators. In short, it’s a decent benchmark to mark the start of the “modern” political era. Finally, the election of 1912 was a serious oddball, with the GOP coming in third.)

Let’s take a look at how often large jumps have happened in the past. The GOP has posted EV gains in excess of 97 six times since 1916:

Most of these big gains took place at moments of serious change.

1920: Harding’s “return to normalcy.” Had 3,000 votes in California gone the other way in 1916, Woodrow Wilson would have lost to Charles Hughes. A war-weary public and a damaging recession let Harding run against the unpopular Wilson (much like Obama “ran against Bush”) and rack up the biggest popular-vote margin since 1820.

1952: Twenty years of Dem control of the White House ended. The incumbent president, Truman, was unpopular due to a seemingly intractable war in Korea and chose not to seek re-election as a result. The GOP candidate was the venerated Allied commander in WWII, Gen. Eisenhower.

1968: Another incumbent Dem mired in an even less popular war in Asia (LBJ) decided against running for another term. A badly fractured Democratic Party put forth a wounded, underfunded candidate (Humphrey) against the conniving Nixon, who knew how to exploit the fears and resentments brewing during a time of social upheaval. And hard not to improve on Goldwater’s performance.

1972: A continuation of 1968 in many ways – the Democrats even more badly fractured, their candidate woefully unready and unappealing to many. Nixon, evil though he was, deserved credit for appearing on this list twice.

1980: Stagflation, the Iran hostage crisis, and a Democratic president swept narrowly into office in the wake of Watergate (Carter) versus Nixon’s heir. Carter’s outsider status, a virtue on the campaign trail, also turned into a major liability once in DC, as few people owed him anything.

2000: The outlier on this list. Pundits and Ralph Nader succeeded in turning this into the “Seinfeld election” (ie, the “election about nothing”). Gore struggled to cast himself as the natural inheritor and steward of the Clinton legacy and Rove (again abetted by the media) cast Gore as a serial liar. And a much quieter conclusion to demographic realignment took place in states like TN and KY. However, Without those unearned Florida electoral votes, the gain would have only been 87 EVs – not enough for this list.

Now, the 97-plus Democratic gains:

These elections are a bit more of a mix between the epochal and the prosaic. Also, in the prior elections, Dems took 111 or fewer EVs five times, something that only happened once for the GOP.

1932: The Great Depression. ‘Nuff said.

1960: Perhaps the trickiest race on this list. At the very least, Adlai Stevenson’s abysmal 1956 haul meant the odds favored a better performance by Kennedy.

1964: A wildly conservative, non-mainstream Republican candidate versus a pre-backlash LBJ, running in the wake of JFK’s assassination. Despite the size of the victory, this election famously did not offer the Dems lasting gains but actually presaged a long period of decline.

1976: Watergate, the accidental presidency of Gerry Ford, and McGovern’s unthinkably pitiful showing gave Carter lots of room for improvement.

1988: How sad is it that Michael Dukakis is on this list? It’s only possible because Walter Mondale was ten times sadder. Dukakis is the only person on both lists to post a big gain but still lose – a classic dead-cat bounce.

1992: A bit tough to classify. Dukakis not only did poorly in 1988, he underperformed expectations badly. The dark recession of 1990-91 played a major role here, though.

2008: The most unpopular president in US history and the second-worst financial crisis in US history, not to mention an unpopular war and an alienating conservative GOP ticket.

So a few pretty clear trends emerge. Most of these elections took place during or in the wake of unpopular wars or economic downturns, or both: 1920, 1932, 1952, 1968, 1980, 1992, 2008. Two back-to-back races saw a political collapse on the part of each party: 1972, for complex reasons, and 1976, for much simpler ones.

Some just involved improvements over craptacular prior performances, like 1960 or 1988 (but also including 1932, 1968 & 1976). One time, 1964, saw one party put forth a completely unacceptable candidate, at least for that particular moment in time. And as for the election of 2000… well, as Al Gore himself would say, sometimes, there’s that little-known third category.

As impressive as Nixon’s consecutive gains were, in a way, George W. Bush’s surge from Bob Dole’s sucky performance might be the most remarkable of all. After eight years of peace and prosperity, he had to invent an amazing mythology in order to give voters a reason to change horses. It didn’t really work, of course – Gore still won more votes. But thanks to an assist from the Supreme Court, he pulled it off.

Anyhow, drilling down to the 2012 election, I don’t think this past history offers the GOP a whole lot of hope. The war in Iraq darn well better be over by then, and we probably won’t engage in another large-scale conflict. The Dems aren’t about to implode or nominate someone unelectable. And McCain’s haul wasn’t so awful, ala McGovern or Mondale, that you simply have to expect a bounce.

They already tried the 2000/2004 smear strategy this year, and that failed. I think it’ll be a lot harder to try that on an incumbent. So that leaves the possibility of a major economic downturn. It’s sadly possible that we won’t be out of this mess in three years, but that seems hard to imagine. What I think is more likely (but hopefully not very likely) is that we recover and then relapse (think 1938).

The pure odds would seem to favor the GOP – after all, 97-plus gains have happened 13 times in just 24 elections. But the background facts are very unfavorable, and that’s without even looking at demographic nitty-gritty of the blue states which might be winnable in 2012 for Republicans. That, however, can wait for another day.

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Recession And Children’s Health Care – A Revisit

Ten months ago, we wrote this piece because we were concerned about what might be coming down the road. Like hurricanes and pandemics, recessions are inevitable, and preparing for them makes more sense than ignoring them. But how to prepare?

Well, knowledge is always relevant. In an attempt to get a better feel for what might happen, we asked What’s The Effect Of Recession On The Health Care Safety Net?:

That’s a question worth mulling over. We know the safety net, though poorly understood, appears stable. Yet we know that even before the recession hits (or hit, as we might be there already) the net is threatened, and we know everyone, including the voters, are talking about the economy. But is there anything out there that helps us get a better feel for what’s likely to happen?

We can guess that recessions trigger unemployment, which makes it hard to keep health insurance, but do we go back to the way it was afterwards? How long does it take? And what happens to the safety net in the meantime? In other words, is there any data or are we just guessing?

Here’s what else we wrote:

The most vulnerable remain the most vulnerable. And, here’s where SCHIP can help (.pdf) by mitigating the effects on children of lost health insurance.

SCHIP also served as a safety net for low-income children during the 2000 recession and beyond, when many families lost employer-sponsored coverage. Although children and nonelderly adults experienced similar losses of private coverage between 2000 and 2003, earlier gains in children’s coverage were sustained through continued growth in public coverage, largely attributable to SCHIP.

We could have passed SCHIP improvements, but they were vetoed by Bush and overridden in the Senate but not the House. More of what we wrote:

So, loss of employment begats loss of insurance which begats loss of health care, in an environment which makes the states less able to pay for the safety net. Those state funds that help fund local safety nets become ever more threatened by recession. Local clinics, local hospitals and local public health services are all at risk when state funds dry up.There’s nothing about the data review that suggests good news; if anything, the recession effects appear likely to be felt for years after the Bush recession is over. In addition, for-profit safety net additions like walk-in clinics are untested and uncertain to survive recession.

Not just walk-in clinics, but hospitals and ERs are threatened as well.

Well, that was then and this is now. So where are we in all of this? Unsurprisingly, just where we thought we’d be. As families slide into poverty, Medicaid and SCHIP pick up the slack… for now

Using U.S. Census Bureau data reflecting the three-year period 2005-2007, [FamiliesUSA] the non-partisan organization representing healthcare consumers has revealed that about half a million children gained health insurance between 2006 and 2007. At the same time, the number of children living in poverty increased by 500,000 to 13.3 million.

This safety net is being stretched and might well break, however, because states do not have unlimited funds and cannot (most of them) run a deficit.

The non-partisan FamiliesUSA sums it up with this November 2008 study:

8.6 Million Children Are Uninsured

• One in nine American children (11.1 percent) is uninsured.
• The five states with the largest number of uninsured children are Texas, California, Florida, New York, and Georgia. Together, the uninsured children in these five states account for nearly half of all uninsured children in the country (48.3 percent).
• The five states with the highest rates of uninsured children are Texas, Florida, New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada. More than 15 percent of children in each of these states are uninsured, compared to a national median of 9.2 percent.

Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) Are Picking up the Slack

• Between 2006 and 2007, the number of uninsured children declined by 521,000.
• The number of children covered by private health coverage declined by 65,000.
• The number of children covered in Medicaid and CHIP increased by 954,000.

FamiliesUSA also found the majority of uninsured children come from working families with two-parent households, so another myth goes out the window. This isn’t class warfare, this is everyone.

Remember, this is just the beginning. Covering kids through Medicaid and SCHIP will temporarily help kids (but not adults), and mask what’s really happening as people lose insurance and can’t get it back (that takes at least two years after a recession). When states start to hurt, eligibility will be cut back and/or new enrollment will be limited at the state level.

Even were it not for a recession, reforms in health care are badly needed. From TIME:

By too many measures, America is a lot less healthy than a developed nation has any business being.

This Trust For America’s Health report from October, 2008 focuses on better ways to spend health dollars:

Even though the United States spends more than $2 trillion annually on health care, tens of millions of Americans suffer from preventable diseases and major vulnerabilities exist in the nation’s preparedness to respond to health emergencies.

If there’s any doubt as to why health reform is at the top of the new Obama Administration’s agenda, these numbers should put that to rest. A health disaster is staring us in the face, and “status quo” is far more tenuous than it appears. Covering the kids, important as it is, is only a piece of the puzzle.

The safety net is doing its job, but it can’t do everything for everyone and can’t do more with less. A weakened traditional health system (that’s where we start, and recession will weaken it further), and an ignored public health system is a recipe for disaster. Let’s hope a year from now, we’re not writing the same thing again.

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No Dark Cloud without a Darker Lining

President Elect Obama wasn’t alone in seeing the economic collapse as a final judgment on the effectiveness of conservative fiscal policies. The idea that the personal greed of executives, the profit motive of corporations, and the overall health of society are directly correlated, has been so discredited that the few market fundamentalists still humming this mantra should worry less about being shouted down, and more about being hauled off to a rubber room. The utter failure of the unrestrained free market and it’s trickle-down cousin is so evident that even such high priests as Alan Greenspan have been forced to admit that they were mistaken about very basic aspects of their religion.

But even with the core ideas of conservative economics in tatters, there’s a shadow that lingers over the discussion of where the nation goes from here. After decades of indoctrination into the cult of selfishness, it’s become so deeply ingrained that even in the midst of definitive failure, we still treat the tenants of conservatism as if they’re givens. We’re still so thoroughly in the conservative mindset, that we constantly posit (with a straight face) propositions like “well, now that the economy is bad, we may not be able to make all the environmental improvements we wanted.”

Conservatives, from the moment the economy started to skid, started mouthing this as a bedrock Fact. In fact, they looked to this idea with some obvious relief. Sure, our stock options may be worthless, but hell, at least nobody will try and rescue those polar bears. We can thank God for that. There’s no dark cloud from which Republicans can’t produce a still darker, sootier lining.

But conservatives weren’t alone in these statements.  Sure, you had Texas Governor Rick Perry arguing that regulating greenhouse gases as pollutants would wreck the Texas economy by blocking the scores of new coal burning power plants slated for the Lone Star State. But you also had John Kerry talking about how the economy would constrain the Obama administration from improving emission rules, and a broad cross-section of the world’s nations – the same nations who signed off on Kyoto — retreating from environmental rules in the face of the economic difficulty.

The headline on reporter Alister Doyle’s article for Reuters says it succinctly:

Economy offers excuse to avoid climate fight

To some extent, this retreat from change comes from the simple momentum. Without the incentive of high fossil fuel prices, the easiest thing to do is… nothing. With all the dollar signs (and Euro signs, and Yen, Yuan, and Tugrik signs for that matter) all pointed down, every government’s primary thought on the environment Is simply not now. Gas prices are the one good thing about smashing the economy, so not now. Not now, when we already have so much to deal with. Please, will not someone rid me of these bothersome environmentalists?

The answer to that question is “no.” Or at least, let’s hope not. Because at the heart of the “now the economy is wrecked, with need to go slow on environmental regulation” argument are two simple ideas. First, that the economy should be our primary concern, and second that protecting the environment is expensive. Which is quite possibly the most idiotic construction since the float/sink test for witches.

Here, let’s do a quick mental experiment.

Suppose you live in a giant floating ship. Not just you, but everyone you know or have ever known lives in this pearl-white ship with its sails of glowing gossamer and its railings of gleaming crystal. All your life this ship has been racing across a barren landscape, heading toward some vaguely defined, but surely glorious destination.

And as you breeze past craggy peaks and scorched deserts you, along with everyone else on board, practices their wrestling. This isn’t just wrestling, you understand. It’s wrestling refined into an art as subtle as a noh play, as vigorous as mountain climbing. It’s both the entertainment and the religion of those on board the floating ship. The champions of this sport are idolized. The many matches that take place each day are scrutinized to the last drop of sweat, the schedules for the next day are examined and weighed. The rules are not just written in the ancient pages of the Holy Rule Book, they’re engraved on the souls of every passenger.

Then one day, someone – to tell the truth, a low-ranking woman child, a laughably scrawny yellow-robe who shows no flair for fingerwork nor skill in foot placement – notices that there is a problem with the great ship. The crystal rails are riddled with cracks. The polished decks are wearing thin. Even the great flying kilu birds who drag the ship through the sky show signs of illness.  A few people show concern when she spreads this news, but then we are nearing the season of the Grand Tournament, and there’s so much to do.  

Yellow-robe just won’t let it go. The ship has sailed the skies on its endless quest for centuries, for millennia, for generations uncounted. Why has no one noticed these problems before, she asks? The stick-thin girl keeps examining the damage, keeps looking for answers. Then one day, when everyone is gathered to watch one of the most anticipated matches of the year, she stands up and shouts her conclusions.

Wrestling, she says, is destroying the ship. As the crowd looks at her in astonishment, she explains that though wrestling itself is certainly almost as ancient as the ship, in recent years people have tended toward more violent forms of struggle. In hurling each other against the railings, the crystal rails have been damaged. In scuffling over the boards, the decks of the ship have been warped. The actions of the wrestlers have been so boisterous  that they have even set the ship to rocking, injuring the kilu in the process. Unless the wrestlers calm down, there is every chance the great ship could be seriously harmed.

Though there’s a great reluctance to believe yellow-robe, gradually she is able to win converts by showing them the same evidence she has followed. There are still many who believe that the ship has merely been damaged by the passage of time, or by strong winds, or even that the damage has always been there and yellow-robe is completely mistaken. There are still more who believe her, but who can’t imagine any change to the sport they love. Even so, there are proposals put forward  that would constrain the actions of the wrestlers. All of which sets up a howl of protest from the purists. Yes, they say, our wrestlers are more active than those in the past, but that is because they have studied more, worked harder, and practiced long hours. The very things yellow-robe is pointing to are simply signs of growth.

In the midst of this difficult discussion, another crisis erupts. One of the greatest heroes of the sport, a cyan robe of the finest quality, has been found guilty of cheating. Soon it becomes clear that corruption has spread among many of the top competitors and among their judges. People turn away in disgust. The stands that once thronged with spectators are all but empty. The whole sport, the very definition of their culture, is on the brink of failure.

Yellow-robe comes to the captain and his officers. “The ship is in great danger,” she says. “We need to make changes now, while we can.”

The captain looks on the young woman with kindness, but slowly shakes his head. “We can not risk it,” he says. “We must first restore the reputation of the sport before we can entertain changing the rules. Wait until the tournament is restored to its glory, then we will talk.”

Yellow-robe leaves the captain’s quarters sadly, the worn decks groaning under her slight weight.

The people of the flying ship are making two clear errors. They are valuing the game they play above the very vessel on which their life depends, and they are assuming that the same rules and system that led them into a crisis are the only ones that can lead them out. Sound familiar?

More than thirty years ago, when the first iteration of the Clean Air Act was under consideration, the industries involved predicted disaster. The cost of electricity would soar to such levels that the average family would “freeze in the dark.” Utilities would be forced out of business. Unemployment and economic collapse would follow. What actually happened? The cost of electricity actually fell as the rules went into effect. We met the new obligations for a tiny fraction of the predicted costs while improving health, aiding the environment, and advancing technology.

The “costs” of tackling environmental protection are being generated from the same industries that have the most to gain by holding onto the status quo and by the economists who assured us that the credit default swap was a brilliant idea. For decades, conservatives have been pushing the idea that the environment and the economy are at opposite ends of the line. You can’t help one without hurting the other.

Says who?

We couldn’t sign Kyoto, because it would hurt the economy. Well here’s news, we didn’t sign, and the economy failed.  We couldn’t place tough requirements on our cars to protect the auto industry. We didn’t, and the industry has been dragged to the brink of collapse. We couldn’t restrict mountaintop removal mining, because it would cost us jobs.  We expanded this form of mining at a record pace, and mining jobs evaporated. We had to open up the national parks to being drilled, chopped, and mined, because the economy needed it. We did all that, we did everything the purists asked, so where are our super duper trillion dollar economic boom times?

We’ve just experienced the most environmentally abusive administration since the word “ecology” was coined, aided for most of those years by a Republican-dominated congress all too eager to set fire to every environmental rule ever concocted. Even as they head for the door, the Bush administration is still intent on gutting the Clean Air Act, expanding mountaintop removal, breaking the Endangered Species Act, and opening more public lands to destruction. None of which has done a damn thing to help the economy. Republican tactics have both wrecked the ship and ruined the game, and we’re still buying into it.

The economic crisis is not a reason to back off from daring changes in environmental regulations. This is the time to demand a fundamentally new game.

In the United States, some business groups are calling on President-elect Barack Obama to move cautiously in tackling global warming, saying that a too aggressive response could prolong the economic downturn and cost jobs.
But a growing chorus of other businesses, environmentalists, and politicians are calling for a green-based economic recovery. … Such a Green New Deal, woven into the economic stimulus package being crafted for early next year, could create millions of government-subsidized jobs and build a new energy infrastructure.

Those who brought on the economic collapse now want to use it as an excuse to perpetuate the same policies that got us to this point. To this end they present numbers suggesting enormous costs for making changes and dire threats of storms ahead. However, they’re writing these warnings on the back of a sheaf of failed predictions. We can keep listening to them, or we can toss this last bastion of conservative economics onto the same toxic scrapheap with the rest of their disastrous ideas.

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Your Abbreviated Pundit Round-up

Sundays are a great day to abbreviate.

Tom Friedman:

If Iraq can keep improving — still uncertain — and become a place where Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites can write their own social contract and live together with a modicum of stability, it could one day become a strategic asset for the United States in the post-9/11 effort to promote different politics in the Arab-Muslim world.

But even if it does, I was still wrong enough about Iraq that it would be despite what I’ve said, and not because of it.

Maureen Dowd: Maybe I, too, can be outsourced. It’s just a matter of time.

Connecticut Post Staff:

“The people have spoken,” read a recent letter to the editor. “It’s too bad we in Connecticut never had that same opportunity to protect our families.”

The writer was talking about California’s Election Day passage of Proposition 8, which changed the state Constitution to restrict the definition of marriage to a union between a man and a woman. Connecticut is now one of two states where same-sex couples can legally marry.

What the writer leaves unsaid is what we’re supposed to be protecting our families from. Being gay? People either are or they aren’t, and I can’t imagine anyone thinks passing a law is going to change that.

Richard Reeves:

I’m sure there are legions of Obama supporters and voters gritting their teeth at his decision to offer Hillary Clinton appointment as secretary of state.

A short memory and inclination toward compromise may not be weakness but a sign of security and strength, something badly needed in Washington these days.

Amity Schlaes: Since I’m the hot topic in New Deal revisionism, let me take on Krugman. He’s wrong, I’m right.

Why does all this matter today? Because lawmakers are considering new labor legislation containing “card check,” which would strengthen organized labor and so its wage demands. Because employees continue to pressure firms to spend on health care, without considering they may be making the company unable to hire an unemployed friend. Piling on public-sector jobs or raising wages may take away jobs in the private sector, directly or indirectly.

And anyone who says otherwise is contributing to the next Depression.

Peggy Noonan:

Mr. Obama’s cabinet picks and other nominations suggest moderation, also maturity, and his treatment of Joe Lieberman shows forbearance and shrewdness. Politics is a game of addition, take the long view, don’t throw anyone out as you try to hit 60. Most of all, leave Mr. Lieberman having to prove every day to the Democratic caucus that he really is a Democrat.

Gov. Mark Sanford:

People usually think more about what went right and what went wrong after a loss than after a victory. Accordingly, Republicans will have a lot of thinking time over the holidays.

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