Now Conservatives Think Ahead To President Obama

Another week is over, and a quick assessment would go something like this:

1) Whatever John McCain says, the voters don't believe it, not even if Joe the Plumber supports it.

2) Whatever the Bush administration does, the Wall-Street-types don't believe it for more than a couple of hours.

In other words, this is a crisis of trust in the ability of Republicans of all stripes to solve the economic mess, and this feeling can't possibly turn around before the election.

3) All this is perfectly clear to any conservative with an IQ in the 90-110 range, as shown by the last Matthew Kaminski's column in the Wall Street Journal.

What is interesting in Kaminski's piece is the fact that in his 1300-word column, nowhere the possibility that Barack Obama will NOT be elected is mentioned. The very title, "The Axelrod Method. The 'change' president could be in for a rough ride on Capitol Hill," indicates that while McCain's campaigns launches its last fireworks, conservatives start thinking to a completely different subject: the possible failure of Obama's first term.

Kaminsky writes about the election of Deval Patrick, governor of Massachusetts:

As a path to power, the Axelrod method appears to be the best thing going today. Coming into the 2006 race, Mr. Patrick was a political novice with 1%-2% name recognition in a state that's 6% black . He faced off against a sitting state attorney general favored by the Democratic Party establishment. The former Clinton administration lawyer energized the grass-roots and youth vote with superior organization and stirring oratory. The candidate himself was the message; the campaign dwelled on his personal story, not the issues. (...) Massachusetts never saw anything like it. Mr. Patrick upset the favorite in the Democratic primary and won the general election by 21 points.

Then Kaminski, goes into the details of the difficult relationship between the governor and the Democratic legislature:

That crusading optimism, so critical to his election victory, fast bumped up against established Democratic interests such as the police unions and power brokers on Beacon Hill. They didn't know Mr. Patrick, didn't appreciate him jumping the queue to the governor's chair, didn't buy his reformist outsider message, and frankly liked things as they were. Great speeches or popular support were insufficient for Mr. Patrick to get his way.

And Kaminski makes his final point forecasting "a rough ride" for Obama, when dealing with "the Democratic warhorses on Capitol Hill."

Well, no doubt that the Republican candidate for president  will be happy to hear THAT (with still 17 days to go) but let's put aside John McCain's feelings, and discuss the scenario offered by the Wall Street Journal.

First, Kaminski could have found a better example than the one of a first-term governor: in fact, president Carter's relationship with Democratic Congress between 1977 and 1981, would be much more significant. 

Jimmy Carter, indeed had trouble in having legislation passed by Congress, as had Bill Clinton in 1993-1995. It would be fair to say that all Democratic presidents, including Franklin Roosevelt, had sooner or later strong difficulties in implementing their agenda because of resistance from Congress. Only Roosevelt in his first term (before the "Court-Packing" episode) and Lyndon Johnson after the 1964 landslide were able to lead Congress in the direction they wanted.

Carter and Clinton, on the contrary, were both governors of backward Southern states, real outsiders in the party. Clinton was more well-connected than Carter, but his first term began in worst possible way, with troubles in confirming his cabinet, and the public relation disaster of gays in the military. Clinton got only 43% of the popular vote, and no senator or representative felt obliged to him for his election.

What about president Obama? If the Democratic ticket wins on November 4, it will be largely because a perfect campaign that has reshaped the political geography of the country. Axelrod's and Plouffes' efforts in mobilizing activists and voters from North Dakota to Louisiana will benefit local Democratic candidates for the House and the Senate, many of whom will enter Congress only because of Obama's coattails.

Obama will win with more than 50% of the popular vote (FiveThirtyEight's forecasts, the best in the business, give him 52%) and a large majority in the electoral college. He will bring to Washington a NEW Democratic majority in the Senate, a majority that today exists only in name (the party controls 49 seats, and only the conditional support of two independents allows Harry Reid to claim the mantle of Senate Majority Leader). Democratic candidates for a senate seat might win in states like Texas, on November 4: will they forget in a minute who is the leader that propelled them over the top? And representative who will win in arch-conservatives districts will give Obama a "rough ride?"

Maybe.

However, a more plausible scenario is that President Obama will start with strong majorities in both houses of Congress, and that the bulk of these senators and representatives will be grateful to him, and decided to implement his agenda to turn the page after eight years of George W. Bush. The sense of urgency created by financial chaos will add to the discipline of the troops, exactly as happened during Franklin Roosevelt's first term. The fact that the mood of the country changed, and that Democrats will be on the verge of a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate will strengthen the administration enormously.

What Barack Obama will be able to do is another matter. Two wars and a depression will tax his abilities enough, Congress will not be the top of his concerns.

Is McCain Really Ahead?

Gallup's new poll, conducted right after the Republican convention, barely appeared on the firm's home page, and the pundit class started screaming about the "Palin effect," the "new energy" she brought to McCain's campaign, and the new "enthusiasm" of evangelicals for a presidential ticket led by someone they despised.

Well, let's look at the basics.

It is certainly true that McCain for a moment took the lead, after several weeks in which it was "advantage Obama" (most recently 50% to 42%, just one week ago). However, these polls reflect the "bounce" after the convention and really mean that the race is tied, as shown by the new Rasmussen's poll here on our right bar. The turning point will probably arrive with the three debates between the candidates.

More important, the race seem to go in the same direction of the 2000 and 2004 election, that is highly polarized contests in which the two camps count on mobilizing the faithful more than  reaching to the independents. Probably about 90 percent of those identifying with a political party will vote for that party's presidential candidate: the exit polls in 2004 showed that John Kerry had won 89 percent of the Democratic vote, George W. Bush 93 percent of the Republican vote. The question is: which one of the camps has more troops?

We know that the Democratic advantage in party identification is now of almost 6 points, according to Rasmussen: during August, the number of Americans who consider themselves to be Republicans increased two percentage points to 33.2% while the number of Democrats was little changed at 38.9%. That gives the Democrats a net advantage of 5.7 percentage points.

To gauge the importance of this factor, imagine that in November vote the same 120 million Americans who voted in 2004 (there will be more voters, but we shall look at that issue later). If Obama will keep the share of 90 percent of the Democratic vote, that translates into a huge gap over McCain (41 million votes to 36 million). Even assuming (somehow generously) that McCain will able to bring the same percentage of followers to the polls, while Democratic cohesiveness would be weaker (80%) that still means an advantage for Obama (37 million to 36 million). 

And what about independents? In an year of economic hardship as this one, there is no way they will split 50-50 between the two parties: more probably they will go 52-48 for the Democratic candidate, McCain's courtship of them notwithstanding. That means another million votes in the democratic column (Independents are about a third of the voters, as of today). 

And there will be new voters, a majority of them pulling the lever for the democratic candidates (remember that turnout in their primaries has been the double than in Republican ones). This will bring another million votes net advantage to Obama.

Question: Can the democrats squander an advantage which is between 3 and 7 MILLION VOTES in the next two months? The answer is: "In theory, that is possible." If you put together a lethargic propaganda, a campaign focused on the economy but short of solid proposals, plus the vicious Republican campaign, it is indeed possible that the Democrats achieve the result of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

However, this would really go against the odds. To win, it is enough for Obama to reassure the constituencies that took part in the primaries, especially women, Latinos and young people: they should give the Democrats a comfortable edge in November's election. Right now, calculations about the electoral college give the Democratic candidate a slim majority (273 votes) but the victory might be much larger, if Obama wins in Ohio, Virginia or Florida, which is quite possible.

If you add to this the real possibility of large majorities in the House and in the Senate, one realizes that there are on the table long-term opportunities for the Democrats, and the possibility of changing American political landscape for a generation, as Ronald Reagan did for Republicans in 1980. This, of course, is a question of leadership but it all depends on how the party leader will conduct himself. Will Obama be up to the task?

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Palin's 15 Minutes of Fame/2

McCain's campaign released today a statement to let the world know that Bristol Palin, the 17-year-old daughter of John McCain’s running mate, is five months pregnant, but has "the love and support of her family." No less. The statement goes on saying that "Bristol and the young man she will marry are going to realize very quickly the difficulties of raising a child, which is why they will have the love and support of our entire family." The young man is not even named, and the text convey a certain lack of enthusiasm.

It seems fair to report that, in answering to a 2006 Gubernatorial Candidate Questionnaire, Palin stated that she didn't support "explicit sex-education programs." Too bad. Maybe now Governor Palin will change her mind about what 17-year-old girls should learn in high-school.

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Karl Rove’s Strategy for Attacking Obama -How Democrats Can Respond

This piece by Democratic communications analyst James Vega was originally published on August 8, 2008 in "The democratic strategist," and is of the greatest interest today, on the eve of Republican Convention's opening in St.Paul (MN).

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With the recent appointment of Steven Schmidt and several other staffers to the highest levels of the McCain campaign, the political protégés of Karl Rove have now taken almost complete control. As a result Rove’s basic political strategy has been elevated to the core approach of the campaign.

At its heart, Karl Rove’s approach for the last 20 years has been an essentially class-based attack on Democrats – one that portrays them as representing an out-of-touch, educated elite who have little in common with average Americans. In this strategy, individual Democrats are not simply wrong about specific issues; their errors all arise from deep, pathological defects in their basic values and character.

This general strategy can be traced back to the campaigns of Richard Nixon and George Wallace in 1968 and 1972. But one of Rove’s distinct additions was to recognize that attacks on a candidates’ character must be psychologically plausible – they must be fine-tuned to exploit weaknesses the opposing candidate actually appears to reflect in his behavior.

In this regard, Rove has always had an exceptionally sinister aptitude (one that is reminiscent of Hannibal Lector’s perverse but penetrating form of psychological insight) for being able to recognize subtle human weaknesses and frailties. For example, although Al Gore and John Kerry were both products of relatively advantaged, prep school environments and were clearly not working class “ordinary guys”, they were nonetheless quite distinct. On the one hand Gore was vulnerable to being portrayed as somewhat pompous, self-important and egotistic. Kerry, in contrast, invited the caricature of being a long-winded, detached, emotionally remote New England Yankee. The overall class-based frame worked for both men, but the political hit-man’s art lay in recognizing and exploiting the subtle variations between them.

Obama presents an even more complex challenge. Although meditative, professorial, articulate and elegant, he nonetheless does not fit the image of a typical left-wing college professor (or, for that matter, of a Black militant, a well-to-do New York limousine liberal or corrupt Chicago pol).

The solution the Rove team developed, only days after taking control of the McCain campaign, was to portray Obama as a resident of the rarified world of the “Hollywood movie star liberals” – a pampered universe of exclusive health and exercise clubs, expensive hotel suites and fancy bottled water. The implication was that, like other Hollywood stars, Obama must be “self-infatuated and effete” or “vain and out of touch” or “effete, elite and equivocal” – in short, a weak and vain man without real character; a male fashion model living a movie stars’ life and not the real life of ordinary Americans.

This class-based caricature of Obama is important for the McCain campaign because it provides a critical psychological, character-based foundation to support a very disparate set of accusations – that he does not really care about America’s solders, that he lacks real patriotism, that he “plays the race card” and so on. Using this “typical Hollywood liberal” stereotype, it is not even necessary to explicitly contrast Obama with the “heartland virtues” of John McCain who the Rove team directly links with such traditional movie-hero figures as John Wayne.

How can Obama best respond to this line of attack? The kernel of truth which the attack exploits is the fact that Obama is most obviously not an “ordinary” or “average” guy in any meaningful way and any attempt on his part to present himself as such necessarily appears completely unconvincing and condescending.

But it is a profound misunderstanding of “ordinary people” to think that they require a candidate to exactly resemble them in order for him or her to win their respect and support. On the contrary, individuals who excel and achieve success through hard work, perseverance and dedication are greatly admired by most Americans, so long as they continue to genuinely respect and care about ordinary voters if they enter political life. Average voters genuinely admire upward mobility and success if it is honestly and honorably achieved.

And in fact, Obama’s life story provides a powerful core narrative that supports precisely this alternative way of understanding him. It is composed of three elements:

1. A far from easy or pampered early life and a youth marked by confusion, mistakes, bad choices and lack of direction.

2. A remarkable personal turn-around, build on the foundation of the incredibly hard work, perseverance and dedication that is required to get a law degree at a top university.

3. A decision to turn his back on the “easy life” of a professor or private attorney and to try instead to find a role of service to the community.

This is simply not the life story of a typical pampered Hollywood star or vacuous celebrity. On the contrary, it is a quintessentially American success story of youthful error followed by redemption and success through hard work and an ultimate decision to seek a way to contribute to society.

The McCain campaign’s attempt to fit Obama into the “vacuous Hollywood star” framework simply will not stick if Obama’s unique biography can be correctly presented. Between now and the convention, Democrats must make a coordinated and concerted effort to define a simple core narrative along these lines – one that can be driven home every single time the McCain campaign attempts to stigmatize Obama with their utterly fraudulent depiction of his character.

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McCain-Palin's Rebranding of The Party Remains Doubtful

It appears that rejuvenating the image of the Republican party, and making its brand more popular among women is not as easy as it seems. The first polls taken after Palin's choice on Friday show that among Democratic women - including those who, according to mainstream media should have been truly disappointed that Hillary Clinton did not win the Democratic nomination - 9% say Palin makes them more likely to support McCain, 15% LESS likely (Gallup).

According to Rasmussen, women soundly rejected her, 48% to 25% in answering to the question: "Is she ready to be president?

Overall, likely voters expressed a favorable impression of her by a 53/26 margin, but there was a severe gender gap on this: Men embraced her at 58% to 23%, while for women it was 48/30.

The widespread uncertainty about whether Palin is qualified to be president amounts to the lowest vote of confidence in a running mate since the elder George Bush chose then-Indiana senator Dan Quayle to join his ticket in 1988. 

Is that surprising? Only for CNN and FOX pundits (as Frank Rich pointed out in his excellent column yesterday). The long trend of American politics are well-established, and one of them is that women tend to vote Democratic because of Republican Party's staunch opposition to abortion. As a large majority of women are pro-choice, it is only natural that they vote for the party who supports their rights in the political arena. Palin is the darling of pro-life women (and men), a constituency that was skeptical of McCain tepid attitude toward their crusade to outlaw abortion. In this respect, it is another move to consolidate the Republican base, not to hunt in the Democratic pastures.

The problem of this strategy is obvious: this year, the number of citizens who identify with the GOP is much smaller than the number of those who consider themselves Democrats. The gap is about 29% to 37%. This means that bringing to the polls all the faithful supporters of the two parties will translate in a large victory for the Democrats, assuming that Independents split 50-50 between McCain and Obama.

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Charlie Cook Thinks That...

Charlie Cook, the founder of the well respected "Cook Political Report" wrote six weeks ago:

"My father turns 90 years old next month and has joked that at his age, he doesn't buy green bananas anymore.

The folly of a 71-year old nominee picking a green, relatively inexperienced running mate seems much more serious, particularly if that presidential nominee sells as his strong suit that national security credentials are his "raison d'etre" for the presidency.

In a very challenging national security environment, putting someone on McCain's ticket who only has experience heading the Florida or Minnesota National Guard would seem a stretch given McCain's rationale for the presidency."

It turns out that McCain selected not the governor from Florida (pop. 18,251,000) nor the one from Minnesota (pop. 5,200,000) but the chief of ALASKA National Guard (population unknown, but a lot of salmon).

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McCain chooses a female version of Dan Quayle

And here is the "hockey mom." After the "security moms" of 2004, Republicans try to do some rebranding of the party with Sarah Palin, the youngish Vogue-covergirl-outdoor maniac-devote-conservative-NRA-faithful- Governor of Alaska. Nice try.

However, Palin seems more or less a female version of Dan Quayle, the youngish-conservative-NRA-faithful-Senator from Indiana picked by Bush father in 1988.

This year, however, an obviously unqualified candidate as Vice president will hardly reinforce the ticket. If national security is the raison d'etre for the Republican case for McCain, the question is how the Arizonan would rationalize picking a running mate with even less foreign policy and national security experience than Obama, or Quayle. With a vice president who will be a 72-year-old heart's beat away from the presidency, how does McCain explain selecting someone with zero experience in what he says is so important?

And what about health care, social security, subprime mortgages, or closing factories? Voters in Ohio, Pennsylvania or Michigan will not be thrilled by a fiscal conservative who has barely set foot on the 48 states south of the Canadian border.

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Will John McCain Do Better Than Barry Goldwater?

Politically, the situation in the field is this: Obama has gained a 7-point margin over John McCain in the last three days (50%-43%) and he seems to be a Democratic candidate not weakened at all by the long battle in the primaries. At least, this seems to be the effect of Hillary Clinton's endorsement of Saturday: now 81% of Democratic voters say they are ready to vote for him.
That means he should easily win in November: he will need only to keep the blue States where John Kerry prevailed in 2004, and win in states like Iowa, Colorado and New Mexico (look at the map on top of the page): that would make 273 votes in the Electoral College, more than the "magic number" of 270. In Iowa and New Mexico a few thousand votes more (or, a few thousand votes LESS in the Republican column) will suffice. Colorado has been leaning Democratic in recent years, electing several smart politicians like governor Bill Ritter and senator Ken Salazar.
This, however, is a conservative forecast: polls give him good chances of winning in Ohio and Nevada, creating a very large majority in the Electoral College for a Democratic President who will have strong Democratic majorities in Congress (the party should pick several seats in the House, and Democrats are on the brink of a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate).
During an American Presidential campaign everything can happen, but John McCain will have a hard time in convincing voters that the main issue should be terrorism, or Iraq, and not the economy. The gasoline at 4$ a gallon is simply political poison for him.

Will Clinton Do What Reagan Did in 1976?

In the end, numbers prevailed and all the talk about a convention fight in Denver proved to be just that... talk. Hillary Rodham Clinton will suspend her campaign and endorse Senator Barack Obama on Saturday, which was her only possible choice after Democratic members of Congress urged her to leave the race and allow the party to coalesce around the nominee. Now, the problem is: what will Clinton do in the Fall?

I suspect that the rumors about her becoming Vice president are nonsense: if she is really serious in asking the n. 2 position on the ticket, Obama will be dead serious in refusing it. Not because of her sometimes vicious attacks during the primaries but because an Obama-Clinton ticket would not have credibility vis-à-vis the voters: it would give them the feeling that everything was simply a show and that, in the end, every nasty political fight can finish with tarallucci e vino (if you are not familiar with this Italian motto, send me an email, and I will explain). There are all chances that Obama will pick up someone with experience, and possibly a military background, to stand up to McCain when things will get tough after the conventions. 

The real issue, then, is whether Hillary will indeed campaign for Obama in the Fall, or not. There is one precedent: the 1976 long contest between Gerald Ford, the incumbent President who had entered the White House because of Richard Nixon's resignation after Watergate, and conservative rising star Ronald Reagan. Reagan fought to the bitter end and this solidified his name recognition, and his relationship with the party, opening the path to his easy nomination 1980.

In the campaign of 1976, however, he stayed home in California, and his presence at political events was perfunctory. Ford asked him to play an active role, at least in some swing states were he was popular, like Ohio and Mississippi, but Reagan declined.Of course, nobody can say what would have happened had Reagan campaigned vigorously, but the numbers are there: barely 11.500 ballots more in Ohio and 15.500 in Mississippi would have been enough to tilt these states to Ford, and create a majority for him in the Electoral College. Carter would still have had a plurality of the popular vote but Ford would have won 272 electoral votes and with that the White House (a scenario similar to the one of 2000, when Gore easily won the popular vote but Bush got more electoral votes).

So, the real question is: how hard will Clinton work in the Fall, to convince her supporters that a democratic victory in 2008 is indeed necessary? I suspect that 85% of them will vote for Obama anyway, but the traps on the road to victory in any American presidential election are more than land mines in a Cambodia uncleared field.

George W. Bush's Fin de Règne

While Dubya travels the Middle East and gives nonsensical speeches to the Israeli Parliament, Congress has sent him a farm bill that includes a lot of money for food stamps amid rising grocery prices (and a boost in farm subsidies in order to create a veto-proof majority). The Senate passed the bill 81-15 Thursday, a day after the House approved it with 318 "yes" votes, that means enough votes to override a presidential veto in both houses of Congress. Bush had threatened to veto the $290 billion bill, saying with a straight face that it is fiscally irresponsible. What is remarkable is that this is the very first time in seven and a half years that a number of Republicans rebel against the White House.

"Republicans Must Stand for Something!", or Who Needs Friends When Enemies Work For You?

No less the engineer of a vision of politics based upon dirty tricks, Karl Rove, writes that "As Republican ranks declined, the number of independents and Democrats grew. Has the bottom been reached?". So, what we have been saying for months now has been vindicated by "Bush's Brain" himself: powerful currents in American politics do favor the Democrats in 2008, and panic is spreading in the GOP. 

Rove has his recipe for winning the Presidency (not even the Virgin of Guadalupe could make Republicans win back Congress, where a Democratic landslide is more or less inevitable) and the prescription would be: "Republicans Must Stand for Something!" This doesn't sound very original (even if the entire leadership of the ITALIAN Democratic party could benefit from the advice) and it skips a very basic point: "Will a majority of voters AGREE with the SOMETHING offered to them?"

The very issues advanced by Rove in his column seem to go precisely in the opposite direction: To tell Americans that they are winning in Iraq and that the economy is improving appears to be a message rejected by two thirds, or even three fourths, of the voters. If this is what the political guru of the Wall Street Journal has to say, Democrats should start making preparations for their victory party in November.

The Day After

Pennsylvania spoke, and the two Democratic candidates are more or less in the situation of the two Civil War armies on the morning of July 4, 1863, at Gettysburg (which, by the way, was in Pennsylvania).

The question, today, is: "Does the never-ending battle for the democratic nomination alter the dynamics of this campaign?" It might, but the fundamentals remain on the Democratic side, whoever is the nominee (and Marco Polo remains strongly convinced that it will be Barack Obama). We think significant that at this low point of Democratic Party's internecine war, polls show Barack Obama with a statistically insignificant two-point advantage over John McCain, 47% to 45%. During last month, it was McCain leading Obama by similarly close margins: at this point the two candidates are tied in the preference of voters. In a match-up with Hillary Clinton, McCain maintains the advantage: yesterday, 47% of the vote, while Clinton would get 45% (all data coming from Rasmussen).

This almost perfect parity between Obama and McCain is apparent in the Electoral College, too, and this is what will really matter in November. So far, the race remains a toss-up: the Democrats lead in states with 200 Electoral Votes while the GOP has the advantage in states with 189 ones. When States that “lean” toward one of the two camps are added, the Democrats lead 260 to 240 (the magic number to enter the White House is 270).

All this means that John McCain, at the moment when Democrats are engaged in a dogfight, and mainstream media are romancing him, is not capable of obtaining a significant lead over Obama, and has only a modest advantage over Clinton. Why is that?

The only reasonable explanation is that McCain is the Republican standard bearer in a year when all the the strong currents of American politics favor the Democrats. The economic crisis and the social tragedy of million of people losing their home will be on the forefront of voters' concerns in November. The same can be said for the Iraq war, that vanished from the TV screen, but not from the mind of citizens: two-thirds of them still want the troops home ASAP.

Much will depend on the two Conventions, but in the Fall most Democratic voters will go back to the party candidate, no matter his or her name. Today, only 74% of Democratic say they would support Obama but American politics has been polarized for 30 years, and the two parties has never been so far apart as during George W. Bush's era. Three out of four citizens think that the Country is "on the wrong track." This trend will favor heavily the Democrats and it will matter a lot in November.

Are intra-party feuds fatal in November?

Media pundits look restlessly for political events similar to the harshly contested Democratic race in this year's primaries; the 1976 elections (on the Republican side) and the 1980 competition between Edward Kennedy and Jimmy Carter, on the Democratic side, are often cited in the search for historical lessons that might be applied to the present.

However, former US Ambassador Dennis Kux has another example in mind: "I think that all these people are just not old enough to remember the primary that is most similar to the ongoing one; the Republican race of 1952," he told Valentina Pasquali at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, one of the most respected think tanks in Washington DC.

In 1952, Senator Robert Taft, son of former President William Taft and leader of the Republican "Old Guard," tried to capture the GOP nomination against Dwight Eisenhower, the war hero that wasn't even affiliated with the party. The Republican bosses decided that, after 20 years of Roosevelt-Truman domination, they wanted to win the White House at any cost (what happened on the Democratic side was covered here).

Just like today, the incumbent was out of the race, since President Harry Truman had announced he would not seek a second full term (although an exception for him was included in the XXII Constitutional amendment). Just like it might happen this year, the race between Eisenhower and Taft went all the way to the convention and was only decided by delegate-count. Moreover, just like in 2008, a fight over the standing of some delegations happened in 1952, when accusations of rigging in the primaries in Texas and Georgia heated up the convention and gave rise to a litigation over the seating of delegates.

"So many observers keep repeating that the clash between Obama and Clinton will end up damaging the party in November by creating divisions among the democratic voters," Ambassador Kux told Valentina Pasquali. "I really don't agree."

In 1952, despite the prolonged battle inside the party, Dwight Eisenhower went on to take the White House in a landslide, with an 11% victory margin over his Democratic opponent Adlai Stevenson II.

Twenty-five years later...

On March 23, 1983, twenty-five years ago, President Ronald Reagan started one of the greatest waste of resources ever proposed in human history: "What if free people could live secure in the knowledge that (...) we could intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our own soil or that of our allies?" That was the military program later known as "Strategic Defense Initiative," and popularly baptized, Star Wars after George Lucas's movie of 1977.

Reagan went on: "I know this is a formidable technical task, one that may not be accomplished before the end of this century. (...) But isn't worth every investment necessary to free the world from the threat of nuclear war? We know it is!"

The end of XX Century lapsed, eight more have passed, and no system capable intercepting and destroying strategic ballistic missiles exists today, nor will exist in a foreseeable future. From time to time, the Pentagon claims that a "successful" experiment has been performed, more often the attempts to shut down a high-altitude missile, or satellite, fail. Just to remember what 25 years means in the field of technology, one could point out that in 1983 there was no Macintosh computer, there were no portable phones, and internet was a mininetwork solely for military use, in the event of a full-scale nuclear war, nothing compared with the round-the-globe, free communication tool that we know today.

Other military endeavours, like the Manhattan Project, were completed in a short time: the program to build an atomic bomb from scratch was started in 1941 and had its first test in July 1945, not to mention the tragically successful explosions over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Four years were enough. 

And what about satellites orbiting around the Earth? The U.S. Earth satellite program began in 1954 and, after the shock created by the Soviet success in launching Sputnik in October 1957, it was accelerated, with the goal of putting an American engine into orbit as soon as possible. On February 1, 1958, the Juno I rocket was launched from Cape Canaveral, propelling Explorer 1 in space. Again, the task was accomplished in four years.

Let's take the example of the design of a pressurized water reactor for submarine propulsion: In February 1949, admiral Rickover was assigned to the Division of Reactor Development, Atomic Energy Commission, and the world's first nuclear-powered submarine, USS Nautilus, was launched and commissioned in 1954: six years.One must wonder if today American scientists are definitly more inept than their predecessors. As massive incompetence seems improbable, the reasons why Reagan's dream of an anti ballistic defense is still on paper must lay elsewhere. Probably, it is because a broad range of experts believed then – and still believe today – that a missile shield capable to destroy thousands of warheads from incoming nuclear missiles and guarantee full protection of the U.S. territory is simply impossible to build. Unless, that is, the United States used that shield to launch a first strike. Such an attack might destroy 90% or 95% of hostile missiles on the ground, before they could be fired. Only a handful would be left for the missile shield to knock down and this is the reason why Moscow leaders (Andropov then as Putin now) are ferociously opposed to it.

Russian paranoia may be understandable, but the results achieved after spending at least 150 billion inflation-adjusted dollars remain elusive.This didn't prevent the Cheney-Bush administration from spending more money than previous presidents on the project, and from breaking the United States' commitment to the 30-year-old ABM Treaty, ten years after the dissolving of the Soviet Union. The theory that the program should continue as a "guarantee" against the possibility of an attack by North Korea or Iran cannot be taken seriously.

How much domestic spending in repairing crumbling infrastructure, or establishing a universal health care system, would have been possible using that money? The real mystery of American politics is how such a boondoggle could still get Congress appropriations every year, and its creator Ronald Reagan be revered as one of this Country's great presidents.

A LARGER, BIGGER DEMOCRATIC COALITION/2

Obama's pledged delegates: 1406
Clinton's pledged delegates: 1246


As we have noted in the first installment of this series, eight years of Republican control of Presidency and Congress politically activated new segments of the American electorate. How this fact will play in this year's races, and beyond, is the topic we should explore.
It is plain that the failure of the Bush presidency is the dominant fact of American politics today.George W. Bush's approval ratings stabilized around 30 percent, 25 percentage points below those of Ronald Reagan's in 1988. Bush's presidency has been marred by scandals, an unpopular war, and an economy that is already in recession, hardly ideal for any party wanting to hold onto the White House as Carter learned in 1980 ("Billygate," hostages in Iran, and stagflation).
The mobilization of new angry voters was what created the successes of Democratic political strategy since early 2006, when they focused on the campaign themes that brought their takeover of the House and Senate in November 2006. The majority in the Senate, for example, was entirely the byproduct of unexpected victories in Republican-held territory, like Montana or Virginia. The so-called success of the troop surge in Iraq, which has reduced the number of American casualties has not altered the centrality of George W. Bush and his failed presidency in the mind of Democratic voters approaching November.
Any forecast about the Presidential and Congressional elections must be based not on the last maneuvering of the candidates, but on long-term political trends. The central trend in recent years has been polarization of the electorate, a factor that for a long time was central to Karl Rove's successful strategy. About 90 percent of those identifying with a political party vote for that party's presidential candidate The exit polls in 2004 showed that John Kerry had won 89 percent of the Democratic vote, George W. Bush 93 percent of the Republican vote. As it is, this translates in a huge advantage for the party that is ahead in what political scientists call "party identification," simply because the pool of voters is larger. And what is the situation on this front? The Democratic advantage is now of almost 10 points, according to Rasmussen and even more according to the Gallup Organization. That disparity is one of the widest partisan gaps ever measured and it is clearly linked to the beginning of the primaries season: the 9.7 percentage point advantage for Democrats now is up from a 5.6 point advantage in January and a 2.1 point advantage in December.
To gauge the importance of this factor, imagine that in November vote the same 120 million Americans who voted in 2004 (there will be more voters, but it doesn't matter here). If Obama or Clinton will keep the share of 90 percent of the Democratic vote, that translates into a huge gap (12 million votes!) with the Republican candidate, assuming (somehow generously) that he will able to bring the same percentage of followers to the polls (this is a very optimistic assessment of Republican cohesiveness this year: even among Republicans, almost a third of Newsweek's survey respondents said they disapprove of the job Bush is doing).
This assumptions translate into 90 percent of 48 million votes for the Democratic standard bearer against 90 percent of 36 million votes for the Republican one. In an year of economic hardship as this one, there is no way the so-called Independents would split 50-50 between the two parties: more probably they will go 55-45 for the Democratic candidate, McCain's courtship of them notwithstanding. That means another 4 million votes in the democratic column (Independents are about a third of the voters, as of today). As there will be new voters, a large majority of them pulling the lever for the democratic candidates (remember that turnout in their primaries has been the double than in Republican ones) this will bring another 2 million votes net advantage to Hillary/Obama.
Question: Can the democrats squander a 18 MILLION VOTES ADVANTAGE between March and November? The answer is: "In theory, that is possible," Democrats have a long tradition of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
However, this would really go against the odds. To win, it is enough to reassure the constituencies now pouring into their primaries, especially women, Latinos and young people: they should give the Democrats a comfortable edge in November's election, and potentially well beyond. Right now, calculations about the electoral college give the Democratic candidate a solid majority of 318 votes but the victory might be much larger, with Obama (who in the end will prevail over Clinton) collecting more than 350 votes in the electoral college.
If you add to this the real possibility of large majorities in the House (25 seats more) and in the Senate (6 to 8 seats more), one realizes that there are on the table long-term opportunities for the Democrats, the possibility of changing American political landscape for a generation, as Ronald Reagan did for Republicans in 1980. This, of course, is a question of leadership but it all depends on how the party leader will conduct themselves.

Republicans lose seat they had hold for 22 years

On Saturday, Republicans lost former House Speaker Dennis Hastert’s seat in a hotly contested special election in Chicago (IL-14). Bill Foster, a Democrat running for his first political job, will go to Congress after defeating Republican millionaire Jim Oberweis 53% to 47%, a result that was unthinkable just weeks ago.

Hastert resigned his seat, and the special election was called to fill the remainder of his term. In November, the same two candidates will campaign for the full term 2009-2011.

The district has at its heart Kendall County, a reliably Republican fast-growing area in exurban Chicago that elected Hastert for the first time in 1986. Hastert was the Speaker of the House between 1999 and 2007, the longest-serving Republican in this capacity ever.

The special election is a huge psychological blow to the Republican Party, handicapped by a stream of senators' and representatives' retirements that forecast larger Democratic majorities in Congress after November. Hoping to turn the tide, the National Republican Congressional Committee spent $1.2 million on the race, to no avail.

A LARGER, BIGGER DEMOCRATIC COALITION/1

While the interest of the media is focused on the candidates, political scientists should look at the tectonic shift under way in the American electorate. Seven years of Bush Administration have played the role of midwife to a new coalition of groups that is making the party younger, more affluent, more liberal, and more responsive to women, Latinos, and African-Americans. Of course, many of these constituencies were heavily tilted toward the Democrats already in the 1970s, but what is new is the growth of Latinos, and there commitment to the Democratic party. It is worth noting that still in 2004 Republicans scored some successes among them, playing the religious card (most of them are catholic, and traditionalist).

This shift, well described in a recent National Journal article, can be measured both by looking at the participation in the democratic primaries so far and by checking the polls about party affiliation.

We already noticed the surprisingly large turnout on the Democratic side ("Let's Crunch Some Numbers", below) but now Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International polls offer evidence that in 18 the states where it is possible to compare 2004 and 2008 caucuses and primaries, the share of the vote cast by young people has risen by substantial margins. Women's share of the vote has grown in 17 of the 18 states, albeit by smaller increments because the "gender gap" was already significant. In 12 of those states, Latinos have cast a larger percentage of votes, as have the voters who consider themselves liberals. African-Americans have boosted their share in 11 of the 18 states. Look at this chart, courtesy of National Journal, that shows how the movement was under way already in 2006.

LET'S CRUNCH SOME NUMBERS

With 99% of the votes counted in Texas, it looks as though the number of votes in the Democratic primary will largely exceed the number of votes cast for Al Gore in 2000, and match John Kerry's vote total for the 2004 general election. Kerry received 2,832,704 votes in Texas in 2004. At this writing, Clinton and Obama are at 2,812,289 between them. A primary that has a party turnout similar, or larger, than a general election is simply unprecedented in American politics and, indeed, Republicans voters on March 4 were about ONE THIRD of the voters who supported Bush in the 2004 general election.
Let's look at the 2004 Presidential Primary: four years ago Kerry got about 560,000 votes, Edwards 120,000, Dean 40,000 and other candidates about 115,00 for a grand total of 835.000 ballots cast. That is two million less than the number of votes cast this year. Or, Democratic voters seem to be this year more than three times the number they were in 2004. Hillary Clinton received more votes than all Republican candidates combined in Texas last night, Barack Obama received nearly as many. Clinton doubled the vote total of Republican nominee John McCain, Obama nearly did as well.
Remember, this is Texas, home of George W. Bush, who got 61% of the vote in 2004. Here, no Democratic candidate for President won the state's electoral votes since Jimmy Carter in 1976. Democrats haven't won a Senate race since Lloyd Bentsen in 1988, or a Governor's race since Ann Richards in 1990. Next Fall, observers may well throw their political maps out of the window.

Will 2008 Be a Remake of 2004? The Role of Working Class White Men

Among political scientists, it is a truism that many working-class white men left the Democratic Party in 1968, voted largely Republican in 1972, came back home for a moment in 1976, and switched to Ronald Reagan in 1980 (a detailed analysis here). Many pundits think that Bill Clinton "won many of them back to the Democratic Party in 1992," but data do not support this opinion. Exit polls actually show that in 1992 Bill Clinton won about the same share of white men as Michael Dukakis in 1988. It was Ross Perot who moved many of them away from the Republican candidate and undid George H.W. Bush.

Democrats have been the party of minorities since 1972, and they did not really compete for white men since the Ford-Carter race in 1976. But in 2008, whith the Republican Party and its standard bearer remarkably unpopular, a war led by Republicans that has lasted longer than Second World War, during a struggling economy, and at the 40-year mark of the Republican majority (no presidential coalition has ever lasted more than four decades: the New Deal one survived only 36), Democrats have their best opportunity in a generation. Yet the Democratic ambition will only be realized by winning more white men, as many scholars realized a few years ago (see, for example, Ruy Teixeira).

It’s not only a southern problem: the bulk of the white men voting in Democratic primaries are not the same white men who migrated from the Democratic Party in the last half century, as David Kuhn has demostrated in his book, The Neglected Voter: White Men and the Democratic Dilemma. Contrary to New York Times’s Paul Krugman opinion, it was not only Southern white men nostalgic of George Wallace who left the Democratic Party. Krugman quoted Princeton's Larry Bartels as saying that outside the territory of the 11 Confederate States, “[in] the rest of the country the Democratic share of the two-party presidential vote among white men was 40% in 1952 and 39% in 2004." 

Bartels uses 1952 as a starting point but that year both parties attempted to convince Dwight Eisenhower, a centrist who was the hero of the Second World War, to be their nominee. When Ike chose the Republicans, many white men followed him, giving to the Democrats an unusually low share of the vote. Therefore, the 1960 race is a more accurate starting point: It was a narrow contest and prior to the shift of 1968 that defines presidential politics to this day. 

Looking at 1960, one discovers that between that year and 2004, Democrats lost 12 percent of the non-Southern white men and 17 percent of white men in the South: simply too much to win the elections. Conventional wisdom dies hard in presidential politics but clinging to it will damage the Democratic party for many years more.

This year, white men initially backed Clinton: their first instinct was to be with the frontrunner. But unlike white women, as Obama became more widely known, white men had no stake in the symbolism of her candidacy. Therefore, they were more willing to swing to the senator of Illinois.

Many of these men casting Democratic ballots today are of the 37 percent of white males who voted for John Kerry in 2004, a share of the vote that left the Democratic candidate 3 million votes behind George Bush. Yet, so far neither Clinton nor Obama understand exactly how to reach out to them, a problem critical to a victory in November, when John McCain will flaunt his military record in order to appeal to this key constituency. In John McCain, any Democrat will find a daunting opponent with white men. He is the embodiment of much they admire.

A simple look at the 2004 exit polls provides a telling lesson for Clinton and Obama. Those white men who voted for George W. Bush in 2004 said the "issue that mattered most in deciding their vote" was terrorism (35 percent) or moral values (31 percent). Yet among the minority of white men who voted Democratic, only five percent said terrorism and 10 percent said moral values. In other words, Clinton's muddled stance on Iraq and hawkish stance on Iran was wrong for most Democratic white men.

For those Democratic white men, the foremost issue in 2004 was Iraq (26 percent) and economy/jobs (35 percent). Clinton's recent effort to mount a broad economic appeal may prove too late in a year when economic catastrophe for millions of American families is already there.

Clinton failed to consider white men in her strategy. Obama's campaign was more successful (particularly after Edwards drop off) because his broad appeal, less obsessed with individual subgroups. He reflected the framework of the Democratic mind in 2008 and therefore attracted white men sympathetic to that mind.

Consider when 2004 voters were asked what issue mattered most in deciding whom to support. White men who voted Republican said they supported the candidate who "has clear stands on the issues" (30 percent), is a "strong leader" (31 percent), or is "honest and trustworthy" (18 percent).

Meanwhile, of those white men who voted for John Kerry: five percent valued that their candidate was a "strong leader," 10 percent valued most that he had "clear stands on the issues," and nine percent said is "honest and trustworthy." White men, like white women, are not one monolith. Yet in the general election, the patterns shared by all those white men who left Democrats will have to be considered by the political left.

Those white males who supported Kerry most valued the personal qualities of a candidate who "will bring about needed change" (47 percent), is intelligent (17 percent), and "cares about people like me" (13 percent). That "change" ranked so high on the list explains Obama's appeal, at least in part.

Using education level as an indicator of social class, you find that white male Democrats without college educations are roughly three times more likely than those who graduated college to value that the candidate who "cares about people like me." In comparison, those who graduated college are roughly three times more likely than those who did not value that the candidate "is intelligent." White male Democrats who graduated college were also three times more likely to say the issue that mattered most was the war in Iraq, where Obama benefited from his early stance against the war. It is no surprise that they would be more sympathetic to Obama today.

Equally, that working class white male Democrats want to believe that the candidate "cares about people like me" certainly explains in part why Clinton has generally held on to their support. Obama's strategy to leave behind the cultural politics of the '60s and run a post-racial campaign appeals to some independent white men: will that be enough? In the 2006-midterm elections many white men were open to supporting Democrats, particularly moderates, even in states like Virginia and Montana, where George W. Bush got 60 percent in 2004.

It will be this presidential election that tests whether Democrats can turn working class men’s frustration with Republicans into a new majority. This is why the contest for white men is larger than the Democratic primary and is a harbinger for who becomes America’s next president.

The Return of Stagflation and Its Political Consequences

The return of "stagflation" to the American economy (a word almost forgotten by the media, as serious inflation had not been a problem for 27 years in the US) and the combination of inflation with a possible recession triggered by the housing market slump seemed unthinkable since Alan Greenspan's stewardship at the FED started working its magic.
Now, the word "stagflation" is popping up in the headlines of every newspaper: The annualized inflation rate for the past three months has been 6.8 percent, while unemployment is going up and growth is slowing, as Ben Bernanke said yesterday. The prices of oil and of gold hit new highs every week, while the dollar continues to drop to new lows compared to the Euro and other world currencies.
This is serious stuff -- and Bush's "stimulus" packages, will only make things worse because it's not a problem of lackof demand but a problem of lack of trust inside the overgrown financial and banking sector.
If the Republican party wanted to do everything to stop John McCain from winning the presidency this fall, it would implement an economic policy exactly like the one that is developing right now. There is no way that any Republican can hold the White House if the economy starts looking like that of Jthe late Seventies, that made President Ronald Reagan. Of course, the Democratic Congress this year will not even consider passing any legislation to prevent the crash.
Whoever will enter the White House on January 20, 2009, will have a task as formidable as the one of Franklin Roosevelt's in March 1933.