The Florida Primary

Tomorrow, Florida holds its presidential primary.

The Republican race is hotly contested, with John McCain and Mitt Romney running neck-and-neck in the polls. Although Romney actually has more delegates up to this point, McCain is the front-runner nationally. If McCain wins in Florida, his momentum going into Super Tuesday, a week from tomorrow, would be all-but insurmountable. If Romney wins, we will still have a race.

Regardless of the outcome, I think tomorrow is the end for Rudy Giuliani’s presidential campaign. Florida was supposed to be his “firewall”. But having not only lost, but badly lost, in the first six states, he surrendered whatever advantage may have had. He now trails the front-runners, not only in Florida, but everywhere else.

The Democratic contest in Florida is technically uncontested. The national party stripped Florida of its delegates, after the state scheduled its primary a week earlier than the official rules allowed. That strikes me as a short-sighted strategy. The Democrats need Florida. It is one of the few states “red” states that the Democrats have a realistic chance of winning in November. (Some people call it a “purple” state.)

Nevertheless, Hillary Clinton is on the ballot and is expected to win, just as she did in Michigan, the other state penalized by the national Democratic party. In all likelihood, these two states’ delegates will wind up getting seated at the convention. I just can’t see the Democrats freezing out their most passionate supporters in two battleground states.

Whatever happens in Florida, the Democratic race is still wide open. Hillary Clinton has a wide lead in delegates over Barack Obama, and she leads the polls in most of the Super Tuesday states. It will be interesting to see if the endorsement of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, which Obama captured today, will make a difference. Historically, endorsements seldom matter very much, but Kennedy is obviously in a category unto himself.

It’s worth considering the different opportunities and problems the two leading Democrats would have in November.

Almost 100% of voting Americans have heard of Hillary Clinton, and know what they think of her. And a pretty high percentage of them (about 48%) don’t like her, and cannot be persuaded to like her, no matter what she may say or do.

That doesn’t mean the remaining 52% will vote for her. It only means they’re “persuadable”. But when you start with a ceiling of 52%, there isn’t much room for error. I mean, both Al Gore and John Kerry started with a higher ceiling than 52%, but they ended up with less than that. This is because some people who are willing to consider voting for you, end up not voting for you, not because they don’t like you, but because they like the other guy better. Or because they just stay home.

So for Hillary to win in November, she needs to hold onto that last 2.1% that will get her over the hump. And historically, that’s tough to pull off. In electoral college terms, she needs to win every state that John Kerry won, and pull away at least a couple of states from the Republican camp. There are only 3 or 4 states where she has even a chance of that, and it is only a chance.

Obama starts out with a much higher ceiling, because there are very few people who actually say they don’t like him. Even the staunchest Republicans — those who have never voted for a Democrat in their lives, and won’t vote for Obama — at least say that he’s a likable guy.

So that means that most Independents — the people who actually settle a presidential race — will at least consider him. So whereas Hillary starts with a ceiling of something like 52%, Obama starts with a ceiling more like 60–65%. Mind you, he wouldn’t get 60–65%, or anything close to it. As in any election, some percentage of those folks would eventually choose the other guy. But the point is they’re available to be persuaded, and for Hillary they’re not.

The problem for Obama is the thinness of his record. The most that his supporters can say, is that he stands for “change” in some vague way. But what kind of change is it? Most voters don’t know. As his background and his proposals start to get better known, uncomfortable truths could seep out. So whereas Obama has a higher ceiling, he has a lower floor. The bottom could really drop out if there are skeletons lurking in his record.

In contrast, we already know Hillary’s skeletons. After her 20 years in the public eye, it’s doubtful we’ll find out anything worse about her than what is already known. So with Hillary, the worst that happens is that she loses a little worse than Kerry and Gore did, and the best that happens is that she ekes out a narrow victory. With Obama, almost anything is possible.

Bush Response to the Virginia Tech Tragedy

A matter of hours after the tragedy at Virginia Tech, this is what President Bush’s spokesperson had to say:

As far as policy, the President believes that there is a right for people to bear arms, but that all laws must be followed. And certainly bringing a gun into a school dormitory and shooting …  obviously that would be against the law and something that someone should be held accountable for.

It’s nice to know that, whatever happens, Bush is still in the NRA’s pocket.

Election 2006

I didn’t blog about the midterm elections during the campaign, as I don’t think my 2004 prognostications were particularly accurate. But now that it is just about over, I can’t resist making a few comments. I have voted for Republicans on numerous occasions, but this year (as in 2004) I was strongly in favor of a change.

The Results. Democrats have taken control of the House, wresting at least 29 seats from the Republicans while losing none of their own. (A few seats are still too close to call.) In the Senate, Democrats won six seats formerly held by Republicans, while losing none of their own. That’s enough to ensure a 51–49 Democratic majority in the Senate next year. Democrats also now control a majority of the state governorships for the first time in 12 years, and won control of several state legislatures.

Observations.

• The Democrats didn’t win this election; the Republicans lost it. Democrats didn’t win because they offered a specific agenda that voters wanted; Republicans lost because their agenda clearly wasn’t working.

• Pending the results in a few of the undecided races, not a single Democrat incumbent lost in a Senate, House, or Gubernatorial race. That is probably unprecedented, and it is certainly very rare.

• The old saying is that “All politics are local.” Yesterday, that wasn’t the case. The results reflected a dissatisfaction on national issues, particularly the war in Iraq.

• The northeast is now solid blue, and the deep south is almost entirely solid red. But in the midwest and far west, formerly red/blue states are now varying shades of pink and purple. These states are in play for either party. I don’t see the Democrats becoming competitive in the deep South (other than perhaps Florida) anytime soon.

• Democratic Chairman Howard Dean’s fifty-state strategy worked. Democrats were competitive in states like Wyoming where, a year ago, no one would have given them a snowball’s chance.

• Polling, and particularly exit polling, worked. There were no embarrassing glitches or races called the wrong way, as happened in 2000 and 2004. The late pre-election polls and early exit polls were remarkably close to the final results. Apparently, the pollsters have learned their lesson.

• Independence has its virtues. The non-partisan analysts (Charlie Cook, Stuart Rothenberg, Larry Sabato) got their projections just about right. Conservative bloggers — even those who professed to be following a rigorous methodology — underestimated the size of the Democratic wave. (A few Democratic bloggers missed on the high side, but their errors were less pronounced, perhaps because you’d have to be utterly irrational to imagine a much better outcome for the Democrats.)

• Most of the incoming freshman class of Democrats are centrists. A generation ago, many of them would have been Republicans—back in the days when the phrase “moderate Republican” wasn’t an oxymoron. Democratic leaders appear to understand that the Humphrey–McGovern–Mondale era is over, and to retain their majority, they must govern towards the center.

• George W. Bush isn’t going to change his stripes overnight. But he will come under pressure to compromise. Republican colleagues know that they have to turn things around, to avoid another beating in 2008. As governor of Texas, Bush was known for working effectively with a Democrat-controlled legislature. But he wasn’t a lame duck then. Even with a favoring wind, it has always been difficult for a president to control the agenda in the final two years of an administration. Look for Bush to focus on foreign policy and Iraq (with much more visible Democratic oversight), while the domestic agenda is set by a new generation of leaders in both parties.

• Having said that, I don’t expect the Republicans to make any kind of meaningful shift to the center. Despite yesterday’s loss, they’ve won 7 of the last 10 presidential elections, and the Republican party is dominated now by “movement” conservatives, who view their ideology as a jihad. These aren’t the kinds of folk who compromise their principles, merely because it’s electorally convenient to do so. Many of them will argue that they lost, not because they were too conservative, but because they weren’t conservative enough.

• On ballot initiatives, both sides can claim victories. Democrats can be pleased that proposals to limit abortions went down to defeat in three states, stem cell research was approved in Missouri, and three states passed minimum wage increases. But Republicans can be pleased that gay marriage bans passed in seven out of eight states, and Michigan voters passed a ban on affirmative action.

• Democrats do not have a clear standard-bearer in 2008. Their two most prominently-mentioned presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, are almost certainly too liberal to be elected.

• I don’t expect the Republicans to abandon their ultra-conservative, “mobilize-the base” strategy in 2008. Although it failed this time, it has worked often enough that I think they’ll give it at least one more try.

Blip or Tsunami? What does this election tell us about the national electorate? Republicans want to believe that this outcome is merely a blip, and in two years they’ll start another winning streak. Democrats want to believe that a tsunami has finally brought the conservative movement to an end.

The truth is probably somewhere in between. Like many politicians before him, George W. Bush over-played his mandate. He was a minority president in 2000, and probably would have been defeated in 2004 had the Democrats not fielded such a feeble candidate. By running a government that catered almost exclusively to the far right, the Republicans practically begged independents to vote for Democrats. Because moderates have been practically banished from the Republican Party, I wonder if those left actually have a clue about how to appeal to independents, or whether they’re just hoping Democrats will implode again?

But the new Democratic coalition is still both weak and unproven. Many of the independents who handed them this victory have voted Republican before, and will do so again, if the Democrats fumble away this opportunity. We are just eighteen years removed from the 1988 presidential election, when the elder Bush captured 40 out of 50 states. A Republican could quite easily do that again, but it is impossible to imagine a Democrat doing so. To win in 2008, Democrats will once again have to thread a needle through the electoral college.

As I noted above, Democrats didn’t really offer a clear alternative this year—they just stood back and allowed the Republicans to self-destruct. As the majority party in Congress, they will no longer be mere observers, and they will be expected to lead.

Mike Bloomberg for President? Nope.

It must be a slow news day over at AM New York, a free daily that’s handed out around the city’s subway and commuter rail stations. Their cover story today is, “Will Mike Run?” The page three headline reads, “Mike’s mixed messages: Bloomie says he won’t run for prez, but deputy won’t let issue die.”

A sidebar headlined “Bloomie the underdog” quotes Steven Malanga, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, who says Bloomberg doesn’t “stand a chance” of getting either party’s nomination. I’ll say! Although nominally a Republican, Bloomberg is considerably more liberal than most national members of his party. He’s the kind of Republican that only New York City could love. With Republicans having won 5 of the last 7, and 7 of the last 10 presidential elections, they have no reason to offer up a moderate like Bloomberg to the national electorate.

Democrats, on the other hand, would love to offer up a moderate like Bloomberg. Indeed, in the current political climate, only a moderate Democrat has any chance of being elected president. In the last forty years, the only Democrats to have won the presidency — Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton — were centrists. But Bloomberg isn’t a Democrat. He used to be, but switched parties to run for Mayor of New York. Nobody’s going to support a presidential candidate who switches parties back-and-forth, depending on what he’s running for. A politician is allowed only one such switch in a lifetime (as Ronald Reagan famously did), and Bloomberg has had his.

Rudy Giuliani, Bloomberg’s predecessor, is making serious presidential noises. By Republican standards, Giuliani is slightly more conservative than Bloomberg, but no one that supports abortion rights (as Giuliani does) is conservative enough for the national party. He’d be a compelling candidate if he could manage to get the nomination, but he won’t survive the primaries.

Can the Democrats Take Congress? Should They?

These days, Democrats are giddy about their chances to re-take one or both houses of Congress.

Cool-headed analyst Charlie Cook has been saying: "Not So Fast." At first blush, the "macro" conditions, as Cook describes them, seem to favor the Democrats. Cook is referring to the generic "right track/wrong track" and presidential job performance polls that we see almost every week. For instance, in the spring 1994, the year of the political tsunami that swept the Democrats out of power in Congress, 47% of Americans said the country was on the wrong track vs. 33% on the right track, a 14% gap. This year, according to one poll, the gap is 36% (26% "right track" vs. 62% "wrong track").

But ironically, while people seem overwhelmingly to favor Democrats in a "generic ballot," when voters get into the booth they tend to re-elect incumbents. One must also bear in mind that the quirks of our system give less populous states disproportionate representation in Congress, and Republicans are lucky enough to control many of those states.

When you look at the "micro" conditions (as Cook puts it), Republicans look like they’re still in pretty good shape. To seize control of the Senate, Democrats need a net gain of six seats. Cook identifies six races in which the Republicans are somewhat vulnerable, but Democrats would need to run the table while losing none of the seats they already control. While theoretically possible, it seems unlikely.

Democrats’ chances in the House are a bit better, since all 435 seats are up for re-election, but Cook concludes that only 36 are "truly in play." The Democrats need a net gain of 15 seats, but as Cook observes:

Meanwhile, despite their herculean efforts, Democratic recruiters have enticed few first-tier challengers into running this year. Instead, the party has an abundance of second- and third-tier candidates who could never prevail on their own and would need a hurricane-force wind at their backs to cross the finish line first.

Without another scandal or a few more serious gaffes by President Bush, it looks like the Republicans will hold onto at least one house of Congress, and probably both, although the Democrats appear certain to narrow the GOP majority.

Although no Democrat will publicly admit this, it is actually to the Democrats’ benefit if they just narrowly fail to re-take Congress this year. Without a friendly ally in the White House, there isn’t much that a Democratic majority in Congress could do. The most likely outcome is two years of gridlock, and in 2008 both parties would be able to blame the other for the lack of progress.

In contrast, if the Republicans hold Congress through the remainder of the Bush presidency, in 2008 the Democrats will have a clear shot at retaking Washington, with Republicans being held clearly accountable for the current state of things.

Perish the Thought: Kerry in '08??

An article today on Yahoo! News says “Kerry Positioned for ‘08 White House Bid.” Egad! A second Kerry bid is just what Democrats don’t need. Even his presence in the primaries will reinforce the party’s image as soft, flip-flopping, liberal, tax-and-spenders. I don’t think Hillary Clinton is electable either, but at least she’s been tough on Iraq. Much as I oppose that war, no one that’s perceived as soft on defense—as Kerry is—will be the next President.

While Kerry has not formally declared his candidacy (it’s far too early for that), the article says that he has maintained the core of his 2004 campaign staff, continues to build a network of supporters, and continues to travel nationwide raising money—all things he’d be unlikely to do if he were content merely to be the junior Senator from Massachusetts.

The most memorable quote of the article goes to Ronald Kaufman, a former political director for the first President Bush: “I go to bed every night praying Kerry is the nominee again.” Yes, that’s right, folks. Kerry is precisely the nominee the Republicans would love to run against.

Spinning Debate #2

Last night’s Cheney-Edwards debate was a draw. Both men scored points. Both men missed opportunities. The “insta-polls” afterwards went either way, depending on which network you watched. There were no obvious gaffes on either side. Both sides can claim victory…of a sort.

From Bush’s point of view, Cheney had to stop the bleeding. With Bush having clearly lost last week’s encounter in Miami, the campaign could ill afford another drubbing. Whether Cheney won or not, he was at least solid. I doubt that Cheney persuaded any Kerry supporters to switch sides, but at least he reassured a nervous Republican base.

From Kerry’s point of view, Edwards matched blows for 90 minutes with the Vice President and managed to appear substantially his political equal. When you’re the challenger, your first goal is simply to demonstrate that you belong there. To the undecided voters who still matter, Edwards showed he belonged. No undecided voters will choose Kerry-Edwards as a result of this debate, but at least Edwards gave them no reason to choose Bush.

So, it was a draw. Vice Presidential debates historically are not relevant to the final outcome, and it appears this wasn’t the one to change that trend. The stakes remain high for the two remaining Bush-Kerry debates.

Spinning Debate #1

In the first of their three debates, John F. Kerry appears to have scored a victory over President Bush. I haven’t found any source outside of the Bush campaign that believes the President won. Every journalist, pundit or commentator — of whatever party — declares it a Kerry victory or a tie.

Assuming, charitably, that it was a tie, you have to assume that the debate helped Kerry. In any election involving an incumbent, the challenger’s first task is to persuade the voters that he’s a plausible commander-in-chief. No matter how vulnerable the incumbent may be (and Bush is as vulnerable as any), no challenger can be elected until he passes that threshold. Merely by standing toe-to-toe with Bush and not wilting, John Kerry, perhaps for the first time, seemed Presidential.

I’m obviously not much of a pundit, because I initially thought Bush had won. Although Kerry was articulate and poised, he seemed stiff and humorless. Bush imbued his answers with the folksy, unsubtle, no-nonsense Southern twang that voters four years ago found appealing. There wasn’t much levity in the debate, but such as it was, it came from the incumbent. On a gut level, I thought that Bush did a better job of making an emotional connection with his audience.

But Bush stammered through several of his answers, and he was clearly on the defensive. I was disappointed that moderator Jim Lehrer spent so much of the debate (at least 2/3rds of it) re-hashing the rationale for invading Iraq. While the candidates clearly disagree on whether the war was a mistake, after an hour they were just repeating themselves.

Kerry supporters shouldn’t get too giddy. Post-debate insta-polls initially showed Al Gore winning the first debate in 2000. By the time the punditocracy was finished dissecting Gore’s performance, he had lost. It will take a few days to see whether Kerry’s solid performance last night actually made a difference to persuadable voters. What’s more, there are two Presidental debates to go, plus a Cheney-Edwards tilt next Tuesday. Any one of them could produce one of those defining moments that changes an election.

Is the Clock Running Out on Kerry?

Slowly but surely, John Kerry is eating into George W. Bush’s post-RNC lead. Yesterday, in fact, brought the first poll since August with Kerry in the lead, albeit by a statistically insignificant one percent.

Poll results vary widely, depending on the method used to normalize demographic groups and identify “likely” voters. The same polling consortium (Investors Business Daily/Christian Science Monitor) showed just a 3-point Bush lead after the convention, which is a lot less than the 12-point lead that Gallup and some other polls showed. It will take a lot more than just one poll to persuade anybody that Kerry actually has lead.

In the meantime, Kerry is fighting a perception of inevitability. Recent New York Times and Washington Post polls show that around 60% of voters — regardless of whom they personally favor — expect Bush to win a second term. The perception of being a loser infects a campaign like cancer. As Howard Kurtz puts it in today’s Washington Post online:

It’s not just who’s ahead—most of all the in Key Battleground States—but who people think is going to win.

By that measure, the election is a runaway…

Why does this matter? For one thing, it means Kerry hasn’t really gotten over the threshold. If people don’t think he’s got a real shot at winning, it depresses interest in the election and means they spend less time, if any at all, trying to envision him as commander-in-chief. That, in turn, makes it harder for him to reduce the stature gap that any challenger faces against an incumbent.

Also affected is the conventional wisdom in the press. Every story about Kerry is framed in some way by him being behind in the polls. By October, you might start seeing pieces about which of Bush’s Cabinet members would stick around in 2005, or whether the president will get serious about tax simplification. That sends a subtle message as well: Kerry is looking like a long shot.

So Kerry not only has to catch up (to the degree these volatile polls show him behind), but has to be perceived as catching up. Which is why the media zeitgeist after the first debate will be so important, because it will affect the other debates as well.

Kurtz goes on to remind us what happened after Kerry’s surprise victory in the Iowa caucuses. He became the instant favorite in all of the other state races (and eventually won nearly all of them), simply because swing voters like to go with a winner.

So while Kerry gradually gnaws away at Bush’s lead, an aura of inevitability still surrounds Bush’s re-election, which in turn depresses the turnout the Democrats so desperately need if they are to capture the White House.

Not-So-Clear Politics

RealClearPolitics posted a commentary piece yesterday called “John Edwards and the Shrinking Battleground.” For those not familiar with it, RealClearPolitics is about as real and clear as FoxNews is fair and balanced. In other words, it’s a Republican site.

When John Kerry chose John Edwards as his running mate, RCP wrote:

While this pick may play well in the next three weeks I don’t know how well it is going to work after Labor Day when the real contest begins…The Edwards pick is a poll-driven mistake…This is a very serious election, and the Bush-Cheney campaign will make that abundantly clear. Kerry would have been better off with the safe, solid choice of Dick Gephardt who at least would have helped potentially win Missouri.

Two months later, RCP thinks it has a we-told-you-so moment:

Senator Edwards did give Kerry a little bounce… A week before Kerry’s VP announcement Bush was up about two points and a week after Edwards was chosen the Kerry/Edwards ticket had moved to roughly a three point lead. So Edwards delivered about a five point bounce that subsequently faded during the rest of July as Kerry headed into his convention in Boston.

But now we are in the middle of September, and you have to wonder just what John Edwards is bringing to the table. The contrast with Dick Cheney that all the pundits were atwitter about in early July suddenly doesn’t look so great from the Kerry perspective…

Because of the unwise choice of Edwards as a running mate, even if Kerry pulls back to even in the national polls his route to 270 electoral votes is a big problem — and almost impossible if he can’t win either Florida or Ohio. Had he chosen Gephardt and put Missouri into play, the Kerry campaign’s electoral math would look considerably kinder. Flipping Missouri alone would get Kerry over 270 EV’s, and flipping Missouri and New Hampshire would allow for the loss of New Mexico. Wining Missouri, New Hampshire and Nevada would have allowed Kerry to lose Wisconsin and still win the election.

Of course, it is not a sure thing that Gephardt would have been able to deliver Missouri. Given Gallup’s latest poll showing Bush ahead by fourteen, maybe even Dick Gephardt wouldn’t have been able to deliver his home state. But unlike North Carolina, Missouri is a much more competitive state for Democrats, and in a close election where Kerry had a chance to win, one would think Missouri with Dick Gephardt on the ticket would have been very much in play.

Instead, Kerry is stuck with a running mate who brings nothing except a pretty smile. The Kerry campaign had run a pretty darn good campaign through June, but starting with the Edwards choice, a wasted convention, an insane comment at the Grand Canyon and no answer to his Vietnam and antiwar past, Kerry has dug himself what may be an insurmountable hole.

Now, I have to admit that it’s unclear precisely what Edwards brings to the Democratic ticket, but you have to be suspicious of advice coming from a source that wants Kerry to lose. Most commentators — Democrat or Republican — thought Edwards was a superior choice to Gephardt. As RCP notes, it is far from certain that Gephardt would have delivered Missouri. He is popular only in his hometown of St. Louis; he is actually a mild liability elsewhere in the state. Gephardt also reminds people of the Humphrey-Mondale-Scoop Jackson style ultra-liberal Democrat that most of the country has long since resoundingly rejected.

RCP isn’t done second-guessing the strategy of the candidate it opposes. They chastise Kerry’s decision during the summer to put more states in play, saying:

Arizona, Colorado Louisiana and Virginia? It’s not complicated to figure out that if these states are close Bush is finished. So what was their strategy in spending time and money in states that they were only going to carry if they didn’t need them to win the election? Maybe they bought in to the conventional wisdom over the summer that Bush was in big, big trouble. Whatever the strategic rationale, it was a major mistake and a misallocation of resources.

With the wasted money and time in states they don’t have a prayer of carrying and a VP nominee that can’t make a difference in any state that will matter, the Kerry folks have boxed themselves into an electoral corner. So now they are not only staring at how they get this race back to even in the national polls but also how they are going to piece together the necessary 270 Electoral Votes.

But RCP ignores one critical fact. Because John Kerry was such a prodigious fundraiser during primary season, the campaign had money to burn during the summer. And given the “use-it-or-lose-it” rules that govern modern elections, Kerry had to spend the money, because after the convention he was limited to the $75 million cap that constrains all candidates that accept federal funding, as both Kerry and Bush are doing. Naturally, Kerry invested heavily in the main battleground states where RCP believes he should be focusing, but at some point those investments reach saturation, and a candidate needs to expand his appeal. (If you see a Bush add in the safe Kerry state of California — and you will — it’s the opposite coin of the same strategy.)

It is far from clear that Kerry’s “route to 270 electoral votes is a big problem.” The non-partisan daily political blog from ABC News, The Note, refers in today’s entry to “the semi-friendly contours of the Electoral College.” There are actually quite a few ways to get Kerry to 270.

In any event, although both candidates still have a lot of work to do, Kerry’s prospects aren’t as bleak as RCP would like us to believe. The latest national poll (jointly sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor and Investor’s Business Daily) has the race at a 46%–46% tie. Rasmussen Reports has also been showing the race essentially tied.

It will take a while to find out if the Bush convention bounce has truly faded, but it certainly looks like it has. That’s why they call them “bounces.”