Nancy Pelosi, Psephologist?

There are several reasons why Massachusetts elected the Republican on Tuesday, a topic I hope to cover if I have the time. However, one reason certainly isn't this bullshit explanation offered by Nancy Pelosi:

“There’s some fundamentals in there [the Senate HCR bill] that make it problematic for our members,” Ms. Pelosi said. “Some members say, and I respect this, some of the concerns that were expressed in Massachusetts were about certain provisions of the Senate bill. We want, obviously, to hear and heed what was said there and what is said across the country.”

Some of the concerns that were expressed in Massachusetts? If I interpret this correctly, she is, in effect, implying / suggesting that some people voted for Scott Brown because, after studying the details of the two bills, found the Senate version inferior to the House version and in opposition to their liberal proclivities, hence elected the Republican candidate to the Senate?

This reminds me of a line in the first season of The West Wing, the box set of which I have been plowing through the past week or so: "We don't need an opposition party; we're our own best opposition party".

UPDATE: Holy crap, a marginal percentage of voters for Brown did, in fact, follow the logic that Pelosi outlined above [see comments for details]. Astonishing, and Mea culpa. I still believe that, in this instance, the Dems should pass the Senate version, flawed as it is. Of course, Congress and the Administration are backpedalling from even that. In the bigger picture, the Administration should be more aggressive, a post I was working on this morning before lecturing . . .

. . . and this is consistent with a protest vote thesis, for which special elections are prime electoral contexts. I do wonder just how salient the preference for the public option was in these Brown voters however.

Read more...

Dial an Asshat

What Ari said.

I realize there's an element of hyperbole to the analogy I'm about to draw, but I just finished one of several lectures on Reconstruction that I give at the beginning of my post-Civil War survey course, so my thoughts on health care reform have a contingent, curricular shape to them today. The greatest failure of Reconstruction, of course, was the white republic's inability to perceive that the political liberty of freedpersons as well as the overall decency of their existence was undermined by the scarcity of their economic opportunities -- a scarcity that was replaced in quite short order by an enduring, multi-generational gulag of debt servitude. The economic needs of emancipated slaves were abundantly documented and entered into the public record in a great variety of ways, and yet a Congress overwhelmingly comprised of Republicans decided in relatively short order -- by 1869, really -- to scale back its efforts, operating on the mistaken belief they'd done enough. Reconstruction fizzled, and the rest of the story hardly needs reviewing.

Quite simply, the failure of Reconstruction amounts to the greatest domestic policy fuck-up in US history; a fuck-up so grand and apparently satisfying that subsequent generations of white Congressional and Presidential leadership were pleased to repeat the error, if only (for the least malicious, at least) by ignoring the problem or by dismissing remedies as too difficult or controversial to actually enact. And as it happened for so many decades, there simply weren't the votes in Congress to flesh out the 14th and 15th Amendments, or to pass anti-lynching legislation over the yowls of white supremacists. The blame for this rested largely, but not exclusively, with the Senate, where the Dyer Act or the 1957 Civil Rights Act were either asphyxiated or drained of any real force by filibusters that demeaned the entire nation. Sure, House conservatives joined in the nonsense as often as possible, but while the House might help enact terrible laws or avoid taking up decent causes, reform efforts never -- at least so far as I can tally it -- went to the House to die.

Until now, apparently. Now, there's no sense in comparing the tens of millions of uninsured Americans with the condition of emancipated slaves and the three or four generations who followed them. At the same time, however, I would suggest that the century-long inability of the US to adequately develop a comprehensive system of health insurance does rank in the same elite class of policy fuck-ups that includes our shameful, century-long avoidance of meaningful civil rights legislation. Now obviously, the Senate bill that's currently being drowned in the House bathtub is inadequate on so many counts that hardly bear repeating; it's not the analogue of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, in other words. But neither is it the analogue of the 1957 bill, which accomplished virtually nothing other than establishing a precedent for more elaborate federal action a few clicks farther down the road. The Senate health care bill seems rather to be something in between, and for the life of me I can't believe it's the House that's blowing this.

So anyway, again -- what Ari said. Call your representatives. I'm even going to give Don Young's office a futile ring tomorrow, if for no other reason than to entertain myself. Your mileage, however, may vary.

Read more...

No We Can't

While I've been trying to ignore the news for the past 24 hours, itself ironic given I did a couple live BBC radio interviews about guess what yesterday morning (which was a bit of an adventure as I am at home playing single dad to my chicken-pox addled daughter, who gracefully declined a gold plated opportunity to get on the air for the first time), two things come to mind.

1) The U.S. Senate sucks. As an institution. In class, I use the U.S. Senate as an case study of democratic institutions that aren't. Two of my classes are designed to explore the tension between theoretical conceptions of democracy (of which there are, of course, many contradictory accounts, so it can be fun for those students who bother to read a book) and empirical reality. While I have always let students reach their own conclusions, I tend to treat the U.S. Senate in a breath normally reserved for the House of Lords. It's bad enough in terms of representation that the institution is highly skewed, and the median voter as represented in the Senate is considerably to the right of the median voter as represented in the House (or in the general population).

However, to add the tacit requirement of a super majority on top of this already skewed pattern of representation is to add insult to (small d) democratic injury.

I don't make this rant as a dismayed Democrat. Indeed, as a Democrat, my natural state is dismay. I'm comfortable here. Rather, I question the institution on democratic norms. In the U.S. the students would get this, yet still want to retain the institution, thus they would, on average, logically opt to abolish the 17th Amendment. This never failed to both surprise and impress me. In the U.K., students simply want to abolish the Senate. Of course, these same students argue in favor of retaining the House of Lords, modified to make it more democratic.

2) The Democrats in the House need to get their shit together and pass the existing Senate version of HCR now, for reasons articulated by both Rob and Scott below, and that this is all we'll have for a generation on HCR. This seems to me to be the only way forward remaining. Of course, being Democrats, they can't do the sensible thing.

A little, uh, leadership from the Executive branch and that guy all about change we elected in 2008 would come in handy here. Unfortunately, all we get are noises about a version of HCR that moderate Republicans would embrace.

What's the point of having -- still -- huge majorities in the Senate, the House, and having the Executive branch again?

There are two silver linings here, and it's not that having 59 votes in the Senate is somehow better than having 60. First, Joe Leiberman is now, happily, irrelevant. Second, I have to do a couple lectures on campus next week about the current state of play in American politics, and now I have something analytical to talk about.

Read more...

Things I Don't Understand

Although I'm hardly a rational choice purist, I tend to think that political actors operate according to logics that are essentially intelligible, and that they more or less respond to obvious costs and benefits. I'm not, by and large, compelled by arguments that treat an entire subset of political actors as morons; if politicians are doing something that appears to me to be stupid, I'm very often inclined to think that I don't sufficiently understand the situation, and the costs and benefits involved.

And so now, here are two things that I don't understand. I don't understand how House Democrats think that a better outcome will result from scrapping the Senate bill and starting over. While much can be accomplished in reconciliation, passing the Senate bill doesn't preclude that strategy, and in any case reconciliation has procedural and substantive drawbacks as a method of passing legislation. I certainly don't understand the idea of "calling the Senate's bluff" by pushing reform through piecemeal; the Republicans aren't bluffing, and they have both the capacity and the will to prevent action. I do get the anger. The House bill itself already represented a substantial compromise from what progressives wanted and believed was possible, and after all there's only so much shit you're prepared to eat. Still, I don't see that it's going to get any better, especially since Senate Democrats have proceeded to go wobbly, and might not even manage 51 for the key parts of the bill.

And here's the other thing that I don't understand; I don't get how anyone in the White House thinks that something useful can be achieved through bipartisanship. This makes far less sense than what the House Democrats appear to believe. It's simply insane, at this point, to treat the Republican Party as an institution that's interested in policy. Even if you do manage to make sufficient concessions to flip one or two Senate Republicans, you're not going to get any movement from the House Republican caucus. Moreover, if the White House doesn't think that it can keep progressive House Democrats in line for the current Senate bill, then how in Jeebus' name can it possibly believe that progressives will go along with the much, much worse legislation that is likely to result from a bipartisan compromise?

And so I don't get it. I've always been pretty dismissive of the idea that the Democrats can lose my vote; for me, the difference between the lesser and greater evils is always relevant, and so I'll tend to support whichever candidate is more progressive, even if I find the substantive views repellent. But if the Democrats manage to fuck this up, I'm not sure I'm on the bus anymore. I'll have to stop paying attention to politics and (shudder) do some actual work.

Read more...

A Question

If -- and I'm pessimistically assuming when -- Scott Brown wins tonight, how long will it take before a member of the Senate Democratic caucus announces his or her intention to reject "Plan A" (i.e., a quick wrap-up of negotiations and a full vote on final passage before Brown is seated) because it would presumably "flout the will" of Massachusetts voters?

Read more...

Only The Democrats

Can turn what should be a sure thing into an angst ridden few days. The only thing more fulfilling than rooting for Celtic in European competition, or the Mariners prior to 1995, is consistently setting myself up for disappointment by supporting the Democrats.

I have several disorganized sets of semi-organized comments on this. First, the validity and reliability of polling in this election, second, the structural and contextual issues facing the Democrats, and finally, what the worst case scenario could mean.

538 has been doing their usual comprehensive, rigorous, and analytical job of covering the polling side of this race, but even they are flailing about at night, in a deep fog, on a Pacific Ocean beach, after drinking way too much vintage port, unable to work out east from west, north from south, blindfolded. With the tide coming in. (Yes, this is personal anecdote, save for the blindfold. But then it wasn't really necessary). Polling is going to be particularly problematic in this electoral setting. Polling houses rely on likely voter models that vary based on a series of assumptions. These assumptions are usually, but not always, defensible in a normal electoral setting such as a Presidential or even mid-term year, where we have heaps of past empirical data to model, from which we can estimate probabilities of who is more likely to turn out and who less likely.

A mid January election in the state of Massachusetts held in the current political climate does not afford such a wealth of data, needless to say. I would be extremely reluctant to use polls conducted in this electoral context as the empirical base for a projective model formulated during a "normal" year (2008) for Senate elections to estimate a probability of either a Brown or a Coakley victory tomorrow. Indeed, Franklin reports that the polling in this race is highly varied; where in general elections we find various poll estimations within +/- 5% 95% of the time, the results here are all over the map. This is not at all surprising, since nobody has a clear idea what the electorate will look like tomorrow.

However, there are a few certainties that we can cling to, and none warm my heart. First, turnout will be lower on Tuesday than in November 2008. As structural variance in turnout affects different socio-economic categories at different, and largely predictable, rates, it's safe to say that the drop off in Republican turnout will be less extreme than Democratic turnout. In a needlessly close rate hinging on independent voters, this matters, even in a state where Democrats heavily outnumber Republicans.

Second, while we can point to NY-23 for evidence of how the tea-bagger label or support can be toxic in certain settings, a year in to the administration, the present race can be assuming more of a protest vote dynamic. Obama and the Democrats are becoming associated with the economic malaise. While Obama is right to suggest that it takes more than one year to reverse what eight years caused, this evidential argument doesn't necessarily play. Democrats can't run against Bush indefinitely. There comes a point where the party has to present a positive message about its policies, and while this has always been a stretch for the Democratic Party in my lifetime, the effectiveness of "running against the past" will attenuate with time. As this is essentially a by-election where the fate of the executive branch is not at risk, and most people don't really understand how the U.S. Senate operates (i.e. that 60th vote does matter, like it or not), those content in their support for the current administration and the Democratic Party have less incentive to turn out than the tea bagging set, those swayed by seductive populist appeals, those independents who have reasoned concerns with the approach of the administration, or even those, independent and Democrat, who just want to send a message of protest or frustration with the current climate.

The Democrats, both in Congress and in the administration, are the incumbent party of power now, and will start to bear the burden of blame for current conditions.

Finally, as fellow Massachusetts pol Tip O'Neil famously said, all politics is local. Coakley has, at best, run a complacent campaign. At one extreme, the campaign can be portrayed as a campaign of entitlement -- she expected to coast to victory. I can understand the national Democrats' overlooking the Mass. Senate race, but the actual candidate still has to win, and convincing her base to support her in a special election in January is critical. She hasn't. Massachusetts has elected Republicans state-wide, and until 2007 had a lock on governor for 16 years. They're not scared of electing Republicans, and in an election that superficially appears to not matter, very well may do so.

The problem is that, as we know, this election does matter in both tactical and strategic senses. Tactically, it could (and probably would) torpedo health care reform. Of course, the Democrats can then blame the Republicans for this failure, but a) that's the only good that would come from a Brown victory, and b) this argument, too, assumes that average citizens understand that 59% of the vote in the US Senate is not enough. They won't get that, but rather see a party with 59% of the votes in the Senate failing miserably to pass the Administration's signature issue.

Strategically, the implications are clear. The Democrats can, and will, be portrayed both as free-spending socialists who can't be trusted with our tax dollars, yet simultaneously be portrayed as unable to simply and effectively govern with huge majorities in both Houses of Congress and the Presidency. We can't trust the Dems because they're pointlessly spending all our money, yet we can't trust the Dems because they can't seem to spend all our money.

This is before the symbolic value of it being Massachusetts, in Teddy Kennedy's seat, is exploited even superficially. The tea baggers and Republicans writ large will go ape shit, and the Democrats will embrace chicken little. Both will be over-reactions, but the potential damage caused by not passing health care reform should not be underestimated.

If Brown should win, I don't think the Democrats will suddenly lose the House in 2010. The conditions are different than 1994, which is another post entirely. They'll lose seats in both the House and the Senate, but anybody who knows anything about House elections already know that the Dems will lose seats in the House.

Will Brown win? Silver suggests a tend back towards Coakley, and these numbers don't include the weekend blitz by the Democrats (contra Silver, as he points out, Franklin reaches a different estimation). I wouldn't be surprised either way, yet I have faith that Coakley will pull it out. But it's nothing more than faith, and it pisses me off that it should come to nothing more than faith in Massachusetts of all places. Rationally, structural and contextual variables are aligned against the Democrats in this special election: significantly lower turnout favors the Republicans, the Democrats are now the incumbent party of government lending a protest-vote dynamic that typify special elections, and Coakley has run a magnificently shitty campaign.

However, in a state as blue as Massachusetts, the Democrats should have overcome these hurdles due to the built in partisan advantage. They haven't.

Read more...