Brendan Nyhan

Logical fallacies in action: We have lots of choices now, so political parties will wither on the vine!

That sounds pretty silly, but it’s the suggestion that Matt Bai makes in his New York Times Magazine piece on the death of the 527 group called America Coming Together (ACT):

ACT represented the first serious challenge to the industrial-age structure of the modern political party. Before [George] Soros and [Peter] Lewis plunked down all that cash for ACT, liberal donors had assumed that their only avenue into the political system was through supporting the party and its candidates…

ACT helped to usher us into the post-party world. We are now confronting a period in which the power and the innovation in American politics will reside not in some party headquarters on Capitol Hill but in a decentralized network of grass-roots groups, donors and Internet impresarios, all of whom seem to be increasingly entwined with one another. There’s peril in this trend — it would seem to favor millionaires over workers, and ideologues over pragmatists — but it was probably inevitable. Everywhere else in American life, after all, we see evidence of what the Democratic speechwriter Andrei Cherny, in his 2000 book, ”The Next Deal,” presciently identified as “the Choice Generation”… Was it really reasonable, then, to expect the same top-down system that has governed American politics since the time of Martin Van Buren to somehow survive the revolution intact? In the end, ACT’s contribution was to act as a bridge from the last political moment to the next, hastening the chaotic process of democratization — even without the capital ”D” that its founders would have preferred.

But as Mike Tofias put it in an email to me, this is probably wrong:

I agree that the future is in the networks, but I am not sure how you read 2004 and
say the party is dead. If anything the rise and fall of ACT and Dean’s takeover of
the DNC suggests that parties are still the political vehicle of choice. Anything else
is probably just a fly-by-night outfit.

In short: Yes, you can create your own 527. Yes, parties will increasingly work in alliance with a decentralized network of independent groups, and the power of those groups could pull the parties further away from the center. No, that doesn’t mean parties are going away or will be replaced by independent groups or anything like that. Mike’s right — if parties are outmoded, why did Dean jump from his own group (Democracy for America) to take control of the Democratic Party?

Another problem with Bai’s article is the simplistic notion that parties have been “top-down” since Van Buren and are now being “democratized.” The Democrats were largely paralyzed by the divide between northern and southern Democrats for decades, and later operated more as a loose coalition of interest groups than anything else. Also, the relatively unified Republican caucus in Congress is largely a creation of Newt Gingrich and only dates back to the late 1980s/early 1990s. Over the long term, the level of control that parties exert over their members has varied for a whole series of reasons.

In the end, it’s not at all clear that the advent of the “Choice Generation” is going to reduce “top-down” party influence. If anything, we’ve seen a trend in the opposite direction, with both parties trying to practice a more parliamentary style of politics in which internally unified parties deliver coordinated messages to the electorate. This is especially true on the Republican side, where independent groups follow the dictates of Karl Rove rather than battling him for control of the GOP. The party lives!

(For more on the Internet politics bubble, see this post, which also includes links to a number of past posts on the subject.)

The smearing of Cindy Sheehan as a traitor continues, as Media Matters documents here and here.
Some of the worst offenders:

Michael Barone: “Today, we have many in the press — not most, I think, but some at least — who do not want us to win this war and think that we don’t deserve to win this war. It’s a more critical press.”

Frank Gaffney: “It will clearly be the case that enemies of this country, in a global war, of which Iraq is one front, will be emboldened and hardened, even as I think they are by these sorts of indications that we’re losing our nerve, that we’re being bloodied and that we’re going to try to — or at least some of us — are going to try to compel the president to give up, that will only bring the threat we currently face, principally overseas, to our shores and, I think, do so in a way that will make the losses we’ve sustained in Iraq pale by comparison.

Chattanooga Times Free Press: “[I]t is unfortunate that Mrs. Sheehan’s sadness now has caused her to be used as a ‘front’ and a personal ‘symbol’ by a variety of political anti-Bush and anti-war activists who are seeking to undermine the American military effort to establish freedom and defeat terrorism in Iraq and throughout the world… It is saddening that Mrs. Sheehan has lost a son. It is saddening that Mrs. Sheehan’s demonstration has sought to undermine the purpose of his service in a way that surely encourages his murderers.”

David Horowitz: “Cindy Sheehan is the most prominent symbol and chief mouthpiece of a psychological warfare campaign against her own country in time of war that can only benefit its enemies on the field of battle. It is one thing to criticize a war policy… She has made herself a willing tool of anti-American forces in this country that want America to lose the war in Iraq and the war on terror generally… She has betrayed his sacrifice and embraced his enemies.”

Charles Krauthammer reportedly also said that Sheehan is “hurting our troops and endangering our troops,” and said that her statements “have to be attacked because they are libeling America, endangering America, and they are untrue from beginning to end.” According to Media Matters, when this claim was questioned by Juan Williams, Krauthammer said, “You don’t think it’s encouraging, you don’t think it’s going to encourage Iraqis who are attacking us, particularly this kind of stuff about American imperialism?”

What’s especially sad is that this sort of anti-democratic smear campaign is par for the course since 2001, as I documented on Spinsanity. Henry Farrell of Crooked Timber has compiled an updated list of commentators claiming that the left is rooting for the other side in Iraq or the war on terror.

The Wall Street Journal ran the inevitable op-ed from a grieving parent whose child was killed in Iraq, which begins, “I lost a son in Iraq and Cindy Sheehan does not speak for me.”

This was inevitable because Sheehan and others like her are being treated like martyrs. Maureen Dowd wrote that “the moral authority of
parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute.” No, it’s not. As horrible as losing a child is, parents whose children have died in Iraq are citizens just like the rest of us. (To his credit, the author of the Journal op-ed recognizes this fact, and disavows Dowd’s claim.)

Surprisingly enough, Ana Marie Cox put it best on Wonkette:

Over at The Corner, Kate O’Beirne finally suggests what we suppose is inevitable, that anti-war grieving mother Cindy Sheehan should be countered
with pro-war grieving mothers: “Surely a fair number of such family members
are in Texas? Let’s hear from them. . .”

Is that what the debate has come to? Which side can corral the saddest crop
of widows, parents, and orphans? Call it a harms race. Better: an ache-off.
We hope the grimly absurd image of two competing camps of mourners
illustrates why it is we’ve been somewhat reluctant to weigh in on Sheehan’s
cause: Grief can pull a person in any direction, and whatever “moral
authority” it imbues, we can’t claim that Sheehan has it and those mothers
who still support the war don’t. The Bush administration knows all about
exploiting tragedy for its own causes, including re-election. Whatever
arguments there are against the war in Iraq, let’s not make “I have more
despairing mothers on my side” one of them. The only way to win a grief
contest is for more people to die.

Amen. Let’s have a real debate over the war, not an “ache-off.”

In an editorial today (subscription required), our friends at the Wall Street Journal make a series of mendacious claims about the new CBO report, which notes a surge in revenue in this fiscal year:

[T]his windfall means that tax revenue as a share of the economy is climbing back to normal levels. As the nearby chart shows, at 17.5% of GDP this year, Uncle Sam’s tax take is close to the 17.9% postwar average. And CBO estimates that as the economy continues to grow, the tax take will slowly rise throughout this decade to 17.8%.

This is because more Americans are thrown into higher tax brackets as their incomes rise. Economists call this “real bracket creep,” and what it means is that most taxpayers will see their tax burdens gradually rise even under the lower Bush rates of 2003. The burden will be that much higher still if the lower Bush rates are allowed to expire after 2008 (on dividends and capital gains) and 2010 (on income taxes).

The CBO estimates above are also featured in this graphic, which accompanied the editorial:

But that graphic cuts off at 2010, and the CBO estimates it presents do not include the costs of extending the tax cuts that expire in 2008 and 2010. Yet the Journal writes that “The burden will be that much higher still if the lower Bush rates are allowed to expire after 2008 (on dividends and capital gains) and 2010 (on income taxes)” — a statement that implies that the actual tax burden would be higher than the CBO estimates, rather than lower as will actually be the case.

This is obvious when you look at the CBO report, which lays out the costs of extending the expiring tax cuts and reforming the alternative minimum tax cut. If you reduce projected revenues accordingly (taking into account increased debt service), the Journal’s chart looks strikingly optimistic:

In fact, revenue would decline back below 17 percent of GDP — a level that, before Bush, hadn’t been reached since the Eisenhower administration (PDF).

The WSJ continues:

A second fact you won’t see in many other newspapers is that the federal budget deficit has also declined to close to its modern average. CBO says the deficit will fall to 2.7% of national output in the fiscal year that ends at the end of next month. It is expected to continue to fall to 2.4% of GDP next year and 2.0% in 2010, even if the Bush tax rates stay in place.

But the situation worsens dramatically over time if AMT reform and tax cut extensions are enacted, as the Journal’s own reporters showed (subscription required) — take a look at the graphic that ran with their story:

You can see that the Journal’s 2010 date is cherrypicked — the effects of extending President Bush’s tax cuts are modest in that year, but explode over the next five.

Once again, the lesson here is simple: never trust the Wall Street Journal editorial page.

(Also see my blog posts and Spinsanity’s articles on the WSJ editorial page.)

Here’s David Carr on favorable coverage of Hillary Clinton by the New York Post:

Both sides could benefit from the thaw. The News Corporation is in the midst of a counteroffensive against a change in the Nielsen ratings that it says undercounts minorities, and that, oh, by the way, could cripple its local stations…

Mr. Murdoch has a history of backing and engaging political winners, most notably Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain… Because he has no romanticism for lost causes, The Post apparently will not try to maim Mrs. Clinton in a Senate race with Ms. Pirro that is beginning to seem over before it has begun. They still whack Ms. Clinton occasionally, but it is more on general principle – they do it to stay in shape – and not with the same glee as in the past.

Over the long haul, the Murdoch-Clinton detente cannot last. In its phenomenal success, Fox News has used institutional enmity of the Clintons as one of its guiding principals [sic]. But in the meantime, the fight between Ms. Pirro and Mrs. Clinton will help ratings and circulation numbers, and the prospect of a Clinton presidential candidacy will agitate and engage the News Corporation’s core audiences.

“Fox News and The Post need Hillary to run for Senate and president,” said James Carville, a political consultant who worked in the Clinton White House. “There is only one politician in America that gets people to watch television for or buy a newspaper, and that’s her. No one else comes close.”

I don’t buy Carr’s argument that Rupert Murdoch needs Hillary Clinton’s help in Washington — she’s a powerless Democrat like everyone else in her caucus — but the other two possibilities are intriguing:
(1) Murdoch privately believes Clinton might actually win the presidency in 2008 and wants to hedge his bets;
(2) The profit incentives of a Hillary presidential candidacy are so great that News Corp. will hold its fire until after she wins the nomination. Then, of course, Fox will put Arkansas Whitewater Obsessives for Truth on the air for six months straight.

#2 might also be important in explaining the positive coverage she’s (shockingly) received thus far from the political press as a whole. Yet another explanation is that Republicans are being nice to her (maybe because they privately want her to win the Democratic nomination?), which cues reporters to treat her better.

More ideas welcome in comments…

After conceding that Roberts is going to get confirmed, Democrats were accused of rolling over by lefty interest groups, so they now have to run around squawking for the benefit of NARAL et al:

Major liberal groups accused Democratic senators yesterday of showing too little stomach for opposing John G. Roberts Jr.’s Supreme Court nomination, saying newly released documents indicate he is much more conservative than many people first thought.

The response was quick and pointed, as two key senators unleashed their sharpest criticisms yet of Roberts and sought to assure activists that the battle is far from over.

Via Wonkette, this AP story is almost literally unbelievable:

A rush to purchase $50 used laptops turned into a violent stampede Tuesday, with people getting thrown to the pavement, beaten with a folding chair and nearly driven over. One woman went so far as to wet herself rather than surrender her place in line.

Clearly there’s an undersupply of cheap computers out there. Just go to your local university town and read the classifieds…

Looks like I was right — this is not a winnable fight for the Democrats:

Democrats have decided that unless there is an unexpected development in the weeks ahead, they will not launch a major fight to block the Supreme Court nomination of John G. Roberts Jr., according to legislators, Senate aides and party strategists.

In a series of interviews in recent days, more than a dozen Democratic senators and aides who are intimately involved in deliberations about strategy said that they see no evidence that most Democratic senators are prepared to expend political capital in what is widely seen as a futile effort to derail the nomination.

Tom DeLay quoted in the Boston Globe (10/9/98) speaking about Bill Clinton:

“I believe that this nation sits at a crossroads. One direction points to the higher road of the rule of law… Now, the other road is the path of least resistance. This is where we start making exceptions to our laws based on poll numbers and spin control. This is when we pitch the law completely overboard when the mood fits us.”

Tom DeLay arguing against judicial review on the Justice Sunday telecast two days ago:

Mr. DeLay, the highest ranking of six Republican congressmen who participated, questioned the Supreme Court’s power to strike down federal laws it deemed unconstitutional.

The Constitution assigned Congress the power to make laws and limited the federal courts to applying and interpreting those laws, Mr. DeLay said, but “this fact, understood by every high school civics student, has been forgotten in recent decades by too many members of the American judiciary, including, most notably, the United States Supreme Court itself.”

As evidence, he and others cited Supreme Court decisions about abortion, sodomy, obscenity and government support for religion. “That’s not judicial independence,” Mr. DeLay said. “That’s judicial supremacy, judicial autocracy.”

And, of course, let’s not forget the ethics troubles of Mr. Rule of Law, nor DeLay’s statement that he pursued impeachment because Bill Clinton didn’t share his “Biblical worldview.”

The Internet politics bubble continues. Tom Curry has a story on MSNBC.com that opens with this lead:

Democratic bloggers say they are beginning to transform the way political campaigns are run, pointing to their recent success in raising more than $550,000 for Democratic congressional candidate Paul Hackett, a Marine veteran of the Iraq war, who came within 4,000 votes of defeating Republican Jean Schmidt two weeks ago in a special election in a heavily Republican district in Ohio.

The work of such bloggers as Bob Brigham of Swingstateproject.com points toward a day when the traditional campaign — tailored by Washington-based consultants, centered on 30-second TV ads, with fund-raising driven by Washington-based party committees — might become obsolete.

But as Holly Martin points out on Wonkette, “campaigns require, you know, knowledge and shit.” As Curry himself points out, “To win the open seat in Iowa’s first congressional district next year, for example, one needs to know very place-specific details.” Consultants, TV ads and local knowledge are not going away. That’s know-nothing hype of the sort we saw during the Internet bubble in business. The lefty blog infrastructure is going to help liberal candidates raise more money, but it’s not going to change politics as we know it.

Part of Curry’s article profiles Bob Brigham of the Swing State Project:

On Monday, Brigham and his allies are launching a new political action committee (PAC) called “Leave No District Behind.”

Brigham wants the Democrats to field House candidates in every congressional district, instead of allowing dozens of districts to go uncontested as they did in last year’s campaign.

He reckons that $100,000 invested in each of the uncontested House districts would at least give the Democrats a candidate and a minimal staff.

His rationale is that Republicans in uncompetitive races were able to campaign for their colleagues rather than staying home to defend their own turf. But why divert so much time and effort into unwinnable races? It’s completely idiotic.

The problem is that lefty bloggers think the Howard Dean/Paul Hackett phenomena are replicable, and they’re not. No one wants to work for a loser — or give one money. And a few hundred thousand dollars in Internet contributions does not make most uncompetitive districts winnable. Those are cold, hard facts. How much money will Bob Brigham waste before he comes to terms with them?

(For past posts on the Internet politics bubble, see here, here, here, and here.)