Brendan Nyhan

With structural factors pointing toward significant Republican gains in November, the White House and the Democratic Party are suggesting that the US Chamber of Commerce is funding its ads with foreign money despite a lack of hard evidence to support the charge. President Obama has called the ads “a threat to our democracy” and the DNC released an online ad saying “It appears they’ve even taken secret foreign money to influence our elections” (while showing images of Chinese currency).

On Saturday, the New York Times published a story saying “there is little evidence that what the chamber does in collecting overseas dues is improper or even unusual, according to both liberal and conservative election-law lawyers and campaign finance documents.” Think Progress, the original source of the charge, claimed that the Times had not refuted its claim, arguing that other funds from international corporations may support the Chamber’s ads. However, no proof was provided for the original allegation. As Think Progress acknowledged, “the essential fact is that there are no disclosure requirements that provide oversight to know whether or not the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is obeying the law.” (See also this response.)

While more disclosure may be desirable, it doesn’t justify the “When did you stop beating your wife?” nature of these allegations, as in this quote from Obama adviser David Axelrod yesterday:

David Axelrod, the president’s senior adviser, was asked Sunday by Bob Schieffer on “Face the Nation” on CBS if he had any evidence that the chamber was using secret foreign funds to influence the election.

“Well, do you have any evidence that it’s not, Bob?” Mr. Axelrod replied. “The fact is that the chamber has asserted that, but they won’t release any information about where their campaign money is coming from. And that’s at the core of the problem here.”

The Democratic committee’s spokesman, Hari Sevugan, likewise offered no evidence and suggested it was up to the chamber to disprove the assertions. “Serious questions have been raised,” he said in an e-mail. “If they want to clear this up, they can open up their books.”

Democrats might want to think back to the 1996-2000 period when Republicans repeatedly demagogued the issue of foreign campaign contributions and demanded that the Clinton White House prove its innocence against a litany of allegations. More importantly, with a Republican House seeming likely, the Obama administration might want to consider whether it wants to set up a standard where every charge made by the other party must be disproven.

Los Angeles Times columnist Ron Brownstein (4/25/05):

[I]f the two parties continue on their current trajectories, the backdrop for the 2008 election could be massive federal budget deficits, gridlock on problems like controlling healthcare costs, furious fights over ethics and poisonous clashes over social issues and Supreme Court appointments. A lackluster economy that’s squeezing the middle-class seems a reasonable possibility too.

In such an environment, imagine the options available to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) if he doesn’t win the 2008 Republican nomination, and former Democratic Sen. Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, now that he’s dropped his flirtation with running for mayor of New York. If the two Vietnam veterans joined for an all-maverick independent ticket, they might inspire a gold rush of online support — and make the two national parties the latest example of the Internet’s ability to threaten seemingly impregnable institutions.

Philadelphia Inquirer editorial board (5/25/05):

In a real cliffhanger, 14 U.S. senators, seven from each party, announced a compromise on judicial nominations that pulled their institution back from the precipice to which it had been driven by baying packs of ideologues.

It was great to see that the Senate still includes people who don’t view all issues as iron-cage death matches between good and evil. The moderates won a victory, however temporary. Their civil good sense shamed partisans on both sides.

Looking at the group as it announced the deal, you could almost – but not quite – glimpse the outlines of a third party of the center. A key architect of this compromise, John McCain of Arizona, likely would win a presidential election today if he ran against any of the probable nominees of the two parties. By standing up for principle here, though, he’s probably forfeited any shot at the GOP nod in 2008.

Blogger Mickey Kaus (5/31/05):

McCain doesn’t have to run as a Republican. He can run as a third-party candidate, Perot-style. Isn’t it, in fact, intuitively obvious that that’s what McCain will do, once he’s sufficiently infuriated by his rejection by GOP conservatives? … And he might win. Polls show voters are dissatisfied with both parties, no? Ross Perot got 19 percent of the vote despite being labeled (unfairly or not) as wacky. That’s a good base to start with. … McCain would steal both moderate GOPs and moderate Dems. Suddenly the Republicans would too have to worry about the center, in a way they maybe wouldn’t if they were just running against a Democrat.

The Atlantic’s James Fallows (6/7/05):

I feel something different from what I’ve ever felt before in my depressingly long political life, which is I can imagine [in] another election or two a third party making it if people just feel the two established parties — [which have] been around since before the Civil War — that neither of them can deal with the actual issues that face the country. So this article proposes that in the third election from now the third party will win and I actually could imagine that happening.

Blogger Marshall Wittman (6/8/05):

Conditions are developing for a possible third party alternative in ’08.

As the new Washington Post survey shows, independents are particularly estranged from the Bushies. The overall electorate is annoyed by both parties and the Washington politicians. The deficit is growing and the economy is anemic. The popularity of the Iraq war is plummeting and no end is in sight.

These are combustible conditions that could very well produce a third force in American politics. It is striking how similar the current situation is to that in 1992 when Perot emerged. Actually it is far worse – then, we were in the aftermath of a successful war although the economy was in a worse state.

Newsweek’s Howard Fineman (1/4/06):

If Sen. John McCain doesn’t win the Republican presidential nomination, I could see him leading an independent effort to “clean up” the capital as a third-party candidate. Having been seared by his own touch with this type of controversy (the Keating case in the ’80s, which was as important an experience to him as Vietnam), McCain could team up with a Democrat, say, Sen. Joe Lieberman. If they could assemble a cabinet in waiting — perhaps Wes Clark for defense, Russ Feingold for justice, Colin Powell for anything — they could win the 2008 election going away.

US News & World Report’s Paul Bedard (1/22/06):

Sen. John McCain’ s white-hot public approval ratings–59 percent in the new Diageo/Hotline poll–are fast giving rise to a new 2008 presidential primary scenario among Washington’s political brain trust. If, as conservatives believe, McCain’s liberal stands on gays and abortion kill his GOP primary chances, he may ride into the election as an independent.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman (4/28/06):

If the Democrats shirk this energy challenge, as the Republicans have, I’m certain there is going to be a third party in the 2008 election. It is going to be called the Geo-Green Party, and it is going to win a lot of centrist voters. The next Ross Perot will be green.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman (5/3/06):

Yes, our system is rigged against third parties. Still, my gut says that some politician, someday soon, just to be different, just for the fun of it, will take a flier on telling Americans the truth. The right candidate with the right message on energy might be able to drive a bus right up the middle of the U.S. political scene today — lose the far left and the far right — and still maybe, just maybe, win a three-way election.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman (6/16/06):

Frankly, I wish we did not need a third party. I wish the Democrats would adopt a Geo-Green agenda as their own. (Republicans never would.) But if not, I hope it will become the soul of a third party…

To be sure, Geo-Greenism is not a complete philosophy on par with liberalism or conservatism. But it can be paired with either of them to make them more relevant to the biggest challenges of our time. Even if Geo-Greenism couldn’t attract enough voters to win an election, it might attract a big enough following to frighten both Democrats and Republicans into finally doing the right things.

Hotsoup co-founders Joe Lockhart and Mark McKinnon (11/12/06):

An analysis of exit polls from the 2004 presidential election reveal that while the percentage of ticket-splitting voters has decreased every election since 1988, there is a large bloc – as many as a third of the electorate – that votes straight-ticket Republican or Democratic even though they are not philosophically suited for either party.

Voters in this squishy middle are not necessarily ideological cousins (it would be wrong to call this a moderate middle), but they are united by their shared frustration with the political system.

Call them the “disenchanted middle,” ripe for the plucking by a third-party insurgency in 2008 or a candidate who reforms his or her party from within.

The American Prospect’s Mark Schmitt (11/24/06):

It’s tempting to make fun of Marshall Wittmann’s newest guise, as Lieberman’s communications director, as if it were just another twist in one of the oddest careers in Washington. The New York Times has some fun with that theme today.
However, it’s quite obvious where this is going. John McCain will fail to win the Republican nomination, and he and Lieberman will turn up as a third party presidential ticket. They will have a great shtick: “We were each rejected by the ideological extremists in our parties, therefore we represent the true forgotten center of American politics.” The Broders of the world will salivate over the possibility.
Except, of course, it will not be a centrist party. It will be the Neoconservative party, with Lieberman having taken that angry turn and McCain already there. And both are rank opportunists, for whom “straight talk” is an empty slogan.

Hotsoup co-founder Joe Lockhart (11/27/06):

If 2008 rolls around and not much has changed, the caucuses and primaries descend into their normal petty bickering and negative ads and debates, a new force will inevitably take shape. There has been much talk throughout our history of third parties. But it’s been mostly talk. Every three or four decades we have a challenge to our two-party system, a challenge that recedes as quickly as it came along.

2008 could be different. There are too many structural reasons to go into that make a third-party candidacy more legitimate in 2008. Suffice it to say; those structural differences mixed in with the mood of the country create a toxic brew for our two-party system.

Hotsoup co-founder Mark McKinnon (11/27/06):

If things keep going they way they have been, 2008 may make the voter of 1992 look like a bunch of happy campers. The time could be more than ripe for another third-party bid, especially if centrist, bipartisan candidates like McCain and Obama get bounced from their respective primaries.

All it will take is someone who understands just how hungry voters are for a third way. Someone with a lot of ambition and smarts. And someone with a whole lot of money. Wait, this sounds a lot like Mayor Mike Bloomberg in New York.

That’s right; Mike Bloomberg could be the Ross Perot of 2008. And I believe he’s not just thinking about it, but has some very talented aides cooking up plans in laboratory in the bowels of Gotham City. If he’s smart, he’ll wait to see how the primaries shake out, find the best person to lead the ticket, make himself the vice presidential candidate (which he has to do in order to fund the effort), and off they’ll go shake up the great race in 2008.

Unity ’08 co-founder Jerry Rafshoon (12/6/06):

Our No. 1 goal is to elect [our ticket].

…Twenty percent of the vote is our minimum goal. It’s our minimum.

We’ll take it, certainly, if that’s what we get. But think about this: By the time we have this convention, we’ll have 5, 10, maybe even 20 million people on the Web site having this convention. Let’s say it’s 10 [million]. That’ll be more people than have chosen the nominees of the Democratic and Republican parties, because they will have been chosen by the early primaries. It may not even break a million that have chosen those candidates.

That person will probably leap ahead in the polls then, because everybody’s going to have them on the cover…. There may be people who wanted to get either one of their party’s nomination and didn’t get it; there could be new people; there maybe people from other disciplines than politics.

Political strategist Dick Morris (12/7/06):

The Lieberman victory bode well for a third party, triangulation master Dick Morris said in an interview for this story.

“Lieberman’s ability to cross party lines easily, certainly is attracting Republican and independent voters and certainly shows that Bloomberg could succeed,” Morris said. “His [Bloomberg’s] combination of social liberalism and fiscal conservatism and hawkishness on terror is a great combo for independent voters.”

McCain strategist Mark McKinnon (12/3/06):

A veteran campaigner for President Bush and a current adviser to Senator McCain, Mark McKinnon, told New York magazine that if the primaries “squeeze out the moderates, you’ll have an ideal situation for a third-party run.”

Political strategist Joe Trippi (12/10/06):

The Internet guru credited with transforming Howard Dean from an unknown governor to a front-runner in 2004, Joseph Trippi, sounded almost enthusiastic. “Given his resources, it’s all sitting there for [Bloomberg],” Mr. Trippi said. “People are so sick of the polarization of politics that he could make the case that it’s time to move beyond the two parties and that he’s the one to lead us.”

University of Texas professor Sanford Levinson (12/27/06):

The two-party system remains vulnerable to a challenge, and Rudy, for better and, definitely, for worse, is precisely the kind of person who could explode a lot of verities. He would offer Republicans who are sick and tired of the stranglehold over their party of the religious right a “safe harbor,” without having to vote for, say, Hillary Clinton. Ditto those (unlike myself) who admire Lieberman and feel his pain at the ostensible leftward drift of the Democratic Party. One can easily imagine such a ticket winning enough electoral votes to throw the election into the House (the long-awaited train wreck), and there are even scenarios, albeit longshot that could have them winning enough of the large states plus some others to take the whole thing.

Democratic strategist Bob Shrum (6/11/07):

The second key question: Can Bloomberg win? Mike, a businessman, is not the type to launch a Quixotic quest. Well, believe it or not, there is a long-shot path to Pennsylvania Avenue – if he really goes for the win rather than contenting himself with playing spoiler. He could target states like Missouri, where his gun control position would doom him in a two-way race. In a three-way contest, it could pick up all the state’s electoral votes with, say, 36% of the vote.

Blogger Andrew Sullivan (6/11/07):

If we end up in a polarizing Clinton-Giuliani race, then I predict a serious third party candidate.

Pollster John Zogby (6/21/07):

Now that Mayor Bloomberg has scuttled his membership in the GOP and an independent bid for the presidency looks more likely, the burning question on the minds of New Yorkers is: Can this guy really win? My polling shows his chances are promising.

Former senator Lincoln Chaffee (2/21/10):

Before long, we centrists may even come together to define the third party that Mr. Zogby foresaw in 2001.

Democratic strategist Mark Penn (5/6/10):

Thursday’s elections in Britain could be a harbinger of what is likely to come to America in the not-too-distant future: new movements and even parties that shake up the political system…

Today, about 40 percent of Americans are political nomads, wandering from party to party in search of a permanent home…

There is also a structural problem — socially liberal and fiscally conservative voters believe, especially after what happened with health care, that they have no clear choice: They must sign on with the religious right or the economic left. It is just a matter of time before they demand their own movement or party.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman (10/3/10):

Barring a transformation of the Democratic and Republican Parties, there is going to be a serious third party candidate in 2012, with a serious political movement behind him or her — one definitely big enough to impact the election’s outcome.

There is a revolution brewing in the country, and it is not just on the right wing but in the radical center. I know of at least two serious groups, one on the East Coast and one on the West Coast, developing “third parties” to challenge our stagnating two-party duopoly that has been presiding over our nation’s steady incremental decline.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman (7/24/11):

Thanks to a quiet political start-up that is now ready to show its hand, a viable, centrist, third presidential ticket, elected by an Internet convention, is going to emerge in 2012. I know it sounds gimmicky — an Internet convention — but an impressive group of frustrated Democrats, Republicans and independents, called Americans Elect, is really serious, and they have thought out this process well. In a few days, Americans Elect will formally submit the 1.6 million signatures it has gathered to get on the presidential ballot in California as part of its unfolding national effort to get on the ballots of all 50 states for 2012.

National Journal’s Ron Fournier (2/14/13):

My conversations this week with two Republican officials, along with a Democratic strategist’s timely memo, reflect a growing school of thought in Washington that social change and a disillusioned electorate threaten the entire two-party system…

[Republican consultant Scott] Reed sketched a hypothetical scenario under which Paul runs for the Republican nomination in 2016, loses after solid showings in Iowa and other states run by supporters of his father (former GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul), bolts the GOP, and mounts a third-party bid that undercuts the Republican nominee…

The next morning, Rep. Reid Ribble of Wisconsin dipped his spoon into a bowl of strawberries, sugar, and pink milk—and declared the era of two major parties just about over. “I think we’re at the precipice of a breakdown of the two-party system,” said the Wisconsin Republican.

A third voice joined the conversation when Democratic consultant Doug Sosnik released his State of the Union memo, a remarkable document warning both Democrats and Republicans about the increasing likelihood of a third-party presidential bid…

In a telephone interview last week, Sosnik said voters are wary of the leadership pool in U.S. politics. Business or even religious leaders could find traction in future presidential races.

“I think we will have a great debate with third and even fourth parties” vying for traditional GOP voters as well as Democrats now aligned with Obama, he said.

Republican strategist Ed Rogers in the Washington Post (9/23/13):

No one is winning this fight [over a potential government shutdown]. Does either party believe it can survive for much longer with this kind of dissatisfaction among their consumers? Voters might just go shopping for a better offer.

For the first time, I see the ingredients there for a third-party movement. It wouldn’t take much for a conservative third party to gather enough votes in a few districts and states to make a big difference. But any such movement would have to coalesce around a leader, and I don’t see who that person might be.

Our current broken system is producing a vacuum — and politics abhors a vacuum. If we don’t get our act together, something big (and not necessarily good) might appear on the horizon.

Former Politico CEO Jim Vandehei (4/25/16):

[T]he best, perhaps only way to disrupt the establishment is by stealing a lot of Donald Trump’s and Bernie Sanders’s tricks and electing a third-party candidate.

Mr. Trump’s vulgar approach to politics is a terrific middle finger to the establishment but a terrible political and governing paradigm. Same goes for Sanders-style socialism. But if someone turned the critique, passion and disdain shared by the two movements into a new one, they could change the system in meaningful ways. Only an outside force can knock Washington out of its governing rut—and the presidency is the only place with the power to do it.

The dream of the independent third party presidential candidate shall never die — at least in the columns of elite pundits like Thomas Friedman. In his latest effort, Friedman predicts “a serious third party candidate” for the presidency in 2012:

Barring a transformation of the Democratic and Republican Parties, there is going to be a serious third party candidate in 2012, with a serious political movement behind him or her — one definitely big enough to impact the election’s outcome.

There is a revolution brewing in the country, and it is not just on the right wing but in the radical center. I know of at least two serious groups, one on the East Coast and one on the West Coast, developing “third parties” to challenge our stagnating two-party duopoly that has been presiding over our nation’s steady incremental decline.

Interestingly, however, Friedman fails to mention this prediction from an April 2006 column:

If the Democrats shirk this energy challenge, as the Republicans have, I’m certain there is going to be a third party in the 2008 election. It is going to be called the Geo-Green Party, and it is going to win a lot of centrist voters. The next Ross Perot will be green.

He later hyped the concept in columns in May and June 2006 before dropping it until a March 2010 column calling for (unlikely) changes to the political system that would make third party candidates more viable.

I’ve written at great length about the reasons that successful third party candidacies are extremely unlikely. Along these lines, Steve Kornacki of Salon (where I cross-post) has posted an excellent response to Friedman showing how structural obstacles and the incentive to avoid a “wasted” vote doomed John Anderson’s centrist presidential campaign in 1980 (a context with many potential parallels to 2012 if the economy doesn’t recover).

And even if a third party candidate did pull off a miracle and win the presidency, it would not create the “superconsensus” that Friedman wants, particularly in Congress. Here’s Steve Benen:

In other words, Friedman has effectively endorsed the entirety of President Obama’s agenda, most of which has passed, can’t pass, or has to be severely watered down because of unprecedented Senate obstructionism. But instead of calling for reforming the legislative process, or calling on Republicans to start playing a constructive role in policymaking, or calling on voters to elect more candidates who agree with the agenda the columnist espouses, Friedman says what we really need is an amorphous third party that will think the way he does.

Sigh.

To hear Friedman tell it, this mystery party is, in effect, needed to pass a bolder, more sweeping version of the Democratic agenda. Why not just elect more and better Democrats to make that possible? Friedman doesn’t say. How would the Friedman Party overcome Republican obstructionism? He doesn’t say. How would this third party make the kind of institutional changes that have stifled the process in recent years? Friedman doesn’t say.

Other than that, it’s a fine idea.

It just gets so tiresome when this crowd argues, for the umpteenth time, that a magical entity can emerge that will agree with Democrats but not really, establish a “consensus” among people with sincere disagreements, and govern successfully without all the messiness that comes with a massive democratic system.

The best precedent in contemporary politics is Jesse Ventura, who was elected governor in Minnesota as an independent candidate and tried to govern without the support of either major party. Needless to say, it did not go well.

Update 10/4 11:45 AM: Dave Weigel, Jamelle Bouie, Jonathan Bernstein, and Ezra Klein have also posted useful critiques of Friedman that are worth reading.

Update 10/5 12:01 PM: To underscore how frequently pundits hype unlikely third-party scenarios, I’ve compiled a timeline of third-party hype since 2005. History has not been kind to these claims.

On his new 538 blog at NYTimes.com, Nate Silver argues that “the political climate could potentially be very favorable to a third-party candidate in 2012” and that “those who are critiquing [Friedman] are making too much of a data set — the performance of third-party candidates in recent Presidential elections — that contains too few salient examples.” It’s certainly true that the historical record of modern presidential campaigns is short. However, the key point is that political scientists have strong theoretical reasons to doubt the viability of a third-party presidential campaign, which include the logic of strategic voting, the winner-take-all nature of the Electoral College, the fact that the House decides the election if there is an Electoral College deadlock, difficulties in securing ballot access in all fifty states, and the lack of a significant activist or electoral constituency for a centrist candidate. The context may be relatively more favorable to a third-party candidate in 2012 than it has been since at least 1980, but all of those factors are still likely to dissuade serious candidates and to limit the impact of any that do enter.

In addition, neither Friedman nor anyone else has provided a plausible rationale for an actual third party campaign that could attract votes. For all the hype about third parties in 2008, the Unity 2008 “movement” shut down after attracting 124,000 supporters rather than the predicted 5-20 million. Similarly, the draft Bloomberg petition went nowhere, which was to be expected since his candidacy had no constituency and no rationale. As one “Bush campaign veteran” put it, “Is there a single American clamoring for a Bloomberg presidency? A single one?”

Update 10/6 8:26 AM: See also Jonathan Bernstein on the distinction between a “serious” third party candidate (not totally unlikely if you define “serious” as someone like John Anderson or Ross Perot who can attract 5-20% of the vote) and a third party candidate who actually has a realistic chance of winning (far more unlikely).

With a GOP wave seeming increasingly likely in November, liberals are already looking to place blame. One of the targets has been Democrats themselves. To date, most have faulted the White House and the party for ineffective communication strategies (an example of what I call the tactical fallacy). This week, however, Markos Moulitsas, the founder of the Daily Kos website, wrote a column for The Hill arguing that Democrats are actually in trouble for not being liberal enough. Citing polls that appear to show public support for various progressive policies, he concludes as follows:

Assuming big Republican gains this November, the media narrative will claim Democrats overreached and governed too liberally. Yet actual progressive policies polled well and continue to poll well. If anything, it’s been failure to act on popular legislation that helped put them in this hole.

What’s ironic is that conservatives made similar claims in 2006 after the Democrats took control of Congress. Here, for instance, was what David Limbaugh wrote: “if the party had stuck to its principles, it wouldn’t have sustained such losses.” (Other examples: former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, the Club for Growth’s Pat Toomey, former Republican Majority Leader Dick Armey, and the Wall Street Journal editorial board.)

These claims are implausible. The role of ideological positioning is often overstated in American politics — presidential elections are largely driven by the economy, and Congressional outcomes are closely related to the number of seats held by the president’s party, whether it is a midterm election, and the state of the economy. However, to the extent that ideological positioning matters, it’s unlikely that the Democrats would be helped by shifting in a more liberal direction — the public tends to move in the opposite direction of the party in power, demanding less government under Democrats and more under Republicans. (Conservative self-identification is up by five points since 2008 and Jim Stimson’s measure of public mood shows movement in a conservative direction in 2009, though the estimate is noisy.)

As for the polls that Moulitsas cites, it’s important to keep in mind that results vary depending on how the questions are asked. Other results would likely find substantially lower levels of support for the proposals he identifies, particularly if Republican counter-arguments were included. Moreover, support levels may be lower among those voters who are actually going to vote in a midterm election with low Democratic enthusiasm, especially in more conservative states and districts. Finally, many of these proposals could not attract the sixty votes necessary to break a filibuster in the Senate, so Democrats have elected to avoid pursuing them, reserving time for legislation with a better chance of passage that will not create tough votes for vulnerable members.

Again, conservatives went through the same process of denial after President Bush’s proposal to add private accounts to Social Security, which polled well in the abstract, failed to even be considered in the 109th Congress of 2005-2006. For instance, the Wall Street Journal editorialized that “President Bush gave Republicans a once-in-a-generation chance to reform Social Security … along free market lines, but GOP House leaders fought him behind the scenes,” failing to acknowledge was that GOP leaders “fought [Bush] behind the scenes” because the proposal was unpopular once voters heard Democratic counter-arguments, especially among seniors and constituents of members from less conservative states and districts.

In short, the coming Democratic losses will largely be the result of factors outside the party’s control — a midterm election, a bad economy, and the high number of seats currently held by the party — not a failure to promote a more liberal policy agenda. Like conservatives in 2006, Kos is grasping at straws.

Update 10/1 11:14 AM: See also Jon Chait on the Kos op-ed.

Update 10/2 2:30 PM: Matthew Yglesias weighs in:

It is always worth beginning this conversation with a recognition that given where things stood in January 2009, large House losses were essentially inevitable. The Democratic majority elected in 2008 was totally unsustainable and was doomed by basic regression to the mean.

Beyond that, I think it’s worth distinguishing between first-order and second-order claims about whether being more liberal would have helped or hurt. What Democrats needed, according to the evidence, is policies that were more effective at turning the recession around. According to me, the policies that would have achieved those goals were “more liberal” than the policies that were in fact adopted. But if Paul Ryan is right and draconian spending cuts paired with a green light to polluters and the financial industry would have produced more growth, than what they needed was more conservative policies. The problem with a lot of the discussion around this issue is that people who cover politics don’t like to make judgments about disputed policy issues. But given the connection between economic performance and election outcomes, you can’t assess political strategy in slack economy without forming some view about what would cause the excess capacity to come into use.

The first point is essentially correct and is addressed above (“the high number of seats currently held by the party”). In terms of the second point, I’m obviously sympathetic to the view that the economy is largely responsible for shaping political outcomes. The argument Yglesias is making is intellectually coherent — it is possible that more liberal stimulus policies would have spurred the economy, and that the resulting economic improvement would have helped Democrats. However, that isn’t the claim Kos made. His argument centers on public opinion, not policy outcomes. Kos does cite greater stimulus spending as a policy that he thinks Democrats should have pursued, but most of the policies he describes (immigration reform, tax increases for high income Americans, single payer health care, etc.) would not have delivered significant short-term stimulus to the economy even if they could have made it through Congress.

[Cross-posted to HuffPost Pollster]

Yesterday, President Obama spoke at a large rally at the University of Wisconsin that was intended to help rally the Democratic base for the midterm election. But will he and his party be able to narrow the enthusiasm gap with Republicans? The indicators aren’t encouraging.

One possible obstacle was suggested recently by The New Republic’s Jon Chait, who suggested that Democrats can’t sustain enthusiasm when their party holds the presidency like Republicans:

The Democratic base tends to lose interest in the threat of right-wing politics when their party holds power. Republicans, I’m guessing offhand, have had more success energizing their base during Republican rule. (Anybody want to quantify this?) Specifically I’m thinking of the 2002 and 2004 elections, which featured revved-up Republican bases despite total GOP control of government.

My seat of the pants analysis is that this reflects a psychological difference between the left and the right. The liberal coalition is more ideologically diffuse and attracted to individualism. Sometimes you see left-wing splintering at the end of periods of Democratic control — 1948, 1968, 2000 — but more often it’s simply harder to make liberals understand the urgency of preserving their party’s control of power against a hypothetical threat. Conservatives, by contrast, may find the idea of rallying behind a leader more attractive. Liberals were obviously very enthusiastic about the historical nature of Obama’s election, but the enthusiasm has waned since. The conservative cult of personality around George W. Bush actually seemed to peak in 2004.

Is this claim supported by the data? Gallup has asked survey respondents whether they are more or less enthusiastic are about voting than usual in every election since 1994. In previous years, I use the last available poll before the general election. However, Gallup changed their question wording this election cycle for the enthusiasm question so I rely on the June 11-13, 2010 survey (the last using the old wording) to make sure the results are comparable with previous years (the current estimates of enthusiasm using the new wording are very similar).

Using this measure, I calculate net enthusiasm by party (% more enthusiastic – % less enthusiastic) and then take the difference between parties, constructing a measure of the net enthusiasm advantage for the president’s party.* (This abstracts away from features of the election that may increase or decrease enthusiasm in both parties.) The results are more ambiguous than Chait’s claim:

Democrats have been less enthusiastic relative to the other party in the first midterm under both Clinton and Obama than Republicans were under Bush, but it’s important to keep in mind that the 2002 election is an outlier due to 9/11. By comparison, 1994 and 2010 were extremely unfavorable electoral environments. In more favorable conditions (principally, a booming economy), we see that Democrats were relatively more enthusiastic for Clinton in the 1996-2000 elections than Republicans were for Bush in 2004-2008. It’s unlikely that Democrats will close the enthusiasm gap with Republicans in this election — the conditions are just too unfavorable — but the historical record doesn’t indicate that they are incapable of enthusiastically supporting a Democratic president.

* I relied on Gallup’s tabulation of enthusiasm by party (including leaners) when available. I calculated results myself for 1996 and 2000 using survey data archived by the Roper Center. Note: The 1996 survey includes “the same” as an option for the enthusiasm question; in other years, it was only recorded if volunteered by the respondent.

[Cross-posted to Pollster.com and Huffington Post]