Brendan Nyhan

Ezra Klein flags a new Pew poll showing that John McCain is becoming a much more polarizing figure:

Via the new Pew Poll comes evidence that McCain’s broad coalition of People Who Like Him is beginning to polarize by party as he moves towards the Republican nomination. His favorability numbers among Democrats have tanked, and his ratings among independents have fallen, even if only to 51 percent.
Meanwhile, Republicans seem to have discovered a newfound affection for the guy, and their recognition that he too supports endless war and upward redistribution have sent his numbers skyrocketing. None of this is particularly shocking — in fact, expect to see the same phenomenon with Obama before very long — but it suggests that McCain is vulnerable in exactly the ways everyone is saying he’s vulnerable. As Matt noted the other day, both McCain and Obama have faced their toughest battles in primaries, and so very few voters have heard McCain attacked from the left, or Obama assailed from the right. But they will soon.

This is exactly the process that I predicted would take place if McCain won the nomination:

McCain spiked upward in popularity at the time he made his run in the 2000 presidential primaries, and has barely declined since…

The reason, I think, is that Democratic politicians don’t criticize McCain (some even ask him to be their vice presidential nominee). He’s more or less the only partisan politician who Democrats and Republicans generally praise. As a result, the public likes him across the board — the Quinnipiac poll shows his favorabe ratings as 37% favorable, 8% unfavorable among Republicans; 31% favorable, 8% unfavorable among Democrats; and 40% favorable, 9% unfavorable among independents.

But this will inevitably change if McCain runs in 2008. The reason is that he’s never received significant Democratic criticism. He was defeated in 2000 before the Democrats felt the need to open up on him, and since then they all praise him because they want to look bipartisan and co-sponsor bills with him in Congress. But he won’t get the Republican nomination unless he starts unloading on the Democrats, and if he does get nominated (which I think is unlikely), things will turn around really quickly. Pretty soon Democrats will start pointing out that he’s a pro-life, ultra-hawkish, government-cutting conservative, and his favorability profile will start to look like most other Republicans. And even though McCain’s numbers look great today, few Democrats would actually vote for him — if he’s only getting 15% against Hillary Clinton right now, imagine what he’d draw against a more moderate Democrat like John Edwards at the end of a vicious presidential campaign.

The counterpoint to this is the finding in the same poll that Barack Obama’s support lags Hillary’s among some Democratic constituencies. But as Matthew Yglesias notes, these people are very likely to come into the fold by November:

Obama is winning even though he’s doing unusually poorly among self-identified Democrats. In particular, older white working class Democrats seem drawn to McCain in pretty large numbers. But you’ve got to consider that at this point almost ever older white working class Democrat in America has been the target of a lot of messaging from Hillary Clinton arguing that Obama is too inexperienced and too dovish. They haven’t, meanwhile, heard any messaging from anyone about how John McCain wants to privatize Social Security and cut Medicare benefits. Obama, in other words, is currently winning despite weakness with this demographic, and is also almost certain to look less weak among this demographic in November than he does today.

The tension here is between the predictability of partisanship and election outcomes on the one hand and the prevailing belief in candidate quality as a major factor in elections. During campaigns, the fundamentals end up pushing people in relatively predictable directions, but we tend to attribute many of those changes to political skill (or the lack thereof). In reality, the candidates themselves probably only matter on the margin, as Andrew Gelman argues (though you’d still rather be McCain than Romney and Obama rather than Clinton):

The predictability of election outcomes from fundamental variables suggests that different presidential candidates from the same party don’t differ much in the votes they will receive in the general election. It’s better to be a moderate than an extremist, and it’s better to be a better campaigner etc., but all these things together probably only count for a couple of percentage points of the vote.

…Now, don’t get me wrong: a couple of percentage points of the vote can make a big difference–just look at the tied elections of 1960, 1968, 1976, and 2000, as well as the very close election of 2004. Also, who knows how things will go with the unprecedented “woman or young black guy vs. old white guy” dynamic. But, based on past elections, I’d say the whole “electability” thing is overrated. Once Election Day comes around, people will find a reason to vote for the party they want to support.

For more, see the article Gelman and Harvard’s Gary King wrote on this phenomenon, which shows how voters tend to eventually end up where we would predict over the course of the campaign:

Gelman, Andrew and Gary King. “Why Are American Presidential Election Campaign Polls So Variable When Votes are So Predictable?” British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 23, No. 1 (October, 1993)…

As most political scientists know, the outcome of the U.S. Presidential election can be predicted within a few percentage points (in the popular vote), based on information available months before the election. Thus, the general election campaign for president seems irrelevant to the outcome (except in very close elections), despite all the media coverage of campaign strategy. However, it is also well known that the pre-election opinion polls can vary wildly over the campaign, and this variation is generally attributed to events in the campaign. How can campaign events affect people’s opinions on whom they plan to vote for, and yet not affect the outcome of the election? For that matter, why do voters consistently increase their support for a candidate during his nominating convention, even though the conventions are almost entirely predictable events whose effects can be rationally forecast?

…We show that responses to pollsters during the campaign are not generally informed or even, in a sense we describe, “rational.” In contrast, voters decide which candidate to eventually support based on their enlightened preferences, as formed by the information they have learned during the campaign, as well as basic political cues such as ideology and party identification. We cannot prove this conclusion, but we do show that it is consistent with the aggregate forecasts and individual-level opinion poll responses. Based on the enlightened preferences hypothesis, we conclude that the news media have an important effect on the outcome of Presidential elections—not due to misleading advertisements, sound bites, or spin doctors, but rather by conveying candidates’ positions on important issues.

This plot in particular does a nice job of showing how the estimated effect of ideology and race increased over the course of the 1988 campaign, while the effect of other variables declined dramatically (see page 445 of the paper for details):

In addition, this plot shows how actual support for George H.W. Bush converged with his predicted level of support using regression weights from polls immediately before the election (see page 448 for details):

If John McCain ends up losing this election, expect a flurry of stories claiming he lost because he shifted to the right and lost his so-called “maverick” appeal. The state of the economy and other factors will get much less attention.

Jon Chait has a nice piece in the LA Times that echoes the points I’ve made about Hillary’s overrated 2000 victory in New York:

The real reason Clinton will lose is more prosaic: Obama is a far better politician.

Republicans have long had a kind of black-magic fear of the Clintons’ political potency. From the right’s perspective, Bill Clinton won the presidency at a time when the GOP thought it had an electoral college lock. Then he beat back the Republican revolution and the party’s efforts to defeat him.

The reality is less dramatic. Bill Clinton defeated a recession-weakened president with some help from a third-party spoiler, stopped the GOP from cutting highly popular social programs, won reelection during an economic boom and rallied his own party to thwart a wildly partisan impeachment crusade. None of these triumphs required unusual political skill.

Hillary Clinton has tried to piggyback on her husband’s ferocious reputation, boasting that she “beat the Republican attack machine.” Of course, if anybody beat the Republican attack machine, it was Bill. Hillary Clinton wasn’t on any ballot in the 1990s. True, her reputation was at stake, but that’s a fight she lost: She ended that decade a highly unpopular figure. She remains one today, with about half of the public persistently telling pollsters they have an unfavorable view of her.

Nor was Clinton able to shed her baggage when she moved to New York. In her November 2000 Senate race, she ran five points behind Democratic ticket-topper Al Gore in New York, and Gore himself was hardly a beloved figure at the time. Six years later, she pummeled a token opponent.

One point Chait doesn’t note: Hillary’s numbers only improved in the aftermath of the Lewinsky affair, which made her seem like a more sympathetic figure. But by 2000 they reverted to her previous, highly polarizing profile.

The point about Bill Clinton’s overrated political skill is also worth considering (Ezra Klein had a good post on this in the last month or two but I can’t find the link right now). Bill is obviously a very good politician, but his political achievements are relatively underwhelming in retrospect and he’s been an ineffective surrogate for Hillary in this cycle.

Rush Limbaugh, who has already said that Barack Obama looked like Osama bin Laden in a picture in which the Democratic presidential candidate was wearing Somali clothing, added on “The O’Reilly Factor” this week that Obama was “looking like [Osama bin Laden’s chief collaborator] Ayman [al-]Zawahiri.”

On a related note, I heard Limbaugh ranting today about how Obama is worse than Bill Clinton based on the overblown dispute over what an adviser allegedly told a Canadian diplomat:

[D]o you think Obama’s faithful give a rat’s rear end about the Tony Rezko deal and how Obama bought his house? You know, it strikes me… This is the kind of thing that we tried with the Clintons back in 1992, all of the character defects, the lying. It didn’t matter. It really didn’t matter. People were just so (sigh). People didn’t care about it. When we tried pointing out the character flaws of Clinton, it just didn’t matter. Now, this stuff with Obama is far more serious, and I’m not minimizing how bad the Clinton stuff was, but this is worse. This guy is actually incompetent. He is clueless. He has a Clinton problem in that he will just change a story on a dime, and make it sound like everybody else heard him wrong the first time.

It’ll take better material than that for Rush to turn Obama into Michael Dukakis.

As Paul Krugman and Bob Somerby have argued, the risk that Barack Obama will turned into the next Michael Dukakis (or worse) is real.

After months of largely respectful coverage and debate, there has been a slew of attacks in the last few weeks on Obama as unpatriotic and/or a Muslim that are being widely reported in the mainstream press.

Just consider some of what’s happened:

-The AP ran a story with the headline “No hand over his heart: Obama patriotism questioned” quoting GOP consultant Roger Stone saying Obama is “part of the blame America first crowd.” Obama was asked about the attacks on his patriotism during a press conference and CNN ran an online poll asking “Does [Sen.] Barack Obama show the proper patriotism for someone who wants to be president of the United States?” (via Media Matters).

-The Washington Times published a story with the headline “Military Fears ‘Unknown Quantity’” which claims that “[m]embers of Washington’s military and defense establishment are expressing trepidation about Sen. Barack Obama” (though, as Greg Sargent pointed out, only one person — a retired general who now serves as a Fox News analyst — is quoted expressing this sentiment). The piece also quotes a Pentagon official saying that Obama’s victory would “give the Arab street the final victory, the best optics, and the ultimate in bragging rights. They win. We lose.”

-The radio talk show host Bill Cunningham referred to Obama as “Barack Hussein Obama” at a John McCain rally at least three times and then seven more times on “Hannity & Colmes”. (McCain repudiated his attacks.)

-A picture was circulated of Obama in Somali dress that was attributed to Clinton staffers by Matt Drudge. Rush Limbaugh referred to it this way: “Obama dresses up like Bin Laden, and if you mention it, it’s a scurrilous attack” (via Andrew Sullivan).

-Time Magazine’s Mark Halperin offered a list of “[t]hings McCain can do when running against Obama that Clinton has been unable to do well or at all” that included “Allow some supporters to risk being accused of using the race card when criticizing Obama” and “Emphasize Barack Hussein Obama’s unusual name and exotic background through a Manchurian Candidate prism” (via Brad DeLong).

-The Tennessee Republican Party issued a press release titled “Anti-Semites for Obama” that referred to him as “Barack Hussein Obama,” linked him to Louis Farrakhan and other anti-Semitic figures, and showed the picture of him in African clothing.

-Jonah Goldberg falsely claimed that Obama’s “campaign headquarters in Houston had a Che Guevara-emblazoned Cuban flag hanging on the wall.”

Going forward, the question is whether the press will continue to give credence to these attacks. There was a critical period in 1999 when Republican agitprop claiming Al Gore was a liar found a receptive audience in the press. Very quickly, a largely phony narrative about his truthfulness was manufactured that played out all the way through the general election. Is this the equivalent period in the Obama campaign? It’s hard not to be concerned.

Given the stakes, it’s important to push back against this sort of fear-mongering and credulous media reporting. At the same time, though, we should be wary of attributing all the attacks on Obama to some sort of sprawling McCain-directed strategy, as Josh Marshall seemed to do:

Hopefully, everyone can now see the McCain strategy for running against Barack Obama. Yes, we have some general points on taxes, culture wars and McCain as war hero who can protect us in ways that flash-in-the-pan pretty boy Barack Obama can’t.

But that’s not the core. The core is to drill a handful of key adjectives into the public mind about Barack Obama: Muslim, anti-American, BLACK, terrorist, Arab. Maybe a little hustler and shifty thrown in, but we’ll have to see. The details and specific arguments are sort of beside the point. They’re like the libretto in a Wagner opera, nice for some narrative structure. But it’s the score that’s the real essence of it, the point of the whole exercise.

Now, a good deal has been made out of John McCain’s repudiation of talk radio yakmeister Bill Cunningham, who led off for McCain at one of his rallies with the full run of Obama sludge. But don’t be distracted or fooled. This is more like an example of what the digital commerce folks refer to as ‘channel conflict’. You’ve got your multiple distribution channels. You’ve got the way McCain’s selling the product. Broadcast. Broad and thematic about McCain. But you’ve got a number of other product channels to sell through, most of them a lot grittier, but no less essential for ultimate success.

Both can work simultaneously. In fact, in the kind of campaign McCain’s running, they’re both essential for success (see the 2000 Republican presidential primary in South Carolina). The key is just that the channels don’t cross. Because that’s when the trouble starts and they can begin to undermine or even short-circuit each other. And that’s what threatened to happened here.

Don’t insult your intelligence or mine by pretending that John McCain’s plan for this race doesn’t rely on hundreds of Cunninghams — large and small — across the country, and the RNC and all the GOP third party groups, to be peddling this stuff nonstop for the next eight months because it’s the only way John McCain have a real shot at contesting this race.

If McCain really wants to repudiate this stuff, he can start with the Tennessee Republican party which dished all the slurs and smears about Obama being a Nation of Islam-loving anti-Semite, just today. And once he’s done talking to the people who will be running his Tennessee campaign, we’ll have a number of others he can talk to, like the head of his Ohio campaign, former Sen. Mike DeWine, who gave that Cunningham guy his marching orders.

Let’s just not fool ourselves, not lie to ourselves about what’s happening here and who’s in charge.

However, Marshall — who has recently acquired a penchant for asserting things he can’t prove — doesn’t know that there is a “McCain strategy for running against Barack Obama” that tries to “drill a handful of key adjectives into the public mind about Barack Obama: Muslim, anti-American, BLACK, terrorist, Arab” and that McCain is “in charge” of it. The smear campaign against Obama is likely to be waged in a far more decentralized fashion than Marshall seems to realize. As the New York Times points out, “McCain clearly will not control all of the voices that could oppose Mr. Obama, from bloggers and talk radio hosts to other elected officials.” Should McCain push back harder? Of course. Unfortunately, he has every incentive to sit back, allow the attacks to take place, and only criticize a handful of the most extreme and widely publicized smears (such as Cunningham’s). That’s loathsome, but it doesn’t make him “in charge” of the whole process.

In a move that will reduce David Broder and political consultants to tears, Michael Bloomberg published a NYT op-ed announcing that he’s not running for president. Despite his stated belief that “an independent can win,” this was the only rational decision (see my previous posts on Bloomberg hype for more). So who will the third party utopians turn to next?

The New York Times obit of William F. Buckley implies that his most notable characteristic was his use of big words, which they reference in the headline (that’s what “sesquipedalian” means) and the lede:

William F. Buckley Jr., 82, Dies; Sesquipedalian Spark of Right
By DOUGLAS MARTIN

William F. Buckley Jr., who marshaled polysyllabic exuberance, arched eyebrows and a refined, perspicacious mind to elevate conservatism to the center of American political discourse, died on Wednesday at his home in Stamford, Conn. He was 82.

Is that really what’s most notable about him?

Dispatches from the shady political culture of Louisiana, where Republican Governor Bobby Jindal passed what sounds like a long-overdue ethics reform package:

[L]awmakers are known to scour the chambers for willing lobbyists when a day’s session ends, hoping to cadge a dinner invitation. They need not look far.

Mr. Jindal took that penchant on as well, effectively aiming a blow at the Capitol’s de facto sister institution, Ruth’s Chris Steak House, where business is transacted nightly, courtesy of lobbyists (“sponsors,” in legislators’ parlance).

The governor, ignoring cries of pain and going against the unswerving devotion to Louisiana’s food culture, pushed for the $50-a-meal cap, at any restaurant. No more unlimited spending.

In a town where legislators have been known to proclaim paid-for meals a principal draw to public service, this was an especially unpopular move. Last week, State Representative Charmaine L. Marchand of the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans said the limit would force her and her colleagues to dine at Taco Bell, and urged that it be pushed to $75 per person, to give them “wiggle room.”

No public groundswell took up her cause, and the $50 limit held.

Who knew Taco Bell was so expensive in Louisiana?

Via Andrew Sullivan, Kay Bailey Hutchison has joined the long list of Republicans who have suggested since Sept. 11 that anti-war dissent is treasonous, saying that a bill requiring a rapid withdrawal from Iraq would “put a bullet right in the hearts of our troops who are there.” (She later claimed she meant to say “bullseye” rather than “bullet.”) I’ve added the quote to my timeline of attacks on dissent since 9/11.

Contrary to my counterintuitive hype of a possible Ron Paul third party presidential candidacy, he has apparently ruled out an independent bid: “I am committed to fighting for our ideas within the Republican Party, so there will be no third party run” (via Michael Crowley).

However, I do feel validated by the poll (via Douthat) showing Paul doubling Michael Bloomberg’s support if they both ran as third party candidates. As I’ve written before, Bloomberg has no constituency and no rationale for a candidacy. But that hasn’t stopped the folks at the Draft Bloomberg movement from making this silly video calling on him to save us:

Total signatures on their petition to date: 11,605. Total signatures on the petition to save “Friday Night Lights” (a far more worthy cause, though probably just as quixotic): 11,530. Go FNL!

How do you make a political scientist mad? Screw up the basics of the legislative process.

Julie Rovner’s NPR report on some governors’ opposition to a Bush administration ruling that would restrict eligibility for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program concluded with this infuriatingly obvious misstatement:

Congressional Democrats are sympathetic to the governor’s pleas, but to overcome a certain veto [of an SCHIP expansion], they’ll need to convince a majority of Republicans — something they’ve been so far unable to do.

But as Rovner should know, it takes a two-thirds majority in both chambers to override a veto. Given that the Democrats have majorities in the House and Senate, they don’t need a majority of Republicans in either chamber. And, in fact, a proposed SCHIP expansion passed the Senate by a veto-proof 67-29 vote but a veto override attempt in the House failed by only 13 votes (273-156) despite Republicans voting 154-44 against it.