Brendan Nyhan

If you haven’t seen them yet, make sure to check out my Spinsanity column on the ways the Center for American Progress twists quotations and my media fact-checking scorecard tracking how well the media debunked three well-known distortions over a ten-day period earlier this month.

On Wednesday, the election will (hopefully) be over and the fight over the rules of the game will resume. Here is what I think should be done:

1) Abolish the Electoral College

It’s an undemocratic constitutional legacy that causes voters in 30-40 states to be ignored in favor of a handful of battleground states. People claim small states would be neglected without the Electoral College, but most of them are not getting much attention right now anyway (see Rhode Island, Wyoming, the Dakotas, etc.). And any candidate who shunned vast swaths of the country would pay a heavy price. We should give voters more credit – they will punish national candidates who run regional campaigns. The only way this will happen soon, of course, is if Kerry follows in Bush’s footsteps by losing the popular vote and winning the presidency, but that is actually a distinct possibility.

2) Repeal McCain-Feingold

As Kevin Drum points out, it didn’t limit the total amount of money in the system – that’s an impossible goal (and not a desirable one). Instead, by banning soft money, it diverted funds into 527s that aren’t politically accountable, freeing them to be as deceptive and nasty as they want. We should have unlimited individual donations and instant disclosure online, which would keep more money flowing to parties and candidates who are directly accountable to voters and make it possible for more challengers to wage well-funded campaigns. Let people make up their minds about the sources of campaign funds, rather than weakening parties.

3) Create Iowa-style non-partisan redistricting commissions and give free airtime to major party Congressional candidates

The freshmen I teach at Duke were stunned to find out how few challengers beat House incumbents. As David Broder argues in the Washington Post today, we need to level the playing field by creating competitive districts and giving challengers exposure. Combined with unlimited donations to parties and candidates, this could create more close races nationwide.

Unfortunately, it’s much more likely that we’ll go through another cycle of attempting to “reform” McCain-Feingold further by attempting to close its alleged loopholes. But the First Amendment makes it impossible to make campaign finance law as restrictive as its misguided proponents would like. And the unintended side effects – like turning 527s like America Coming Together into quasi-parties – are likely to continue to mount.

October 31, 2004

The Durham Herald-Sun finally ran its report on the Communist-hating sign maker and his opponents. It’s a doozy. Once again, sign-stealing and hateful invective are wrong no matter what. This whole controversy is equal parts amusing and sad — it almost seems like an article in The Onion parodying how extreme both sides of our political debate have become:

Fed up with people stealing roadside pro-Bush signs, a man erected new signs in Durham Monday saying communists stole the signs.

Steve Winter, an Apostolic pastor who lives in the Forest Hills neighborhood, had signs made that state, “THE BUSH ’04 SIGN WAS STOLEN FROM HERE BY COMMUNISTS,” and has put up about 10 signs in places where Bush signs disappeared, he said.

“A statement needed to be made … that [stealing] was going on, rather than just replacing the stolen signs,” said Winter, put the signs up with his family. “We were reporting a crime to the community.”

He said he thought liberal Democrats were stealing the signs because they were desperate. Stealing political signs interferes with free speech and the electoral process and mirrors communist regimes of the past, he said.

“The liberal Democrat of today is no different than a communist … they have no moral restraint, they are willing to break the law, intimidate people, willing to steal, and their viewpoints are a very left-leaning, socialist/communist agenda,” he said.

But people who saw Winter’s signs, like Kenny Mendez, 21, said they thought they were a joke.

“I think they’re funny … and the first time I saw one I nearly crashed my car,” Mendez said.

Duke University graduate student Adam Hartstone-Rose, 23, said his wife called him after she saw the signs while driving.

“We wanted to know how they knew communists stole the signs, if they left a little red envelope or something,” Hartstone-Rose said, joking.

The sign planted in an island of grass at the intersection of Chapel Hill Boulevard and University Drive has attracted a lot of attention according to a man who works at a nearby business.

“There must have been six people standing out there last night looking at it,” says Mark Carder, who works at GTI Quality Auto.

Another sign posted after but near the “communists” sign on University states, “MY KERRY SIGN GOT RIPPED OFF RIGHT AFTER HE HUMILIATED BUSH IN THE FIRST DEBATE.”

Carder, an undecided voter, laughed when he heard about the Kerry sign but took the other sign seriously. He didn’t like it because he knew of Winter, who he said he had seen driving around the neighborhood in a car with a “BIBLE” license plate and thought he was a little extreme, he said.

Jeep Cross, owner of Carolina Banner, the company that made Winter’s signs, said he was sympathetic with Winter’s concerns about stealing signs.

“It’s not funny. People have a message and want to have a way of getting that message out. I’d be upset too. He’s spending his hard-earned money on that,” Cross said, adding that each of the 25 signs Winter ordered from Carolina Banner cost about $5-$8.

Winter said several of his signs had already been stolen.

Melinda Ruley, who saw the signs while driving to a nearby gas station with her children, said she also understood Winter’s actions, but didn’t agree with the signs.

“I think it’s right to protest — I appreciate the sentiment of frustration — I guess those signs just seem a little mean-spirited,” she said.

Several local political candidates and political activists have also complained recently about having signs stolen.

“It’s nothing new, but it’s pretty frustrating when you think of the cost of these signs,” said Becky Heron, a Democrat running for re-election as a county commissioner who said she wished signs were illegal because they were a pain to put up and take back down.

Political campaign volunteer and activist Charlotte Woods said she put a Bush/Cheney sign at the intersection of Cornwallis Road and University Drive every night, but it was always gone the next day.

“That’s my property and my First Amendment rights! If I saw anybody getting ready to pull up Kerry/Edwards signs, I would be just as upset about it,” she said.

Johnathan Paul, a spokesperson for Democratic U.S. Rep. David Price’s campaign, said the campaign had been pleased with its sign distribution.

“We’ve heard a few reports of certain instances [of theft], but it hasn’t been widely reported, at least not to us,” Paul said.

But Winter said the only signs disappearing were pro-Republican.

“Anybody with eyes can see this city is pasted with Kerry signs and you see very few Bush signs because they’ve been stolen,” he said. “There may be Republicans out there [stealing], but they’re a rare exception. Your average Republican is going to be a law-abiding, moral, quite probably religious person. In the Democratic Party, someone being a moral, law-abiding and patriotic person is very rare.”

“I’m saying what I want to say with my signs, and we are Americans first. After that we’re supposed to be family, friends and neighbors, and then on further down the line we can be Democrats and Republicans,” she said.

Today’s New York Times has an article on Kerry and Bush’s efforts to appeal to Jewish voters by touting their support for Israel. In it, Stephen R. Weisman alludes to criticisms made of Kerry without actually presenting the details of what has been alleged, which means that readers don’t get the context they need to fairly evaluate the charges:

[Republicans] cited the senator’s praise seven years ago for Mr. Arafat and his suggestion earlier this year that Israel’s barrier separating Palestinian and Israel populations might become “a barrier to peace.”

…Kerry campaign aides, countering these charges, say that Mr. Kerry’s praise for Mr. Arafat goes back to the high-water mark of peace negotiations, when terrorist attacks had subsided and shortly after Mr. Arafat had shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli prime minister, and Shimon Peres, the Israeli foreign minister, with whom he had reached agreement on the Oslo accords.

As for the barrier, Kerry aides note that the senator had criticized it as potentially harmful because at the time its route had sharply jutted into Palestinian communities, separating them from other parts of Israel. They further point out that Mr. Bush had also criticized the route as “a problem.”

Weisman presents these charges as “he said”/”he said.” But as we showed at Spinsanity, both are being taken dramatically out of context.

First, Kerry’s alleged praise for Arafat as a “statesman” in his 1997 book The New War is being misconstrued:

The Bush campaign’s suggestion that Kerry’s book “calls Yasir Arafat a ‘statesman’ ” is also questionable. In it, he quotes historian Paul Johnson as stating, in part, that “after the PLO and the other terrorist movements it succored racked up an appalling total of lives extinguished and property destroyed, how far have they progressed toward achieving their stated political ends?” Kerry then goes on to write that “only 11 years have passed since those words appeared in print. If nothing else, this indicates the velocity of change in the late 20th century. Terrorist organizations with specific political agendas may be encouraged and emboldened by Yasir Arafat’s transformation from outlaw to statesman, while those whose only object is to disrupt society require no such ‘role models.’ “

In context, Kerry’s characterization of Yasir Arafat as a statesman is more a comment on the Palestinian leader’s image in the world than an unqualified endorsement. While Kerry’s writing can be ambiguous, the Bush campaign’s quotation of a single word unfairly strips out the relevant context, a problem both sides have had when discussing this book.

And here’s the problem with the “barrier to peace” quote, which former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani touted at the Republican convention:

Giuliani said that, “In October of 2003, [Kerry] told an Arab American institute in Detroit that a security barrier separating Israel from the Palestinian territories was a barrier to peace. Okay. Then a few months later, he took exactly the opposite position. In an interview with the Jerusalem Post he said, ‘Israel’s security fence is a legitimate act of self defense.’”

Once again, the first statement is taken dramatically out of context. Kerry actually said, “I know how disheartened Palestinians are by the Israeli government’s decision to build the barrier off of the green line, cutting deep into Palestinian areas. We don’t need another barrier to peace.” As aides explained in the Jerusalem Post article Giuliani cites, Kerry was describing the route of the fence as a “barrier to peace,” not the fence itself.

Weisman can’t even be bothered to explain the first charge, and the second is barely discussed. But he has ample room to pontificate about the political machinations going on. As always, it’s process before policy, speculation and pseudo-analysis instead of facts and context.

The vaunted “Meet the Press” staff appears to have messed up the latest jobs figures slightly. On today’s broadcast, they claimed the country had 132.4 million jobs when President Bush took office, but that it now has 131.5 million, for a total loss of 900,000 jobs. In fact, however, the correct numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that the country had 132,388,000 jobs when Bush took office and now has 131,567,000 for a total net job loss of 821,000 jobs, which would round to 132.4 million – 131.6 million = 800,000 lost jobs. It’s bizarre that MTP messed this up given that news reports with the correct figure are literally everywhere.

The New York Times has most useful policy stories. By contrast, anecdotal speculation about the impact of the OBL tape on the presidential race will no doubt be featured on the front page tomorrow. Thanks press corps!

For the next 72 hours, tens of thousands of people are going to spend a lot of time and energy worrying about what will mostly turn out to be statistical noise. Don’t be one of them.

Most national and state polls will be moving around inside their margin of error. As such, in the absence of consistent movement across the board, you shouldn’t worry about it. And even then, polls are only accurate to a degree. The combination of late-breaking undecideds and the varying effectiveness of the candidate’s GOTV operations means that the final national polls are usually still off by a few percentage points on average. In a race this close, that means we’re going to be in the dark until Election Night.

Three things really matter:
–The ground game – Who will get out their people? A surge in turnout for Kerry could make the difference.
–How the undecideds break – The much-debated “rule” that undecided voters tend to vote against the incumbent may or may not hold (I tend to think it will). If it does, Kerry will be in a strong position; if not, he’s in big trouble.
–The Electoral College math – What combinations of states get you to 270?

You’ll hear all kinds of nonsense before this is over, but remember, nothing else matters except the above three things. Silly prognostication won’t change that.

Update: Just to illustrate how dead-even the polls are, UNC political scientist Jim Stimson’s methodology for combining national trial heat polls and stripping out statistical noise shows Bush at 50.4% of the two-party vote and Kerry at 49.6%. But using an alternative methodology that only employs polls from the last two weeks and weights them differently, he has Kerry ticking up to 50.4% of the two-party vote.

The latest from the Durham sign wars – here’s a shot of three competing signs at the corner of University and 15/501 Business:

Apparently, our good friend the Communist-hating sign maker is getting some competition…

Update: News on the sign beat from the Durham Herald-Sun…

Just say no to protectionism! October 30, 2004