Lessons from the GOP Nomination contest

Now that it's over (and it is over), here's what are some lessons learned from the GOP nomination fight in 2012:

1. The Party Decides. The Party Decides. Seriously, The Party Decides. Despite what appeared to be a chaotic race, with no less than 7 different national front-runners, despite the sturm and drang about the "Tea Party", despite the lack of enthusiasm for Romney, the Republican Party coalesced around a compromise candidate with decent campaigning skills who positioned himself so as to not offend any major party interest group.

You couldn't have created a better test for the "Party Decides" framework: Romney's weaknesses, longstanding fractures within the Republican Party, and miserable economic conditions were a perfect storm to upset the system. And yet, as we see party actors from all spectrums of the Republican party turn to destroy Newt after his improbable South Carolina win, the theory seems as safe as ever.

2. The Invisible Primary is the Most Important Primary. By the time people actually started voting the number of possible nominees had dropped to two: Romney and Perry. Romney successfully cajoled, bribed, threatened, or just flat out beat most of his potential competitors before a single delegate was selected. I'm reasonably certain he forced out Barbour and Thune, and I know he beat Pawlenty by drying up his donor base. Huckabee had his own reasons, and I won't even speculate that Palin has a coherent thought process, but they both ran and lost in the invisible primary as well. Others, like Jindal or Christie, might've thought about running and been told not to early on.

3. SuperPACs. SuperPACs have played an outsized role in this nomination contest, and it's not clear why. So far they haven't really done anything that 527s couldn't do in the past. (527s couldn't say "Vote for X" but they could say "X is an evil jerk".) The invisible monsters that don't report donors and savaged Democrats in 2010 haven't been playing in the Republican contest. But it seems like some sort of psychological barrier has been broken.

While it hasn't really ever been illegal for a rogue billionaire to decide to single-handedly prop up a candidate, what has happened between Newt Gingrich and Sheldon Adelson has been remarkable. One of the ways in which the parties retain control of the nomination process is the way political donations are structured. Since people can only give a couple thousand dollars to a candidate, it requires candidates to appeal to a fairly wide swathe of middle class partisans in order to have enough money to seriously compete for the nomination.

Newt was never going to be the nominee. But we may have returned to the era where Joe Kennedy can buy his son a Presidential Nomination. (Hear that, John Huntsman, Sr.?)

4. You Can't Jump In Late. It's a perennial fantasy. Wes Clark, Fred Thompson, and now Rich Perry stand as monumental failures. Your best polling will be on the day you announce. If you're going to run, then run.

The most obvious point of this, as it applies to Perry, is that if you start running earlier, you get to have your big mistakes earlier. If Perry had managed to screw up a few debates before anyone was paying attention, he could have a year to recover and find his game. (Rumor has it that he didn't jump in the race because he was having back surgery, and then his painkillers from recovery were the cause of some of his odd behavior.)

But it goes beyond that: people who jump in late have a harder time raising money, the best staff is taken, some key party elements have already committed, etc. If you're going to run, then run.

5. Don't Get Drafted. Jon Huntsman's campaign to be the Republican for people who don't like Republicans was pretty awful. But that wasn't his fault! He was in China when the campaign started, and could not legally speak to the people trying to get him to run about campaign strategy. By the time he started running, they'd created the McCain 2000 retread. Despite the fact that McCain lost, and that the GOP has gotten more conservative, Huntsman was more-or-less forced to play they hand they dealt him.

5a. Don't hire John Weaver.

6. GOP Voters are Hyper-Informed. I do not mean that they are correct, especially about basic facts about reality. But rather, GOP partisans watch partisan TV, listen to partisan radio, and read partisan newspapers and blogs. The people who vote in the GOP nomination process really follow the race. That is what produced the surges last year, and that's why state-level results have been tracking so well to national results. Things like the ground game and local group participation matter much less when the potential electorate is filled with highly informed voters.

7. The Candidates Don't Get to Pick the Issues. I don't just mean Romney's well-publicized flip-flop on abortion. Anyone not named Rudy Giuliani could tell you that the GOP isn't going to nominate a pro-choice candidate any time soon. What was more interesting was the backlash against Gingrich for his rejection of the Ryan budget, or Perry's cratering in the polls for favoring a more moderate stance against illegal immigration.

As a corollary to #6, the rise of highly polarized national parties with highly informed partisan voters means that candidates have much less leeway to choose their positions than they used to.

8. Ron Paul is The Future. In the alternative future where only people who are under the age of 30 can vote, Ron Paul has won every contest to date. The GOP has been losing younger voters consistently since 2004 (this is a new phenomenon, despite the stereotypes, there historically hasn't been that big of a partisan difference between age cohorts in voting over the past 40 years). And of the young voters who are open to being Republicans, they favor an unconventional candidate with issue positions far outside of the GOP mainstream.

I've been saying for years that if the GOP wants to keep being able to win national elections, they'll need to convince Hispanic people to start voting like White people. Bush (and Perry) seemed to understand this, even if the rest of the party has rejected it this time around. But now it seems that unless the GOP does something about its issue positions — purge the neo-cons, or roll back the drug war — it will become a rump party for a generation.

The case for Bonapartism

I’ve mentioned this to several people already, so I thought I’d take the time to explain myself online.

Basically, the prevailing “Democratic Peace” theory holds that Democracies tend not to go to war, and don’t ever go to war with each other. This theory may or may not still hold, depending on how “democratic” Serbia was when we bombed them in the 1990s or whether or not Russia and Georgia count as democracies. I tend to think the theory is at least partially true, as democracies at least tend to evaluate their own interests similarly. But even if you don’t think there’s a current example, it’s at least possible to imagine two democracies going at it – most wars have popular support when they’re started, after all.

In contrast to the prevailing theory, these guys argue that young democracies are actually more likely to go to war than other states. If you ignore the mythologizing about democracy, it makes sense. When a country goes democratic the rulers change, and the new government is likely to perceive the interests and global order of the country differently than the previous state. Ideological re-alignment brings instability to stable regions and can therefore easily lead to wars. This probably applies to the shift to any new governing order as well (think of Communist Russia’s survival war after the Russian Civil War, Mao picking a fight with Russia, et cetera, et cetera).

The textbook case for this is, of course, Revolutionary France. Following the extinction of the French monarchy most of Europe declared war on France, which started a spiral of events that eventually led to Emperor Napoleon conquering most of Europe and cheerfully extinguishing monarchies all over the place. Napoleon was able to do this because spreading France’s revolutionary ideals was tremendously popular in France – France was the first nation to be able to fully mobilize for war. Killing kings is fun, apparently.

Egypt is a big country – 80 million people – twice as large as the next largest Arab country. Its politics and culture dominate the Arab world. In short, it occupies the same place in Arab culture as France held in European culture in 1800. Its military is big, modern, American armed, and American trained. Israel is basically the only country in the region that could hope to beat it. It has the capability to be an army of Arab liberation.

Egypt’s culture has been pan-Arabic for as long as it has been independent. They merged with Syria for a couple of years, invaded Libya, and supported a democratic uprising in Yemen. This is not likely to change. What is changing however, is that they are likely to be led by a revolutionary government soon.

Egypt is about to be a big country with a modern army ruled by people who view all Arabs as brothers and democracy as a birthright of humankind. Where is Lt. Bonaparte?

The only thing lacking in this scenario is the triggering event to send Egypt’s army on the march. For Revolutionary France, it was other European countries declaring war on the young republic.

The United Nations just declared Libya a no-fly zone. While it looks like France, Britain, and America will enforce the no-fly zone, they’ve basically ruled out sending in ground troops. Eventually ground troops will, in fact, be necessary (the alternative is portioning Libya). Neither Obama nor Sarkozy nor Cameron have any interest in sending in ground troops, the memory of Iraq is still fresh enough to prevent that – which leaves a “volunteer” “arab” force. Which means next-door Egypt.

And a week later the Arab world finally gets the hero this revolution needs – the great liberator of Benghazi. Where does he stop? Don’t the people of Yemen deserve freedom? Doesn’t the house of Saud pollute the holy land? Aren’t the Sudanese really just “Upper Egyptians”?

Some people think Egypt will become a member of the great democracy club. Other people worry about the Muslim Brotherhood turning it into the next Iran. No one seems to be worrying about an Egyptian Bonaparte, but they should be. I'm not saying it's the most likely possibility, but it's certainly a possibility.

BlagoLand

I haven't really commented much on my Governor's current legal battles. The reason is simple. Larry does it better.

Archpundit is a close personal friend... why, we've even had a beer together before!

And I just want you to know that I voted for the bastard twice. I did not, however, vote for him in the primary.

And I'd do it again. What was I supposed to do, vote for the Republican?

Primaries are important. Before this little bit of fun, I was thinking Jackson for Senate, and Madigan for Governor. But Quinn is super fun, a crazy in the Kucinich mold. Let's see how that works out.

Madigan v. Jackson for Senate? I love that our top Senate candidates are both in politics because their dads are important.

Whenever the Senate primary is, I plan to vote for the farthest lefty with a chance to win. That worked out last time, when I voted for a nutty black reformer from Chicago with a funny name.

There's only one Republican in Illinois who can win statewide office now. His name is Pat Fitzgerald.

What happens when we win?

After the rout.

I agree with all of Chris's predictions to varying degrees. It really is pretty hard to predict what the Democratic Party will do, since their tactic over the past 2 years has been to hunker down and wait out the Bush Presidency, since he'll veto anything fun anyway.

In addition to the normal three axes in American politics (Economic, Foreign, Social), there's a fourth axis that could be described as Partisanship. For example, although Rahmbo is fairly conservative on most things, he's a hyper partisan and will always be first in line to try to fuck the Republicans. On the other hand, you've got a fair number of progressives like Kucinich who seem to enjoy telling Hoyer to get bent. So, once the Democrats have such a huge majority, and a President who will sign their bills, there'll be a wild and wacky period of inter-party alignment. My suspicion is that it'll end up being a fairly liberal working majority that ignores social issues and occasionally throws a piece of meat to corporate America. So: Yes on Universal Health Care, No on repealing DOMA.

Figuring out what the Republicans are going to do is easy. They'll probably fire Boehner, but even if they don't, they'll retreat to "Fuck you, that's why!" mode for the entirety of the Obama presidency. The House Republicans left standing after November will be the ones who are untouchable. If their districts are so conservative that they survive this election, then the only way they'll lose their seats is with a primary challenge from the right. And with such a large Democratic Majority (it's already larger than anything the Republicans managed from 1994-2006), they won't see any feasible way back into the majority. That means they have every incentive to screw with the Democrats, and none to work with them.

Which means the Democrats will be passing legislation by themselves, which is another reason they'll factionalize. Let's say we pick up 25 seats in the election. That'll make it 260 Dems to 175 GOP. That's an 85 seat advantage. But here's where they get bitchy. The GOP just decides that it's going to vote no on everything. Since all of their members are safe, and most of them are assholes, that bloc will hold.

So now you've got 260 Democratic Congressmen, of which 218 are needed to pass anything. Or, to put it the other way, only 43 Democratic congressmen need to be bought off by corporate lobbyists in order to stymie the progressive agenda. That's frighteningly possible, and the main reason why Kos has already made plans to wage a Jyhad against bad Democrats in 2010.

White Votes

On what planet does Barack Obama have a chance of winning the white vote?

John Kerry only got 41% of the white vote. If Kerry had won Hispanics with the 66% that Obama is polling, that would've shifted New Mexico, Iowa, Nevada, and probably Colorado.

Given the Hispanic shift to the Democrats over the past 4 years, the natural demographic increase of Hispanic voters, and a potential surge of African American voters, Barack Obama will win the presidency with just 40% of white voters. He ought to be able to pull that in any state outside of the South/Appalachia.

The Democrats will win in 2008 because of the shift of Hispanic voters. Everything else is noise.

Liar, Liar

One of these days, Joe Biden's going to come out and say that John McCain's pants are — literally — on fire.

True Belief

In a continuation of my thoughts on the psychology of campaigns: I don't think that most politicians have some sort of "core beliefs" which are then explained or lied about on the campaign trail. Most politicians just want to be liked, and are willing to follow and believe in the interests of their constituency groups.

For example, George W. Bush originally ran for congress in 1978 as a pro-choice Republican. His father ran as a pro-choice candidate for President in 1980, and switched positions in order to be Reagan's running mate. Both of them followed a hard pro-life position once in power, because you dance with the ones who brought you. Does anyone doubt that Mittens would've been completely pro-life as President? People say that politicians words don't matter, but that's got it exactly wrong. Politicians words, when they're campaigning, are the most meaningful guide to their future performance.

One could view this rationally: a politician is likely to stick with the views that got them elected in the first place, as they're the most likely views to get them re-elected. Or one could view it as a natural human aversion to lying, after all, it's not lying to the people if you start to believe it yourself. Or maybe it's just a matter of politicians liking to feel loved by their supporters.

Romney's flips before running for President were obviously and transparently cynical. Most politicians are rarely such egregious dissemblers, and Romney was punished at the polls for it. Hillary Clinton, to coin a phrase, seems to have "found her own voice". Before she ran for President, she treated Bill's coalition of moderate Democrats as her own, even going so far as to run to the right on abortion.

Not anymore.

I don't know any feminists who considered Hillary any sort of icon before this year's campaign. My hunch is that a few years from now, it'll be hard to find any who don't.

The Road to Sixty

I don't just think it's possible that we'll get to 60 seats in the Senate this November, I think it's likely. Here's why:

1. Sheer Numbers. In 2006, we needed 6 seats to take back the Senate, but over two-thirds of the seats up for election were Democrats. That meant we had to defend all of our seats and win over half of the remaining 11 races. We did, but just barely (and I say we in the real sense — I went canvassing for McCaskill). This time, however, we're only playing defense in 12 seats, while the Republicans are defending 23.

2. 2002 Echo. The Senate class elected in 2002 represents a different country — one traumatized by 9/11 and massively in favor of invading Iraq. A lot of these guys scraped by on Bush's popularity that year, so the fact that this will be a Democratic year will hit them particularly hard. Freshman Senators like John Sununu and Norm Coleman are screwed.

3. A Better Campaign. During the Summer and Fall of 2006 an intra-party fight roiled the Democrats, with congresscritters like Rahmbo and Chuck Schumer (chairs of the Congressional Campaign Committees) fought with DNC Chair Howard Dean and progressive activists about where and how to compete. Marginal races like John Tester in Montana and Jim Webb in Virginia were originally funded solely by activists, with the party chairs ignoring them. This year Barack Obama is running ads and campaigning in states like Mississippi, where he has no shot of winning, just to swing the Senate race there. The dirty secret about 2006 is that we could have had an even bigger majority if the D.c. types had had any balls. Now Chicago is running the show.

4. Generic Ballot. We won every seat in 2006 where the incumbent polled less than 50% over the summer (plus Webb over Allen and Whitehouse over Chaffee). That's because the public at large preferred the Democrats to the Republicans, and so if there was any fundamental weakness in an incumbent, the voting public eventually decided to throw the bum out. So, for instance, when we see John Cornyn easily beating Dem challenger Rick Noriega 48-35, that's really good news for Noriega (and why Barack Obama plans to organize 10,000 volunteers in the state for him). Ignore who's "winning" any poll with a challenger versus an incumbent — the only important thing at this point is whether or not the incumbent is above fifty.

I've surfed around and seen a lot of Senate Predictions, and they all seem very conservative to me (remember, in 2006 the most optimistic estimates were that we'd gain four seats). So here are my early predictions.

The Lone Worry
Poor Mary Landrieu (D-LA). Normally she'd be safe in a year like this (she barely squeaked by in 2002, but that was a heavy Republican year), unfortunately a huge chunk of her base got washed away by Katrina. I still think she'll pull it out, mainly because the GOP can't find anybody decent to run against her.

The Gimmes
Several Republicans saw the apocalypse coming and decided not to run for re-election. Virginia, Colorado, and New Mexico are as good as ours already.

The Santorum
Jeanne Shaheen has been crushing Sununu for months in polls in New Hampshire. Much like Santorum's slow death spiral in 2006, this race will continue to be fought half-heartedly for the rest of the year.

The Chaffees
Lincoln Chaffee, from Rhode Island, was the only Republican to vote against the Iraq War. Unfortunately for him, he still had an R behind his name, and he lost in 2006. Susan Collins (ME) and Gordon Smith (OR) will have similar problems.

The Conrad Burns
The Tubes! The Tubes! Ted's toast. The mayor of Anchorage is going to make Mackensen's year.

That's SEVEN seats right there, and I'm reasonably confident that we'll win all of them. Add in to the mix these toss-ups:

Minnesota's Norm Coleman, who would certainly be a goner if Al Franken was a better candidate. I'm ok with the risk here, though, because Franken's a movement progressive and if he manages to pull it out he'll be one of the best Senators in the country.

Mississippi's Roger Wicker, an appointee to fill Trent Lott's position, has never won statewide office. Ronnie Musgrove, his Democratic challenger, is the former Governor.

Kentucky's Mitch McConnell — if there's one Senator who can't successfully separate themselves from the national party, it's the minority leader. And he's taking it on the chin.

North Carolina's Elizabeth Dole is a horrible campaigner, and as a 2002 Freshman, would certainly be doomed if her state wasn't so reliably Republican. Even so, North Carolina looks to be turning a bit purple.

Texas's John "Big John" Cornyn, as mentioned earlier, is being threatened by Hispanic War Vet, Rick Noriega. The Obama camp thinks he can win, and so do I.

We only need 3 of those 5 toss-ups to win, although in "wave" or "nationalized" elections, like this year, toss-ups tend to all fall one way or the other (in 2006 we won all of them). So that's why my betting prediction is for 62 Democrats next year (I count Sanders but not Lieberman).

And finally, in addition to all that, there are four more seats we have a chance to take, but probably won't: open seats in Idaho and Nebraska, and fairly strong challengers in Kansas and Oklahoma. But who knows? "Macaca" didn't happen until mid-August in 2006...

In November...

1. The current over/under spread on fivethirtyeight.com is 314 for Obama. I'll take the over bet.

BMS currently owes me $10 for the primaries, let's see what he'll go for the general. My crazy right-wing uncle already bet me a Jackson for a straight up victory, but I kinda think my friends are going to want a point spread. Maybe I'll write something up for this weekend...

2. I'll go balls-out for Senators and predict we get to 60. I actually think we'll get 62, if the trend from 2006 holds.

3. Chris Shays is toast. After this election, New England will be GOP-free in the House.

SCOTUS STILL SUCKS

Mackensen says in comments to this SCOTUS SUCKUS:

"I think he meant the pesky Commerce Clause, or the specific enumeration of powers. Regardless, I feel obliged to stand with Rehnquist on this one (ack): if Congress can create a gun-free zone, then it can do anything, but given specific enumeration of powers this cannot be the case.

Jonathan Adler (at Volokh) is skeptical."

Congress shouldn't be able to do literally anything, but the Court has seriously overstepped its bounds already.

For example, while the D.C. gun ban was ineffectual, the court's decision includes a first amendment type right to bear arms — an invention of right-wing psychopathy made law by the narrowest of majorities. Or take the Exxon case — the court has seriously disrupted our tort-based de facto corporate regulatory regime. And overturning the millionaire's amendment to CFR while leaving Voter ID laws alone is just an insane class-ist interference in the voting process.

And we haven't even seen what Anthony Kennedy, our current little tyrant, will do after Congress and the Presidency swing to the left next year. One doesn't have to believe in a secretive "Constitution in Exile" cabal to see that Kennedy is likely to disagree with some of the more economically progressive legislation set to come out of Congress. What if the court decides that Health Care Mandates are unconstitutional, for example?

Thus far the Democrats haven't tried much, because getting to 60 in the Senate is so hard, and even then the veto pen waits. The Roberts (Kennedy) Court has yet to encounter really liberal legislation. Only time will tell, but I'd wager that the Court is set to seriously fuck with the Democrats in a way they never even contemplated during Bush's term.

WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?

Basically, just this:

Given that the Democratic Wave that took over Ohio in 2006 is liable to continue, the Kerry states should be safe, and Obama is competitive in Iowa, Missouri, Colorado, and Virginia in ways that Kerry wasn't, I feel pretty safe about our chances this year. Hell, Hispanics might give us Nevada and New Mexico, and African-Americans North Carolina and Georgia, just for gravy.