Brendan Nyhan

I know it’s a mundane thing to say, but I will anyway. Please go vote. It’s our civic duty.

After you vote, you’ll be watching the bloviating cable news pundits like me. Here are two useful guides I’ve seen to when the polls close on various key races, which will help you know when to put the TV on mute:
–John Fund of the Wall Street Journal
–Dan Aibel of the blog Contrapositive

And for what little it’s worth, I guessed that Democrats will pick up five seats in the Senate and 27 seats in the House in my Midterm Madness entry on washingtonpost.com.

Politics is a rough business. There are a lot of misleading claims out there. But rather than countering them directly — with more speech — a disturbing number of politicians and analysts suggest that we should suppress speech instead.

For instance, back in 1999, John McCain — a leading contender for the presidency in two years — said “If I could think of a way constitutionally, I would ban negative ads,” a statement that should disturb every freedom-loving American.

Others are less explicit, but insinuate that things would be better if we somehow limited negative ads. In a New York Times op-ed today, Barry Schwartz of Swarthmore College (my alma mater) bemoans the way in which negative campaigning disadvantages inspiring candidates, concluding with this passage:

[U]nless something is done to quell “gotcha” journalism and relentlessly negative campaigning — and as long as we continue to enter the voting booth looking for reasons to say no — the ciphers will be the winners.

But nothing can or should be done to “quell ‘gotcha’ journalism and relentlessly negative campaigning” in a democracy that protects free speech and a free press. Schwartz is a respected scholar of psychology (my wife got me his book The Paradox of Choice for my birthday), but I don’t like the implications of this passage.

Postscript: Schwartz’s larger point, which is drawn from psychology research, is that people approach decisionmaking tasks differently depending on whether they are choosing whom to accept versus whom to reject. His argument is that negative campaigning leads voters to focus on choosing whom to reject, which leads to this bizarre passage:

If somehow the cynicism lifted, and we saw ourselves charged with the task of deciding who to say yes to, we’d have more candidates like Parent B. Just one negative feature would not be enough to disqualify someone, in our minds. There would be little to gain by capturing and broadcasting “macaca moments,” or subtly invoking old Southern fears of black men cavorting with white women. Candidates would be able to take positions and speak their minds. This might lead to the arrival of candidates who actually have positions and minds. We might even be willing to risk generating a little enthusiasm at the prospect of being led by them.

Why should we believe it would be a good thing if “macaca moments” were not broadcast? And why shouldn’t voters disqualify George Allen on that basis given his ugly racial history? Even if voters were choosing “who to say yes to,” they surely would consider negative information as well. It would be bizarre if they didn’t.

If you haven’t seen Rick Santorum’s “Wrestling” ad, you need to do so right now — I came across it via Eve Fairbanks of TNR Online, which called it “possibly the worst ever made.” As she writes, “What is the most wrong image you could imagine pairing with the virulently anti-homosexuality, pro-family-values Santorum for a campaign spot? Jacked, glistening men in Speedos lustily wrestling each other, you say? Well, that’s exactly what we’ve got here!” And, more importantly, Santorum doesn’t look particularly senatorial as he talks to the camera while two-bit wrestlers run around behind him.

Watch it and try to believe a professional campaign put this on the air:

If you have ever thought that judges should be elected, the latest crop of North Carolina judicial races should convince you otherwise. Two races feature wacky ideologues who are apparently trying to get elected on the basis of their political beliefs — a completely inappropriate tactic from a potential judge.

Here’s how the Independent, the local alternative weekly, describes
one associate justice candidate in its editorial:

In the first of three contested races for associate justice, challenger Rachel Lea Hunter faces incumbent Associate Justice Mark Martin. Hunter’s vindictive comments and her kooky campaign tactics have managed to alienate almost everyone, including both political parties and her own campaign manager, who quit and said, “There have been way too many political positions taken by the campaign. I fear that Rachel would have to recuse herself from a tremendous number of cases.”

…Hunter, who has just five years of experience as a lawyer and no experience on the bench, is after the lefties (despite the fact that she courted Republicans when she ran in 2004). She’s called for the impeachment of President Bush, come out against the war in Iraq, and questioned whether oil companies are manipulating the price of gasoline. But the court is not in need of an ideologue, especially a confused one. Judges’ races are nonpartisan for a reason. Intelligent candidates who understand the law and apply it fairly should prevail.

She’s calling for the impeachment of President Bush and opposing the war in Iraq! In a judicial race!

Another race features a conservative who assails “activist judges”:

In the race for chief justice–the administrative leader of the court system–appointed incumbent Sarah Parker faces Pitt County Superior Court Judge Rusty Duke. Duke is a candidate who wears his political beliefs on the right sleeve of his judicial robe, gushing with conservative rhetoric on the campaign trail. Coming out against “activist judges,” as Duke has, is a sure sign of a right-wing ideologue.

Unfortunately, the Independent’s revulsion at Duke’s language prompts one of the most elitist statements I’ve ever read:

The truth is, the North Carolina courts are not full of activist judges overturning constitutional safeguards. Those who claim otherwise are either telegraphing how they plan to vote or trying to rouse the rabble who have put a conservative majority on the bench in the last several elections. In the case of Duke, it’s probably a little of both.

Apparently, the Independent views right-leaning voters in North Carolina as “the rabble who have put a conservative majority on the bench.” In case anyone isn’t clear on the connotations of “rabble,” here’s what Merriam-Webster Online has to say. The word comes from the Middle English term rabel, meaning pack of animals, and in this context it means “a disorganized or disorderly crowd of people: mob” or “the lowest class of people.”

The whole thing is pathetic. When will we stop electing judges?

The New York Times ran a nice graphic today summarizing how uncompetitive most House races have become in recent years:

I especially appreciate that the Times, unlike many other sources, is agnostic about whether the trend is driven by redistricting.

In blogging, short posts are the devil. Nothing good comes of them.

Josh Marshall has started publishing misleading one- or two-sentence posts asserting things he cannot prove. As I’ve pointed out, he previously asserted that the 2004 election was stolen, writing “Helping steal the 2004 election wasn’t enough” in reference to Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell. Now he asks, “Will White House-engineered-timing of Saddam verdict affect election? WaPo reports.”

But as Marshall surely knows, there’s no proof that the White House “engineered” the timing of the verdict, a claim the administration denies. It’s surely possible, but even opinion journalists don’t get to turn allegations into facts. Once again, what’s going on over there?

I hate useless armchair prognostication about elections. Ignore the talking heads and keep up with these sites today and tomorrow for the most reliable information about how things will break:

1. Pollster.com – this new site has quickly become the definitive resource for opinion poll information and analysis. The most important feature is that it aggregates information across polls, providing far more reliable estimates.

Currently, the site is projecting 49 Republican seats in the Senate, 47 Democratic seats, and four tossups. In particular, Tennessee has moved into the lean Republican category and Maryland is now projected as a tossup. This means that Democrats would have to hold all the projected Democratic seats and win all four tossups (MT, MO, MD, VA) to take control of the Senate.

On the House side, the site projects a majority of 220 Democratic seats, 187 Republican seats, and 28 tossups. A Democratic takeover seems extremely likely.

2. Tradesports.com – the best political futures market. The site offers contracts on a wide variety of individual races, but the most important ones right now are for GOP control of the House and Senate. Currently, their prices indicate that there is a projected 22% chance of the GOP retaining the House but a 77% chance of the GOP retaining the Senate, numbers which are consistent with the scenarios described above.

3. Political Arithmetik – the blog of Charles Franklin, a political science professor at Wisconsin who works on Pollster.com. He’s currently reporting that the national Democratic tide is subsiding in House, Senate and governor’s races, but that the Congressional generic ballot isn’t showing the same change. Franklin concludes that the Democratic margin in the House may be smaller than expected and that a Senate takeover will be increasingly difficult.

Does anyone at the New York Times read their own newspaper? Here’s what Adam Nagourney and Jim Rutenberg wrote on November 1 about John Kerry’s botched joke:

In his remarks in California on Monday, Mr. Kerry said: “You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”

Mr. Kerry said that he botched a joke that his aides said had been prepared as follows: “Do you know where you end up if you don’t study, if you aren’t smart, if you’re intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush.”

And here’s Kate Zernike’s article the next day:

Mr. Kerry’s prepared remarks to California students on Monday called for him to say, “Do you know where you end up if you don’t study, if you aren’t smart, if you’re intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush.” In his delivery, he dropped the word “us.”

Um, no. That’s not even close to correct. How did this get into print? Think of how many people at the Times see a story before it is published. Did any of them watch the video of Kerry or read the previous day’s story? Did Zernike?

In any case, the newspaper was forced to run this embarrassing editor’s note the next day:

A Political Memo article yesterday about the fallout for Senator John Kerry over what he called a “botched joke” referred incompletely to the differences between prepared remarks and what he actually said about the Iraq war to students at Pasadena City College in California on Monday. Mr. Kerry not only dropped the word “us,” but he also rephrased his opening sentence extensively and omitted a reference to President Bush. Mr. Kerry’s aides said that the prepared text read: “Do you know where you end up if you don’t study, if you aren’t smart, if you’re intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush.” What he said: “You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”

Here’s some non-election-related trivia that I came across while doing dissertation research. In 1994, John Kerry praised Ken Starr’s appointment as Whitewater independent counsel in place of previous special counsel Robert Fiske as a “good move.” Here’s an excerpt from the Washington Post (8/6/94):

Fiske is widely respected as a skilled prosecutor and a man of integrity. But members of both parties said yesterday that they welcome his replacement with Starr if it bolsters public confidence in the impartiality of the Whitewater investigation.

Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) called it “a good move,” because it may prevent people from impugning “the integrity of the investigation.” But others questioned whether someone with such strong partisan identification could be impartial.

“A good move”! I think we can say with some confidence that the “others” referred to above won this debate.

Writing in the New York Times Book Review, Michael Kinsley bemoans the intellectual dishonesty that plagues our political system, citing the Bush campaign’s forgotten plan to undermine a Gore victory in the Electoral College combined with a popular vote loss — precisely what ended up happening to Bush:

The biggest flaw in our democracy is, as I say, the enormous tolerance for intellectual dishonesty. Politicians are held to account for outright lies, but there seems to be no sanction against saying things you obviously don’t believe. There is no reward for logical consistency, and no punishment for changing your story depending on the circumstances. Yet one minor exercise in disingenuousness can easily have a greater impact on an election than any number of crooked voting machines. And it seems to me, though I can’t prove it, that this problem is getting worse and worse.

A few days before the 2000 election, the Bush team started assembling people to deal with a possible problem: what if Bush won the popular vote but Gore carried the Electoral College. They decided on, and were prepared to begin, a big campaign to convince the citizenry that it would be wrong for Gore to take office under those circumstances. And they intended to create a tidal wave of pressure on Gore’s electors to vote for Bush, which arguably the electors as free agents have the authority to do. In the event, of course, the result was precisely the opposite, and immediately the Bushies launched into precisely the opposite argument: the Electoral College is a vital part of our Constitution, electors are not free agents, threatening the Electoral College result would be thumbing your nose at the founding fathers, and so on. Gore, by the way, never did challenge the Electoral College, although some advisers urged him to do so.

Of all the things Bush did and said during the 2000 election crisis, this having-it-both-ways is the most corrupt. It was reported before the election and is uncontested, but no one seems to care, because so much of our politics is like that. And no electoral reform can fix this problem. Intellectual dishonesty can’t be banned or regulated or “capped” like money. The only way it can be brought under control is if people start voting against it. If they did, the problem would go away. That’s democracy.

It’s amazing that almost no one brings up that Bush plan, which directly contradicts everything they did in Florida.

As far as Kinsley’s larger argument, dishonesty can also be brought under control if the media doesn’t sanction it. In particular, as he writes, we need to take on the kinds of dishonesty that fall short of outright lying. As we argued in All the President’s Spin, the press is terrible at fact-checking that sort of spin, and the Bush administration has ruthlessly exploited its weakness.