Brendan Nyhan

Here are the latest items from my Twitter feed (follow it!):
-Rahm Emanuel manages to reinforce the Obama-has-a-big-ego and words-not-deeds narratives in one sentence.
–21st century constituent service.
-The founder of the Wu Tang Clan is now “the RZA-rector” (via Ben Fritz).
-If you missed it, Tracy Morgan’s Fresh Air interview really was one of the best of the year.
-It’s sad Howard Kurtz thinks the media went above and beyond in fact-checking “death panels.”
-David Broder complains Harry Reid failed to “[summon] his colleagues to statesmanship” — how, exactly, does one do that?

Tom Edsall quoted me in a Huffington Post article today on the 2010 elections:

There are, however, a number of factors that suggest 2010 will be quite different from the Democratic rout of 1994 — the so-called Gingrich Revolution. “First, 1994 was the culmination of the South moving into the Republican column; there’s no equivalent regional shift trending against Democrats in this cycle. Second, the GOP brand is still in terrible shape relative to 1993-1994,” says Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at the University of Michigan.

For more, see this post on the 1994/2010 comparison from September. The statement about the Republican brand is a reference to this post, which shows that the GOP’s net favorables in August 2009 were the worst since 1993 for an opposition party in the first year after a presidential election.

My assessment is roughly in line with the other political scientists Edsall quoted, Charles Franklin of the University of Wisconsin and Pollster.com and Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia:

“I’d say a loss of 20-30 seats, but not yet in the high 30s to make change of control a probable outcome,” says University of Wisconsin political scientist Charles Franklin, who bases his prediction on historical precedents. “Presidential support needs to be in the low 40s to predict a very large loss of seats, based on post WWII data. Also, the GDP [Gross Domestic Product] per capita should be in decline or very small gains. At the latest revision of 2.2% in the third quarter, we are low but not as low as in worst midterms for parties.”

The economy remains the crucial unknown: “If GDP grows at a three percent or so rate through the election, I think approval will turn up into the 50s, and that probably leads to Republican gains of 15 to 20 seats, which historically wouldn’t be bad for the Democrats,” Franklin says. If GDP begins to decline, “then approval will fall more and Democrats could be looking at 30-plus lost seats — still a stretch for Republicans to gain control, but not out of reach.”

…”There are several differences with 1993,” says the University of Virginia’s Larry Sabato. “First, Democrats then didn’t believe it was possible for them to lose the House; now they know better and are more cautious.” In addition, he says, there have been fewer retirements this year; the Democratic base after Obama’s 53 percent win is stronger than it was when Clinton only won a 43 percent plurality in 1992; and the public image of the GOP was much better in the early 1990s than it is now.

For context, here’s a lightly edited version of what I sent to Edsall:

As far as the House, I’ve seen nothing that would dramatically change what I wrote back in September. The Democrats will almost surely lose a significant number of seats, but at this point I still expect them to narrowly retain their majority. Also, there are two important differences between 2010 and 1994. First, 1994 was the culmination of the South moving into the Republican column; there’s no equivalent regional shift trending against Democrats in this cycle. Second, the GOP brand is still in terrible shape relative to 1993-1994.

In terms of Obama’s coalition, I don’t think the decline so far has been especially dramatic (at least relative to my expectations). He started off with honeymoon levels of approval we haven’t seen in some time, but now he’s reverting toward where Reagan and Clinton were at this point in their term. We shouldn’t have expected anything different — Republicans and GOP-leaning independents were going to revert to disapproval of him as soon as he did anything controversial. Also, we expect him to (a) suffer from the poor economy (b) face a public that trends toward a preference for less government during a period of unified Democratic control and (c) lose seats in his first midterm like most recent presidents. Given all of those factors, I think he’s in pretty good shape.

In related news, the Intrade futures market currently estimates the probability of the Democrats retaining control of the House at 66.5%:

(Cross-posted to Pollster.com)

The anti-dissent campaign switched sides last week as Salon’s Joan Walsh became the first prominent liberal to accuse President Obama’s critics of treason.

Between the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the end of President Bush’s time in office, Republicans and their conservative allies repeatedly suggested that Democratic dissent against the administration’s policies was disloyal.

During that period, liberals and Democrats began a sustained effort to adopt the tactics of the right — a decision we criticized back in 2004 in All the President’s Spin. Since then, the trend has intensified — the Center for American Progress, which mass-produces dishonest spin like conservative think tanks, has become a leading Democratic organization; MSNBC’s prime time hosts are aping the misleading cable talk tropes of the right; and even Talking Points Memo, the leading Democratic/liberal journalistic blog, increasingly panders to its readers with unsupported claims and outrageous language.

Still, with the exception of the comedian Wanda Sykes, mainstream Democrats and liberal commentators have largely refrained from equating dissent with treason in the way that Republicans did under President Bush. That’s why I was disturbed to see this Newsbusters post showing Walsh smearing Republican criticism of President Obama as “un-American” and “traitorous,” on MSNBC’s Hardball last week:

WALSH: The climate right now is that Republicans use everything they can to undermine and delegitimize this president. And it’s actually un-American. It`s traitorous, in my opinion. Do you want to give aid and comfort to our enemies? Continue to treat this president like he wasn`t elected and he doesn`t know what he’s doing! He knows what he did. He knows what he`s doing. I`m proud of him. I believe that he has the stalwart, resolute nature to get this done. In my opinion, sometimes he goes too far, but to talk about him like he`s some socialist out to lunch…

There’s no excuse for this kind of language. Walsh may not approve of the way that Republicans are opposing President Obama, but we live in a democracy. It’s especially disturbing because her perspective on dissent (like the right’s) has flipped 180 degrees — here’s what she said during an interview with Bill Maher back in February 2007:

I was feeling optimistic in November [2006] that maybe one thing we could say with certainty was that, in the war over patriotism, and over having the freedom to dissent while still being patriotic, our side maybe had won, and that the climate was freer. I’m wondering how you look at it. Have things gotten a lot better since October of 2001, or a little, or not at all?

And here’s what she wrote in November 2006:

The president who lost the popular vote in 2000 nonetheless ruled as one of the most radical leaders in U.S. history. The president who got a chance to start over, with wide popular support, in the wake of 9/11 instead ruled as the bully-in-chief, presiding over a regime that made dissent synonymous with treason.

Finally, here’s yet another example from September 2006:

Since that time [the immediate aftermath of 9/11], though, we’ve seen hubris beyond imagination. We’ve watched an unbridled executive-branch power grab, warrantless wiretaps, the curtailing of privacy rights; a pervasive smog of secrecy descended to obscure our government. Outrage about torture, rendition and secret prisons here and abroad is dismissed with a flippant “We don’t torture” from the president. And all of it has been shellacked with an ugly culture of bullying in which dissent equals treason, shamelessly, five years after the attack. Last week it was Donald Rumsfeld comparing war critics to people who appeased Hitler; this week we had Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice saying they’re the sort who would have ended the Civil War early and let the South keep its slaves. Their intimidation is meant to say that the very freedoms worth fighting for — the right to dissent, the right to question our government — might have to be abridged while we fight. Politically, that truly is more than we can bear.

It’s sad to see Walsh’s transformation from critic to advocate of what she rightly described as an “ugly culture of bullying in which dissent equals treason.” Let’s hope other people on the left don’t follow her example.

(Disclosure: Spinsanity was syndicated on Salon in 2002. During that time, I occasionally interacted with Walsh via email.)

From the department of unusual metaphors:

Ross Baker, an expert on the presidency and a professor at Rutgers University, said that Obama's “effort [to promote bipartisanship] was a sincere one.”

“It's sort of like a missionary who goes to a primitive tribe and tries to convert them from cannibalism and ends up eating human beings,” Baker said.

Fred Barnes in a 2005 Wall Street Journal op-ed:

Popularity Isn’t Everything
By Fred Barnes

…Bush’s popularity dropped in 2003 after the terrorist insurgency spread in Iraq. And except for a blip or two, it hasn’t risen significantly since… Instead, his job performance rating in the Gallup Poll has dipped further…

[T]the president has taken on a string of big issues… with predictable results. These are issues that generate political conflict. They upset settled practice, rile various institutions, stir strong opposition, and keep poll ratings low. For an activist president, lack of popularity is part of the package…

In crass political terms, you might say Bush is “stuck” with an agenda and a far-reaching one at that…

[Bush’s] best strategy may be to promote his policies more aggressively than ever, ignore falling poll numbers, and hope for the best. Crossing the finish line of his presidency with record low popularity may turn out to be a sign of substantive achievement and lasting reform.

Barnes in a WSJ op-ed yesterday:

The Tyranny of the Majority Party
By Fred Barnes

…Democrats in Washington do have large majorities in Congress. But instead of reflecting popular opinion, they are pursuing wide-ranging initiatives in defiance of the views of the majority of Americans.

…With large congressional majorities, Democrats decided to forget about Mr. Obama’s campaign theme of bipartisanship. They brook no compromise with Republicans and forge ahead on issue after issue… despite the public’s mounting disapproval.

Like his Weekly Standard colleague Bill Kristol, Barnes has made a career out of ideological hackery, but this is audacious even by his standards.

Journalistic accounts of the rise of polarization like the one in Thursday’s New York Times almost always fail to provide two crucial pieces of context:

1. Partisan polarization has increased relative to the mid-20th century. But as I’ve pointed out many times, that period was a historic anomaly — polarization is actually returning to the historical norm last seen in the late 19th/early 20th century:

2. The less polarized politics of the mid-20th century were driven almost entirely by the issue of race, which created a bloc of conservative Southern Democrats who acted as a virtual third party for much of this time. When Democrats are disaggregated by region (here in the House; Senate results are similar), the role of the Southern Democrats in depolarizing the parties becomes obvious:

In other words, the much-lamented era of bipartisanship in Congress was the direct result of a system of racial apartheid in the South. When it was removed, a reversion to a polarized two-party system was virtually inevitable. Unfortunately, almost no one involved in the debate over polarization understands these two crucial facts. It’s incredibly frustrating.

Orrin Hatch on why the Senate is so polarized — they’re under assault by a communications medium. Apparently, “The Internet is constantly badgering everybody”:

“Both parties have become very polarized,” Mr. Hatch said. “A lot of that is because of the stupid ethics rules. We can’t get together at various events. A lot of people complain about taking foreign trips, which are really critical for us to understand foreign policy. The Internet is constantly badgering everybody. In the process, it’s gotten pretty doggone partisan, both ways. It’s bad.”

Hatch has clearly been getting up to date on the latest technology with Max “YouTubes” Baucus, John “it’s a Google” McCain, and Ted “series of tubes” Stevens.

While I’m traveling for the holidays, here are some short items from my Twitter feed (which you should follow!):

-TNR’s Jon Chait on the triumph that the health care bill represents.

-It’s absurd for Karl Rove to mock Dem. hopes for a “40-year majority” after what he said back in 2000.

-Matthew Yglesias notes questions about the sustainability of health care reform if it’s passed on a party-line vote, but the most relevant political science study finds no evidence that the number of minority votes matters.

-Brilliant Ronald Brownstein column on Howard Dean and health reform.

–The ultimate critique of The Phantom Menace (note: mixed with strange and off-color comedy bits).

-The Huffington Post’s “mullet strategy”.

-“Three Myths about Political Independents” — GWU’s John Sides educates pundits about early 1990s political science.

–Arbitraging coins for frequent flier miles (via MR).

-Bill Clinton has some seriously middlebrow taste — David Brooks, Tom Friedman, and Malcolm Gladwell as best thinkers of the year? Really? It’s like the airport bookstore Pulitzers!

–Best correction ever.

On Tuesday, the Weekly Standard’s Michael Goldbarb claimed that the Obama administration had threatened Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE) with closing Offutt Air Force Base, home of the US Strategic Command, if Nelson didn’t support the health care reform bill in the Senate (Michelle Malkin made a similar claim).

Even though this questionable report was based on a single anonymous source (“a Senate aide”) and has been denied by both Nelson’s staff and the White House, Glenn Beck has repeatedly promoted it on his TV and radio shows and suggested that it would constitute treason — the latest in a long series of smears against Obama’s loyalty since 2006.

During his radio show Wednesday, Beck suggested that the allegation would constitute “high crimes” — a reference to the Constitution’s definition of impeachable offenses as “high crimes and misdemeanors”:

Beck read from Goldfarb’s post and called it “one of the worst things you’ve heard yet this year.” Despite later saying that “[w]e have called Senator Nelson’s office; Senator Nelson says, ‘No, no, no. That’s not true,’ ” Beck interviewed Goldfarb, who said, “I have 100 percent confidence in my source on this, and, of course, the Nelson people have every reason to deny it.” After Goldfarb later said, “As I understand it, Rahm Emanuel delivered a message to the Senate leadership that if Nelson did not get behind this, Offutt Air Force base would find itself on the next round of BRAC closures,” Beck responded, “I don’t even know what category that fits in — high crimes?”

Later that day, Beck invoked treason three separate times on his TV show (transcript via Nexis):

-“I have to tell you, there’s a story at the bottom of the hour that if it is true — and we have three sources on it now — if it is true — I mean, how much closer do you get to treason? …”

-“It’s crazy. Give that one a whirl. I’ve said it all along, principles over party. Principles. Well, one senator apparently agrees with me. I say kind of, maybe, but his party reportedly very angry, and allegedly making threats. This one borders treason, I believe…”

-“The rabid progressives don’t care how they accomplish their goals. The ends justify the means. This book – this guy just last week said about me, ‘We’ve got to shut Glenn Beck up by any means necessary.’ That’s how they do their work.
But this – using the military and our strategic command as a pawn, threatening to weaken our national security defenses to fulfill your utopian social justice agenda? To me, that borders on treason! No one – no one – no one wants to believe that the president of the United States or any of his advisors would stoop to these kinds of tactics.

Even though Goldfarb’s story is collapsing, the rumor has spread rapidly through the conservative media and prompted twenty Republican senators to call for an investigation by the Senate Armed Services Committee (via David Weigel). What a nightmare.

[I’ve added Beck’s statements to my timeline of loyalty smears against Obama since 2006.]

Democrats are upset at Joe Lieberman’s defection from the proposed health care reform compromise in the Senate, but don’t know what to do about it. Annoying Lieberman by denying him time to speak on the floor may make Al Franken feel better, but it also raises the odds of a damaging party switch. (Despite his propensity to annoy the base on high-profile issues, Lieberman’s voting record through July actually places him near the center of the Democratic party caucus.) The same problem applies even more strongly to proposals to strip him of his seniority or his chairmanship of the Homeland Security committee.

I’m not sure it’s worth the risk — party switchers tend to drastically change their voting patterns — but a better punishment strategy was suggested by Sandeep Baliga of Northwestern’s Kellogg School back in November. Drawing on game theory, he suggests creating a “penal code” in which Democrats “[forgive] Lieberman gradually over time to get his cooperation in the future”:

Independent Joe Lieberman is driving Gail Collins and the progressive left crazy. He caucuses with the Democrats and holds a plum committee chairmanship on the strength of largely voting with the Democrats. But he is threatening to filibuster the healthcare reform vote in the Senate. The only way to give him the incentive to drop this threat is to threaten him in turn – strip him of his chairmanship if he filibusters the vote.

The problem is that Lieberman knows that if he filibusters, the Democrats do not have the incentive to carry out their threat because they need his vote in the future. Their threat to strip him of his chairmanship is not credible. This is a classic issue in deterrence theory: how can we make our threat to bomb the Soviets if they bomb us credible? Many of the strategies do not transfer… but one does: the Democratic leadership has to rely on reputational devices to incentivize Lieberman.

Forgiving Lieberman may create future defections as the Democratic leadership shows they are wimps. Carrying out the threat shows that Reid and Obama are tough and signals they will be tough in the future. This is the slippery slope argument and the classic “act crazy to get a reputation for toughness” strategy…

If Lieberman finds the threat credible, the Democrats do not even have to carry it out because he will not filibuster. But if he does not find it credible, he will filibuster. Then you face the problem of losing his vote in the future if you accept the slippery slope argument and feel you must punish Lieberman for his treachery.

To evaluate this possibility, we have to consider the credibility of Lieberman’s threat to vote Republican in the future if he stripped of his chairmanship. The Republicans are too extreme for the Connecticut voter. If Lieberman votes with them or switches parties, he is in trouble at home. So you can rely on his reelection motive to discipline him and get his vote on some mainstream Democratic issues.

There is also a subtle way to give Lieberman the incentive to go along with his punishment without ganging up with the Republicans. It is a “penal code” to design dynamic incentives and it was discovered by Dilip Abreu. The penal code boils down to forgiving Lieberman gradually over time to get his cooperation in the future. In this scenario, this requires some deviation from standard seniority principles for allocation of committee chairs. Put a stopgap person, Al Franken, in charge of Lieberman’s committee. Tell Lieberman that Franken will step down if Lieberman is on board in future. Otherwise, goodbye chairmanship forever. If this subgame is triggered as Lieberman is bloody minded, Franken should step down in favor of whoever is in line for the chairmanship now if Lieberman is ejected. This might be necessary to get this person on board with the plan to deviate from the status quo procedure for allocation of committee chairs.

In reality, the requirement to deviate from seniority makes any such proposal difficult to implement. Regardless, however, Baliga’s post is useful in illustrating the subtlety of the incentive problems faced by Harry Reid and the Democratic leadership.