The Effect of (some) Economic Indicators on Presidential Elections
Silver offers a rigorous exploration of the central point made in the NYT article I linked for the post I wrote yesterday. He approaches the question on the relationship between the unemployment rate and the vote for the incumbent President (or party) from several different angles, including the basic unemployment rate, the change in said rate, limiting the analysis to post-war or back to 1912, etc. Furthermore, where I said “While the 7.2% figure is arbitrary, and this election might not hinge on the usual simple domestic economic factors,”, his narrative was more expansive and informative. The arbitrariness of 7.2%, for example; Ronald Reagan won re-election in 1984 by 18% while presumably hobbled by 7.2% unemployment.
Silver basically finds nothing, and in those few bivariate models where there was an observable correlation, the relationship was highly dependent upon one or two cases.
That said, and as Silver correctly points out, this alone is not a reason for optimism. Intuitively and theoretically, the higher the unemployment rate, the lower the probability of Obama’s re-election, even if a relationship is not clear in a simple bivariate analysis of past presidential elections. The reality of modelling presidential elections is complex, and as cases are so rare, the predictive value of said models is contingent.
This highlights the analytical risks associated with a focus on one measure. While this is but one measure, as Bartels (1997) suggests, the economic context does matter:
“The clearest and most significant implication of aggregate election analyses is that objective economic conditions — not clever television ads, debate performances, or the other ephemera of day-to-day campaigning — are the single most important influence upon an incumbent president’s prospects for reelection. Despite a good deal of uncertainty regarding the exact form of the relationship, the relevant time horizon, and the relative importance of specific economic indicators, there can be no doubt that presidential elections are, in significant part, referenda on the state of the economy.”
Furthermore, and germane to this discussion, unemployment is of relatively lesser explanatory power than other measures of economic context:
“Most of the available evidence suggests that voters weigh recent changes in economic conditions more than temporally distant changes — and more than absolute levels of economic well-being. It also suggests, though rather less clearly, that changes in disposable income matter more than changes in GDP (which are presumably less tangible), which in turn matter more than changes in unemployment (which produce relatively few direct losers) and inflation (which produce many losers but also a good many winners).”
Unemployment is but one piece of the puzzle when we attempt to operationalize the concept of “economic conditions” into measures that are useful in modelling presidential elections. All this said, I’d still be more comfortable if unemployment was going down.
Unfortunately, I anticipate we’ll be hearing the opposite today.
“I’d still be more comfortable if unemployment was going down.”
So would I, because then human suffering would be much less.
I know, I know: it would be a shame if Obama lost his re-election because then we would have a president who fights illegal wars (other than the illegal war we’re fighting in Libya, that is), who supports locking up people forever without a trial (but doesn’t give fancy speeches), and who thinks coal is the answer to our energy problems (but doesn’t have cute children).
If you’re going to list a bunch of problems that Obama could have ameliorated, but chose not to, why not take those as reasons that he does not deserve another term, rather than data points to fret about when it comes to his 2012 campaign?
Naderite.
Which means what, exactly?
“Naderite” means you voted for the guy you liked, but because Al Gore ran a terrible campaign, you’ll be forever blamed for George W. Bush.
Remember, it’s always the voter’s fault, never the politician’s.
I think it’ shame the way Al Gore held a gun to those poor Nader voters’ heads and forced them to vote the way they did.
And we know for sure that those people who voted for Nader would have voted for Gore because the support of those two candidates tracked so closely.
Oh, wait, support for Nader did not rise when support for Gore fall, or vice versa. There is no relationship at all between support for the two candidates.
But that’s the level of analysis coming from people who still believe in Obama.
Actually, we know for sure that the majority of those people who voted for Nader – enough to change the election results in at least two states – would have voted for Gore because there was extensive polling done on the question.
But don’t bother with any of that boring, reality-based research and data. You have a storyline, which you can deliver in a sarcastic tone.
Without Nader, his voters would have split 60%-40% for Gore in Florida.
You’re entitled to your own opinion, however idiotic it is, but not to your own facts.
Al Gore won Florida.
What is the split for Buchanan supporters for Gore in Palm Beach County?
No, Al Gore convinced more people in Florida to vote for him. As we all now realize, that’s not what determined whether one wins a state.
Absent Nader, Al Gore actually wins Florida.
wengler, if you want to claim that Pat Buchanan cost Gore Florida, too, I won’t argue with you.
But, then, nobody tried to claim that he didn’t.
Your argument is kind of stupid though. Al Gore lost Florida because Republicans suppressed the vote of people most likely to vote for Al Gore, and then did everything in their power to stop Gore votes from being counted after the election.
Nader didn’t do that. Nor can you presume voters that represent 1 percent or less of the electorate will vote for your guy.
You know, I didn’t vote for Nader, and I kind of feel like he’s a jerk who would have made a bad President, but whenver sniping like this comes up I always feel like pointing out something that should get us all on the same page.
The blame doens’t lie with the thousands who voted for Nader. It lies with the FIFTY MILLION PEOPLE who voted for George W. Bush.
This Anonymous comment was brought to you by Murc and the dodgy cacheing on his work computer.
The blame lies with both groups. Noting that both circumstances are necessary for the Bush presidency doesn’t refute the point that, without both groups behaving as they did, Gore would have won the election.
Actually, Gore did win the election.
Actually, he won the popular vote, but that’s not how elections are decided here.
But, yes, Gore did win the popular vote, regardless of Nader. And if Nader had spent the last few weeks of his campaign concentrating on states where he could maximize his vote total, rather than deciding to concentrate on states where he had the greatest chance of making sure George Bush got those electoral votes, we wouldn’t have to make this distinction.
No, joe. He won Florida. And the Supreme Court stole it from him.
I agree 100% about Nader’s strategy in 2000, which was to spoil the election. Nader assumed, entirely incorrectly, that if he cost the Democrats the election, they’d tack to the left to capture his vote (Nader was always more interested in getting the Democrats to do the right thing than in seriously building a third party. And he actually opposes the kind of electoral reform that would make spoiling impossible.).
Of course, Nader was dead wrong about how the Democrats would respond. Rather than tacking to the left, Democrats turned Nader into Emmanuel Goldstein and have been using him as the basis for two-minute hates ever since (see this thread and countless other discussions on this blog).
But, more importantly for this discussion, Nader failed even to spoil the election. More people voted for Gore than for Bush in Florida, and with Florida’s electoral votes Gore would have won the presidency.
More people voted for Gore than for Bush in Florida, and with Florida’s electoral votes Gore would have won the presidency.
Florida wasn’t the only swing state. Look at New Hampshire.
That’s just silly. Absent Nader, Florida isn’t close, and Katherine Harris and the Supreme Court are irrelevant.
Nader had help spoiling the election, but he did it.
And that’s only looking at Florida. Absent Nader, Gore would have also won Iowa, Oregon, New Mexico, and Wisconsin (all states in which Bush’s margin of victory was about 1/10 the total Nader vote).
If Gore received Florida’s electoral votes, none of these other states would matter. Had the recount continued, Gore would have gotten Florida’s electoral votes, as more Floridians voted for him than for Bush.
You and I agree that Nader tried to cost Gore the election. He came close. But he failed.
Not to pick nits, but Gore won Wiscosin, Iowa, New Mexico and Oregon. Red and blue are reversed from the current usage on that map.
The chart below the map seems (no statistician, I) to illustrate that Nader’s support was stronger in states that were out of reach and weaker in swing states, suggesting strategic voting by disaffected Democrats.
The most hilarious thing about the 2000 election is that it was when exit polls needed to be thrown out because they didn’t calculate Republican electoral fraud after the votes have been cast.
D’oh! You’re right, New Hampshire is the only other state Nader flipped to Bush.
I thought that table looked funny. I assumed I’d just remember wrong.
Nope, as has been demonstrate to you several times now.
No Nader, no Florida dispute. Nader put Florida in play.
No Nader, Gore wins New Hampshire, and Florida becomes irrelevant.
You can keep shouting Leave Ralph Nader Alone! if you want, but you don’t have a leg to stand on here. Nader cost Gore the election. He set out to flip enough EVs to Bush, and he did it.
Without meaning to defend Nader, how about the fact that Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris purged 82,000 people, mainly black, mainly poor, from the voter rolls? I’m pissed about Florida, but I’m mainly pissed that the fucking Republicans disenfranchised black people, and I’m pissed off that Gore did not yell about this from the fucking rooftops. I really can’t give a shit about Nader voters, when Gore himself did not give a shit about tens of thousands of disenfranchised voters. Fucking hell, we kept black people from voting, in the year 2000, and all anybody cares about is fucking Nader voters. I care about the people who wanted to vote, and could not, a lot more than I care about some people who voted for purity in a swing state.
/rant finished.
Huh?
Look, I’ve already said that Nader’s strategy was utterly wrongheaded. So I’m hardly saying “Leave Ralph Nader Alone!”
What I am saying is he didn’t cost Gore the election.
And, really, my claim is pretty simple: Gore won more votes in Florida than Bush did. Thus Nader didn’t flip enough electoral votes to cost Gore the election. The only electoral votes Nader actually flipped were NH’s (and even this is based on assuming that a very high percentage of NH Nader voters would have voted for Gore had Nader not been on the ballot. It’s also worth remembering that Gore’s campaign had zero presence in NH; had he actually tried to win this state, he could have).
I am willing to concede that Nader was one of many factors that made this election close enough for the SCOTUS to steal.
All which leads me back to a point I made earlier (which you keep illustrating): as the continuing scapegoating of Nader shows, even attempting to spoil elections is the stupidest imaginable progressive electoral strategy.
(One other interesting 2000 tidbit: Bush would probably have won NM had Buchanan not been on the ballot. Funny how Republicans seem less interested in engaging in circular firing squads over this fact.)
How about it?
Absent any one of a number of factors, Gore comes away with Florida’s electoral votes.
Nobody is claiming that what Nader voters did was worse than, or even as bad as, what Katherine Harris did. But you know what? Left-wingers don’t get to decide if Republican bureaucrats are going to be corrupt. They don’t get to decide whether Pat Buchanan is going to be on the ballot. They don’t get to decide if the ballot is going to be well-designed.
They get to decide whether and how they’re going to vote, and the ones here keep insisting that it was perfectly harmless and without electoral consequence for them to vote against Al Gore, and that’s just not the truth.
Many simple statements are wrong.
Your conclusion doesn’t follow from your premise, for reasons that I don’t feel like explaining to you again. Actually, I don’t need to, since your admission that Nader made it “close enough to steal” is an acknowledgment of my point.
They won. 1000 more clear-headed Naderites in Florida, and the Republicans would be engaging in firing squads.
Left-wingers don’t get to decide if Republican bureaucrats are going to be corrupt.
No, but I can damn well be pissed off that Gore did not make this an issue. He taught the Republicans that nobody gives a shit when black people can’t vote.
They get to decide whether and how they’re going to vote, and the ones here keep insisting that it was perfectly harmless and without electoral consequence for them to vote against Al Gore, and that’s just not the truth.
The ones here? LGM? Where every mention of Nader turns a thread into a hundred-comment flame war between soullite and jeer9, arguing against every other commenter?
It was in 2000–and is today–utterly without electoral consequence who individual voters vote for in non-swing states.
In swing states, on the other hand, voting for minor party candidates might have electoral consequences.
In 2000, in two of those states–NH and NM–third party voters arguably threw the state to someone who wouldn’t have won had a particular candidate not been on the ballot. As it turned out, neither state would have changed the outcome of the election had the SCOTUS not intervened in FL.
Nader (and Buchanan and Harry Browne) voters contributed to Florida being as close as it was. But Gore received more votes in Florida than Bush did. Nevertheless, Bush won Florida’s electoral votes.
It’s fair to accuse Nader (and Buchanan and Browne) of having an impact on the Florida result (given the closeness of Gore’s advantage over Bush in Florida, Bush likely would have received more votes than Gore had the Reform and Libertarian candidates not been on the ballot). But, like the effect of disfranchisement in the state, these are “what-ifs.”
What’s not a “what if” is that Gore won more votes in the state and the SCOTUS guaranteed that Bush got its electoral votes anyway.
Mal,
Absolutely, and that’s a fine point. It doesn’t get Nader off the hook, but it’s a fine point.
The ones on this thread, insisting that Nader’s campaign and the votes of his supporters in Florida had nothing to do with Bush becoming president.
I’m certainly not saying this, so I’m not sure who you’re arguing with here.
Funny how little the “blame” narrative incorporates this fact.
And among those 50 million who voted for Bush were a goodly number of Florida Democrats.
Oh, this was politician Ralph Nader’s fault, all right.
If he had just decided to spend the last few weeks of the campaign concentrating on states where he could maximize his vote total, instead of concentrating on states where he had the greatest chance of handing the electoral votes to Bush, history would be very different.
So, good point: we should totally blame the politician.
Oh, if we’re assessing blame by spinning “what-ifs” then it is time to talk about Tennessee.
Dude, remember: liberals are too small a group for our concerns to have any validity, but just large enough a group to take the blame for any Dem loss. Until you understand this, you are just an objectively pro-Republican moron.
Also, every Dem victory proves that they tacked far enough to the right, and every Dem loss proves that they were too far to the left.
All of these narratives can be found pre-prepared in your local supermarket’s half-bakery aisle, six to a box.
What? 6.5 is the standard half-baker’s dozen!
You have won the internets for the day.
I’ll leave you and your straw person to enjoy your intimate encounter. Just make you sure clean up afterwards.
Tennessee was already a deep-red state in 2000.
Anyway, I haven’t seen anyone arguing that Al Gore had nothing to do with the outcome of the 2000 election.
As opposed to Ralph Nader who, for bizarre reason, people are desperately eager to pretend had no influence whatsoever on the election.
Ooops, you’ve got it backwards.
Nader voters held a gun to Gore’s head.
And he denied that gun existed. How’d that work out for him?
I take your point, adhv. But what you say isn’t quite right either.
Third party candidates actually have fairly complicated effects on elections. They can take votes from other candidates. They can also get people to the polls who wouldn’t otherwise vote. And they can shape the course of the campaign in a variety of ways.
Polls immediately before and after the election suggested that somewhere between 5 and 10% of voters claimed to support Nader. Many fewer voted for him. This suggests that Gore responded fairly successfully to the Nader challenge, though obviously not quite successfully enough to prevent Florida from being close enough to steal.
But even this was only made possible by the fact that, even without Nader, Florida was astonishingly close. Nader ended up with less than 2% of the vote in Florida (to put this in some perspective, in 1996 Perot got over 9% of the vote in Florida…and over 19% in 1992).
At the end of the day, Nader did very, very badly in 2000. And however mediocre Gore’s campaign may have been, he clearly came up with effective ways to limit Nader’s vote.
I reach a different conclusion from this evidence: that Nader voters were bending over backwards to vote strategically. Do you think they were aware of how close FL was? That they were possibly putting it into play?
Gore intended to not court Nader voters (and, according to the “darth nader” narrative, he lost thereby). Do we really need to have a debate over whether he drifted right?
Whatever veil of ignorance excuses the professional politician, Gore, certainly should apply ten-fold to the average progressive voter.
=====
But the more important point, of course, is we both agree that joe was going after a tedious strawperson.
I agree with most of this, in fact (which is part of the complexity of the effects of third party candidates).
Potential Nader voters were very aware of the possibility of their votes’ throwing the election to Bush, which is why there was so much talk of vote trading at the time (and also why Nader wasn’t a lot more explicit about his willingness to spoil the election).
And Gore, for his part, appealed to these fears very successfully. When I say that Gore responded relatively successfully to Nader, I certainly didn’t mean to suggest that he moved left in response to Nader’s candidacy, merely that he managed to limit the damage caused by Nader voters to his campaign.
And, yes, I agree entirely with your last sentence.
IB — I now see what you are saying, very salient points. This skirmish seems to keep coming up on liberal blogs, and I am going to incorporate your corrections into my “material.”
Ancillary point: if 3rd party candidates create great complexity, would that prompt caution in endorsing conventional or facile narratives? :)
That you’re willing to sacrifice some real gains in economic progress and democracy just so you can preserve your political purity and say you voted for some guy who had no chance of winning or of advancing the political climate.
Are you talking about the “economic gains” we are making now? Excuse me while I go laugh my head off.
Same with gains in democratic values. If you want to vote for someone who believes in military commissions, indefinite detention, secret evidence, presidential execution by fiat, and immunity for torturers, go right ahead and do that. But own up to it. Don’t say “I’m voting for those things because I believe the alternative is worse” because there are other alternatives. Being too lazy to see them or work for them does not eliminate their existence.
The difference between dissatisfaction and disaster is quite easy to overlook, as long as the disaster only happens to other people.
When daddy’s going to be paying your tuition for three more years, you aren’t a woman, you aren’t poor, you aren’t a minority, and you aren’t in the military, who cares if George Bush beat Al Gore, or if John McCain beat Barack Obama?
The gains are that we wouldn’t have had Bush for 8 years and there wouldn’t have been the Bush tax cuts or the war in Iraq. If you don’t dee that as a gain, then its not worth continuing this argument.
As far as other alternatives, I live in the real world, not the Nader world. I believe in fighting for realizable gains, not pie in the sky stuff. I think the country would have been much better off if Gore was elected president (even though I was not a great fan of Gore) and I think the country is much better off with Obama as president rather than McCain (even though I have never believed that Obama was a savior and have disagreed with some of what he has done).
Are you talking about the “economic gains” we are making now?
Yes.
Not good, but better than it was under the Republicans.
No, we’re not making economic gains. We’re clinging on by our fingernails while the Republicans try to destroy the country, with the enthusiastic support of the present-day version of the Naderites, who think what the country needs to move decisively to the left is another 8 or 12 years of Republican governance.
Somehow, all of this has managed to miss who Al Gore was: Bill Clinton’s vice president. That would be Bill Clinton of NAFTA fame, Bill Clinton who signed the repeal of Glass-Stegall into law, and Bill Clinton who inflicted Robert Rubin on us.
Are the Republicans worse? Sure. But not by anywhere near as much as you are claiming.
Ever meet one of those people who, no matter what the conversation is about, finds a way to turn it into an explanation of why you should accept Jesus Christ as Your Lord and Savior?
No matter what anyone is talking about, they just need to change the subject to the message they’ve decided it’s their job to spread.
I hate people like that. Don’t you? So tedious.
16 posts (and counting?) from joe on this subthread and naderites are the tedious ones.
I love how much I matter to you.
You don’t even have anything to say, but you see my name, and you just can’t stop yourself from writing something.
Tell me, when I haunt your nightmares, what does my facial hair look like?
Moving up and down from the action of your jaw, mostly.
Sorry I have the incredible bad taste to actually write comments.
I know how much that bothers you.
(When one side of an argument ends up begging the other side to stop talking, what does that generally indicate to you?)
Repetition.
Who’s begging whom?
Oh, were you too stupid to get that I was calling you a hypocrite?
My bad. Let me explicitly declare that I am calling you a hypocrite. Cleared that up?
Anyone who thinks Obama “deserves” another term is an idiot, but nowhere near as big an idiot as anyone who thinks the question of desert is remotely relevant to electoral politics.
Silver’s work has vastly improved from that overwrought bespoke model he employed in 2008. I’ve become a fan.
Comparing Reagan and Eisenhower, who won reelection with a weak economy, to Bush 41 and Carter, who did not, brings up another factor.
The economy quite plainly began going south before Reagan and Eisenhower’s terms. Indeed, the state of the economy (and their predecessors’ alleged responsibility for the situation) was a prominent theme in the elections campaigns that put them in office. In the case of Carter and Bush 41, the economy quite plainly started going south during their terms. Obviously, FDR would be in the former category.
As would Obama.
Would Obama have take the lessons of FDR, his re-election would not be in doubt.
Instead he struck a FDR-Lite course that has no sputtered into full-blown austerity. FDR-Lite to Hoover-Lite.
If Obama had 70 Senate votes like FDR, the FDR course would have been available to him.
As it is, he had to horse trade like crazy just to get the Recovery Act.
Obama never had anything like FDR’s 100 days.
Of course, the Depression had already been going on for more than 3 years at that point.
But let it be said, FDR never made and phony distinctions between “private jobs” and “public jobs”. Instead he created jobs. Obama could’ve gotten nearly whatever bill he wanted through the House. His problem is that he went to the table in a bipartisan mood against people who hate him and lied to him at every turn.
The parallels between Obama’s and Reagan’s first terms goes beyond economics: Reagan, for example, ended the Iranian hostage crisis (utilizing methods that were not revealed until the second term was well underway), Obama killed bin Laden.
But both cut taxes in their first term (Reagan in a far more egregious and idiotic way). Both spiked the deficit, although Obama’s was more direct.
If Reagan won re-election– with 7.2% unemployment– by 18% against a lackluster Democrat, and Obama faces a Republican field that can most charitably called “mediocre”, how much could another 2% unemployed really have on him?
The old saw about “What’s a recession? What’s a depression?” comes into play here. The unemployment issue will only play out in states where more than one in ten are unemployed, because people need the visual cue that so-and-so can’t find work, and even then, it will only play out on a precinct-by-precinct basis.
There’s one problem with this – the are a lot fewer swing voters than there used to be. The 1990s brought about a much higher level of polarization. The two parties used to fight over maybe 30% of the electorate, and now they’re fighting over maybe half of that.
So, margins of victory are going to be smaller these days, so the consequences of factors that can swing votes on the margin are more important.
There’s also the problem that a lot of people seem convinced that Obama raised taxes on everyone. Granted, it’s republicans that are most thoroughly convinced, so that won’t make a difference, but to what extent will they convince independents?
Also a lot of people are convinced that Obama prolonged the unpopular and wasteful war in Afghanistan, cut taxes for billionaires while freezing pay for mailmen, refuses to prosecute torturers, wants to force people to buy health insurance they hate, supports radical increases in oil drilling and coal mining, doesn’t want to end the war on drugs, and thinks we need to deport more illegal immigrants than George W. Bush did. It’s such a shame that people believe these things, isn’t it?
You already made your point with your first post that generated a ton of responses. Now you’re just trying to derail the thread.
Actually, other than the war on Afghanistan and coal, OL mentioned none of these things in his opening comment above.
(Which is not to say I agree with OL on the politics here. The number of people who disagree enough with Obama from the left not to vote for him is, for better or for worse, not politically significant. The White House’s staunchest centrist defenders and most vociferous progressive critics seem wedded to the view that progressive dissent cost the Democrats last fall and will cost the Democrats and the President in 2012. But I’ve never seen any poling data that indicates that this is the case. I agree with OL that progressives ought to be pissed off at Obama–though we probably disagree about whether or not we ought to hold our noses and vote for him anyway. But by and large progressives aren’t pissed off, let alone willing to withhold our votes.)
I’ve seen very few examples of centrists making that claim. The centrists are arguing, like they always do, that dissatisfaction among centrists cost the Democrats the 2010 elections.
Go over to DailyKos and you’ll find countless diaries blaming the 2010 elections on progressives sitting on their hands.
Or just do a google search for “professional left.”
Always a good place to find centrists.
Huh?
Unless, of course, you’re using the word “centrist” to mean something different than everyone else.
By centrists I mean centrists, many of whom happen to be partisan Democrats (and, yes, partisan Democrats are among the core constituencies of dKos).
So it’s B, “using the term to mean something different than everyone else.”
You remind me of the right-wing kook in “The Crying of Lot 49,” who mentioned “…our left-leaning friends at the John Birch Society.”
Uh huh. Lots of centrists at Daily Kos.
I haven’t seen this perfect a demonstration of the “All men are John” fallacy in some time.
Because some centrists are partisan Democrats, and because some partisan Democrats write for Daily Kos, then the partisan Democrats who write for Daily Kos are centrists.
What’s your evidence that there are no centrists at dKos, Joe….other than calling me names, that is?
dKos is full of posters who regularly denounce what they call “the professional left” and suggest that any critic of Obama from the left is at best deluded and at worst a Republican plant. I would describe these people as “centrists” just as I’d describe our President as a centrist.
There are certainly those who’d disagree with me (Republicans, for example, seem to think that our President is a socialist). But I think my description is both reasonable and common.
The fact that no one there describes themselves as centrists?
The results of polling on that site, which demonstrate on issue after issue that there are virtually no centrists there?
A vague familiarity with what a centrist is, and the capacity to distinguish that from the content on Daily Kos?
The fact that your argument for why there are centrists there relies on the application of a fundamental logical fallacy?
Other than that, though, I got nuthin.
I’m sure you would. The problem is, that word already has a meaning, and that’s not it.
So, when you use “centrist” in your special way, nobody is going to know what you’re talking about.
But wait: there’s more!
There’s also the fact that 100% of the criticism one finds of the President at Daily Kos is criticism from the left.
Again, joe, all you’ve done so far is shout at me and call me names.
Google “Obama centrist” and you’ll find thousands of people–many of whom aren’t to Obama’s left–using the term in what you keep insisting is my “special way.”
For example, here’s noted Communist (or is it John Bircher) Brad DeLong calling Obama a centrist.
You keep saying that; do you imagine anyone who is reading down this far into the thread is going to magically forget all of the points I’ve made because you’re pretending they’re not there?
Or maybe the problem is your memory, since I didn’t rebut the statement that Obama is a centrist, but that the people at Daily Kos are centrists. In point of fact, I spent the entire 2008 campaign calling Obama a centrist, and rebutting people who described him as a socialist or radical.
Yeah, well…Again, joe, all you’ve done so far is shout at me and call me names.
Mmm. Sorry about that. I’ll try to make some points next time.
Here’s the description of the purpose DailyKos is from the site’s own faq:
DailyKos is a Democratic blog. Period.
Again, you keep asserting that there are no centrists on dKos. You’ve provided no evidence whatsoever for this assertion. You’ve just made it in a wide variety of ways.
We seem to agree that the President is a centrist….or at least that it’s reasonable to call him one.
I think we can also agree that a large chunk of Kossacks agree with the President on policy issues and disagree bitterly with other Kossacks who criticize the President from the left.
I would call such people “centrists.” And I think it’s reasonable to do so. And, as I’ve just indicated above, the site’s FAQ explicitly includes centrists in its intended membership.
Though perhaps Markos Moulitsos, like me and Brad DeLong, is using the term in a “special,” far-leftist-Peter Pinguid Society way.
Were you a better reader, and less desperate to defend yourself now that you’ve been backed into such a corner, you might have noticed that the passage you quoted doesn’t say a word about who writes for the site or their location on the political spectrum, just what political figures they’re willing to support.
The problem with taxes is that people don’t differentiate between federal taxes and everything else. State and local taxes are going up to deal with budget shortfalls. User fees and license fees are too.
The Republicans have really weak arguments to make for “regime change”. Obamacare is a non-starter, for example, because it doesn’t even kick in until his second term. That very ambiguity will discard it as an issue in most voters’ minds. And if Romney wins the nomination? :-)
I think the strongest argument for a Republican win in 2012, and at its heart, it’s an argument Americans are not that concerned about (I’ll get back on that in a sec), is the budget deficit/national debt.
Americans are not that concerned about the deficit/debt because right now, there’s really no big impact on their lives: taxes are low, interest rates and inflation remain under control. Yes, it worries them in the abstract, just as if you gave thought to how much you actually have to pay out over thirty years on a mortgage might keep you awake at night.
So long as the deficit/debt is not monetized, in other words, its a nonissue for the average voter.
Obviously (to addres your point) Obama’s campaign will roll out reams of paper and miles of video (terabytes of video?) to rebut the “tax hike” claims (especially if he’s successful in getting the Bush cuts to expire). In the end, it will come down to Obama’s presentation in one debate or another on taxes.
My call? Obama by seven. Yes. I think he wins bigger than he did against McCain, for reasons that include the fact that McCain will seem popular next to Brand X.
The risk here is that unemployment is an unreliable economic indicator. Today we have a situation where many people who probably could be considered unemployed are not because they have given up looking for work. And the economy is not improving very quickly. I’m not sure 1984 is a great comparison point as a result, but maybe some of the same factors were at work there as well.
That’s why you should always look at U-6, and not just U-3.
We’re being threatened by Nazi submarines?
No, and I didn’t mean to make a one-to-one comparison, just to note that Obama has a little wiggle room even by Silver’s standards.
Here’s my prediction (based on no scientific research at all): if unemployment is 8% or less, Obama wins reelection. If it is over 9.5% percent, he loses. If it is between 8 and 9.5 and the Republicans nominate someone who can walk and chew gum at the same time (which eliminates Palin, Bachman, Santorum, etc), then it is going to be a very close election.
It would be a very close election if the Unemployment rate were 4%.
What country have you been living in for the last decade or so?
I don’t think that is the case. Obama won by 7% in the last election which is not a landslide but is not very close either. If unemployment were at 4%, I believe his margin of victory for reelection would be at least 7%
Good point.
But while soullite overstated her argument, there’s a kernel of truth in there. The electorate is much more polarized than it used to be, and there are a lot fewer actual swing voters, so the margins of victory are a lot smaller than they used to be.
A candidate with Obama’s talents, against a candidate with McCain’s talents, in the circumstances of fall 2008, would have likely seen a margin well into the double digits before the mid-1990s.
It would be a very close election if the Unemployment rate were 4%.
Okay, unemployment is 9.1% now, with 13.9 million out of work. Assuming no changes at all in numbers of people in the workforce, we would need to add 7.8 million jobs, or 487,000/month between now and November 2012, in order to get to 4.0% unemployment, a level that Clinton never achieved.
Now, since a lot of people have gotten discouraged and left the workforce, but would re-enter in better times, the real number to get to this would be higher that 487K/month, but let’s stick with the first estimate.
I’m going to go out on a limb, and say that any President who is around in a period of job growth like that will win in a landslide.
I will go further out on a limb, and point out that anybody who would write what soullite did is innumerate. Discussing 4% unemployment at a time like this is about as realistic as discussing what will happen once the US disbands the military.
Above was me
Wait, I thought the plutocrats determined who they wanted to have the presidency. Why does it have to be close?
Wouldn’t it work out better for them if Obama got 90% of the vote on the Marxist ticket so that the plutocrats could frame centrist economic policy as Marxist economic policy moving the much-ballyhooed Overton window so far to the right no actual honest-to-God, salt-of-the-Earth, power-to-the-people ever had a chance?
Nah, the underdog has to have a chance or the election spectacle isn’t distracting enough. :)
The jobs report sure was horrible today. The economy looks like it’s headed for, at best, a “lost decade”, at worst a double-dip (just in time for 2012). Barack Hussein Obama, MMMMM mmm mm…
Wage growth is a better proxy, and it doesn’t look much better.
You really do have to ask yourself: A President that has overseen this kind of economy; that has acted in the way that Obama has to secure the privileges of the wealthy and ignore the plight of the great many, does he actually deserve to be reelected?
Blah-blah-blah the Republicans are worse; nobody cares. Nobody is going to vote based on that. Democracy simply cannot function if the worse thing you can think of happening is the other side winning an election. To believe that is to cast Democracy aside altogether.
Uh, yeah, nobody decides how to vote based on opposition to a candidate. That’s why phrases like “Hold your nose” and “Lesser of two evils” never entered our political vocabulary.
soullite, have you ever actually met an American? You don’t seem to have any idea what they’re like.
Words like “tedious” and “god, give it a rest already” entered our vocabulary to describe things like your posts.
I trust that, if you had any rebuttal to anything I’ve written, we’d have seen it by now.
“Shut up, you’re making me sad!” Boo hoo hoo.
B
Recent experience suggests otherwise. In 2006 and 2008, the Democrats won precisely because enough swing voters decided that they the Republicans were worse.
And the Republicans won in 2010 (and will likely win again in 2012) not because they’ve convinced swing voters of their nonsense, but because swing voters are currently angrier about the Democrats’ nonsense.
I agree, however, that this is no way to run a democracy. The two-party system today is pretty much all bug and no feature. Its operation manages to assure that we cannot seriously address any problems like climate change or healthcare costs that play out in the medium-to-long run. Though give our financial elites credit for figuring out how to make it work for them very well in the short run, whoever ends up winning.
The two-party system today is pretty much all bug and no feature.
You’ve got that backwards as your last sentence indicates.
Though give our financial elites credit for figuring out how to make it work for them very well in the short run, whoever ends up winning.
DailyKos has been waking up as of late. Not even they will defend Obama’s pathetic economic record anymore. They rightly call this a depression as well.
Gee….another Bush Depression…what a shock Kos would call it that…
As someone who voted for Nader (though didn’t much care for him) in a safely democratic state because he hoped the Green Party would reach the 5% level needed for public funding, I wish more people in safe states had done the same thing. Then we might actually have a progressive tool to threaten and cajole the Dems leftward, and perhaps a ready transitional group for the day voters realize the Dems aren’t actually interested in representing anyone but their corporate donors. Unfortunately, in 2000 we got the worst of both worlds, and the SC provided the embarrassing denouement. It’s not about purity, folks. It’s about how to move the the party leftward. I don’t see much happening within the party itself (rather I see progressives folding their principles in order to accommodate and the party bosses supporting corporate shills in contested primaries) and I’m not hearing many suggestions other than the Republicans are even creepier. Apparently, the left should have rejoiced in Clintonism and followed the party line with Gore. Some good old-fashioned Nader-bashing always raises the spirit, though.
jeer,
If people who vote GOP can’t figure out that the Republicans only care about the super-rich and corporate donors, why the hell do you think that the people who vote for the Dems are going to figure it out just because there is a Green party saying that this is the case?
Taking your ideas seriously for just a second, how many people are there out there who you think are so far to the left of the Democratic party that they don’t vote for Democrats now? Because you’re suggesting that we need to cajole the Democrats leftward by presenting a viable challenge on the left. So you’re either suggesting we need to temporarily (?) cripple the Dems by drawing off significant left support that now votes Dem or we need to find “new” voters to vote for a third party, right?
How many people is this? What percentage of the electorate?
And before you answer, remember that in your own comment you acknowledge that even in “safe states” this number was less than 5% in 2000.
How many people who voted for Obama in ’08 failed to support the Dems in the 2010 mid-terms because they didn’t see the point? A fairly sizeable number, I believe. And you have to start somewhere. You seem to be arguing that people are too stupid to make a correct choice, even when presented with the opportunity. While I wouldn’t necessarily quarrel with that view given the direction our country is heading in, I still think a real left option serves a useful purpose. And your ideas for shifting the Dems left?
Indeed. The problem for you is that the large majority of them were centrists, independents, and Republicans who’d crossed over.
How many people voted for Obama in a Presidential election, but failed to vote for Dems in an off-year election. That’s what you got? And these people were all lefties who failed to turn out. They weren’t centrists that swung to the GOP? Do you have any idea how elections work in the US?
You seem to be arguing that people are too stupid to make a correct choice
You seem to be under the impression you know what the “correct choice” is and that people who don’t agree with you are “stupid.”
I think that you and I and just about anyone who comments on this blog are to the left of 97-99% of Americans. I think that if all the lefties who held their nose and voted for Barack Obama in 2008 decided that they were going to support the most charismatic, articulate, handsome, dynamic, well-funded person to run on a platform of exactly what they believe in, that person might, MIGHT!, get invited to a debate and poll 3 to 5% of the vote.
I think you think that Americans think just like you do and they’ve had the wool pulled over their eyes, they’ve got the false consciousness, they’ve been misled by middle-of-the-road liberals.
Americans do not think like you do. You are to the left of the left. No shame in that. Just stop yelling at the rest of us who realize we’re on the extreme left in America and are just trying to support any politician who has any hope of getting elected who might make things just a little bit better.
And it’s your belief that the large numbers of “centrists” who put Obama and majorities of Dems into both houses in ’08 would not vote for a candidate who actually represented real change (ie., the policies Obama ran on) if he were designated as some sort of further left boogeyman? And these “centrists” stayed home in ’10 because they were so disappointed and didn’t much care that the criminals/incompetents that they just threw out of office returned to power? But I’m the one arguing people are stupid? People are frustrated and want an effective government and a return to the rule of law. They do not like the Republican agenda but they are at a loss with what to do when Dem leadership is essentially Liebermanism, not “middle-of-the-road liberalism.” I apologize if my previous post was indeed “yelling.” It saddens me that the Green argument is so unpersuasive to many on the left. I still await your ideas for moving the Dems left?
Your logic seems suspect. Liberals will vote for Obama strictly as an antidote to whatever is out there. It’s the centrist vote he needs, it’s the centrist vote the Dems lost in 2010, but you’ll note something out of NY26.
It’s the centrist vote that’s disgusted with the Ryan Plan.
But voting for Nader didn’t work and it din’t cajole the Dems leftward. Maybe it would have if Nader had got 5% but he didn’t. And a third party left candidacy in 2012 is unlikely to get 2% of the vote or move the agenda of the Dems leftward.
Do you think that a third party candidacy or a leftist challenger to Obama in the Dem primaries will move the agenda?
False.
This is why we are still tediously fighting over the narrative of what happened. If the Dems can dismiss 2000 as Darth Nader, then they don’t have to move left at all. (Question the narratives that are being used to quash dissent!) Instead, they can use political blackmail to force progressives to vote for any corporatist centrist.
“Real nice country you’ve got here. It’d be a shame if another Republican got elected and anything should happen to it.”
==========
PS: Of course, this suggest that even if the Darth Nader narrative were true, it would be in the practical best interests of progressives to pretend otherwise.
I don’t get your point. I was pointing out that the Nader candidacy failed. It didn’t get him elected. It didn’t move either the Democratic Party or the national consensus leftward. Are you contending otherwise?
Yes. It created an opportunity for a new narrative. That opportunity was declined, however, so I understand that reasonable people will choose to weigh that as “nothing.”
So in other words, it failed. I’m not saying that the Nader candidacy was nothing, i’m saying that it failed. He wasn’t elected. The opportunity for a new narrative (whatever that meands) was declined so, in plainer English, the candidacy failed. (Unless you are taking the position that it laid the groundwork for some marvelous transition that will occur in the future).
Are you taking the position that if the Democrats moved leftward, then they would win more elections and capture the White House more often? You can make that argument but it is refuted by history and by all the polling data that we have.
While I agree the Nader candidacy failed (it neither built a viable third party nor moved the Democratic Party leftward), the argument for moving the Democratic Party leftward is not that it would win more elections and capture the White House more often, but rather that when it won elections and captured the White House it would make things better rather than merely making things worse a little more slowly than the GOP.
Of course to support moving the Democratic Party leftward, one would also have to believe–and I do–that it could still win elections and capture the White House…but one doesn’t need to believe that it would be better at doing so.
the argument for moving the Democratic Party leftward is not that it would win more elections and capture the White House more often, but rather that when it won elections and captured the White House it would make things better rather than merely making things worse a little more slowly than the GOP.
Cannot be re-stated often enough. I see very few suggestions, however, about how to do this from within the party when all of the institutional pressure is pushing rightward; lots of criticism, though, that external prodding from third parties is self-defeating.
The candidacy could do no more than create the opportunity. I regard it as a success, insofar as I lay the failure at the door of the people who have spun the events of 2000 into their own, dissent-squashing narrative.
I know you want to speak “plain English” but we will have to talk about cui bono.
More often? No. But when they did, it would be better. I am not sure it would be less often; Gore didn’t get elected, after all — can’t gloss that over! Even if it would be slightly less often, I would be sorely tempted to take quality over quantity.
Now, since we are talking plain, practical English — let’s discuss just how bad Bush would’ve been if we’d had firm Democratic Senators at the time.
Lots of dems voted for Iraq, and the Patriot Act, the tax cuts, etc. under Bush. We just saw 3 years of how easy it is to obstruct a presidential adenda, right? It was a friggin’ cakewalk, and it didn’t even have a price tag in the midterm elections. Ensuring all Dems are quality means even when you lack a bit on the quantity, you don’t end up with the Bush years. (Which, after all, is the boogeyman that is supposed to reform Naderites, right?)
Weaksauce, centrist, compromising dems are the reason the Bush years sucked. They got played like suckers.
All good points, hv, and similiar to IB’s comments above. However, “they got played like suckers” works as an alibi only if you believe that side of the Dem party isn’t part of the kabuki. While the intentional stance can be hard to decipher, the fact that such Dems almost always end up furthering the rightwing agenda tells me their “opposition” is more often than not disingenuous.
There’s your problem right there. It’s supposed to be about moving the country leftward.
Move the party leftward, without a corresponding movement among the voting populace, and you get a small opposition party that says the things you want to hear, along with the imposition of the policy program of the median Republican legislator.
When Nancy Pelosi took over as Speaker in January 2007, she was presiding over a Democratic caucus that was more conservative than the one she was presiding over in the previous Congress, owing to the addition of a lot more centrist and conservative Dems than progressive Dems in the 2006 elections. What did you like better, wengler: the Pelosi House or the Delay House?
Today, Majority Leader Pelosi is presiding over a much more liberal House caucus than the one she presided over in 2009-2010, owing the defeat of a metric shit-ton of Blue Dogs. What did you like better, wengler: the Pelosi House or the Boehner House?
Today, Majority Leader Pelosi
ITYM Minority Leader, alas.
Alas.
There’s your problem right there. It’s supposed to be about moving the country leftward.
Good point, Joe.
Well the way to move the country leftward, assuming we maintain a two-party system, is to move the Democratic Party leftward (just as conservatives managed to move the country rightward by moving the GOP rightward).
It is inconceivable that either party in our political system will be reduced to a “small opposition party.” Which is why both parties can move far, far off center and stay politically viable (though on the GOP has tested that proposition in the last four decades or so).
The problem with the cries to challenge Obama from the left (in the primaries or the general election) is that neither strategy has a snowball’s chance in hell of moving the Democrats’ leftward this year.
Primary campaigns can move parties further off center (Reagan in ’76 and Buchanan in ’92 are good examples), but there is neither the popular base nor a likely standard bearer for such an effort from the democratic wing of the Democratic Party this year.
Progressive Democrats ought, instead, to be focusing on fielding a serious progressive presidential candidate in 2016, however. It’s been a long time since the ’88 Jackson campaign….
Correction: I should have said “one way to move the country leftward is to move the Democratic Party leftward.”
The other would be to create a viable progressive third party.
It’s hard to say which proposition is more of a long shot (the fact that I’m a registered Independent suggests that I’m not exactly banking on either of them happening any time soon).
Mr. Socialist here was a registered Independent as well for many years (so the idea that Independents can’t be left seems unfounded), though I re-registered as a Dem this year because I wanted the opportunity to vote against BHO in a primary – which with my luck of course is not going to present itself.
There is a much easier way to move the country leftward, which isn’t a long-shot: move some people from the center-right to the center-left.
While this might be as emotionally satisfying as trying to jack up the far left end of the spectrum, it has the advantage of being practicable, and of involving significant-enough numbers to be sustainable and significant.
This talk of moving the country leftward seems a bit monolithic to me. When you get past the tribal labels and look at public opinion issue-by-issue, the is not a center-right country, whatever the WSJ editorial staff might claim. Most people support Social Security; most people have no problem taxing the rich; most people can get behind some government-backed health insurance; the list goes on. It’s when you package all those positions up and call it “the Democrat Party (sic)” or “the libruls” that the tribal component kicks in.
The way to move the country left is to hold the line on specific issues–because those issues are meaningful to the electorate, and “leftist” positions on those issues are the popular ones.
Interesting analysis.
You can point to the Social Security Privatization fight of 2005 to back up your case. Not only did they win on the policy, but the fight and victory greatly strengthened the hand of liberals in national politics.
http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2011/06/its-the-economy-stupid-oh-shit/comment-page-1#comment-124437
http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2011/06/its-the-economy-stupid-oh-shit/comment-page-1#comment-124460
I think we’re done moving left (or even standing still) as a country, frankly. The only way out of the current alternation between the Republicans goose-stepping Bircherward and the Democrats shuffling Bircherward is going to be something catastrophic, which I would bet doesn’t end in current German policy prescriptions.
Seriously, where is the model that stops this? The Republicans drag the country radically further to the Dominionist right every chance they get, and the Democrats may sort of half-ass tepidly hold position or take a small step toward the technocratic center but this is the best you can expect, I mean why would we even start with a negotiating position that is any further left than center-right, just look at the political realities and working class people don’t contribute money and we’re scared of Fox News and the Teabaggers and the Chamber of Commerce so this is the best of all possible worlds and just shut up shut up shut up you stupid dirty hippies.
And then it happens again.
History shows us that bodies politic swing like a pendulum. Thirty five years ago, I’m sure there were conservatives who cried out that even Nixon was being too liberal.
The longer term trends favor progressivism. At least that’s the thought that keeps me from slitting my wrists.
People keep saying that, but I think it’s really wishful thinking. This is basically a New Gilded Age, but this time we’re rushing headlong into a fossil fuel / global warming resource constraint. Maybe some unforeseen technological innovation will relax those constraints, but that’s a discontinuity of a sort that I am unwilling to bet on.
I also note that 35 years ago, those movement conservatives started investing billions of dollars to create a set of organizations to destroy the modern liberal state — hell, Murdoch alone went deep in the hole to buy FNC’s way onto most of the cable systems in the country. The current state of affairs is not an accident. There is no equivalent money being invested today, nor any equivalent money on the horizon.
But I can’t be right about this. We are of course living is the best of all possible worlds, and the Dems are the bestest political party ever, so any problems are inevitable and the Dems cannot be criticized for anything they’ve done — at least not from the left. There are no better policies that could even have been advocated, no principles that anyone could have stood for.
Whoa, that’s a bit of a stretch, even for an emotional exaggeration.
Yes, there’s a mechanism involved that might slow the progress of, errrr, progress, but world history (a much longer time frame) shows that society becomes more liberal the farther down the road it marches.
It may not…probably won’t since I’m getting up there…happen in my life time, but I can head into the future knowing it will happen eventually.
I’m good with that.
world history (a much longer time frame) shows that society becomes more liberal the farther down the road it marches.
I’m quite sure that the average educated Roman citizen of 200 CE thought something comparable. Being in the center of an Empire, which we clearly are, distorts one’s perspective.
Our Empire, like all Empires, will fall.