Extremely Rare Tuesday Morning Daddy Blogging
Yes, Imogen is “reading” The Economist.
I think she just likes it for the pictures. But it’s a start.
Category: Dave Brockington
Nancy Pelosi, Psephologist?
There are several reasons why Massachusetts elected the Republican on Tuesday, a topic I hope to cover if I have the time. However, one reason certainly isn’t this bullshit explanation offered by Nancy Pelosi:
“There’s some fundamentals in there [the Senate HCR bill] that make it problematic for our members,” Ms. Pelosi said. “Some members say, and I respect this, some of the concerns that were expressed in Massachusetts were about certain provisions of the Senate bill. We want, obviously, to hear and heed what was said there and what is said across the country.”
Some of the concerns that were expressed in Massachusetts? If I interpret this correctly, she is, in effect, implying / suggesting that some people voted for Scott Brown because, after studying the details of the two bills, found the Senate version inferior to the House version and in opposition to their liberal proclivities, hence elected the Republican candidate to the Senate?
This reminds me of a line in the first season of The West Wing, the box set of which I have been plowing through the past week or so: “We don’t need an opposition party; we’re our own best opposition party”.
UPDATE: Holy crap, a marginal percentage of voters for Brown did, in fact, follow the logic that Pelosi outlined above [see comments for details]. Astonishing, and Mea culpa. I still believe that, in this instance, the Dems should pass the Senate version, flawed as it is. Of course, Congress and the Administration are backpedalling from even that. In the bigger picture, the Administration should be more aggressive, a post I was working on this morning before lecturing . . .
. . . and this is consistent with a protest vote thesis, for which special elections are prime electoral contexts. I do wonder just how salient the preference for the public option was in these Brown voters however.
No We Can’t
While I’ve been trying to ignore the news for the past 24 hours, itself ironic given I did a couple live BBC radio interviews about guess what yesterday morning (which was a bit of an adventure as I am at home playing single dad to my chicken-pox addled daughter, who gracefully declined a gold plated opportunity to get on the air for the first time), two things come to mind.
1) The U.S. Senate sucks. As an institution. In class, I use the U.S. Senate as an case study of democratic institutions that aren’t. Two of my classes are designed to explore the tension between theoretical conceptions of democracy (of which there are, of course, many contradictory accounts, so it can be fun for those students who bother to read a book) and empirical reality. While I have always let students reach their own conclusions, I tend to treat the U.S. Senate in a breath normally reserved for the House of Lords. It’s bad enough in terms of representation that the institution is highly skewed, and the median voter as represented in the Senate is considerably to the right of the median voter as represented in the House (or in the general population).
However, to add the tacit requirement of a super majority on top of this already skewed pattern of representation is to add insult to (small d) democratic injury.
I don’t make this rant as a dismayed Democrat. Indeed, as a Democrat, my natural state is dismay. I’m comfortable here. Rather, I question the institution on democratic norms. In the U.S. the students would get this, yet still want to retain the institution, thus they would, on average, logically opt to abolish the 17th Amendment. This never failed to both surprise and impress me. In the U.K., students simply want to abolish the Senate. Of course, these same students argue in favor of retaining the House of Lords, modified to make it more democratic.
2) The Democrats in the House need to get their shit together and pass the existing Senate version of HCR now, for reasons articulated by both Rob and Scott below, and that this is all we’ll have for a generation on HCR. This seems to me to be the only way forward remaining. Of course, being Democrats, they can’t do the sensible thing.
A little, uh, leadership from the Executive branch and that guy all about change we elected in 2008 would come in handy here. Unfortunately, all we get are noises about a version of HCR that moderate Republicans would embrace.
What’s the point of having — still — huge majorities in the Senate, the House, and having the Executive branch again?
There are two silver linings here, and it’s not that having 59 votes in the Senate is somehow better than having 60. First, Joe Leiberman is now, happily, irrelevant. Second, I have to do a couple lectures on campus next week about the current state of play in American politics, and now I have something analytical to talk about.
Only The Democrats
Can turn what should be a sure thing into an angst ridden few days. The only thing more fulfilling than rooting for Celtic in European competition, or the Mariners prior to 1995, is consistently setting myself up for disappointment by supporting the Democrats.
I have several disorganized sets of semi-organized comments on this. First, the validity and reliability of polling in this election, second, the structural and contextual issues facing the Democrats, and finally, what the worst case scenario could mean.
538 has been doing their usual comprehensive, rigorous, and analytical job of covering the polling side of this race, but even they are flailing about at night, in a deep fog, on a Pacific Ocean beach, after drinking way too much vintage port, unable to work out east from west, north from south, blindfolded. With the tide coming in. (Yes, this is personal anecdote, save for the blindfold. But then it wasn’t really necessary). Polling is going to be particularly problematic in this electoral setting. Polling houses rely on likely voter models that vary based on a series of assumptions. These assumptions are usually, but not always, defensible in a normal electoral setting such as a Presidential or even mid-term year, where we have heaps of past empirical data to model, from which we can estimate probabilities of who is more likely to turn out and who less likely.
A mid January election in the state of Massachusetts held in the current political climate does not afford such a wealth of data, needless to say. I would be extremely reluctant to use polls conducted in this electoral context as the empirical base for a projective model formulated during a “normal” year (2008) for Senate elections to estimate a probability of either a Brown or a Coakley victory tomorrow. Indeed, Franklin reports that the polling in this race is highly varied; where in general elections we find various poll estimations within +/- 5% 95% of the time, the results here are all over the map. This is not at all surprising, since nobody has a clear idea what the electorate will look like tomorrow.
However, there are a few certainties that we can cling to, and none warm my heart. First, turnout will be lower on Tuesday than in November 2008. As structural variance in turnout affects different socio-economic categories at different, and largely predictable, rates, it’s safe to say that the drop off in Republican turnout will be less extreme than Democratic turnout. In a needlessly close rate hinging on independent voters, this matters, even in a state where Democrats heavily outnumber Republicans.
Second, while we can point to NY-23 for evidence of how the tea-bagger label or support can be toxic in certain settings, a year in to the administration, the present race can be assuming more of a protest vote dynamic. Obama and the Democrats are becoming associated with the economic malaise. While Obama is right to suggest that it takes more than one year to reverse what eight years caused, this evidential argument doesn’t necessarily play. Democrats can’t run against Bush indefinitely. There comes a point where the party has to present a positive message about its policies, and while this has always been a stretch for the Democratic Party in my lifetime, the effectiveness of “running against the past” will attenuate with time. As this is essentially a by-election where the fate of the executive branch is not at risk, and most people don’t really understand how the U.S. Senate operates (i.e. that 60th vote does matter, like it or not), those content in their support for the current administration and the Democratic Party have less incentive to turn out than the tea bagging set, those swayed by seductive populist appeals, those independents who have reasoned concerns with the approach of the administration, or even those, independent and Democrat, who just want to send a message of protest or frustration with the current climate.
The Democrats, both in Congress and in the administration, are the incumbent party of power now, and will start to bear the burden of blame for current conditions.
Finally, as fellow Massachusetts pol Tip O’Neil famously said, all politics is local. Coakley has, at best, run a complacent campaign. At one extreme, the campaign can be portrayed as a campaign of entitlement — she expected to coast to victory. I can understand the national Democrats’ overlooking the Mass. Senate race, but the actual candidate still has to win, and convincing her base to support her in a special election in January is critical. She hasn’t. Massachusetts has elected Republicans state-wide, and until 2007 had a lock on governor for 16 years. They’re not scared of electing Republicans, and in an election that superficially appears to not matter, very well may do so.
The problem is that, as we know, this election does matter in both tactical and strategic senses. Tactically, it could (and probably would) torpedo health care reform. Of course, the Democrats can then blame the Republicans for this failure, but a) that’s the only good that would come from a Brown victory, and b) this argument, too, assumes that average citizens understand that 59% of the vote in the US Senate is not enough. They won’t get that, but rather see a party with 59% of the votes in the Senate failing miserably to pass the Administration’s signature issue.
Strategically, the implications are clear. The Democrats can, and will, be portrayed both as free-spending socialists who can’t be trusted with our tax dollars, yet simultaneously be portrayed as unable to simply and effectively govern with huge majorities in both Houses of Congress and the Presidency. We can’t trust the Dems because they’re pointlessly spending all our money, yet we can’t trust the Dems because they can’t seem to spend all our money.
This is before the symbolic value of it being Massachusetts, in Teddy Kennedy’s seat, is exploited even superficially. The tea baggers and Republicans writ large will go ape shit, and the Democrats will embrace chicken little. Both will be over-reactions, but the potential damage caused by not passing health care reform should not be underestimated.
If Brown should win, I don’t think the Democrats will suddenly lose the House in 2010. The conditions are different than 1994, which is another post entirely. They’ll lose seats in both the House and the Senate, but anybody who knows anything about House elections already know that the Dems will lose seats in the House.
Will Brown win? Silver suggests a tend back towards Coakley, and these numbers don’t include the weekend blitz by the Democrats (contra Silver, as he points out, Franklin reaches a different estimation). I wouldn’t be surprised either way, yet I have faith that Coakley will pull it out. But it’s nothing more than faith, and it pisses me off that it should come to nothing more than faith in Massachusetts of all places. Rationally, structural and contextual variables are aligned against the Democrats in this special election: significantly lower turnout favors the Republicans, the Democrats are now the incumbent party of government lending a protest-vote dynamic that typify special elections, and Coakley has run a magnificently shitty campaign.
However, in a state as blue as Massachusetts, the Democrats should have overcome these hurdles due to the built in partisan advantage. They haven’t.
Clint Dempsey
And Here’s To You, Mrs. Robinson
As I am wearing my Northern Ireland top today (coincidental, and I will not be wearing it come the NI v USA friendly) it seems appropriate to wade into this. At least the big story in the last week in Northern Irish politics has been this, and not the resurgence of a handful of semi-organized Republican assholes who clearly didn’t get the memo.
Juxtapose these paragraphs from The Guardian article:
But no one can have anticipated that this decidedly odd couple – the devout Mrs Robinson, at 59, was old enough to be the then 19-year-old McCambley’s grandmother – would have an affair .
Mrs Robinson’s transgression was the more astonishing given the controversy generated last year when she described homosexuality as an abomination on a par with paedophilia that made her nauseous. As the BBC programme coyly noted, the passage in Leviticus that she quoted contains similar sentiments about adultery.
With this:
“And here’s to you, Mrs. Robinson.
Jesus loves you more than you will know.
Woah, woah, woah.
God bless you please, Mrs. Robinson.
Heaven holds a place for those who pray.
Hey hey hey, Hey hey hey.”
Pure gold.
It’s nearly enough to make me, of a (peaceful) nationalist bent, miss the days of Ian Paisley. Unfortunately, I’m no Paul Simon, and couldn’t get the following to somehow work:
“Where have you gone, Ian Paisley?
Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you.
What’s that you say, Mrs. Robinson?
Dr. No has left and gone away.”
Labour Frets About Gordon Brown . . . Again, and Again, and . . .
Preface: I’m lucky to be writing this, as my internet connectivity at our Oregon Estate (read: two bedroom apartment in a posh suburb) is dodgy. The better half upgraded a few weeks ago, the provider dropped the ball, we’ve been without since 31 December, and I’m nicking bandwidth on some nearby, highly unreliable, open wifi. Upgraded access is restored here on 11 January, which conveniently is the same day I brave the upgraded security regime to fly back to England for the new term.
This latest Labour hang wringing over the leadership (and electoral suitability) of Gordon Brown has taken another ham fisted turn, as covered by the New York Times, The Guardian, The Times, The Independent, et al. (OK, I’m sure The Sun does cover it, but first we get to read about how Cheryl Cole lost her virginity at 15, Rachel Weisz is everybody’s favorite MILF, and Patrick Vieira is leaving Inter Milan for greener pastures, presumably Man City, but then it is The Sun).
I’ll make this short: this is stupid. Labour’s chance to ditch Brown, as I pointed out at the time, was this past June. An Alan Johnson leadership would have helped Labour, but now that Johnson instead opted to assume the cabinet portfolio of doom (i.e. the Home Office), he’s in a worse position to help Labour. With Labour slowly regaining traction in the polls over the past two months or so, such that a hung parliament is not out of the question (and third place behind the Lib Dems now seems unlikely), provoking a leadership contest four to five months before an election is lunacy on the scale of Michael Foot’s 1983 Labour manifesto. Stating it lightly, this does not help.
The best analysis, as is often the case, can be found at UK Polling Report. Yes, Brown is a clear drag on Labour, while Cameron is the opposite for the Tories. However, the opportunity costs involved in a leadership challenge and then election while the party ought to be busy writing its manifesto and campaigning on it in a unified (for Labour) manner are immense.
Labour had the chance to ditch the Right Honorable Dour Scot in June, and they didn’t. It’s too late now to do any good.
NW 253 Redux
Rob covers most of the points on 253 that I would have touched upon (as well as some I hadn’t considered), but there are a few I want to add. First, as a preface, I’ve flown AMS-DTW six or eight times, and been on that very flight, and I’m happy to report that this experience doesn’t affect my observation or the validity of my opinion (which is always questionable at any rate).
My instinct when hearing about it was “it’s about time”. As Jeff Fecke comments to Rob’s post, “you’re 99% safe everywhere, but you’re not 100% safe anywhere.” Probability suggest that this will happen, and it will happen again, and if this is the best that they can do, we’re in pretty good shape overall. When one considers the sheer number of passenger / flights that occur daily, let alone annually, and by my (possibly unreliable) count there have only been three incidents of note on US or US-bound carriers post 9/11 (the shoe bomber, the British liquid bombers, and Detroit guy) I am not terribly concerned. Two amateur attempts, and one that MI-5 were all over.
Additionally, as commenter Hanspeter points out, this was not a TSA fault:
“Lagos airport technically passes some standard level of security competency, which is why planes leaving there are allowed to land here. Amsterdam airport also screwed the pooch, though, since that airport is supposed to be very good at security.”
Schiphol Amsterdam indeed has excellent security; even pre-9/11, flying an American carrier from AMS to wherever in the US (typically NW) involved an additional “interview” at the gate for every passenger (they ask for all manner of ID, including frequent flyer membership cards, thumb through your passport and inquire about certain trips, etc.); post 9/11, they added an additional security checkpoint at every gate for American-bound US carriers. (Oddly enough, these measures didn’t apply to KLM flights to the US). However, I’m not sure how Schiphol screwed the pooch; if the technology to stop this guy wasn’t installed, it wasn’t installed.
Furthermore, to my knowledge there are no direct flights from Nigeria to the US, because security is not up to standard. (UPDATE: a commenter points out that Delta fly a couple direct flights between Lagos and the US).
Lagos to Amsterdam was a KLM flight. Indeed, to my knowledge passengers connecting through AMS from Lagos have to go through an additional layer of security because Nigeria security is not considered adequate by the EU. If a pooch was screwed here, it wasn’t that security at Schiphol allowed Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to board the DTW flight, rather it was a simple old fashioned intelligence failure.
Lagos to Amsterdam was a KLM flight. Indeed, to my knowledge passengers connecting through AMS from Lagos have to go through an additional layer of security because Nigeria security is not considered adequate by the EU. If a pooch was screwed here, it wasn’t that security at Schiphol allowed Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to board the DTW flight, rather it was a simple old fashioned intelligence failure.
My rather sanguine attitude expressed above does not place me in the ‘don’t violate my privacy dammit’ camp, however. I have no problem that Schiphol is installing the very machines that may have prevented the Detroit thing; I’m comfortable with some random stranger noting that I’m probably carrying around ten post-holiday extra pounds than I should be. As AMS is one of my primary transit hubs (indeed, my flights back to England in early January take me through Schiphol) I’m certain to experience this new technology in any event.
But I’m not going to freak out about the Detroit thing. It may have been professionally conceived, but it was rank amateur in execution. If this is the best that they can do given our widely assailed security vulnerabilities, I’m fairly relaxed about it.
Wait, Acorn Did Not Commit Voting Fraud?
You’re kidding, right? At least that’s the line by the reasonable representative from Iowa, Steve King (R). After weighing his complete lack of evidence to the contrary, he finds this report “unconvincing”. Instead, he goes with his well honed imagination:
“This report doesn’t begin to cover the transgressions of Acorn,” Mr. King said.
Admittedly, the authors of the report were likely unable to interview the voices in King’s head, so he does have a point.
“I think Acorn is bigger than Watergate.”
To which all I can think is that I’d like some of that eggnog he is drinking, but I have to drive back down to Oregon from Kitsap County today.
Of course, maybe with that eggnog and King’s imagination, my car might be sprinkled with fairy dust, sprout wings, and we could fly down to Oregon . . . because it must be powerful stuff, seeing as how King has voted in favor of Acorn projects early and often.
Life’s ironies can be delicious.
As an aside, it appears that Congressional legislation cutting off Acorn is vulnerable to a constitutional critique as a bill of attainder. I’d search to see if Scott or Paul have picked up on this, but I can see the wings unfurling from my car as I type . . .
I Always Suspected That Peter Mandelson Was a Wanker
I’ll have more to say about this later, but I’m out the door for a Christmas dinner with my partner’s family. Merry Christmas, Lord P.
Of course, the British university system never really recovered from the Thatcher slash and burn approach, only just recently recovering a modicum of respectability. Nobody really believed Tony Blair’s desire to see 50% of British “school leavers” in university was possible (or even desirable), but this is the same government, right, that now claims this:
Lord Mandelson made his position clear in the Secretary of State’s annual letter to the Higher Education Funding Council for England. He said: “My predecessor repeatedly made clear the risks of student over-recruitment putting unmanageable pressures on our student support budgets.”
And people wonder why most people no longer believe a word that the Labour government has to say about, well, much of anything.
Teenage Runaways Need to Up Their Game
Because there’s running away from home, and there’s sailing away from home.
OK, technically, they’re not sure how she transported from The Netherlands to the Dutch Antilles, but I would think that it’s somewhat difficult for a 13/14 year old to just up and buy a KLM ticket and board without any indication that this is approved by a parent / guardian / the state.
Of course, it probably didn’t hurt that Laura Dekker could withdraw €3,500 from her personal bank account. When I was 13 (or 14, as The Guardian reports her age to be) I didn’t have a personal bank account, let alone €3,500 to put in or take out of it. Hell, come to think of it, I don’t have that now.
British Party Leaders to Have Three Debates
Because apparently nobody watches the weekly PM’s Question Time.
This is a good idea in general, but a bad idea for Gordon Brown and Labour. As his approval ratings are trailing those of his party, and likewise he is trailing David Cameron, I’m not sure how this will help him. Especially as a lot of his negatives are tied to his personality, not his policies.
I expect that if it adds anything to Cameron’s chances (growing somewhat after having dipped for a few weeks) it will solidify and reassure the support of those who voted Labour or Lib Dem in 97, 01, and 05. The real winner here could be Nick Clegg, because a) nobody knows who the hell he is at the moment, b) like Cameron, the five people who have heard of Nick Clegg have no idea what the hell he or his party stand for, and c) he will appeal in contrast to Gordon Brown even if he fails to utter a single word all night.
I also anticipate that these debates will be of a vastly superior quality to their American inspirations, both in terms of the type of questions asked as well as the directness of the responses. But I’ll miss the Palinesque moments . . .
. . . and I do look forward to the British reaction to their first ever debates, wondering how soon, and how often, some media turd will bemoan yet another Yank import sullying the culture, like Halloween and a currency that one can divide by 100.
