The New Democrat Network (NDN) is set to release a poll tomorrow of Hispanics in four key states: Florida, Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada. There’ll be more to say about the poll then, when the full results are available, but NDN has already dribbled out a few results for newspapers in those states.
While he is behind among Florida Hispanics, apparently because of overwhelming suppport for Bush among Cuban-American Hispanics, in the southwestern states of Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada, Kerry’s looking very strong. Among Nevada Hispanics, Kerry is ahead of Bush 58-31, a 27 point lead that is quite close to Gore’s 31 point lead in 2000. And Kerry is ahead by 59-30 among Arizona Hispanics, a 29 point lead that is closely approximates Gore’s 2000 margin in that state (also 31 points). Finally, in New Mexico, Kerry is ahead by an overwhelming 64-25; that 39 point lead is actually a bit larger than Gore’s very healthy 34 point lead in 2000.
So Kerry’s looking very good among southwestern Hispanics, a tale that was also told in the Democracy Corps poll of Hispanics that was released back in March. More on this poll tomorrow.
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Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
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March 28: RIP Joe Lieberman, a Democrat Who Lost His Way
I was sorry to learn of the sudden death of 2000 Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Lieberman. But his long and stormy career did offer some important lessons about party loyalty, which I wrote about at New York:
Joe Lieberman was active in politics right up to the end. The former senator was the founding co-chair of the nonpartisan group No Labels, which is laying the groundwork for a presidential campaign on behalf of a yet-to-be-identified bipartisan “unity ticket.” Lieberman did not live to see whether No Labels will run a candidate. He died on Wednesday at 82 due to complications from a fall. But this last political venture was entirely in keeping with his long career as a self-styled politician of the pragmatic center, which often took him across party boundaries.
Lieberman’s first years in Connecticut Democratic politics as a state legislator and then state attorney general were reasonably conventional. He was known for a particular interest in civil rights and environmental protection, and his identity as an observant Orthodox Jew also drew attention. But in 1988, the Democrat used unconventional tactics in his challenge to Republican U.S. senator Lowell Weicker. Lieberman positioned himself to the incumbent’s right on selected issues, like Ronald Reagan’s military operations against Libya and Grenada. He also capitalized on longtime conservative resentment of his moderate opponent, winning prized endorsements from William F. and James Buckley, icons of the right. Lieberman won the race narrowly in an upset.
Almost immediately, Senator Lieberman became closely associated with the Democratic Leadership Council. The group of mostly moderate elected officials focused on restoring the national political viability of a party that had lost five of the six previous presidential elections; it soon produced a president in Bill Clinton. Lieberman became probably the most systematically pro-Clinton (or in the parlance of the time, “New Democrat”) member of Congress. This gave his 1998 Senate speech condemning the then-president’s behavior in the Monica Lewinsky scandal as “immoral” and “harmful” a special bite. He probably did Clinton a favor by setting the table for a reprimand that fell short of impeachment and removal, but without question, the narrative was born of Lieberman being disloyal to his party.
Perhaps it was his public scolding of Clinton that convinced Al Gore, who was struggling to separate himself from his boss’s misconduct, to lift Lieberman to the summit of his career. Gore tapped the senator to be his running mate in the 2000 election, making him the first Jewish vice-presidential candidate of a major party. He was by all accounts a disciplined and loyal running mate, at least until that moment during the Florida recount saga when he publicly disclaimed interest in challenging late-arriving overseas military ballots against the advice of the Gore campaign. You could argue plausibly that the ticket would have never been in a position to potentially win the state without Lieberman’s appeal in South Florida to Jewish voters thrilled by his nomination to become vice-president. But many Democrats bitter about the loss blamed Lieberman.
As one of the leaders of the “Clintonian” wing of his party, Lieberman was an early front-runner for the 2004 presidential nomination. A longtime supporter of efforts to topple Saddam Hussein, Lieberman had voted to authorize the 2003 invasion of Iraq, like his campaign rivals John Kerry and John Edwards and other notable senators including Hillary Clinton. Unlike most other Democrats, though, Lieberman did not back off this position when the Iraq War became a deadly quagmire. Ill-aligned with his party to an extent he did not seem to perceive, his presidential campaign quickly flamed out, but not before he gained enduring mockery for claiming “Joe-mentum” from a fifth-place finish in New Hampshire.
Returning to the Senate, Lieberman continued his increasingly lonely support for the Iraq War (alongside other heresies to liberalism, such as his support for private-school education vouchers in the District of Columbia). In 2006, Lieberman drew a wealthy primary challenger, Ned Lamont, who soon had a large antiwar following in Connecticut and nationally. As the campaign grew heated, President George W. Bush gave his Democratic war ally a deadly gift by embracing him and kissing his cheek after the State of the Union Address. This moment, memorialized as “The Kiss,” became central to the Lamont campaign’s claim that Lieberman had left his party behind, and the challenger narrowly won the primary. However, Lieberman ran against him in the general election as an independent, with significant back-channel encouragement from the Bush White House (which helped prevent any strong Republican candidacy). Lieberman won a fourth and final term in the Senate with mostly GOP and independent votes. He was publicly endorsed by Newt Gingrich and Rudy Giuliani, among others from what had been the enemy camp.
The 2006 repudiation by his party appeared to break something in Lieberman. This once-happiest of happy political warriors, incapable of holding a grudge, seemed bitter, or at the very least gravely offended, even as he remained in the Senate Democratic Caucus (albeit as formally independent). When his old friend and Iraq War ally John McCain ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, Lieberman committed a partisan sin by endorsing him. His positioning between the two parties, however, still cost him dearly: McCain wanted to choose him as his running mate, before the Arizonan’s staff convinced him that Lieberman’s longtime pro-choice views and support for LGBTQ rights would lead to a convention revolt. The GOP nominee instead went with a different “high-risk, high-reward” choice: Sarah Palin.
After Barack Obama’s victory over Lieberman’s candidate, the new Democratic president needed every Democratic senator to enact the centerpiece of his agenda, the Affordable Care Act. He got Lieberman’s vote — but only after the senator, who represented many of the country’s major private-insurance companies, forced the elimination of the “public option” in the new system. It was a bitter pill for many progressives, who favored a more robust government role in health insurance than Obama had proposed.
By the time Lieberman chose to retire from the Senate in 2012, he was very near to being a man without a party, and he reflected that status by refusing to endorse either Obama or Mitt Romney that year. By then, he was already involved in the last great project of his political career, No Labels. He did, with some hesitation, endorse Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump in 2016. But his long odyssey away from the yoke of the Democratic Party had largely landed him in a nonpartisan limbo. Right up until his death, he was often the public face of No Labels, particularly after the group’s decision to sponsor a presidential ticket alienated many early supporters of its more quotidian efforts to encourage bipartisan “problem-solving” in Congress.
Some will view Lieberman as a victim of partisan polarization, and others as an anachronistic member of a pro-corporate, pro-war bipartisan elite who made polarization necessary. Personally, I will remember him as a politician who followed — sometimes courageously, sometimes foolishly — a path that made him blind to the singular extremism that one party has exhibited throughout the 21st century, a development he tried to ignore to his eventual marginalization. But for all his flaws, I have no doubt Joe Lieberman remained until his last breath committed to the task he often cited via the Hebrew term tikkun olam: repairing a broken world.
I agree that talking about gas prices and linking Bush to the Saudis is a very good idea. This affects people’s day-to-day lives, whereas they just try to ignore Iraq as much as possible. It also makes Bush look out of touch.
Another thing–if they’re correct, the figures are good, even if Kerry does only as well as Gore, because of the huge growth in the Hispanic population (and hopefully citizenship and voting rates).
Question–how accurate are these “partisan” polls? As a yellow-dog Democrat, I’m usually cheered by polls done by our party or groups that lean our way, but I brush off GOP polls as “biased.” Is that what we’re doing here? (I mean those who are celebrating this news, including Mr. Teixeira)
I agree with precinct1233. The undecideds will go overwhelmingly for Kerry, so he’s in even better shape than these numbers indicate. Bush’s share of the vote among Hispanics will probably not get much higher than it is now, while Kerry’s will increase by a decent amount.
Talking about gas prices a good idea, given that their ridiculously high right now. I’m not so sure people care that much about petroleum reserves, but I remember the Bush bounced back from Gore grabbing his lead by talking about Gore’s stance on our oil reserves, or something like that.
Can anyone tell me why Kerry is demagoguing on gas prices and strategic petroleum reserves right now? stupid and proof that mcaulliffe should have been fired long ago.
Richardson should be the VP choice. He could possibly bring three red states and over 40 electoral votes into the Dem column, plus make New Mexico and California secure.
I know he said he’s not interested, but we need him on the ticket. Kerry and the Party leaders should make that clear to him.
And, the real significance of these numbers is that they all carry an “undecided” number of about 11%. Given a 75/25 split DtoR (a reasonably typical range when an incumbent runs), that’s another couple of points in margin to Kerry, which should boost his numbers to more than Gore’s.
Add in the substantial voter growth (both in absolute numbers and relative to Anglo growth in these states), and Kerry’s in great shape.
Hispanics have been the main demographic group targeted by Bush and Rove. It’s significant that they do not appear tp have made substantial progress. Because of the increase in the Hispanic total vote, Bush would need to get 38% nationally in 2004 in order to lose Hispanics by the same total vote margin as in 2000. In the Southwest, where Hispanic growth is even faster, he would need a higher percentage than that. Increased Hispanic support would not be sufficient to bring Arizona or Nevada into the Kerry column, but it could certainly provide the margin of victory if Bush’s support among white non-Hispanics remains at its current low level, or sinks further.
If the percentages of the Hispanic vote stay the same as 2000, if we registered and turned out a larger Hispanic vote wouldn’t that be a Democratic advantage?
Due to the amnesty and the Bush family’s popularity with Hispanics and due to things like gays and abortion, I don’t know if Kerry will ever do well enough in this group. All Bush needs is 40% of their vote in order to win, and he seems well on his way to that.
While I’ll be the first to agree that these aren’t in any way BAD figures, I wouldn’t leap to classify them as “good” — because Gore did, after all, lose Nevada and Arizona. Surely “good” for Kerry would be larger leads, boosting his chances of winning; matching Gore’s numbers is just holding in place.
The comparisons made are between Kerry’s standing with Hispanics now and Gore’s at the time of the election. Is there any available info on how Kerry’s figures compare to some of Gore’s from earlier in that campaign?
I guess this is good, because Bush may have gotten a boost w/ Hispanics after his green card stunt, but it doesn’t look like Kerry is doing any better than Gore with Hispanics, and I’m not surprised that things are shaping up like the way they did in 2000 with these four states:
Florida-virtual tie
Arizona-Bush advantage
New Mexico-virtual tie
Nevada-Bush advantage