Today’s another primary day, this time in my home state of Georgia, and there are a host of contests on tap in both parties, though indications are that turnout will be mediocre at best.
If you are interested in a full rundown, check out my preview over at FiveThirtyEight. I’ve also done an update on the Palin versus Gingrich dimensions of the Republican gubernatorial race for The New Republic.
The very latest news is a poll of that race by Magellan Strategies that shows Karen Handel executing a Nikki Haley-style surge into a dominating first-place position, and longtime front-runner John Oxendine collapsing into a poor fourth place. Magellan also shows Nathan Deal and a rapidly climbing Eric Johnson battling for a runoff spot opposite Handel. What makes the poll seem credible is that it reflects an intensification of trends in the contest that have been apparent for a while. And if Handel does romp in the primary and eventually get the nomination, the hype for Palin will be formidable, since the Alaskan won’t be competing with a trumped-up sounding “sex scandal” for the credit for her candidate’s ascendency, as she had to do in South Carolina.

Like most political junkies, I spend a lot of time staring at polls, and for a complete amateur, I have a reasonably good understanding of what makes for good and bad polls, and also know that (1) averaging lots of comparable poll data is usually how you get a decent handle on reality, and (2) comparing data from the same sources is a relatively good way to identify trends.
But now and then a major poll comes along with a blare of trumpets that raises so many red flags that you generally need to toss back a shaker of salt before you even read the thing.
That’s true of the new “Power and the People” series initiated today by Politico.
Aside from the cheesy title, let me briefly count the ways in which this instrument for weighing public opinion is suspect:
It involves (1) internet-based polling, (2) conducted and (3) analyzed by Mark Penn, with a separate sample of (4) “DC elites;” determined according to (5) arbitrary definitions of “political involvement” and (6) even more arbitrary income and educational levels; with the whole thing getting a (7) huge, Tea Partyish spin of comparing the fat-and-happy liberals of Washington with the despised and suffering masses of Americans, who don’t like Barack Obama or any of that guvmint stuff. I could add Politico‘s own sensation-seeking involvement as suspect factor #8, but they are respectable enough as journalists to give them just one mulligan for running a headline that is sure to thrill Fox News.
On factor number (7), I have to object especially to the neo-Marxist planted axiom in an inflammatory sidebar article that suggests the godless liberal elites don’t understand America because the economy in DC is booming, thanks to the “massive expansion of government under President Barack Obama” that has “basically guaranteed a robust job market for policy professionals, regulators and contractors for years to come.” You woundn’t know from this hammerheaded story that the major battle going on in Washigton recently was over Democratic efforts to maintain unemployment insurance and avoid massive state and local layoffs, in the teeth of Republican resistance; or that the Pentagon budget, which conservatives treat as the ultimate sacred cow, is the single biggest driver of the DC economy; or that the most sizable areas of increased domestic spending do not involve “policy professionals, regulators and contractors” but automatic spending on Social Security and Medicare, which has almost no impact on the bank accounts of “elites.”
I will try to force myself to look at this series more carefully as it unfolds, but at this point, it sure looks like a heavily loaded contribution to an anticipatory zeitgeist keyed to the viewpoint of future Republican “elites” that Politico expects to rule Washington directly.

It’s been obvious for quite some time–dating back at least to the fall of 2008–that the Republican Party is undergoing an ideological transformation that really is historically unusual. Normally political parties that go through two consecutive really bad electoral cycles downplay ideology and conspicuously seek “the center.” Not today’s GOP, in which there are virtually no self-identified “moderates,” and all the internal pressure on politicians–and all is no exaggeration–is from the right.
But as Jonathan Chait notes today, there are two distinct phenomena pulling the GOP to the right this year: there’s ideological radicalism, to be sure, but also what he calls “tactical radicalism:”

Obviously the conservative movement is intoxicated with hubris right now. Part of this hubris is their belief that the American people are truly and deeply on their side and that the last two elections were either a fluke or the product of a GOP that was too centrist. It’s a tactical radicalism, a belief that ideological purity carries no electoral cost whatsoever.

This is what I’ve called the “move right and win” hypothesis, and it’s generally based on some “hidden majority” theory whereby every defeat is the product of a discouraged conservative base or some anti-conservative conspiracy (e.g., the bizarre “ACORN stole the election” interpretation of 2008). As Chait observes, there is a counterpart hypothesis on the left, but is vastly less influential, and anyone watching internal party politics these days will note the major difference in tone between Democratic primaries where moderation is generally a virtue and Republican primaries where it’s always a vice.
While many Democrats (including Chait in the piece I’ve linked to) are interested in the short-term implications of tactical radicalism, such as the possibility that GOP candidates like Sharron Angle or Rand Paul could lose races that should be Republican cakewalks, there’s a long-term factor as well that no one should forget about for a moment. If, as is almost universally expected, Republicans have a very good midterm election year after a highly-self-conscious lurch to the right, will there be any force on earth limiting the tactical radicalism of conservatives going forward? I mean, really, there’s been almost no empirical evidence supporting the “move right and win” hypothesis up until now, and we see how fiercely it’s embraced by Republicans. Will 2010 serve as the eternal validator of the belief that America’s not just a “center-right country” but a country prepared to repudiate every progressive development of the last century or so?
That could well be the conviction some conservatives carry away from this election cycle, and if so, what would normally pass for the political “center” will be wide open for Democrats to occupy for the foreseeable future.

If you really want to understand “polarization” in today’s political climate, you have to understand that Ds and Rs, and conservatives and liberals, live in very different worlds when it comes to facts and relevant information. We’ve seen an unusually graphic illustration of this reality during the last week, when much of the conservative chattering classes have been obsessed not with the financial regulation bill, not with Republican primary battles, but with the premise that there’s a massive effort underway led by the Obama administration to harrass and demonize white people.
The main exhibit in this bizarre narrative is one Malik Zulu Shabazz, the leader of something called the New Black Panther Party. On election day in 2008, Shabazz and a few associates played the fool at a virtually all-black Philadelphia polling place, and yelled about “crackers” voting the wrong way. Despite the lack of evidence that Shabazz had actually intimidated any actual voters, the DOJ initiated a criminal prosecution, which it then downgraded to a civil suit (all of this was under the Bush administration). Shortly after Obama’s inauguration, DOJ dropped the civil suit, and a former DOJ attorney is now claiming that he and others were under instructions not to go after African-Americans for voter intimidation violations.
Now at this juncture it’s important to understand that many conservatives not only deny there are significant efforts to intimidate or otherwise discourage minority voters, but that the real threat to the integrity of U.S. elections comes from the other side of the political and racial lines. These are folks who seem to believe, for example, that the relatively marginal community organizing group (now disbanded after being denied any access to federal funds for non-political activities) ACORN may have stolen the 2008 presidential election for Barack Obama. So a pathetic self-promoting guy like Shabazz is pure political gold.
And sure enough, Shabazz has appeared frequently on Fox News to spout his nonsense, as reported by Dave Weigel:

How often does Fox bring on the Panthers, or talk about them? A Lexis-Nexis search finds 68 mentions of “Malik Zulu Shabazz,” a leader of the NBPP. The majority are appearances on Fox News, where Shabazz is repeatedly brought on to act as a foolish, anti-Semitic punching bag. Among the segment titles: “Professor’s Comments on Whites Stir Controversy” and “Black Panthers Take a Stand on Duke Rape Case.”

This last week, Shabazz’s fifteen minutes of Fox Fame was extended as Fox reporters and conservative bloggers brandished the “scandal” of the NBBP’s escape from civil liability for acting the fool as a response to the NAACP’s resolution calling on the Tea Party movement to repudiate its “racist elements.” RedState’s highly influential Erick Erickson even called on Republicans to make Shabazz the “Willie Horton” of the 2010 campaign.
Unbelievable, eh? But it all makes sense among folks who seem to believe that the only real racism in America is being exhibited by anyone who thinks white racism is a problem, and that in fact, white people are being victimized by minorities, in Philadelphia, in the Department of Justice, and in the White House itself. As Jonathan Chait notes in reference to Fox’s Shabazzaganza:

There has been a great deal of right-wing insanity unleashed over the last year and a half, but this is the first time that the fear has an explicitly racial cast. You now have the largest organ of movement conservatism promoting Limbaugh’s idee fixe that the Obama administration represents black America’s historical revenge against whites.

At a minimum, it’s scary that conservative Americans are being tutored in anti-anti-racism, the idea that what’s called “playing the race card” is always illegitimate, regardless of the facts. But what’s worse is the idea that semi-open race-baiting involving imaginary menaces like the New Black Panther Party is now being promoted as anti-racism. It’s anti-anti-racism with a particularly nasty twist.

There’s been a saga unfolding this week in Colorado which illustrates the fundamental fact that polls, political trends, money, and all the advantages in the world can’t guarantee an electoral victory for any given candidate, if he or she has a skeleton in the old closet that suddenly emerges and starts clanking in front of the cameras.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott McInnis, considered an even bet to defeat Denver mayor John Hickenlooper in November, has suffered this fate, leaving the Colorado GOP in a heap of trouble.
Long story short, the Denver papers seem to have done some rudimentary checking into McGinnis’ finances, and discovered that just after his retirement from Congress in 2005, he got paid a cool $300,000 for a two-year stint with a foundation in which his only visible work was a 150-page paper with the gripping title of “Musings on Water.” Somehow or other, suspicions were raised that this might not be the former congressman’s original work, and an out-of-state expert figured out that whole pages were lifted from a twenty-year-old paper written by somebody else. Mcinnis then sought to dime out his “researcher” on the project, confirming, of course, that he didn’t exactly sit down at the computer and pound out the pricey paper himself. Said researcher, an 82-year-old engineer, allowed as how he thought he was doing campaign research for McInnis, and expressed considerable unhappiness that he was only paid a few hundred bucks while the putative gubernatorial candidate was pulling down 300 large.
McInnis should be nicknamed “Digger,” since everything he’s done to “explain” his problem has just widened and deepened the crevice into which his candidacy has now descended.
The problem is, the state party convention has passed, and now McInnis is on the primary ballot with a tea party activist, Dan Maes, who just received a major fine for campaign finance violations (ironic, since the guy can’t seem to raise much money). State party poohbahs would like to find a replacement for McInnis, but can’t do that until the primary, which could well be won by Maes, who ain’t going anywhere. Meanwhile, McInnis is refusing to do anything other than soldier on with his campaign. At this point, with primary ballots already printed and in the mail, Colorado Republicans seem to be hoping that McInnis will beat Maes and then decide to withdraw his nomination, allowing party leaders to find a toothsome replacement (perhaps the loser of the Norton-Buck Senate battle).
Quite a mess, eh? And totally unforeseen so far as we can tell.
The moral of the story is that any candidate for major office should hire a good, vicious oppo research consultant to review his or her own record and show exactly what could be made of this or that “insignificant” fact. Some candidates actually do that. Looks like Scott McInnis didn’t, and in a difficult year, Democrats should have at least one bright spot in Colorado.

It didn’t get the kind of national attention that Sarah Palin’s endorsement of Karen Handel received, but it could matter down the road: Newt Gingrich has endorsed his former House colleague Nathan Deal for governor of Georgia, just a week before the July 20 primary. Moreover, Gingrich offered his imprimatur in Georgia, not on a Facebook site (Palin’s only venue for Handel so far), and has cut an ad for the North Georgia party-switcher.
I’d say this is a pretty risky gambit for Newt, taking on Palin in his own home state, all the more because this is an extremely unstable race. Five different polling outfits have released surveys of this contest since July 1, and the results are all over the place. Two polls, from Survey USA and Mason-Dixon, have shown longtime frontrunner John Oxendine maintaining his lead with over 30% of the vote, and Karen Handel moving up into second place at 23%. Two other polls, from Insider Advantage and Magellan, have Oxendine’s support collapsing down into the teens; IA had him tied with Handel, and Magellan had Handel surging into the lead. All four polls had Nathan Deal bumping along in the teens as well, and not showing much momentum.
Now Rasmussen‘s weighed in with a poll showing Handel and Deal tied for the lead at 25%, with Oxendine semi-collapsing back to 20%.
If Rasmussen’s right, and Handel and Deal wind up in a runoff, the Newt-Versus-Sarah story-line will get a lot more play, and pressure on Palin to personally campaign for her latest Mama Grizzly will grow intense.
All this activity is preliminary, of course, to the general election, and the latest poll to test various Republicans against likely Democratic nominee Roy Barnes, the Mason-Dixon survey, shows the former governor tied with Oxendine, up eleven points over Handel, and up eighteen points over Deal.

Going into yesterday’s Alabama runoffs, the Republican gubernatorial contest revolved around rumors of a big, teacher-union-generated Democratic crossover vote in favor of Dr. Robert Bentley, along with speculation that his opponent, Bradley Byrne, might have gained crucial momentum by accusing Bentley of being a Democratic or union stooge.
Bentley beat Byrne 56-44, and a cursory look at the returns shows no evidence of any massive Democratic crossover vote. In fact, turnout was down 6% from the primary, with no apparent relationship between Republican turnout numbers and those counties with or without significant Democratic contests to keep Dems on their side of the line. Moreover, Byrne did quite well in most of the counties with a big Democratic constituency. There was some anecdotal buzz yesterday about Democratic crossover in isolated locations (e.g., Madison County, where Republican turnout actually dropped 17%), but most election officials said it didn’t seem to be happening.
The much more likely explanation is that Bentley got the bulk of voters who cast ballots for Tim James and Roy Moore in the primary, hardly a stretch since both their campaign managers endorsed Bentley. James voters in particularly probably discounted Byrne’s attacks on Bentley as no more credible than Byrne’s earlier attacks on their candidate.
In any event, future Republican candidates who think demonizing teachers unions is a failsafe strategy should take a close look at Alabama.
In the two congressional runoffs, nothing that unusual happened, either. In the 2d district Republican contest, “establishment” candidate Martha Roby easily despatched Tea Party activist Rick Barber 60-40, beating him nearly three-to-one in their common home county, Montgomery, where the fiery pool hall owner did not gather his armies effectively. Roby will now face Democratic incumbent Bobby Bright in what is expected to be a close race in November.
And in the 7th district Democratic contest, where the Democratic nomination really is tantamount to election, Terri Sewell, who had superior financial resources and significant national support, defeated Shelia Smoot 55-45, with the key being Sewell’s 54-46 margin in Jefferson County, where local races boosted turnout.

Two months ago, and for a long time before that, one of the most settled propositions in American politics was that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid could not win re-election this year. (Google up “Harry Reid is toast” and you get a pretty rich collection of links stretching back for a good while). The idea was that a national leader with universal name ID and his kind of negative approval ratings couldn’t possibly dig himself out of the hole he was in.
Yesterday Rasmussen–yes, Rasmussen–released a new poll showing Harry Reid in a statistical dead heat with Republican nominee Sharron Angle. True, Angle has never been gangbusters in a general election poll, but as recently as June 9 she held an eleven-point lead over Reid–and then her issue positions started drawing attention.
Aside from Angle’s rapidly eroding horse-race numbers, her approval/disapproval ratings aren’t much better than Reid’s; even though she’s had very little time to alienate voters, she’s done so very efficiently.
It’s all a reminder of a simple but oft-forgotten fact about politics: no matter how “nationalized” an election has become; no matter how tilted the “landscape” is; no matter how rigidly partisan voters seem to be–in the end, elections require a choice between candidates, and Harry Reid has drawn an opponent who has given his campaign, and perhaps his career, new life.

This item is cross-posted from The New Republic.
So far this year, the script for Republican primaries has been easy to follow. There’s usually been a fight between the Tea Party movement and the Republican establishment; between “true conservatives” and those dismissed as RINOs; between fierce opponents of any cooperation with “socialist” Democrats and the occasional, hunted-to-extinction statesman interested in bipartisanship. You often don’t need to have a program to know the players.
But in today’s Alabama runoff, you can forgive true conservatives for being a bit confused. That’s because this primary pits an establishment RINO suspect–former Democratic state senator, upper-crust Episcopalian, and career trial lawyer Bradley Byrne–against an Evangelical conservative candidate who is allied with the teachers’ unions.
Allow me to explain. Byrne, who won 28 percent of the vote in Alabama’s June 1 primary, is closely associated with causes that the local Tea Party hates: He came down on the liberal side of the great litmus-test struggle of recent Alabama political history, Governor Bob Riley’s 2003 tax-reform initiative, which would have significantly changed one of the country’s most regressive tax systems, but is remembered by conservatives as an audacious effort to raise taxes. (It was subsequently rejected by Alabama voters in a referendum that is considered a signature victory for the hard right.) Byrne enjoys strong backing from the Alabama business community and mainstream Republican elected officials, including Governor Riley. And in the heart of the Bible Belt, he is a member of that great blue-blooded liberal establishment denomination, the Episcopal Church–an affiliation which may have influenced his near-fatal admission early in the campaign that he did not believe every single word in the Bible was literally true.
Byrne’s opponent in the runoff, Tuscaloosa state representative Dr. Robert Bentley, is a classic conservative Baptist, closely identified with 2008 presidential candidate Mike Huckabee. He ran an “outsider” campaign in which he promised not to take a salary as governor, and emerged from the back of a large pack of candidates on June 1 to win a runoff spot. Bentley has been endorsed by the campaign managers for both Tim James–the closest thing to a confirmed member of the Tea Party in the primary–and for Christian Right icon Judge Roy Moore, whose underfinanced candidacy finished a disappointing fourth.
In other words, Bentley should be considered the “conservative insurgent” against the establishmentarian Byrne. Except that Byrne hates teachers unions a lot, and his extremely personal battle with them has taken center stage in the campaign, earning him a lot of sympathy from conservatives. As a state senator, Byrne was a constant enemy of the Alabama Education Association (AEA)–once staging a one-man filibuster against a bipartisan compromise bill that would submit teacher dismissal actions to arbitration–and his antagonism only intensified during his stint as Governor Riley’s appointed overseer of the state’s two-year college network. (It makes sense that one of Byrne’s early gubernatorial endorsements came from Jeb Bush, who shares his strong hostility to teachers’ unions.) During the primary campaign, Byrne’s opposition blossomed into a monomaniacal vendetta against the AEA. Alabama political reporter Kim Chandler captured the tone nicely:

Last fall, Bradley Byrne held a press conference on the steps of the Alabama Capi­tol. Instead of standing with the white columned capitol behind him for the backdrop favored by most politicians, Byrne faced the capitol so the cameras aimed at him panned down Montgomery’s Dexter Ave­nue.
Visible over Byrne’s right shoulder was the head­quarters of the Alabama Education Association. There, Byrne said, lie many of the problems in schools and in state politics.
“I don’t think AEA stands for the best of their profes­sion. AEA stands for the worst of it,” Byrne said at the news conference.
Public clashes with the powerful teachers lobby have been the trademark of much of Byrne’s 16-year political career and have become a centerpiece of his campaign to be Ala­bama’s next governor.

This vendetta, in turn, has scrambled Alabama’s political alignments, attracting conservatives who hate teachers’ unions to Byrne, while pushing the state’s Democratic allies into bed with a candidate who, in most other states, would be considered a champion of the hard right.

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