Lots of speculative buzz out there about possible third party candidates and what they might do to President Obama’s hopes for re-election. Theo Anderson, for example, has a post up at In These Times, “Why Gary Johnson Should Terrify the Democrats,” arguing that,

The conventional wisdom is that a challenge by a strong Libertarian candidate would hurt the Republican more than the Democrat. But that seems unlikely. Democrats are usually critiqued from the right and pulled toward the center. The pressure coming from the GOP is always in the direction of more defense spending, a more hawkish foreign policy and fewer civil liberties. But what if Democrats are seriously challenged from the left on social and foreign policy-by a self-styled conservative?
The danger for Democrats isn’t that Johnson will win a significant percentage of the Left’s vote. The danger is that he’ll peel away a sizable share of the much-prized independent voters, who tend to be fiscal conservatives and social liberals, and who might feel, understandably, that Obama hasn’t played it straight with them. He backed away from his early-career support for gay marriage rights, for example, and endorsed civil unions when he became president. His position is now reported to be “evolving.” Does anyone know where it has evolved to, or when he might come to a definite conclusion? Or where he’s at on immigration reform? Or on the drug war?
There’s no uncertainty about where Gary Johnson stands on those issues. On every one of them, his position is both clear and deeply offensive to the GOP base, which is why he never had a chance of winning the Party’s nomination and has very little chance of winning the presidency. But it’s exactly why he appeals to independents.

Anderson’s rationale seems a little tortured, especially in stark contrast to Johnson’s limited charisma. Mr. Excitement he’s not, which is one reason he tanked in December, while quasi-libertarian Ron Paul is still a nettlesome factor in the GOP field.
Moreover, Anderson makes the classic mistake of treating Independents as a real-world third force, which they are not, as Alan I. Abramowitz has made clear with hard-headed data analysis on many occasions. From Abramowitz’s most recent post at Sabato’s Crystal Ball:

…There’s an organization that hopes to provide Americans with a centrist alternative to the two major party candidates in 2012. It’s called Americans Elect and it has already raised over $20 million…The absence of a high profile candidate is far from the only major obstacle that Americans Elect faces. Attracting media coverage, raising the hundreds of millions of dollars needed to wage a national campaign and securing a place on the ballot in all 50 states are perennial problems faced by third party candidates.
Of course there will be third party candidates on the ballot in 2012, just as there are in every presidential election. But it is unlikely that any of these candidates will approach the 19% of the vote that Ross Perot received in 1992, or even the 8% that he received in 1996.
Third party candidates have not fared well in recent presidential elections: The total vote won by third party candidates has fallen from 20% in 1992 to 10% in 1996, 4% in 2000, 1% in 2004 and 2% in 2008.
There’s an important reason why third party candidates have fared poorly in recent presidential elections and why third party candidates are likely to fare poorly again in 2012: partisan polarization. The vast majority of American voters today, in fact well over 90%, identify with or lean toward one of the two major parties. And the vast majority of those identifiers and leaners strongly prefer their own party’s candidates and policies to those of the opposing party.
…Over time, the parties have been moving apart. But both Democrats and Republicans are now closer to their own party and farther from the opposition party than at any time in the past four decades. Democrats on average place the Democratic Party exactly where they place themselves while they place the Republican Party very far to the right of where they place themselves. And Republicans on average place the Republican Party exactly where they place themselves while they place the Democratic Party very far to the left of where they place themselves. As a result, very few supporters of either party are likely to be tempted to vote for a centrist third party.

As for “Independents,” Abramowitz clarifies the ‘threat’:

There is one group of voters that might be tempted to vote for a centrist third party: pure independents. These voters, on average, place themselves right in the middle of the two major parties and rather far from either one. But pure independents typically make up less than 10% of the electorate, and they tend to be less interested in politics and less attentive to political campaigns than voters who identify with a political party. There are simply not enough of them and they are too hard to mobilize to have a major impact on the outcome of a presidential election.

None of this is to say that is it impossible for a third party candidate to do significant damage to the Democratic nominee, as many believe Ralph Nader did in 2000. But it is unlikely, especially with the existing possible third party candidates, none of whom appear to have the chops to bust the two-party paradigm.

One of America’s most treasured conceits is that our electorate votes on the basis issues and their interests, which they very often don’t do in the real world. A host of other factors come into play, including judgements about character, family tradition, party loyalty and others.
I’ve often wondered about the role of “likeability,” for lack of a better term, in candidate choice. I suspect that, who knows, maybe 5 percent of voters or more cast their ballots for a candidate because they like his/her personality. Sometimes this works to the benefit of Democrats, as possibly in 1960, when JFK got elected, or maybe ’92 and 2008, when Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, respectively, won.
I don’t know of any definitive measures for quantifying “likeability” in a useful way, although there have been a some dicey attempts. In 2007, for example, a Quinnipiac University poll asked respondents about their “preferences for guests at Thanksgiving dinner” The results indicated more Republicans wanted to have Obama over for Thanksgiving dinner than Hillary Clinton or John Edwards, while Dems preferred Giuliani as a Republican guest over McCain and Thompson.
In that same year, an Associated Press/Yahoo survey quizzed the public about their choices for a bowling teammates. As for the most and least welcome bowling teammates, Hillary Clinton was last choice for 39 percent of respondents and first choice for 20 percent of respondents, while Giuliani was favored by 17 percent and opposed by 13 percent.
Neither one of these polls seems a very serious effort to quantify likeability for purposes of voting. Just because you want to have dinner or bowl with a candidate, it doesn’t mean they have nailed your vote. But it does seem like there should be a way to measure the phenomenon. There have also been “who was more likeable?” questions in polls to assess debate performance, but not much correlation with voting choices.
The “favorability” ratings in many polls are useful. But a favorable opinion about a candidate can be based on issue positions and job performance, well as personality factors. It’s not quite the same thing as ‘likeability,’ which is hard enough to define, much less quantify. Yet it could be a pivotal factor in a close election.
Obama seems to have likeability, which may be reflected in his substantially higher approval and favorability ratings than his party. He conveys a positive spirit and an appealing, relaxed demeanor, which I doubt can be convincingly quantified. Maybe that’s why he was called “No Drama Obama” toward the end of the ’08 campaign, while McCain was awash in tense theatrics. The wingnuts’ shrill personal attacks against him notwithstanding, my hunch is that Obama’s likeability will serve him well again in November.

According to Brian Beutler’s Talking Points Memo post “Dems Plot Payroll Tax Cut End Game,” Dems will amend the GOP proposal to include extended unemployment insurance and Medicare physician reimbursements. Expect tricky parliamentary chess moves ahead.
In a video released by the White House this morning, President Obama is urging supporters to pressure Congress to extend the payroll tax cut before it expires. Noting that wage earners will have to shell out $40 more per paycheck if the tax cut lapses after February, Obama called on supporters to post at Twitter and Facebook, explaining what they could do with $40 more per paycheck.
Rick Santorum is the only Republican presidential candidate who has ever won a swing state, as he recently bragged. But he is also the only one who lost one by 18 points, and it seems like a good time for Dems to better understand why. Julie Hirschfeld Davis has the skinny at Bloomberg Businessweek. It had to do with a little too much emphasis on “cultural issues” and alienating women, as well as Santorum “moving his family to suburban Virginia, yet still claiming a property tax deduction and tuition reimbursement in Pennsylvania.”
At The Daily Green Jim Dipeso, policy director for Republicans for Environmental Protection, has a post, “Swing Voters Want Renewable Energy.” Apparently there are a few Republican environmentalists, who are not just industry puppets providing cover. Dipeso cites a State of the Rockies Project poll of voters in six states indicating agreement that “renewable energy would create jobs in their states” and 80 percent believed “it’s possible to have both a strong economy and to protect land and water.” Dipeso also discusses an encouraging Third Way focus group of mid-western and southern swing voters who support moderate government regulation to protect the environment.
Speaking of swing voters, Ryan Lizza’s “Obama’s Swing Voters” in The New Yorker flags five interesting links. which are “far more informative than much of the horse-race analysis…”
Despite polls indicating most Catholics are not opposed to government funding for birth control, the Republicans continue to parrot the meme that President Obama is somehow dissing their faith. They are also trying to generalize it more broadly with repetition of terms like “Obama’s war on religion.” Unfortunately, memes don’t have to be true to be effective. “Since winning 54 percent of the Catholic vote in 2008, the president’s approval rating among Catholics had fallen to 39 percent in the latest Rasmussen Reports poll. And Republicans are eagerly trying to drive that wedge between Obama and Catholics even deeper,” reports Hayley Peterson in the Washington Examiner. it appears that the Obama campaign might benefit from more creative outreach to Catholics and other religious groups.
Craig Gilbert reports in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on the impact of the Catholic vote in key battleground states. Gilbert notes that “New Hampshire (38%) and New Mexico (36%) had a higher percentage of Catholic voters than Wisconsin (33%) in 2008, according to exit polls.” Other battlegound states in which Catholics were a quarter or more of the electorate include PA, FL, MI, IA and CO.
Good to see that the Obama campaign is alert to the importance of the high-turnout senior vote, as evidenced by this excellent YouTube clip, which should be sent to all your senior relatives and friends. Actually there are quite a few YouTube video clips about Obama and seniors here.
Douglas Schoen warns at The Daily Beast that it’s “Not Too Late for Americans Elect to Win 2012 Presidential Election,” noting that “A recently completed Americans Elect survey found that and voters favor, 58 percent to 13 percent, having an alternative presidential ticket that is independent of the Democratic and Republican parties on the ballot in 2012.” Schoen also cites a Washington Post/ABC News poll in November showing even stronger support for an Independent ticket.

I trust that President Obama read E. J. Dionne, Jr.’s Sunday WaPo column, “Contraception and the cost of culture wars,” in which he argued that the President crafted a good compromise, albeit a little late, exempting religious institutions and their affiliates from being obligated to pay for contraceptives.
Many progressives disagree, citing equally-persuasive arguments that it should be a collective obligation of a sensible society. On balance, it appears to be a workable compromise that most reasonable people in both parties can live with.
But the real gold in Dionne’s column is in his eloquent defense of the much-battered Catholic Church’s good works, particularly with respect to alleviating the suffering of economic hardship.

Those of us who are liberal Catholics have remained in the church for reasons beyond tribal loyalties or a desire to honor the traditions of our parents and grandparents. At the heart of the love many of us have for the church — despite our frustrations over its abysmal handling of the pedophilia scandal and its reluctance to grant women the rights they are due — is a profound respect for the fact on so many questions that count, Catholicism walks its talk and harnesses its faith to the good works the Gospel demands.
When it comes to lifting up the poor, healing the sick, assisting immigrants and refugees, educating the young (especially in inner cities), comforting orphaned and abandoned children, and organizing the needy to act in their own interest, the church has been there with resources and an astoundingly committed band of sisters, priests, brothers and lay people. Organizations such as Catholic Charities, the Catholic Health Association, the Catholic Campaign for Human Development and Catholic Relief Services make the words of Jesus come alive every day.

Critics of the role of the Catholic church will have no trouble enumerating its sins against humanity down though history. But all the while the quiet good works by rank and file church activists to help the poor and oppressed noted by Dionne have benefited millions around the world. it’s important to acknowledge that, even when church scandals dominate the headlines. In the context of the current contraception controversy, Dionne adds:

For liberals who sided with the church in this controversy, the most vexing problem with the original exemption on contraception is that it defined “religious” so narrowly that the reality that these organizations go out of their way to serve non-Catholics was held against them. Their Gospel-inspired work was defined as non-religious. This violated the very essence of Christian charity and the church’s social justice imperatives.
…What bothers liberal Catholics about the arguments advanced by some of our conservative friends is that the Catholic right seems so eager to focus the church’s witness to the world on issues such as abortion, gay marriage, stem cell research and, now, perhaps, contraception that they would effectively, if not necessarily intentionally, relegate the church’s social justice work and teaching to second-class status.
Liberal Catholics were proud to stand with conservatives in defending the church’s religious liberty rights in carrying out its social and charitable mission. Now, we’d ask conservatives to consider that what makes the Gospel so compelling — especially for the young, many of whom are leaving the church — is the central role it assigns to our responsibilities to act on behalf of the needy, the left-out and the abandoned.
And we’d ask our non-Catholic liberal friends to think about this, too. Many of us agreed that broad contraception coverage was, as a general matter, a good thing, and we shared their concern for women’s rights. But we were troubled that some with whom we usually agree seemed to relish a fight with the church and defined any effort to accommodate its anxieties as “selling out.”

Dionne applauds Obama for striking a reasonable compromise, but also for the strong stand he took as a young politician in 2006 defending “religion in the public square” and opposing stereotypes of religious people as intolerant fanatics.
President Obama would do well to celebrate the great works of the Catholic church at a time when many Catholics are feeling dissed by the negative fallout of scandals and unfair stereotypes. But it’s not just the Catholic church. “Prosperity Gospel” protestant churches, many with preachers living extremely high on the hog and often reactionary politics, get tremendous media exposure, while thousands of smaller churches with great programs serving the disadvantaged and destitute in their communities are overshadowed. Non-Christian faiths have also made a difference for the better in their communities in numerous instances.
It’s important that religious institutions should be recognized and uplifted for their charitable works, and the president who makes a special effort to do so could reap a bountiful harvest on election day.

The turnout figures for Santorum’s Tuesday trifecta should put a damper on his crowing. As Catalina Camia reports in USA Today On Politics: “In Colorado, where Romney campaigned heavily, turnout was down about 7% from 2008, according to data compiled by MSNBC’s First Read. In Minnesota, turnout was down by 24%. And in Missouri, which was a “beauty contest” primary with no impact on delegate allocation, voting was down 57%.”
“Turning the Tide in Ohio” a Campaigns & Elections post by by Dennis Willard & Melissa Fazekas addresses the successful campaign to defeat Governor Kasich’s assault on collective bargaining for public workers. The authors explain “how social media helped amplify our message, boost earned media efforts, and overturn an Ohio law.”
According to Gabriella Schwarz CNN.com post “Poll: Obama leads GOP candidates in Virginia,” in the latest Quinnipiac Poll of registered voters, “President Barack Obama edged out Mitt Romney in a hypothetical general election match-up in Virginia, according to a new poll. …Obama captured 47% to Romney’s 43%, a wider margin than the two percentage point difference in the December results. But Romney fared better than his GOP rivals in the likely swing state….Obama led Newt Gingrich 51% to 37%, Rick Santorum 49% to 41% and Ron Paul 47% to 40%.”
The same poll has former DNC Chairman Tim Kaine in a statistical tie with George Allen in the U.S. Senate race. “Kaine’s standing in the Senate race will almost certainly be tied to Virginia’s view of the president,” according to Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. This is a high priority race for the GOP, and Dems can help Kaine at his Act Blue page.
When the best Romney can do with a Pawlenty endorsement in MN (his home state), is a humiliating defeat, as Ben Jacobs notes at the Daily Beast, it’s probably a safe bet that TimPaw is not going to be seen as much of a veep asset on the GOP ticket.
As the 10th most populous state (close to tied with NC and NJ), Georgia is the biggest prize on Super Tuesday (March 6), and it’s a must-win for Newt, who never won a state-wide race in his former home state. (Gingrich now lives in VA, where he failed to qualify for the primary ballot). In 2008, 60 percent of GA GOP voters were white evangelicals. Romney and Santorum are reportedly joining the fray in GA.
Sara Kiff of Ezra Klein’s Wonkblog explains why the white house is prepared to hang tough on supporting health care coverage of contraceptives. “A poll out Tuesday from the Public Religion Research Institute finds 52 percent of Catholic voters agreed with the statement, “employers should be required to provide their employees with health care plans that cover contraception and birth control at no cost.” That’s pretty much in line with overall support for the provision, which hovers at 55 percent – likely because Catholics use contraceptives at rates similar to the rest of Americans.” Kiff reports that 60 percent of young voters and women support the measure.
E.J. Dionne’s WaPo op-ed, “Clint, Rick and the limits of pessimism” spotlights Rove’s blunder in criticizing Clint Eastwood for making a highly popular ad celebrating America’s moxie, as symptomatic of the GOP’s rut — “a constant doubling-down on glumness.”
Harold Meyerson has some fun with his WaPo op-ed “The GOP scrambles for a bogeyman,” holding the Republicans to account for their Europe-bashing as a way to trash President Obama. Meyerson asks Republicans, “If Europe is not a “free land,” why are we still in NATO? If Europe is home to the pernicious bureaucratic authoritarianism that Romney and Gingrich claim, why haven’t Republicans called for breaking our alliances with it? Why do we have close ties to Germany, where workers have considerable input into corporate decisions? Or to Britain, the home of national health? Is Europe friend or foe?”
TV still rules as the primary source for political news, according to TPM’s Kyle Leighton, who explains of a new survey: “The Pew study also shows that there is certainly overlap between those who watch newscasts and seek information online. Two thirds of Americans get their news either “regularly” or “sometimes” from cable, nearly the same as those who go to local television news, and 61 percent that look to the national nightly broadcasts for the same. About 52 percent say the regularly or sometimes go to the internet, and with 32 percent saying they never do.”

Perhaps the most relevant implications of Santorum’s Tuesday trifecta are: 1. Romney’s support is weak 2. Santorum edges up in the GOP veepstakes, and 3. Newt’s support is much weaker than might be expected after his big SC win.
The votes in MN, CO and MO were two caucuses and a beauty contest, respectively, and the turnout was low in all three. It is tempting to dismiss their results entirely, except that these are swing states and Santorum did win them all. They may signal some movement in his direction. It’s nothing for Dems to lose sleep over yet, since Santorum’s views are pretty extreme across the spectrum of major issues.
Santorum does defend conservative economic policies more artfully than do his competitors for the GOP nod, which is why he has done better with blue collar voters in his congressional and senatorial elections than have most Republicans. He has on occasion supported causes championed by labor, such as a minimum wage hike and steel tariffs, and he has been the GOP field’s most vocal advocate of re-invigorating U.S. manufacturing.
But his smokescreen defenses of more tax breaks for the rich, de-regulation, partial privatization of social security and draconian cuts in social programs are not likely to hold up well under the light of increasingly intense national scrutiny. It is even harder to see how his extremist views on social issues, which include criticism of contraception, won’t alienate millions of swing voters, particularly Republicans of a libertarian bent. And he is not exactly ‘Mr. Clean’ when it comes to coddling with lobbyists.
Still, Santorum’s three wins make a case that he can generate some excitement with the conservative base, which is a good quality in a veep candidate. He just might be able to help Romney in PA, as well as with Catholic blue collar voters in general. He has earned a spot on the veep short list.
Newt wasn’t on the ballot in MO Tuesday. And his weak showings in CO (3rd) and MN (4th) suggest that his widely-ridiculed Occupy the Moon proposal may have damaged his chances. (Memo to Newt: Not every brain fart should be loudly trumpeted).
Santorum’s Fat Tuesday does nothing to dismiss the mounting evidence that the GOP field — each candidate included — is so flawed that their nominee will likely need a sudden economic downturn or some other disaster to get traction against the incumbent. At the very least, Santorum has increased the odds that the GOP field of presidential candidates is in for a long, grueling slog, while President Obama uses the opportunity raise money and shore up his coalition.

No matter how many times the sharpest political scientists present data proving that the “Independent voter” category is largely a myth, some reporter will come out with an article somewhere larded up with quotes saying this or that candidate is toast because they can’t win ‘Independents.’ They are the myth that will not die, the elusive unicorns of politics, prancing around in sparkly woodlands in the easily-distracted heads of lazy reporters and academics.
So, one more time. There is no Santa Clause, no Easter Bunny, no tooth-fairy and there are no ‘independent voters.’ There are swing voters. There are political moderates. There are Reagan Democrats and other voters who sometimes vote for different parties. But over 90 percent of self-identified ‘independents’ lean Democratic or Republican, according to Alan I. Abramowitz, author of “The Disappearing Center: Engaged Citizens, Polarization, and American Democracy.” The term has little useful meaning, other than serving as a feel-good, catch-all category for Democratic and Republican voters who can’t bear to identify themselves as such.
Jamelle Bouie sheds light on the phenomenon in his American Prospect post, “New Name, Same Old Thing.”:

Among political scientists, it’s well known that the “independent voter” is a myth. When pressed, the large majority of voters lean Democratic or Republican and tend to vote like partisans, consistently supporting their party of choice. The only difference between a strong partisan and a “weak partisan leaner” is that the latter are reluctant–for whatever reason–to place themselves in one camp or the other…Over the last few years, this myth of the independent voter has taken hold among political journalists and others outside of academia.

Bouie provides a painful example of the delusion, which you can read if you want to at his link above, then has this to say about the so-called “Obama independents”:

“Obama Independents” fit the profile of a Democratic-leaning voter, who might defect from the party in GOP wave years, but for the most part chooses the name with “D” next to it when in the voting booth…There’s no need to hype Obama Independents as some new segment of the electorate, and indeed, the entire exercise is a little banal. Of course the Democratic presidential candidate needs to win a large majority of Democratic voters to win the presidency. That’s just how it goes.

The overwhelming majority of ‘independents’ are Republican and Democratic “leaners,” while swing voters and moderates will remain the more relevant categories for political analysis.

Looks like the Republicans aren’t totally paranoid about voter fraud, after all. An Indiana jury just convicted Republican Secretary of State Charlie White of three counts of voter fraud, two counts of perjury and one count of theft, according to this Indy Star report.
Ronald Brownstein has a sobering analysis for those who think President Obama will have a cakewalk election in November: “Political strategists used to believe that incumbents were unlikely to win elections (or carry states) where their approval rating lagged below 50 percent; but given the widespread cynicism about politicians many strategists on both sides believe the tipping point is now around 47 percent. Below that number, incumbents are a distinct underdog; above it, they are favored, with the ground tilting much more toward them once they cross 50 percent…the number of states Obama can plausibly contest to reach 270 Electoral College votes is narrowing.” On the upside, Brownstein notes that Obama is “generally polling above his approval ratings in head-to-head match-ups against the leading Republican contenders-who have seen their favorability ratings decline amid their fierce primary struggle.”
Punditty at Allvoices.com has a somewhat sunnier take on Obama’s prospects: “According to poll figures available Feb. 3, 2012, at Dave Leip’s Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections, President Obama leads in 20 states when the three most recent polls for that state are averaged, giving him 259 electoral votes of the 270 needed to win re-election. The unnamed GOP opponent is ahead in 15 states for 106 electoral votes, with 136 electoral votes rated as tossups and 37 electoral votes lack enough data to reach a conclusion.”
AP’s Ken Thomas assesses prospects for a long GOP campaign, and also sees a tough struggle for Dems: “A Gallup survey showed Obama’s approval ratings dropping in North Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida, all critical to his re-election. In New Hampshire, which Obama carried in 2008, he had an approval rating of about 38 percent…Adding to the concerns, the Congressional Budget Office estimated this week that the economy would grow only 2 percent this year. It also predicted an unemployment rate of 8.9 percent on Election Day.”
In his post on “The 50 Percent Problem” at The Hill, Democratic consultant Mark Mellman takes an instructive look at the relationship between presidential approval ratings and reelection prospects, and notes “Professor Alan Abramowitz’s statistical model suggests that a 1-point increase in the president’s net approval rating leads to a 0.1 percent increase in vote — meaningful, but hardly the perfect correlation implied by the 50 percent rule…So based on all the data, what can we say about approval ratings and presidential votes? In short, presidents with approval ratings below 43 percent are quite likely to lose, while those over 55 percent are very likely to win. In between, where President Obama now stands, is the zone of uncertainty…
Charlie Cook sees a significant uptick in President Obama’s prospects: “My feeling for much of the past year was that Obama’s reelection chances were distinctly uphill. Today, I am not so sure. I see it as more of an evenly matched fight, something borne out by a USA Today/Gallup survey of the key battleground states showing essentially a tie.”
As if the GOP doesn’t have enough internecine conflict, Karl Rove picks a fight with Clint Eastwood for doing a patriotic “Yea America” ad cheering on Big Auto’s comeback — just because it indirectly calls attention to the fact that President Obama’s initiative — which Romney opposed — saved America’s most pivotal industry. Hard to see any political upside for Rove’s whine, which has undoubtedly increased the ad’s hittage, now at over 2.7 million and counting.
Republicans shot themselves in the other foot with a different Super Bowl ad deploying a demeaning racial stereotype to defeat Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow (MI). The denunciations are rolling in. As Republican consultant Mike Murphy swiftly tweeted his verdict Sunday night: “Pete Hoekstra Superbowl TV ad in MI Senate race really, really dumb. I mean really.” Hoekstra still supports the ad, which was produced by the same wizard who did the ‘Demon Sheep’ ad for Carly Fiorina in her losing Senate campaign in CA. and Christine O’Donnell’s “I’m You” spot in her losing U.S. senate campaign in DE.
The buzz is increasing, even in conservative circles, that Dems may indeed retake the House, mostly because of the growing perception that Republicans are responsible for Washington gridlock, reports WaPo’s Aaron Blake.
Big shift in Obama campaign fund-raising strategy, as Michael O’Brien reports at MSNBC First Read: “Obama campaign manager Jim Messina emailed supporters to formally endorse contributions to Priorities USA, the Democratic super PAC founded by Bill Burton, a former White House deputy press secretary. “With so much at stake, we can’t allow for two sets of rules in this election whereby the Republican nominee is the beneficiary of unlimited spending and Democrats unilaterally disarm,” Messina wrote on the campaign’s blog. “Therefore, the campaign has decided to do what we can, consistent with the law, to support Priorities USA in its effort to counter the weight of the GOP Super PAC.”
Lest you thought that the GOP voter suppression campaign was finally flagging, the Virginia News Leader reports that “there are at least 17 bills flowing through the Virginia General Assembly that make voting more difficult…Those “Voter Integrity” bills are generally the work of Republicans.”
George Wagner’s op-ed in the Milwaukee-Journal Sentinel, “Today’s GOP Vacates the Center,” presents some interesting data about the primary source of current political polarization and paralysis: “…Over the last generation, the Republican Party has drifted much farther to the right than Democrats have moved to the left. Political scientists Howard Rosenthal and Keith T. Poole cite legislative voting records over the past 35 years. By creating a widely used measurement that reveals the ideology of congressional members, U.S. Senate Republicans moved twice as far to the right as Senate Democrats moved to the left; and House Republicans moved six times farther to the right than their Democratic colleagues move to the left…It’s really been a one-sided shift. The polarization that the electorate decries has been caused mostly by the GOP.

Democrats have reason to be encouraged by this morning’s report that that the economy added 243,000 jobs in January and the overall unemployment rate has dropped to 8.3 percent. Of course the Administration should vigorously exercise its bragging rights concerning the monthly report, and especially the overall favorable employment trend of recent months.
For those who want a more nuanced understanding of what the latest employment numbers may mean for the 2012 elections, however, Nate Silver’s “Obama’s Magic Number? 150,000 Jobs Per Month” at his FiveThirtyEight NYT blog may be the most incisive data-driven analysis yet published on the relationship of employment to presidential politics. Silver takes a sobering look at the connection, and explains:

No economic indicator is the holy grail…And there are a number of non-economic variables pertinent to predicting presidential elections — wars, candidate quality and ideology, turnout, scandals and so forth…But if you want to focus a single economic indicator, job growth during the presidential election year — especially as measured by the series called nonfarm payrolls — has a lot going for it.
…Data related to the change in the level of employment have had among the highest correlations with electoral performance in the past. The correlations aren’t perfect by any means. But if you perform a true apples-to-apples comparison (that is, looking at the economic indicators alone rather than muddying them with other sorts of extraneous variables), they do at least as well as anything else in predicting elections, and slightly better than some other commonly used metrics.
Just as important, there are a lot of qualitative reasons to focus on the jobs numbers. They measure something tangible and important. They receive much attention from economists, investors, political campaigns and the news media, and therefore inform the public discussion. They are released every month after only a minimal lag. They are subject to revision, and the revisions can be significant, but they aren’t quite as bad as those for other economic series like G.D.P. or personal income growth. The jobs numbers are calculated in a comparatively straightforward way, and are usually in pretty good alignment with other economic measures. They don’t need to be adjusted for inflation.

Silver then taps some creative methodology to correlate the nonfarm payroll growth rate with the popular vote margin of defeat or victory for the incumbent party in 16 post WWII presidential elections, and he comes to some interesting conclusions, including:

Overall, the relationship between job growth and electoral performance is good but not great…Roughly speaking, there were 10 election years in which you could make a pretty good prediction about the election outcome from knowing the jobs numbers alone: 1948, 1960, and then the eight elections from 1980 onward…In six other elections, you would have needed to look beyond the jobs numbers to come to a good prediction about the outcome.

Citing some of the complicating factors that can cloud his data-driven analysis, such as Eisenhower’s charisma, the Watergate scandal and foreign policy debacles. Regarding a possible Obama-Romney race, Silver argues,

…If we knew nothing else about the election but how many jobs were created between January and October 2012, we would deem Mr. Obama to be a favorite if the economy created more than 107,000 jobs per month and an underdog otherwise. Basically, this would represent job creation at about the rate of population growth.

That’s good news for Obama. The “what have you done for me lately?” factor may signal even better news:

…The public has tended to give greater weight to recent job growth, discounting earlier performance when the trajectory seems positive…If you break it down in more detail, you’ll find that job growth during the third year of a president’s term has a positive effect on his re-election odds, while the coefficients attached to the first two years are negative.
But none of these results are statistically significant or particularly close to it; only job growth during the fourth year of a president’s term has a clear effect.

Silver then factors in presidential approval ratings into his calculations, which indicate:

Mr. Obama’s approval rating is now 46.5 percent, according to the Real Clear Politics average…That isn’t terrible — it’s in the range where Mr. Obama might be able to eke out a victory in the Electoral College — but it’s somewhat below average. From 1948 through 2008, the average president had an approval rating of 52 percent as of Feb. 1 of the election year, according to the Roper Center archives.
If Mr. Obama has an approval rating of 52 percent by November, he will almost certainly win re-election. He’d also be a favorite if he’s at 50 percent. And 48 percent or 49 percent might also do the trick, since at that point Mr. Obama’s approval rating would likely exceed his disapproval rating.
But Mr. Obama is not quite there yet. The surest way for him to improve his approval rating will be to create jobs at a rate that exceeds the rate of population growth.
We can come up with an estimate of just how many jobs this might be if we put a president’s approval rating as of Feb. 1 and the payrolls numbers into a regression equation…I’ll spare you the math (although it is straightforward), but this works out to a break-even number of 166,000 jobs per month — not a huge number, but more than the 107,000 that we had estimated before accounting for Mr. Obama’s middling approval rating.
…If you run another version of the analysis that considers a president’s net approval rating, along with the rate of payroll growth net of population growth, you come up with a break-even number of 151,000 jobs per month.

The Wall St. Journal is predicting an average of 155K jobs being added per month in 2012, notes Silver. But he adds that forecasting track records are “frankly pretty mediocre.” Taking all of the factors into consideration, Silver ventures, ” If payrolls growth averages 175,000 per month, Mr. Obama will probably be a favorite, but not a prohibitive one. If it averages 125,000 per month, he will be a modest underdog.”
Silver’s numbers appear to be sound enough, and 150K jobs per month seems like a good guidepost. Rachel Weiner cautions at WaPo’s The Fix, however, that “No president in recent history has been reelected with unemployment above 8 percent, and analysts suggest it would take growth of between 167,000 and 260,000 jobs a month to get there by November.”
It would be interesting to see what Silver’s analysis could do scaled down to the state level, taking into consideration Geoffrey Skelley’s point at Sabato’s Crystal Ball that “after all, presidents are elected in 51 individual battles (50 states plus Washington, D.C.).” It might be worthwhile to look at needed job growth and margins of victory in the half-dozen most volatile swing states. That could be helpful to Dems in terms of laser-targeting resources.

Romney’s gloatfest about his big Florida win has been gished by his latest gaffe. But the most interesting statistic of the election — the 14 percent decline in GOP primary turnout from ’08 — does not bode well for Republicans in the general election. Granted, there was a big property tax initiative on the ballot in ’08. But Janet Hook’s Wall St. Journal report, “Florida Turnout Falls Short of Hopes” notes that leading voter turnout experts believed it to be lower than expected nonetheless, all the more disappointing to the GOP because Florida is hosting the Republican national convention this summer.
Gov. Mitch Daniels, Indiana’s shameless corporate toady, signs the ‘right-to-work’ bill into law — the first rust belt state to do so. The great Hoosier, Eugene V. Debs, turns in his grave as workers begin protests.
But it looks like a ‘Stop the Insanity’ movement may be afoot among some other GOP governors, according to Michael Cooper’s New York Times article “Second Year In, Republican Governors Moderate Tone.” Well, maybe just a ‘Reduce the Cluelessness’ trend.
Jamie Stiehm’s “What’s a Republican Feminist To Do?” at the NYT ‘Campaign Stops’ blog explains the dilemma facing Republican women who don’t think women who have abortions should be criminalized. Stiehm doesn’t directly address whether some pro-choice Republican women will vote Democratic, but it’s clearly a possibility for those who strongly believe that women ought to have dominion over their own bodies. Her post also illuminates Romney’s flip-flops on the issue, in stark contrast to both of his parents. Stiehm’s best quote comes from Ted Kennedy in his victory over Romney in the ’94 Senate race: “I am pro-choice. My opponent is multiple choice.”
Richard Cohen’s WaPo column “Republicans Have Only Themselves to Blame” provides a condensed catalog of GOP folly from the primary trail, along with some sharp zingers, among them “Yahoos stride the stage” and “The GOP is brain-dead.” As for the cause, Cohen explains: “The Republican establishment acts as if this season’s goon squad of presidential candidates has come out of nowhere, an act of God — a tsunami that hit the party and receded, leaving nothing but nitwits standing…For too long it has been mute in the face of a belligerent anti-intellectualism, pretending that knowledge and experience do not matter and that Washington is a condition and not a mere city.”
This should be Thursdays’ most unappealing event.
TDS’s James Vega did a worthy takedown of the recent WaPo article in the Fix, “Obama: The most polarizing president. Ever.” Now Jim Manley, a longtime aide to Democratic Sens. Ted Kennedy and Harry Reid has a rebuttal, also in the Fix, featuring quotes placing the blame for polarization where it more plausibly belongs, including this gem by Thomas Mann, of the Brookings Institution, and Norman Ornstein, of the American Enterprise Institute: “One of our two major parties, the Republicans, has become an insurgent outlier–ideologically extreme, contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime, scornful of compromise, unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science, and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”
Josh Dzieza has a rogues’ gallery, “Who Gave $1 Million or More to Super PACs? A Daily Beast Roundup“.
Mindful that “after all, presidents are elected in 51 individual battles,” Geoffrey Skelley reviews the latest unemployment rates of the 50 states at Sabato’s Crystal Ball, and discusses the possible implications. For example, “Nevada is a toss up state that…However, the terrible state of the Silver State’s economy — it has the highest unemployment rate in the nation at 12.6% — might be a drag on Obama…Then there are toss ups such as Virginia (6.2%) and Iowa (5.6%), which have jobless rates considerably lower than the national average. That could make these states more likely to support the status quo and vote for the incumbent. For the same reason, recent good news regarding the economies of many Rust Belt states could improve Obama’s reelection chances…Obama barely won North Carolina in 2008, and the state’s 9.9% unemployment rate helps explain why we believe, at the moment, the Republicans are slightly favored to take back the Tar Heel State in November. Conversely, New Mexico, a state with a large Hispanic population that has been trending more Democratic, has a fairly low unemployment rate, making it more likely to remain in the president’s column.”
At FiveThirtyEight.com John Sides sorts out the available data to address the question, “Did Romney’s Ad Advantage Help in Florida?” Lots of significant caveats here, but Sides concludes that “I would say there is suggestive evidence that Mr. Romney’s advantages in advertising helped him win in Florida – but it qualifies as circumstantial.”
Nate Berg reports at the Atlantic that “Increasing Density and Diversity Likely to Make Western States More Blue.” Berg notes that “much of this shift to the blue side of the spectrum is due to the heavy concentration of new growth in the urban areas of these six states and, not unrelated, their increasing minority populations…The Las Vegas metro area, for example, is now home to three out of four Nevadans. The state’s minority population also increased by about 11 percent between censuses, bringing the non-white population to nearly 45 percent. Two-thirds of Arizonans live in the Phoenix metro area. Arizona’s minority population also increased from 36.2 percent in 2000 to 42.2 percent in 2010. The Albuquerque metro area now houses about 44 percent of New Mexicans. Nearly 40 percent of all Idahoans live in the Boise metro area.”
Don’t miss this moving photo tribute to Obama’s leadership