Well, the Georgia U.S. Senate runoff is finally over, and while the result was no surprise, the margin for Republican Saxby Chambliss–57%-43%–was higher than most people expected.
A quick and superficial look at the numbers confirms the suspicion that Chambliss’ vote came back out for the runoff more strongly than that of Democrat Jim Martin. Total turnout was down about 40% from November 4. But in suburban Cobb and Gwinnett Counties, Chambliss’ margin over Martin actually went up 17,000 votes in each. Meanwhile, in the two largest urban/suburban counties where Martin needed a big vote, his margins declined significantly: by 77,000 in Dekalb and by 62,000 in Fulton. These four counties alone account for a significant share of the bloated Chambliss margin.
Since there was no exit polling, it will take a while to get the demographic breakdowns, but it certainly looks like the indications from early voting that African-Americans were not turning out for Martin as they did for Obama on November 4 held true on Runoff Day. We will also need to wait a bit to determine if Chambliss’s stop-Obama message actually turned some voters.

I was gratified to see that Patrick Ruffini of NextRight quickly responded to my post about the “Rebuild the Party” manifesto that he has been instrumental in drafting and promoting among Republicans. His main argument is that the notable absence of any ideological-debate component in his scheme for the revival of the GOP is a matter of “division of labor”: it’s not his job, and his suggestions for infrastructure building, internet-based organizing, and new faces are steps Republicans should take no matter where they wind up on ideology or policy.
That’s fair enough, though I must take issue with his “so’s-your-old-man” argument that “no such ideological introspection or self-criticism was present in the Obama victory.” Actually, there was a pretty robust debate throughout the primaries about Obama’s ideology, ranging from his “theory of change” to his positions on FISA, Pakistan, and residual troops in Iraq. And there was some distinct unhappiness among a decent number of progressives about his adoption of market-based approaches to both universal health care and climate change, and his refusal to categorically call for repealing No Child Left Behind or systematically overturning existing trade agreements.
But more importantly, the main point of my post was that Democrats have undergone a period of “ideological introspection” that’s gone on for many years, and that preceded and continued during the “netroots” reforms of this decade, while Republicans as a whole haven’t really reconsidered their ideological underpinnings since the late 1970s, other than to accuse GOP officeholders of various forms of heresy or infidelity. And the problem with Ruffini’s “division of labor” argument is that few if any other influential Republicans are dealing with the issues that he considers somebody else’s business.
Indeed, the dominant point of view in Republican circles right now is exactly what it has been since at least 1976: money and mechanics aside, there’s nothing wrong with the GOP that a more rigorous application of an essentially unchanging conservative ideology can’t cure, and if Republicans stray from that ideology, they deserve to lose. Just today, RedState’s Erick Erickson, an early and influential endorser of the “Rebuild the Party” plan, expressed this sentiment very clearly:

The conservative movement stagnated because it became, in essence, a component of the Republican Party and let the standard bearer of the party, George Bush, (not to mention Republican leaders in Congress) drive the agenda. When it became abundantly apparent that Bush was not driving the conservative agenda (hat tip to Rush Limbaugh who for years has been saying Bush is not a movement conservative) a lot of the conservative movement had become entrenched in the bureaucracy.
So we arrive where ostensibly conservative organizations are pushing the bailout scheme and socialized medicine programs.
It’s not a reset that we need. It is not new ideas, per se, that we need. It is a conservative movement that purges the dead wood and returns to pushing a conservative, not a Republican status quo, agenda. The ideas stand the test of time. They may need some dusting off, but time does not invalidate the idea. You do not raze a house with rotten beams. You tear out the rotten beams and support the rest of the house

You’d think by now that conservatives like Erickson would be wondering why they keep arriving over and over at this same juncture, where the “politicians”–whether it’s Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, George W. Bush, generations of Republican congressional leaders, and even Ronald Reagan at one juncture–sell out the “movement.” Is it, as David Stockman suggested in the title of his famous lament over the disappointments of the early Reagan years, just a matter of “the Triumph of Politics”?
I articulated my own theory on this phenenomenon in a post on conservative self-deception a few weeks ago.
Here’s the short version: there is not, and never has been, a popular majority that supports “core conservative principles” as defined by such goals as a major scaling-back of New Deal safety net programs, abolition of the federal role in major areas of governance, an elimination of progressive taxation and/or taxes on capital, the re-criminalization of abortion, or imposition of U.S. world-wide hegemony by force of arms. Republican politicians understand this, so they take what they can get and live with the rest. These “compromises” with basic political realities predictably lead, again and again, to large federal budget deficits, unpopular and poorly waged wars, nasty skirmishing on cultural issues, and above all, a large assortment of big government programs and agencies for which conservative pols can find no useful purpose other than as vehicles for vote-buying and patronage. This isn’t so much a matter of ideological infidelity or personal “corruption” as it is the natural result of entrusting government to people who get themselves elected now and then–typically under false flags of “reform” or “compassion” or “strength”–when Democrats screw up, but then have no real agenda for governing that the public will accept.
So here we are yet again. Every time George W. Bush sought to govern as a “true conservative”–e.g., trying to privatize Social Security, save the life of Terry Schiavo, make the Middle East a pro-Western paradise, leave emergency management to the state and local governments of Louisiana, rely on suppy-side economics to avoid fiscal calamity, govern as though the Democratic Party did not exist other than as a punching-bag–he failed. Had he been more rigorously a “true conservative,” he would have failed even more dramatically. And yet we are being told that he, like his father, failed only because he never bought into conservatism in the first place.
This conservative interpretation of events is getting very old by now. And if they do not at least reconsider it, then all the internet savvy and outreach and infrastructure and money and young, diverse candidates on earth will not save them, and they’ll start the cycle all over again next time Democratic mistakes give them the opportunity to govern.

I’m with Ta-Nehisi Coates on this one: it’s just confusing gibberish to talk, as Fred Barnes has recently, of Hillary Clinton representing the “center-right of the Democratic Party.” I mean, the “center-right nation” argument is ridiculous enough, without exporting that term directly into the heart of the Donkey Party.
In common parlance, the terms “left” and “right” are not purely relative terms. They convey an association with, respectively, liberal or progressive ideology or conservative ideology. Unless party factions are large and hardened enough to split into three distinct ideological tendencies (left-center-right) that completely cross party lines, there’s no good reason to use the term “left” for Republicans or “right” for Democrats. That way lies total confusion.
Sure, there are a significant number (generally a bit over 20%) of rank-and-file self-identified Democrats who also self-identify as “conservative,” given the usual “liberal-moderate-conservative” choices. And there are a smaller percentage of Democratic elected officials who might fit that description; the Blue Dog Coalition in Congress calls itself an assemblage of “moderate and conservative Democrats.”
But applying that term or “center-right” to people like Hillary Clinton, who disagrees with Republicans on virtually every major issue, is absurd. You might as well call John McCain a representative of the “center-left of the Republican Party.”
The truth is that when you hear someone refer to “conservative Democrats” or “center-right Democrats,” it’s almost always intended as an insult if it comes from a progressive or as a back-handed compliment if it comes from a conservative. In the case of Fred Barnes, it’s of a piece with a lot of the praise being currently and temporarily dished out by Republicans towards Barack Obama’s appointments. It’s mainly a provocation designed to increase tensions among Democrats. We shouldn’t fall for it.

As J. P. Green noted yesterday, the Georgia Senate run-off provides an instructive test of just how much negative advertising voters can tolerate. But it also provides a classic test of the power of money in politics. As Robbie Brown explains in the New York Times:

Although both parties have flooded Georgia with national strategists, speakers and volunteers, Republicans have outgunned Democrats in fund-raising and advertising….In the first 18 days of the runoff, the Chambliss campaign and the National Republican Senatorial Committee spent $2 million on television advertisements, according to CMAG, an advertising tracking firm. During the same period, the Martin campaign and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee spent $1.8 million.
But outside donations skyrocketed, especially among Republican-supporting groups, according to the Federal Election Commission. Freedom’s Watch, a conservative lobbying group, has spent $600,000 on television spots for Mr. Chambliss, according to CMAG, and the National Rifle Association has spent more than $30,000.

And John Fritze adds in his USA Today article “‘Unbelievable’ sum of money in Ga. runoff“:

A USA TODAY analysis of reports filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) shows: Chambliss raised $1.6 million in large contributions — amounts of $1,000 or more — from Nov. 13 through Nov. 21 compared with $462,000 for Martin. The FEC requires candidates to report large contributions within 48 hours once the campaign is in the final days.
Independent groups such as the National Rifle Association’s political action committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee spent $2.5 million from Nov. 8 through Nov. 26 in support of Chambliss — more than twice what outside groups have spent for Martin.
• Conservative and pro-business organizations, such as Americans for Job Security, have spent $1.8 million on issue ads this month that stake out positions aligned with Chambliss.
“The amount of money coming into this (race) is unbelievable,” said Bill Bozarth, executive director of Common Cause Georgia, a non-partisan watchdog group. “It almost makes me nostalgic for the days when we were a backwater election state.”
…Martin spokesman Matt Canter said many of the Democratic campaign’s contributions fall under the $1,000 reporting threshold set by the FEC for last-minute contributions. He said Martin has raised about $2.5 million since the general election when those smaller donations are included, although that information won’t be available until the post-election campaign reports are filed.
“We are raising the resources we need to compete,” Canter said. “Jim Martin’s message is not getting drowned out.”
Chambliss, who first won his seat in 2002, held the financial advantage heading into the runoff. FEC reports show Chambliss had $1.46 million available in his account as of Nov. 12, compared with $617,000 for Martin.

And, in today’s Wall St. Journal, Brody Mullins and Alex Roth explain in their article “Outsiders Look to Sway Georgia Race With Ads, Manpower“:

Since Republicans took a beating at the polls nationwide Nov. 4, business groups and conservative organizations have spent $4.2 million here on Sen. Chambliss, nearly four times as much as labor unions and liberal advocacy groups have spent on Mr. Martin since Election Day.
…The chamber is paying $750,000 to air television advertisements backing Sen. Chambliss. The National Republican Trust, an outside political group that ran ads against President-elect Barack Obama, has funded more than $1 million in advertisements for the Republican. Other groups funding television advertisements or political mailings on Sen. Chambliss’s behalf include the National Right to Life and the National Rifle Association.

It’s possible, as Green notes, that Chambliss’s harsh attack ads will turn off some voters. But Martin’s best hope may be that his campaign’s GOTV effort will trump the GOP millions. As Brown notes, quoting one expert on GA politics:

Experts say the winner will be the candidate who best rallies his base. “It’s not about changing anybody’s mind at this point,” said Merle Black, an expert in Southern politics at Emory University. “It’s all about turnout.”

Even as Americans generally express satisfaction with Barack Obama’s handling of the transition to a new administration, up north across the border, the typically calm and civil Canadians are undergoing a political crisis of an unprecedented intensity.
In case you haven’t heard, three opposition parties (the centrist Liberals, the social-democratic New Democratic Party, and the quasi-separatist Bloc Quebecois) have formed an extremely rare coalition (the first since World War I) that will probably topple a Tory minority government which won a plurality of votes in the October 14 national elections.
The precipitating event was the announcement last month of an economic package by Stephen Harper’s government that did not include significant steps to stimulate the struggling economy, but did include a couple of stick-in-the-eye measures aimed at reducing the financial and political base of the opposition (a reduction in subsidies for political parties–essential to opposition parties–and a temporary ban on public sector strikes).
The opposition coalition, which would give the Liberals the prime minister’s post and the NDP significant cabinet representation, has a spare majority in the House of Commons, and intends to force a no-confidence vote as early as next week (a step the government could delay, but only until January, by adjourning Parliament). At that point, the Governor General of Canada, a Liberal appointee, would probably invite the coalition to form a government, though she could call for new elections (unlikely given the proximity of the October 14 vote). Complicating the situation is the fact that the new PM would be lame-duck Liberal leader Stephane Dion. Liberals have scheduled a leadership selection convention for May, and the winner would duly replace Dion as PM.
Though most Tories appear to concede that Harper has bungled his way into this situation, their rhetoric about these developments is extraordinary by Canadian standards. Aside from predictable talk about “antidemocratic coups” and “banana republic tactics,” there’s lots of shrieking about the perfidy of Liberals forming a coalition with the “socialist” NDP and the “treasonous” BQ.
Over the years I’ve heard a lot of anxious talk from progressives in Canada about the gradual migration of hyper-polarized Rovian political rhetoric from conservatives in the U.S. to their counterparts Up North. I’d say it’s arrived.

As you probably know, there’s been a lot of intra-Republican talk lately about how to recover from the 2008 elections, and more generally, from the disastrous trajectory of the Bush administration.
And as you may also know, most of the participants in this debate begin by asserting that the problems of the GOP are not fundamentally ideological, or if they are, it’s just a matter of insufficient conservatism, or insufficient consistency. Those would-be reformers like Ross Douthat who suggest the old-time religion of small-government conservatism could use a reformation aren’t making a lot of headway. Nobody’s much in the mood to topple any Ronald Reagan statues.
It’s not surprising, then, that the hot item in Republicanland right now is a manifesto entitled: “Rebuild the Party: A Plan for the Future” put together by two young conservative campaign operatives turned bloggers, Patrick Ruffini and Mindy Finn, along with redstate.org managing editor Erick Erickson. Two candidates for RNC chair have already endorsed the “plan” as their own, and the reaction in the conservative blogosphere has been predictably avid.
What jumps out at any reader of “Rebuild the Party” is the virtual invisibility of any ideological issues, and the extent to which the “plan” is a faithful imitation of the nutsier and boltsier sections of Crashing the Gate, the book-length 2006 netroots manifesto written by Markos Moulitsas and Jerome Armstrong. There’s lots about the revolutionary nature of the internet as a vehicle for organizing, fundraising, and communications; lots about the need for a younger and more diverse generation of activists and candidates; lots about rebuilding party infrastructure and competing in all fifty states.
There’s some rich irony in this heavy dose of progressive-envy, since much of the netroots thinking that the Conservative Young Turks are slavishly echoing was itself based on a close reading of the rise of the conservative movement. But more importantly, the “rightroots” movement is missing a key ingredient that helped make the netroots blueprint so successful: a preparatory period of ideological ferment. On the center-left, that occurred in the late 1980s and early 1990s, as a result of the much-maligned but essential “neo-liberal” and “New Democrat” movements.
For all the Clinton- and New Democrat-bashing amongst the netroots, most honest progressives would admit that what happened in 2006 and 2008 was made possible in the first place by earlier party reform efforts that challenged the self-conception of the Donkey Party as a coalition of shrinking interest and identity groups huddled together to protect “their” pieces of the New Deal/Great Society legacy from the conservative onslaught. There wasn’t much of a positive message or agenda, and not much of a strategy for a progressive majority beyond the hope that the GOP would fatally overreach (as they eventually did under Bush, Rove and DeLay).
It’s reasonable to argue that Clinton’s New Democrats themselves overreached through too many compromises, too much Washington-think, too much adulation of globalization and other market forces, and too little respect for the legitimate needs and interests of traditional constituencies. But as Markos and Armstrong recognized in Crashing the Gate, some crucial work was accomplished in opening the party to new ideas; in neutralizing conservative wedge issues by addressing long-neglected public concerns like crime, welfare dependency, and bureaucratic inertia; and in challenging interest-group tunnel-vision and litmus tests. After all, the “fighting Democrats” of the Dean campaign or the 2006 comeback weren’t just 1970s liberals with better technology, and the Obama campaign wasn’t just a hipper version of the McGovern or Mondale campaigns.
It took a second wave of reform in this decade to complete the picture by reconnecting the Democratic Party to its grassroots and its activists, and to constituencies that may have been maginalized during the Clinton years, while reviving the progressive espirit de corps and extending it beyond the Left’s old redoubts.

Read more…

Tomorrow’s Senate run-off election in Georgia is getting national attention because of the implications for the Democrats’ quest for a filibuster-proof Senate majority. All bets are off, since polls for run-off elections are notoriously unreliable. There is a temptation to say that this one is all about African American turnout — if the percentage of eligible Black voters casting ballots exceeds the percentage of eligible white voters who do so, then Martin has a chance.
It’s as plausible a supposition as any. As a Georgia resident, however, I have to add that this election also provides an instructive lesson about negative campaigning. I don’t believe I’m being overly partisan in observing that the quantity of nasty, even vicious television ads being aired on Chambliss’s behalf has probably set a record for state-wide campaigns, perhaps nation-wide. One after the other, making outrageous charges, one even suggesting that Martin is soft on child molesters. Martin’s attack ads are quite tame in comparison.
Tomorrow’s vote in Georgia will also be an instructive test of how much character assassination fair-minded Republican voters can stomach. If decency prevails, many of them will vote for Martin or stay home. And, If Martin wins, I suspect some of the credit should go to Chambliss’s ad-makers, who have set a new standard for sleazy attack ads. If Chambliss wins, on the other hand, it will be a disturbing affirmation of the power of relentless, mean-spirited attack ads.

Bringing “change” to Washington isn’t just a matter of introducing new domestic or international policies, or even successfully meeting today’s crises. It also means cleaning out the Augean Stables of federal deparments and agencies that have won reputations for incompetence, particularly during the Bush Era of indifferent management, cronyism, and ideological manipulation.
That’s why I hope the incoming Obama administration takes the time to review the congressionally-mandated Human Capital Survey of the federal bureaucracy, and the associated rankings of federal agencies conducted by the private nonprofit Partnership for Public Service.
Some of the more disturbing findings of these two studies have been summarized for The Washington Monthly by Partnership president and CEO Max Stier and Kennedy School professor John D. Donohue, in an article provocatively entitled “The Next FEMA.” Among the agencies ranking notably low in morale, professionalism, and leadership are the Office of Thrift Supervision (which has a large role in supervising mortgage lenders), the Defense Contract Management Agency (home to vast cost overruns), the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and the Defense Nuclear Detection Office (paging Sam Nunn!). And oh, yeah, the Department of Homeland Security, where FEMA’s now located, ranks second to the bottom among large agencies.
Stier and Donohue offer a variety of sensible reforms that can help bring change to troubled federal agencies, including a heavy emphasis on management expertise in leadership positions, and a focus on measurable results. But the most important factor may well be the ability of the new administration to take the unsexy but essential challenge of government reform seriously even as it juggles crises and pursues big policy priorities. As we all learned in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, bad agencies have a way of creating their own crises and making themselves an unwanted priority.

Noam H. Levy reports in today’s L.A. Times on the emerging consensus for national health care reform. Levy says a ‘single-payer’ system is “off the table” for now, and, despite unresolved issues, there is growing agreement in Washington that the new system must preserve choice, contain costs, but not diminish existing coverage for anyone. He also cites growing support among Democratic members of congress for “a new system for those without insurance.”
AP’s Nedra Pickler has a preview report on President-elect Obama’s national security team, while MSNBC First Read has a comprehensive scorecard of Obama appointments and short-listers thus far, “The Obama Cabinet Speculation List.”
Politico‘s Roger Simon puts it all in perspective, noting that the big auto bailout is a bargain, compared to outlays for Iraq in his article, “$25 billion represents less than three months of the cost of the Iraq war.”
The Minneapolis Star-Tribune‘s ‘Politically Connected’ web page provides impressive coverage of the Franken-Coleman recount, with maps. Meanwhile the Princeton Election Consortium has a wonky post by a reader ‘RC’ explaining that the MN Senate race is “by any statistically reasonable standard, a perfect tie.”
As Georgia braces for the Sarah Palin show, James Oliphant of the Chicago Trib’s D.C. bureau has an update on the GA Senate run-off, “Ga. Election Holds Key to Democrats’ Senate Goals.” See also the McClatchy Newspapers’ report by David Lightman and Matt Barnwellon the Martin-Chambliss Senate race, “Battle for Georgia Senate Seat Waged on Two Levels.” Sean Quinn reports at fivethirtyeight.com that Martin may have an edge in on-the-ground organizers.
Don’t even think about running a political campaign in 2010 without checking out the New Tools Campaign web pages of The New Politics Institute.
Those interested in the challenges discussed in J.P. Green’s recent TDS post on ‘public diplomacy’ in the Obama era should also read a new Brookings Institution report, “Voices of America: U.S. Public Diplomacy for the 21st Century” by Kristin M. Lord, a Foreign Policy Fellow, Saban Center for Middle East Policy, specializing in U.S. Relations with the Islamic World.
How much damage could the lamest of lame ducks do in the interregnum? Quite a bit, as far as the environment is concerned, according to Mark Clayton’s Christian Science Monitor article ” Democrats brace for ‘midnight rules’ from Bush.” Clayton reviews environmentalists ‘worry list’ of Bush’s last minute initiatives to help polluters, and discusses how the Congressional Review Act of 1996 may enable Dems to prevent it.

For many years, beginning in the Reagan era, the most compelling conservative anti-government slogan was Ronald Reagan’s common-sense statement – “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
It was a powerfully compelling statement and one so clear as to be entirely self-evident, both as a practical truth and as a metaphor for all forms of government activity.
Well, the indispensible Paul Krugman has now penned a new and equally compelling slogan and aphorism for all Democrats who recognize the need for sensible regulation.
Writing in The New York Review of Books, he says:

…the basic principle should be clear: anything that has to be rescued during a financial crisis, because it plays an essential role in the financial mechanism, should be regulated when there isn’t a crisis so that it doesn’t take excessive risks.

This is a remarkable expression of economic common sense, one with which the vast majority of the American electorate can effortlessly agree. For the purposes of everyday political debate, however, the concept can actually be made even simpler and more general:

If some firm or institution needs the American taxpayer to bail it out when there is a major crisis, then it needs ongoing financial regulation by the American taxpayer’s representatives when there’s not a major crisis.

These notions are just as compelling, logical and as self evident as Ronald Reagan’s classic remark. Opponents of sensible regulation will mumble frantically about the “invisible hand”, “automatic equilibrium” and “the market as decentralized information processing system,” but Democrats can just calmly repeat these slogans over and over again as utterly obvious, common sense, and basically self-evident truths.
(The slogans are, in fact, quite flexible. You can croak them out sardonically like Poe’s Raven saying “nevermore “or get a group of kids to chant them like team spirit day cheers for the high school football team.)
But do be prepared. When the self-evident nature of these arguments begin to overcome all rational objections, defenders of deregulation will suddenly whip out sheets of graph paper and begin furiously drawing a variety of curved lines while simultaneously reciting incantations of the form “in an ideal free market all consumers receive exactly the goods and services they desire” and “in an ideal free market all producers receive exactly the compensation they deserve”
Linguistically speaking, these incantations most closely resemble the vespers liturgy used in many European monasteries in the late Middle Ages and the drawings appear remarkably similar to the prehistoric Nasca lines on the Pacific coast of Peru. But both, in fact, are actually verbal and graphic representations of mathematical equations whose essential purpose is to deflect all arguments based on common sense.
Fortunately, as this is the Christmas season, there is a very educational game based on these notions that can be played at holiday parties or to entertain precocious children. The game is to go through all the classic conservative economics texts like Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose, Jude Wanniski’s The Way the World Works and so on replacing every instance of the phrase “the free market” with the words “Santa Claus”.
The game consists in seeing how many pages, chapters and even entire volumes one can review before finding sentences that do not make exactly as much sense after the alteration as they did before (e.g. “Santa Claus insures that everybody gets exactly what they want.” “Santa Claus insures that everybody receives exactly what they deserve”). Some people have gone through thousands of pages this way without ever encountering any difficulty.
It’s great fun, trust me. It’s rather like playing Mad Libs, only funnier.
And best of all, when you’re done you can take the books you’ve annotated, wrap them in Christmas paper and give them as gifts to any of your acquaintances who still do not accept the need for reasonable regulation of business and the financial sector.
And, hey, don’t forget to add Paul Krugman’s delicious new slogan on your Christmas card.