One of those habits in political journalism that makes me absolutely crazy is the tendency to engage in competing exaggerations every time the subject of “swing voters” comes up. There’s a good example in today’s Washington Post, where Alec MacGillis has a piece entitled: “In N.H., the Swing Vote Is Vanishing.”
A big chunk of the the article is devoted to the argument that while the percentage of voters registering as “undeclared” (i.e., independent) in NH has ballooned to 44 percent, a lot of those folks actually vote for one party or the other. This is hardly a novel observation, for NH or anywhere else. And it is useful to correct the impression that the number of swing voters is rapidly increasing, which some journalists erroneously fall for by conflating self-identified independents with swing voters.
But are swing voters really “vanishing?” To make his point, MacGillis cites estimates that “at most a third of those voters are seen as true independents.” If that’s so, then maybe 14 percent of the NH electorate is composed of true, unattached, swing voters. That’s a lot of folks, and hardly a “vanishing” category.
The real point of MacGillis’ piece is that the differences between Democratic and Republican candidates are a lot sharper than in 2000, meaning that John McCain and Barack Obama aren’t in direct competition for undeclared voters, as McCain and Bill Bradley appeared to be in 2000. Moreover, the Democratic contest is the real indie-magnet this year. For that very reason, McCain’s own staffers admit that the universe of undeclared voters they are trying to attract is smaller than in 2000.
But they are still there, and still matter, for candidates in both parties. And down the road, their numbers and nature might change in a competitive general election, when candidate rhetoric is less controlled by the need to compete for highly partisan “base” voters.
In other words, the topic of swing voters, and the closely related topic of base voters, require a lot more nuanced analysis than that afforded by ax-grinding “they are everything” and “they are nothing” exaggerations. And that’s why The Democratic Strategist is planning a special roundtable discussion of the subject for the beginning of the New Year. Stay tuned.

At Salon, Walter Schapiro offers a good description of the sharply diverging rhetoric of the Big Three Democratic presidential candidates on the campaign trail in Iowa. He notes that their varying “strategies for change” have displaced policy arguments as differentiators, but doesn’t hazard a guess as to which one is currently working.

Paul Krugman of The New York Times has struck a big chord in the blogosphere with a new column that basically makes the case for John Edwards (as opposed to Barack Obama) more effectively than Edwards himself has been able to do so far.
Krugman begins by stipulating there’s not much difference between the two candidates on substance. He then makes two distinct arguments. The first is that by talking about bipartisanship and an inclusive approach to lawmaking, Obama is giving up leverage against corporate opposition to big domestic policy changes in advance, while Edwards is more realistically aiming at mobilizing anti-corporate public sentiment in a no-holds-barred, winner-take-all fight. The second is that Edwards as the Democratic nominee would ride a populist tide to a big victory, while Obama would probably win, but by a narrower margin that would limit his presidential power as much as his conciliatory rhetoric.
The first argument, which is also often made against Hillary Clinton, has always struck me as one that inflates tactical into strategic differences. Let’s say Obama’s elected president, and begins with an inclusive approach on health care. Let’s say further that Krugman’s right, and that corporate interests and/or conservatives prove to be obdurate in their opposition to any significant change. Has Obama lost or gained political capital with an initially conciliatory approach? Hard to say, as an abstract matter. If, on the other hand, John Edwards is elected president, and promotes a health care plan by way of an uncompromising assault on corporate interests, what will he do if he fails? Keep at it eternally until he wins, or compromise? That’s hard to say as well, and it’s even harder to say whether the Obama or Edwards approach would get the best and/or fastest results from a progressive point of view.
So in the end, the first argument for the Edwards approach depends pretty heavily on the second: the idea that Americans are begging for an anti-corporate, highly confrontational populism, and will reward its most forceful advocate with a big majority in 2008 and beyond.
There’s not much question that anti-corporate populism is a sentiment that’s on the rise, for the very obvious reason that the current administration and its GOP allies have engaged in a long pattern of mutually corrupting acts with corporate and other wealthy interests. But the idea that big majorities of Americans strongly support the idee fixee interpretation of corporate power–that it’s the single explanation for everything wrong with the country and the world–is just not supported by much evidence. Krugman offers a single data point: “A recent Democracy Corps survey of voter discontent found that the most commonly chosen phrase explaining what’s wrong with the country was ‘Big businesses get whatever they want in Washington.'”
That’s true, but in that survey, even though respondents had the chance to pick two explanations for America’s “wrong track,” something less than an overwhelming majority–40% to be exact–chose the anti-corporate narrative, seven percentage points ahead of the ancient conservative meme, “Moral and family values are being eroded.” The same survey also raised alarms about the preoccupation of independent voters with “uncontrolled borders.”
So while this is definitely a good year for populist rhetoric–and every single Democratic candidate is using it pretty heavily– the idea that it’s some sort of silver bullet that will produce the kind of majorities that will enable the next president to reject any sort of compromise and FDR his or her way to instant progressive victories is, well, a bit under-supported by the evidence. So, too, is the assertion that efforts to reach out beyond the Democratic base for support of progressive policies is (to use Krugman’s phrase about Obama) “naive,” as compared to the rival approach of seeking legislative majorities after labelling not only Republicans but half of Democrats in Washington as incorrigibly corrupt.
The ability to achieve “change” in the current political environment–and given our constitutional system, in almost any political environment–is hard to measure in advance. Obama’s inclusiveness wouldn’t suddenly change everything, but nor would Edwards’ willingness to “fight.” Democrats would be better advised to pick a candidate based on policies and on character than on the belief that any candidate can build a progressive record on nothing more than a different attitude.

We’ve reached the final stage of the pre-voting segment of the 2008 presidential campaign, and the ancient rituals of late candidate endorsements are playing out.
The big news yesterday was that the Des Moines Register, the rare newspaper that can actually affect votes, endorsed Hillary Clinton for president, giving her campaign a much-needed psychological boost going into the home stretch in Iowa (The Register‘s endorsement of John McCain on the other side is less influential, but could help him create some buzz towards a possible third- or fourth-place finish in Iowa).
Though the Register summarily dismissed John Edwards (who received their endorsement four years ago) as the purveyor of “harsh anti-corporate rhetoric,” he received the endorsement of Mari Culver, Iowa’s First Lady. This was hardly a surprise. Culver, a trial lawyer, caucused for Edwards four years ago, and while her husband, Governor Chet Culver, is officially neutral, his own political operation is full of Edwards supporters. The move will remind a lot of Iowans of the influential endorsement of John Kerry in 2004 by then-First Lady Christie Vilsack.
Meanwhile, back on the Republican side, McCain got another endorsement from a source who will raise a lot more eyebrows than the Des Moines Register: Joe Lieberman. Given their longstanding alliance on issues ranging from Iraq to cap-and-trade, and Lieberman’s near-total estrangement from the Democratic Party, the endorsement is hardly a surprise (I’m sure the happiest man in politics today is my former colleague Marshall Wittmann, the McCainiac who is now Lieberman’s communications director). But it does illustrate how rapidly some elements of what used to be thought of as the “center” have moved hard right in the crucible of contemporary poltics. Lest we forget, had the U.S. Supreme Court not intervened eight years ago, it’s likely that Joe Lieberman would be wrapping up his second term as Al Gore’s Vice President (and perhaps as his designated successor), and under another near-miss scenario, John McCain could be stumping the nation right now for a second term for John Kerry, as his Vice President. Instead, McCain is desperately struggling to become the conservative movement’s savior amidst the wreakage of a weak presidential field, and now Lieberman’s joined him. You have to figure that the odds of Lieberman again voting for Harry Reid as Senate Majority Leader in 2009 have gone down to zero, which will be fine with Democrats assuming they pick up the additional seat necessary to finally bid Lieberman adieu.
UPCATEGORY: Democratic Strategist

Editor and Publisher has a Special Report up, “Do Political Bloggers at Newspaper Sites Now Drive 2008 Campaign Coverage?” by Joe Strupp. Since E & P is “America’s Oldest Journal Covering the Newspaper Industry,” as the masthead notes, the narrow focus is understandable. The article is mostly about the advantages of rag blogs vs. print stories, but it does provide some interesting observations, such as the political blogs rank near the top in hits of all the blogs at major newspapers, and the L.A. Times ‘Top of the Ticket’ blog gets 200K page views per month, which is not all that impressive compared to some of the non-newspaper political blogs.
The article, though interesting in terms of shedding light on the future of newspapers, has a “glass is half empty feel” about it, leaving many readers wanting to know more about the influence of non-newspaper political blogs. For the other half of the story, check out Terry McDermott’s “Blogs can top the presses,” posted, somewhat ironically on the L.A. Times website, to their credit.

New York Times reporter Carl Hulse reports on the role of the conservative organization ‘Freedom Watch’ in holding the Ohio 5th district House seat for the GOP and defeating Democratic candidate Robin Weirauch.

The Freedom’s Watch ad, which had ample air time through an estimated $100,000 buy, was a tough one on immigration — the new go-to issue for Republicans. The ad suggested that Ms. Weirauch supported public health care benefits for illegal immigrants. Ms. Weirauch said she obviously does not support such a thing but instead backed a national health care plan that she said would extend to legal residents of the United States. Nevertheless, she had a tough time explaining her way out of it.

This was the first time Freedom Watch bankrolled ads in a GOP House race, but it is not going to be the last. Hulse speculates that Freedom Watch has “tens of millions” of dollars to pour into political races, to help make up the RNC’s fund-raising shortfall.
While it is unclear from recent reportage exactly who runs Freedom Watch, an earlier Washington Post article by Peter Baker named Mel Sembler, “the big-time Bush family fundraiser and co-founder of Freedom’s Watch,” former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, former White House aide Brad Blakeman, Republican Jewish Coalition executive director Matthew Brooks and casino executive William Weidner. Baker quotes watchdog Larry Klayman, who is suing Freedom Watch, saying “its ties to the White House make it likely it was concocted by them as a scheme to circumvent the ban on soft money political advertising.”
Baker also reports that Freedom Watch was launched to spend $15 million in an advertising campaign supporting Bush’s escalation of the war in Iraq. All of which diminishes the cred of Republicans who whine incessantly about the contributions of pro-Democratic “special interests” and wealthy donors.
Meanwhile, Democratic breast-beating about our fund-raising advantage thus far probably needs some reassessment. Apparently, we’re going to have to dig a good bit deeper to win both the white house and a working congressional majority.

Fortune Magazine‘s Washington Bureau Chief Nina Easton’s post “Democrats’ War on Corporate Greed: Mostly Bluster” discusses the comparatively mild messaging of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama on the topic of corporate abuse in comparison to John Edwards.
Easton was struck with the anti-corporate tone of the Democratic field in Thursday’s debate — in stark contrast to the lack of discussion about the Iraq War and terrorism. But despite the debate’s “symphony of simplistic war-cries against business,” Easton sees the policies of Obama and Clinton as “more nuanced” and cites their “deep ties with supporters and contributors in corporate America.”
She is quite right that Edwards is the high-profile class warrior of the ’08 campaign, having anchored his campaign in anti-corporate rhetoric. His statement in Thursday’s debate in Iowa is emblematic of the core message his campaign has been hammering everywhere he goes:

We’re having trouble growing and strengthening the middle class because corporate power and greed have literally taken over the government, and we need a president who’s willing to take these powers on.

Easton believes that Edwards may have found a resonating message:

Edwards, in particular, has hit on an effective formula with populist-minded Iowans: While the two frontrunners, Obama and Clinton, stab-wound each other, Edwards catches attention by dropping a bomb on corporate America. On Thursday, a focus group of Iowa voters holding dial-meters and organized by Fox News (where I am a contributor) showed a mediocre response when Clinton talked about controlling healthcare costs, but off-the-chart support when Edwards let loose against corporate interests.

The last time a politician ran such a strongly-populist campaign was in 1976, when Senator Fred Harris lost the Democratic presidential nomination to Governor Jimmy Carter. But corporate America’s image has taken some hard hits since then.
The Ethics Resource Center’s 2007 National Business Ethics Survey of employed adults, sponsored by top Fortune 500 companies and conducted 6/25 to 8/15, found that only nine percent of companies “have strong ethical cultures” and ethical misconduct is back at “pre-Enron” levels. More than half of employees say they have witnessed ethical misconduct on the job.
The latest Conference Board survey of 5,000 households reported last February found that less than half of all Americans say they are satisfied with their jobs, down from 61 percent who were satisfied twenty years ago. Wages are stagnant. Health insurance premiums are out of control.
There is no guarantee that increasing job dissatisfaction will be translated into political discontent, like presidential approval ratings are clearly linked to rising gas prices. Yet, a lot of Americans feel like they are being ripped-off by big corporations and their errand-boy politicians. Edwards’ gamble is that this simmering anger can be converted into votes for the candidate who calls it out, loud and clear. There are no more Democratic debates before Iowa. But if his ads do justice to his message the week after Christmas, he just may win his bet.

Yesterday I did a post questioning the value of the “Iowa ground game” stories in the MSM. So where does one turn for the real beef? The best thing I’ve read is a long round of diaries at MyDD by someone with the handle of desmoinesdem, an Edwards precinct captain who served Kerry in the same capacity in 2004. The latest (which usefully includes links to six earlier diaries which explain the mechanics of the Caucuses in great detail) addresses the question of the moment: who’s winning in Iowa? And after patiently explaining why staring at polls is probably misleading, demoinesdem goes through the much more subjective measurements that a precinct-level operative utilizes to get a sense of which way the wind is blowing.
You should read the whole thing, but a few nuggets stand out. One is that campaigns tend to overlook potential caucus-goers who appear divided between other candidates; they’re not on the campaign’s radar screen, but could be very important to the actual outcome. Another is the often-forgotten fact that second-place preferences are not just an issue with lower-tier candidates, given the very high “viability” thresholds in smaller precincts. The 2004 winner, John Kerry, was “non-viable” in 222 Iowa precincts. And a third is that late momentum can be crucial, with factors like newspaper and elected official endorsements mattering a lot more in Iowa than in most places.
Speaking of endorsesments, in the comment thread to desmoinesdem’s latest post, there’s a discussion of the Des Moines Register endorsement, which is coming out this Sunday (much earlier than usual). The Register endorsement is universally thought to have helped John Edwards mount a last-minute surge in Iowa in 2004. But this time, the buzz seems to be that either Clinton or Biden will get the nod. And Biden, as desmoinesdem also notes, is the one low-tier candidate who seems to have some momentum at present–not enough to break into the Big Three, but enough potentially to change the dynamics.

Alexandra Alter’s “Reading the Mind Of the Body Politic” in today’s Wall St. Journal should be of interest to those following the buzz about Drew Westen’s “The Political Brain.” Alter’s article, which includes photos, graphics and a video, focuses on efforts to apply Westen’s ideas in current political campaigns. For example:

Last Sunday at a San Francisco hotel ballroom, EmSense researchers fitted five volunteers, all undecided Republicans, with battery-powered headsets made of elastic and lined with bits of copper. As they watched the debate on a big screen, the wireless units, which the company calls “EmGear,” collected data on their skin temperature, heart rate, eye-blinking and brain activity and beamed them to a bank of computers. The data were run through a formula created by EmSense to identify whether a response was positive or negative.
When John McCain ran through a list of Hispanic politicians who had endorsed him, the company says the brain-wave frequencies of the test subjects stayed flat, indicating a lack of interest. When Mike Huckabee argued that withdrawing troops from Iraq would create a power vacuum for terrorists, the volunteers’ adrenaline spiked. Fred Thompson’s discussion of health care caused a pattern of brain activity that suggests the viewers thought about what he said, but didn’t like it. The company, which says it plans to begin contacting campaigns later this month, says it could help candidates vet advertisements or hone their language and delivery in speeches.

Alter discusses other innovative experiments by neuromarketing campaign consultants to mine the subconscious and emotional responses of voters. A good read also for those interested in the newer frontiers of political attitude research.

In his WaPo op-ed column”Homespun Meets Hard-Line,” Michael Gerson sheds some disturbing light on the real Mike Huckabee. Gerson says Huckabee made “a moral blunder of the first order” in accepting the endorsement of anti-immigrant extremist Jim Gilchrist, founder of “The Minuteman Project”:

Gilchrist is not just another voice on immigration. He is one of the most divisive figures in the most divisive debate in American politics. In 2006, responding to pro-immigration demonstrations, he told the Orange County Register, “I’m not going to promote insurrection, but if it happens, it will be on the conscience of the members of Congress who are doing this. I will not promote violence in resolving this, but I will not stop others who might pursue that.” Note the oily formulation — not promoting, but also not criticizing, the resort to political violence. “I’m willing to see my country go into battle if necessary,” he added, “for our sovereignty and to be governed by rule of law.”
Gilchrist has called for the impeachment of President Bush over the issue of border enforcement. He has made noises about running for president as a third-party candidate because of his disdain for Republicans.

Gerson sees Huckabee’s embrace of immigrant-bashing as a sloppy maneuver to top Romney. We look forward to hearing Huckabee explain to Hispanic voters how much of Gilchrist’s agenda he supports.