“The Government We Deserve”: In The End, The Ultimate Responsibility Lies With The Voters Themselves
This may be the most expensive midterm election in history, but it isn’t necessarily the dumbest. That’s not because it’s smart in any way, just that elections in America are always dumb. To take just one tiny data point, the hottest Senate race in the country may be in Iowa, where everything turns on just how mad the Democratic candidate got when his neighbor’s chickens kept crapping in his yard. Madison and Jefferson would be so proud.
Commentators with brows set high and low periodically try to redeem a public that falls for this kind of stuff, with varying degrees of success. Political scientists often point out that accumulating detailed political knowledge is an inefficient use of time, when you can just use party identification as a proxy and almost all the time your decisions will be the same as they would if you knew as much as the most addicted political junkie. Perfectly true. But other attempts are less successful. I point your attention to a piece today in the Times by Lynn Vavreck, an extremely smart person, arguing that political ads aren’t necessarily so bad. From what I can tell it’s only about three-quarters serious, but still:
A functioning democracy needs an electorate that makes informed choices. Much as we dislike them, political ads, especially in midterm elections, convey information to voters about candidates, particularly those who are unknown to most people.
For example, evidence from recent midterm elections showed that in places where candidates advertised with greater frequency, voters on average knew more objective things about the candidate. The effects are notable for something as straightforward as helping voters identify who is actually running in the race. And just like campaign spending generally, challengers’ ads have greater impact than those of incumbents.
The evidence she’s able to marshall all comes from studies where the dependent variable is knowing who the candidates are. That TV ads can produce this kind of “knowledge” isn’t surprising — if you saw 500 ads saying, “Congressional candidate John Beelzeberg: He’d eat your children if he got the chance,” by the end you’d probably know that John Beelzeberg is running for Congress.
And it’s surely important to know who the candidates are. But if that’s about all we can expect of voters, it’s pathetic.
Meanwhile, Mark Leibovich has a useful essay about the “bumpkinification” of the midterms, in which every contender competes to claim the mantle of the most inexperienced candidate who knows nothing about what legislators actually do, and will somehow “change Washington” with their down-home common sense:
Candidates themselves don’t deserve all the blame for their bumpkinizing. Much of that rests with the blizzards of money being blown from wealthy donors and super PACs to a growing oligarchy of media consultants, who typically live on the coasts and work for multiple candidates at once. In a D.C. twist, those bumpkins we see on our screens are often not even real bumpkins so much as some rich guy’s idea of what a bumpkin should be. One telltale signal is how familiar the props are—the livestock, the guns, the motorcycles, the dogs and, of course, the flannel. An ad for Rob Maness, a Louisiana Republican running for the Senate, features a trifecta: a gun, an airboat and an alligator.
In large part, this is what we have to show for the nearly $4 billion that is expected to be spent in this campaign, the most of any midterm election in history. “When you have this much outside spending, way too much of the advertising has no soul,” acknowledged Todd Harris, a partner at Something Else Strategies, who is based in Washington, far from his clients Ernst and McFadden. The people who are creating these spots, in other words, don’t have much connection to the state they’re working in. It’s a good bet that few at Something Else Strategies have spent much time on hog farms. They are paid either way.
I wouldn’t want to excuse Washington consultants, but let’s not forget that responsibility is not zero-sum. Everybody who takes part in this is to blame. There are the candidates, who serve up a ten-course meal of drivel. There are the outside groups that swoop in and try desperately to distract and confuse. There are the reporters who decide that it’s really important that they write another ten stories about somebody’s chickens or somebody else’s “gaffe.”
But in the end, ultimate responsibility lies with the voters themselves. It is within their power to say to candidates, “Look, I’m upset about Congress’ inability to solve problems too, but the fact that you put on a flannel shirt and told me a story about the wisdom of your grandpappy does nothing to convince me you’ll actually be able to solve those problems.” They could do that. But they don’t.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, October 28, 2014
“The Broader GOP Benefits Of Walker Losing”: Intra-Party ‘Feud’ Complicates Walker’s Race In Wisconsin
No gubernatorial race in the country is as competitive as Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) re-election bid in Wisconsin. The last four publicly released polls have shown the race either tied or within one percentage point.
And with just a week until Election Day, the incumbent governor isn’t convinced the Republican Machine is rallying to his defense to the degree he’d prefer.
At a morning campaign stop in Mayville, Wisconsin, Walker openly groused that the outside spending supporting his campaign “pales” in comparison to the Democratic effort to defeat him. He spoke dismissively of an upcoming campaign visit from [New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie], telling reporters that the Garden Stater was visiting because “he asked if he could come and we weren’t going to say no.”
Ouch.
In fairness, Walker later clarified that he’s grateful for Christie’s support, but he’s frustrated because he believes Democrats are rallying behind Mary Burke’s campaign with even stronger support.
The result is an awkward “feud” of sorts – Walker desperately needs backing from the Republican Governors Association, which is chaired by Christie, but at the same time, Walker believes the RGA is holding back, in part because of 2016. And he may have a point – both Christie and Walker are preparing to run for president, and if the Wisconsin governor comes up short, Christie will have one less credible rival for the GOP nomination.
It’s created a dynamic in which Christie’s RGA wants Walker to win, but it also sees the broader benefits of Walker losing.
And that in turn has generated chatter about whether the New Jersey Republican is undermining his Wisconsin ally on purpose to advance Christie’s ambitions.
The Weekly Standard, which is clearly attuned to Republican insiders’ thinking, had an interesting report on this late last week.
Is New Jersey governor and Republican Governors Association chairman Chris Christie undercutting Wisconsin governor Scott Walker’s reelection effort? That’s a question a number of influential Wisconsin Republicans have been asking behind the scenes over the past week after an October 16 Associated Press report indicated that Walker and his allies were being outspent by Democratic challenger Mary Burke and her allies. […]
Why would the RGA spend more on Rick Snyder than Scott Walker? A number of top Wisconsin Republicans have expressed the same concern in separate conversations with THE WEEKLY STANDARD: That RGA chairman Chris Christie might be tanking Walker, a potential rival for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. As Republican governors who took on public employee unions in blue states, Christie and Walker would be chasing after some of the same donors and voters in the 2016 race (if both men decide to run). Knocking Walker out of the running now (while giving extra help to Rick Snyder, a governor of an important early GOP primary state) could be in Christie’s interest.
As for Democrats, President Obama will be in Wisconsin today, rallying support for Burke’s campaign, which “comes on the heels of high-profile events with Michelle Obama and former President Bill Clinton.”
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, October 28, 2014
“Fearmongering, Just Before Election Day”: Republicans Want You Scared Of Ebola
Is it possible that some Republican elected officials simply don’t follow the news?
Maybe that explains why they don’t mention the 43 people who had been exposed to Ebola in Texas that were released from quarantine last week after being confined for 21 days— the incubation period for the disease—and declared Ebola-free?
Perhaps that’s why no Republicans discuss that four of those 43 people had shared a small Dallas apartment with the Liberian man, Thomas Eric Duncan, for a week while he was gravely ill with Ebola before he died on Oct. 8. We are talking when Duncan had a 104-degree fever, vomiting, and diarrhea. Yet, still none of them contracted the disease.
And we don’t hear a peep from them about the two Americans who had contracted Ebola and who recently overcome the disease. Okay, perhaps they missed NBC cameraman Ashoka Mukpo being released from a Nebraska hospital Wednesday, but how could they not see Nina Pham, the nurse who had contracted the disease in a Dallas hospital earlier this month, hug President Obama in the Oval Office on Friday?
The GOP’s lack of interest in news must be the explanation for why they continue to whip up fears about Ebola, right? For example, during Thursday’s U.S. Senate debate in New Hampshire, Republican Scott Brown mentioned that, “There is a rational fear from citizens in New Hampshire” that “people with diseases are coming through our border.”
Of course, Brown didn’t cite even one example of an Ebola-infected person sneaking into the United States. But hey, facts don’t matter when scaring voters.
And then there’s the tight U.S. Senate race in Louisiana. There, Sen. Mary Landrieu’s Republican opponent, Bill Cassidy, released a statement Tuesday that said President Obama’s handling of the Ebola is “posing an immediate danger” to “Louisiana families.” We also saw three other GOP Senate candidates play the Ebola card this week: Virginia’s Ed Gillespie, Alaska’s Dan Sullivan, and Georgia’s David Perdue. First, all three essentially parroted each other by first offering up some scary comments on Ebola. Then each attacked the Obama administration’s handling of the situation, which in turn means that Ebola is likely coming to get you and your family.
And adding to this cacophony of impending calamity was Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), who on Wednesday told the news media (OK, not quite “news media,” Fox News) that new White House Ebola czar Ron Klain was “off to a bad start.” Nothing like undermining people’s confidence by saying—literally on the guy’s first day on the job—that he’s already screwing up.
These comments are actually tame compared to the off-the-charts, scary chatter heard from the GOP last week. The craziest of all was Rand Paul, who faulted those who were saying Ebola is not easy to catch. Sen. Paul really sounded the alarm bells with the remark, “We have physicians and health workers who are catching it who are completely gloved down.” For those actually keeping score, at the time of Paul’s remark, we had only two nurses who’d contracted the disease, and zero physicians.
Coming in second in the race to scare the crap out us was Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), who warned that ISIS fighters might infect themselves with Ebola and then try to infect us all. Of course, a person is only contagious when manifesting Ebola’s symptoms, such as uncontrollable diarrhea and vomiting. At that point, a gravely ill person would have to somehow get their bodily fluids into your system. It has to be challenging to run around and smear your bodily fluids on people when you are uncontrollably pooping and puking.
This rhetoric is in sharp contrast to what we heard Thursday night from Democratic elected officials in New York City after it was determined that a doctor who had recently returned from treating people with Ebola in Guinea had tested positive for the disease. Mayor Bill De Blasio and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo told the public that everything is under control and there is no reason for panic. Of course, right-wing former New York Lt. Governor Betsy McCaughey did her best to undermine these assurances by stating during a radio interview on Sunday that “Our hospitals aren’t ready for Ebola.”
So why are the Republicans continuing with their one-two punch of “Ebola is going to get you” and “Obama is failing to protect your family?” Simple. Fear is the GOP’s modus operandi. We have seen the GOP use it effectively in the past regarding gay marriage, Muslims, blacks and Latinos. They scare voters into voting for them because frankly it’s much simpler than discussing complex issues—like creating jobs, immigration reform, or health care.
And here’s the worst part: Two polls released this week indicate it’s working again. A Politico poll released Monday found that nearly one-third of respondents said they were either losing or have no confidence in the federal government’s handing of the Ebola outbreak.
Add to that a survey released Wednesday that finds that the GOP’s fear-mongering has taken hold of Americans. Almost 46 percent said they were deeply concerned Ebola would spread widely across the country despite the fact that only two people contracted the disease on U.S. soil.
This couldn’t have played out any better for the GOP. First, they scare everyone. Then they position themselves as the guardians of the galaxy who will save us all from this dastardly threat.
I wish I could say that if more in the media called out the Republicans’ fear mongering it would stop. But who are we kidding? The only way Republican leaders will change their tactics is if they lose a few elections in a row doing it. So until that day comes—if ever—be prepared for more rides in the GOP’s House of Horrors.
By: Dean Obeidallah, The Daily Beast, October 27, 2014
“Don’t Let Them Silence You: Vote, Dammit”: The Way We All Become Equal On Election Day Is That We Cast That Ballot
Our country’s oldest and longest struggle has been to enlarge democracy by making it possible for more and more people to be treated equally at the polls. The right to participate in choosing our representatives – to vote — is the very right that inflamed the American colonies and marched us toward revolution and independence.
So it’s unbelievable and frankly outrageous that in the last four years, close to half the states in this country have passed laws to make it harder for people to vote. But it’s true.
But don’t stop there. Engage, and start the conversation of democracy where you live — in your apartment complex, on your block, in your neighborhood. There is always at least one kindred spirit within reach to launch the conversation. Build on it.
As this country began, only white men of property could vote, but over time and with agitation and conflict, the franchise spread regardless of income, color or gender. In the seventies, we managed to lower the voting age to 18. Yet a new nationwide effort to suppress the vote, nurtured by fear and fierce resistance to inevitable demographic change, has hammered the United States.
And this must be said, because it’s true: While it once was Democrats who used the poll tax, literacy tests and outright intimidation to keep Black people from voting, today, in state after state, it is the Republican Party working the levers of suppression. It’s as if their DNA demands it. Here’s what Paul Weyrich, one of the founding fathers of the conservative movement, said back in 1980: “I don’t want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people. They never have been from the beginning of our country, and they are not now. As a matter of fact our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”
So the right has become relentless, trying every trick to keep certain people from voting. And conservative control of the Supreme Court gives them a leg up. Last year’s decision – Shelby County v. Holder – revoked an essential provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and that has only upped the ante, encouraging many Republican state legislators to impose restrictive voter ID laws, as well as work further to gerrymander Congressional districts and limit voting hours and registration. In the past few weeks, the Supreme Court has dealt with voting rights cases in Texas, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Ohio and upheld suppression in three of them, denying the vote to hundreds of thousands of Americans. As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in opposition, “The greatest threat to public confidence… is the prospect of enforcing a purposefully discriminating law.”
The right’s rationale is that people — those people — are manipulating the system to cheat and throw elections. But rarely – meaning almost never — can they offer any proof of anyone, anywhere, showing up at the polling place and trying illegally to cast a ballot. Their argument was knocked further on its head just recently when one of the most respected conservative judges on the bench, Richard Posner of the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago, wrote a blistering dissent on the legality of a Wisconsin voter ID law. “As there is no evidence that voter-impersonation fraud is a problem,” Posner declared, “how can the fact that a legislature says it’s a problem turn it into one? If the Wisconsin legislature says witches are a problem, shall Wisconsin courts be permitted to conduct witch trials?”
The real reason for the laws is to lower turnout, to hold onto power by keeping those who are in opposition from exercising their solemn right — to make it hard for minorities, poor folks, and students, among others, to participate in democracy’s most cherished act.
And you wonder why so many feel disconnected and disaffected? Forces in this country don’t want people to vote at the precise moment when turnout already is at a low, when what we really should be doing is making certain that young people are handed their voter registration card the moment they get a driver’s license, graduate from high school, arrive at college or register at Selective Service.
In a conversation for this week’s edition of Moyers & Company, The Nation magazine’s Ari Berman put it this way: “This is an example of trying to give the most powerful people in the country, the wealthiest, the most connected people, more power. Because the more people that vote, the less power the special interests have. If you can restrict the number of people who participate, it’s a lot easier to rig the political system.” And Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, noted, “For people who don’t have the power to engage in terms of money in the political process, the way we all become equal on Election Day is that we cast that ballot… [So] it’s not just about corporate interests. It is about power. And it is about trying to suppress the voice of those who are the most marginalized.”
So vote, dammit. It is, as President Lyndon Johnson said when he signed the Voting Rights Act, “the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice.” But don’t stop there. Engage, and start the conversation of democracy where you live — in your apartment complex, on your block, in your neighborhood. There is always at least one kindred spirit within reach to launch the conversation. Build on it. Like the founders, launch a Committee of Correspondence and keep it active. Show up when your elected officials hold town meetings. Make a noise and don’t stop howling. Robert LaFollette said democracy is a life, and involves constant struggle. So be it.
By; Bill Moyers and Michael Winship; Moyers and Company, Bill Moyers Blog, October 24, 2014
“The Face Of The McConnell Campaign”: Should Chuck Todd Be ‘Disqualified’ For Saying The Midterm Elections Don’t Matter?
A few developments today in the all-important Kentucky Senate race: Bill Clinton is expected to draw large, enthusiastic crowds for Alison Lundergan Grimes in Owensboro and Paducah; Mitch McConnell is on day two of his three-day fake-enthusiasm bus tour (the state GOP party is giving all-expenses-paid trips to volunteers as long as they “contribute to an enthusiastic atmosphere” at his events, according to an e-mail obtained by The Hill); and Chuck Todd continues to defend his now-infamous declaration that Grimes “disqualified herself” by refusing to say whether she voted for Obama.
As you’ve probably seen by now, McConnell put footage of Todd in a heavily rotated TV ad, and, from what I could tell after spending two days in Kentucky, Chuck Todd has become the face of the McConnell campaign.
Now, I don’t know if this exactly disqualifies Todd from moderating the New Hampshire debate tonight between Jeanne Shaheen and Scott Brown, but the host of the storied Meet the Press and a self-described political junkie has said that it really doesn’t matter which political party wins the Senate. He made that case in an interview with President Obama on his debut MTP last month, saying, A couple more extra red or a couple more blue seats, what’s the diff? Three billion dollars, he said, is being spent merely “to see if it’s Harry Reid or Mitch McConnell that’s in charge of gridlock in the Senate.”
Todd then turned to panelist John Stanton, from Buzzfeed, to pooh-pooh Obama’s argument that party control of the Senate is actually, uh, important:
TODD: You know, Stanton, he was trying to make the rationale for why the midterms matter. And when you have to say, “I know some people don’t think, but they really do matter.”
JOHN STANTON: You’ve already lost…..
in terms of legislation passing. If Democrats keep the Senate, and they have, what, a two-seat or a one-seat majority, or if Republicans take it and have a two-seat or one-seat majority, you still are left with essentially the same dynamic in Washington.
But surely Todd, if not also Stanton, knows that even if no legislation passes (presumably the Dems would filibuster and Obama would veto GOP bills), a McConnell-led Senate would still affect the lives of millions of people. A one- or two-seat majority would give Republicans all the committee chairmanships, and that, as Norm Ornstein writes, “would undoubtedly stop confirmation on virtually all Obama-nominated judges, and probably on most of his executive nominees. And we would see a sharp ramp-up of investigations of alleged wrongdoing, with Benghazi and IRS redux. If you like Darrell Issa, you will love having his reinforcements and doppelgängers in the other chamber.”
Even Politico says, “No one should underestimate the significance if the GOP captures the Senate in November…”
Mitch McConnell, who would become majority leader if the Senate changes hands, is already promising to load up the appropriations bills with policy restrictions that could raise the risk of another government shutdown if Obama doesn’t sign them.
With both the Senate and the House in their hands, Republicans could put Obama on defense on everything from Obamacare to the administration’s greenhouse gas regulations, the Keystone XL pipeline, education policy and spending priorities.
And even with gridlock, McConnell could reach his dream of repealing Obamacare “root and branch.” Robert Reich warns in a MoveOn video that the R’s could use the Senate maneuver of “reconciliation,” which requires “only 51 votes to pass major tax and budget legislation instead of the 60 votes usually required.” That means, he says, that Republicans could win tax cuts for the wealthy and loopholes for Wall Street and pay for them with cuts in Medicare, Medicaid and education. (The Dems used reconciliation to pass the Affordable Care Act in the first place.)
But issues that matter to real people often evaporate in the heat generated by horse-race pundits like Todd. Grimes is “disqualified” for not answering a question (“By dodging the question, did she cast a spell on herself that reverse-aged her to be ineligible for service in the U.S. Senate?” Jim Newell at Salon asks. “Did her incantation strike names from her ballot petitions, putting her below the threshold to qualify for ballot placement?”). But McConnell lies by claiming he can repeal Obamacare while letting Kentuckians keep their Kynect—without acknowledging that Kynect is Obamacare.
As The Nation’s Reed Richardson writes: “When confronted about his specious reasoning in a subsequent Facebook Q & A, Todd backed off his judgment a bit (‘disqualifying for some voters’ was his new formulation), but still defended his over-the-top analysis as reflecting ‘political reality.’ But for all his cynicism, Todd still tries to have it both ways. For, later in the same Facebook chat he said he was ‘sick’ over the fact the McConnell camp had already stuck his Grimes-bashing soundbite into a campaign ad.”
Todd goes into still longer explanations with Media Matters, saying his wording was “sloppy.” It seems like his judgment that it doesn’t matter who runs the Senate was, at best, sloppy, too.
By: Leslie Savan, The Nation, October 21, 2014
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