“Anomalous Levels Of Support”: Bleaching The GOP Vote In A Tanning Electorate Doesn’t Look Much Like A Winner
I’m not sure what represents a greater threat to Sean Trende’s “missing white voter” hypothesis for the GOP’s electoral problems: the misappropriation of his work by conservative stand-patters and double-downers who conveniently ignore Trende’s warnings about what it might take to appeal to these “missing” voters, or the chip-chip-chipping away at his data and conclusions by progressive analysts.
I noted earlier this week that TNR’s Nate Cohn had challenged Trende’s conclusions based on both regional and generational disparities in the GOP’s share of the white vote (i.e., getting a higher percentage of old white southerners does not cut much electoral ice over time). Now come the formidable Alan Abramowitz and Ruy Teixeira with an analysis at Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball that questions Trende’s calculations:
Trende’s claim that Republicans have increased their performance among white voters is based on his calculation of a statistic known as the PVI, or Partisan Voting Index, for white voters. Essentially, this statistic is used to compare the political preferences of a given group to the electorate as a whole. The PVI for white voters compares the Democratic share of the white vote with the Democratic share of the vote in the overall electorate…..
Over time…the PVI for white voters has become increasingly negative, with an especially dramatic decline since 1992. There is no question that in comparison with the overall electorate, white voters have become more Republican over time. But the interpretation of this result is not as straightforward as Trende suggests. That is because the PVI for white voters reflects both the Democratic margin among white voters and the size of the nonwhite electorate.
In fact, the main reason that the gap between the Democratic margin in the overall electorate and the Democratic margin among white voters has increased over time is not because whites have become more Republican but because nonwhites, who are overwhelmingly Democratic, now make up a larger share of the overall electorate. As just one example, the PVI of the white vote in 2012 (-24) was far more negative than it was in 1988 (-13). Yet Democratic margins among both whites and nonwhites were essentially the same in each election. The real change: Nonwhites were just 15% of voters in 1988 compared to 28% in 2012. In other words, the rapid growth of the very Democratic nonwhite share of the electorate makes it seem like white voters are becoming more Republican than they actually are.
So the growing size of a heavily Democratic nonwhite vote has increased the racial polarization of voting above and beyond any actual Republican trend among white voters.
More generally, it’s another way of saying that a GOP strategy based on winning ever-more-historically-anomalous levels of support in a shrinking portion of the electorate doesn’t look much like a winner.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, July 11, 2013
“The Mean Team Piles On The Jobless”: Our Nation’s Corporate And Political Elites Have Developed An Immunity To Shame
“Come on, team, let’s get mean!”
This is not the chant of rabid football fans, egging on their favorite team to crush the opponents. Rather, it’s the raucous war cry of far-out right-wing ideologues all across the country who’re pumping up Team GOP to pound the bejeezus out of America’s millions of unemployed workers. Far from a game, this is real, and it’s a moral abomination.
I’ve been unemployed before, and I can tell you it’s a misery — all the more so today, when there are far more people out of work than there are job openings. This leaves millions of our fellow Americans mired in the debilitating misery of long-term unemployment.
But that’s not miserable enough for a feral breed of Ayn Randian political zealots who are lobbying Republican governors, legislators and congress-critters to punish the jobless for … well, for their joblessness. In this perverse universe, the conventional wisdom asserts that unemployment benefits and other poverty-prevention programs are sapping our nation’s vitality by allowing “moochers” to live the Life of Reilly and avoid work.
The GOP’s budget demigod in the U.S. House, Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI), expressed this dogma in a fanciful homily deriding America’s safety net as “a hammock that lulls able-bodied people to lives of dependency and complacency.” This from a guy whose family’s wealth was gained from government contacts and who has spent practically all of his adult life in the sweet-swaying hammock of congressional privilege, presently drawing $174,000 a year from Old Uncle Sugar.
As ridiculous and just plain mean as this attitude is, it plays well in the insanity that now defines “the debate” in Republican primary elections. So, state after state (as well as Congress) is succumbing to this pound-the-poor, right-wing screed by frenetically slashing unemployment benefits.
Behind this faux-philosophical push are the smiling barons of corporate America. Without jobless payments, you see, desperate millions will be forced to whatever low-wage, no-benefit, dead-end jobs the barons design.
What’s at work here is a profoundly awful ethical phenomenon that has seeped into the top strata of American society: Our nation’s corporate and political elites have developed an immunity to shame.
It has become morally acceptable in those lofty circles to enrich themselves while turning their backs on the rest of us. Even more damning, they feel free to slash America’s already tattered safety net, leaving more holes than net for the workaday majority of Americans who’ve been knocked down by an ongoing economic disaster created by these very elites.
For a look at how shameful these privileged powers have become, turn to North Carolina. Until recently, this Southern state maintained a fairly moderate government with a populist streak, taking pride in its educational system and other public efforts to maintain a middle class. No more. A shame-resistant political leadership has recently taken hold, consisting of corporate-funded Tea Party extremists who loathe the very idea of a safety net.
The new bunch has been gutting everything from public schools to health care, and now they’ve turned on hard-hit citizens who’re out of work. In a state with the fifth highest jobless rate in the country, and with no recovery in sight, the right-wing governor and legislature recently whacked weekly unemployment benefits by a third, leaving struggling North Carolinians with a meager $350 a week to try to make ends meet, while simultaneously eliminating millions of consumer dollars that those families would otherwise be putting into the state’s economy. Then, just to give the jobless another kick, the petty politicians cut the number of weeks people can receive unemployment aid.
This official stinginess automatically disqualified the state from getting $700 million a year for long-term jobless payments from the federal government. Yet Gov. Pat McCrory issued a cockamamie, Kafkaesque claim that the gut-job ensures that “our citizens’ unemployment safety net is secure,” while providing “an economic climate that allows job creators to start hiring again.”
Yeah, we’ll all hold our breath until those “job creators” get going. Meanwhile, the GOP wrecking crew doled out a fat tax break for the corporate elites — for doing nothing. Take from the poor, give to the rich: backward Robin Hood. If ignorance is bliss, McCrory must be ecstatic.
Meanwhile, his shameless immorality has unleashed a growing storm of weekly demonstrations known as “Moral Mondays.” For information about this remarkable citizens’ uprising, link to the North Carolina Justice Center: www.ncjustice.org.
By: Jim Hightower, The National Memo, July 10, 2013
“New Revelations Imperil Virginia’s Governor”: It’s Becoming Increasingly Difficult To Imagine How Bob McDonnell Stays In Office
Just last night, while reporting on Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell’s (R) efforts to address one aspect of the scandal surrounding him, Rachel noted that the governor’s term in office ends officially in January, but “smart bookmakers everywhere are taking bets on whether or not he makes it that far.”
In light of a new Washington Post report, published this morning, the odds of McDonnell’s political survival are considerably worse.
A prominent political donor gave $70,000 to a corporation owned by Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell and his sister last year, and the governor did not disclose the money as a gift or loan, according to people with knowledge of the payments.
The donor, wealthy businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr., also gave a previously unknown $50,000 check to the governor’s wife, Maureen, in 2011, the people said.
The money to the corporation and Maureen McDonnell brings to $145,000 the amount Williams gave to assist the McDonnell family in 2011 and 2012 — funds that are now at the center of federal and state investigations.
Making matters slightly worse, the Post also reports this morning on a $10,000 “gift” the Star Scientific CEO gave to McDonnell’s eldest daughter, intended to help defray costs of her May 2013 wedding. You might be thinking, “Wait, didn’t we already know about Jonnie Williams helping pay for one of the governor’s daughter’s wedding?” We did, but this is another daughter — Williams gave $15,000 to help pay for Cailin McDonnell’s wedding in 2011 and then $10,000 to help finance Jeanine McDonnell’s wedding this year.
All of the extravagant gifts coincided with McDonnell and his wife working to promote Star Scientific and its products.
The governor may have a very good attorney, but it’s increasingly difficult to imagine how the governor stays in office. Indeed, one angle to keep an eye on in the coming days is how quickly Virginia Republicans begin to distance themselves from McDonnell as the scandal grows more serious. For one noteworthy GOP official in particular, that’s likely to be tricky.
The University of Virginia’s Larry Sabato said last night that we should expect state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, for example, to “break openly and sharply” with the governor “very soon.” And that would certainly make sense — Cuccinelli is in a competitive race to replace McDonnell, and won’t want to be tarnished by the allegations.
But that may be more difficult for Cuccinelli than is commonly known. Star Scientific’s Jonnie Williams may have been almost criminally generous to McDonnell, but he also directed over $13,000 worth of gifts to Cuccinelli, too — gifts the right-wing state Attorney General did not disclose.
On several occasions, Cuccinelli even vacationed in Williams’ beach house, despite the fact that Cuccinelli was ostensibly overseeing Star Scientific’s $1.7 million tax dispute with Virginia at the time.
Cuccinelli may want to start backing away from McDonnell in light of the scandal, but that’s easier said than done.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, July 10, 2013
“The Challenge Of Rebranding The GOP”: The Prescription For A Republican Comeback Outside The South Will Be Painful
The trendlines are bad for Republicans. They’re falling behind in the battleground states. Demographic and generational change are making matters worse over time. And outside of the South, they’re not even making gains among white voters. That latter point does create room for Republicans to do even better among white voters and win without big gains among Hispanics, at least for now. But conservatives take solace in the possibility of victory through whites on the assumption that it will be easier to improve among whites than Hispanics. In reality, the prescription for a GOP comeback outside of the South will be painful.
But what Republicans should do isn’t obvious. On its own, the observation that the GOP is doing worse among non-Southern whites doesn’t obviously lend itself to a solution. We might assume, for instance, that the GOP’s problems in northern Virginia, Columbus, and Denver are related to cultural issues, but do we know how many of those voters could be persuaded by any of the shifts suggested by pundits and analysts? What about middle class communities, like Appleton, Ft. Collins, or Lancaster? We might assume that the GOP’s problem is mainly economic, but probably part cultural as well—but in what proportions? And in the culturally Southern areas where the GOP hopes to improve further, like in western Pennsylvania or central Florida, it is highly unclear how much more the GOP can improve—especially if race was part of Obama’s problem.
And as a historical matter, it’s hard to predict how parties will rebound. Many DLC Democrats didn’t realize that the Democrats would eventually find a new base in the Northeast or California. The “Emerging Democratic Majority” characterizes West Virginia as “lean Democratic.” The fact is that the next Republican coalition will be built on dissatisfaction with Democrats, and we just don’t know who will revolt against the Democrats or when.
In the absence of great data on what the GOP should do, analysts and pundits are mainly resorting to what they do best: assuming that what they want is what the country wants. The more culturally liberal Republicans want the GOP to move left on social issues. The populists think populism would do the trick. The conservatives say they should go to the right. It’s all too predictable.
But there are limits to these targeted approaches. For one, parties can’t just excise parts of their base and win elections, especially when they’re the minority party. Moreover, any realistic solution won’t lead to massive gains: Republicans would still be vulnerable to Democratic attacks on their support for cutting entitlements or lower taxes for the rich, or opposition to abortion, gun control, and probably gay marriage. That limits how much they can gain among any particular group. Democrats also have the ideological flexibility to embrace good ideas and co-opt a strong Republican message, as they have done on energy. The Electoral College also makes it harder for a party to win with narrow, deep gains among any single group, like missing conservative white voters or Hispanics—there just aren’t enough them in the critical states. The GOP has a broad problem across a very diverse set of battleground states, and it will require an equally broad set of remedies.
So the best option is to spread the pain around. Don’t castrate the party, smooth out the many sharp edges of the GOP’s platform and message. Keep supporting tax cuts and less regulation, but add an agenda and message aimed at the middle and working class. Remain pro-life, but don’t appear opposed to Planned Parenthood or contraceptives, and return to supporting exceptions in instances of rape or the health of the mother, as President Bush did. Stay committed to religion, but don’t reflexively doubt the science of evolution and global warming, or the promise of stem cell research or renewable energy. Oppose gun control, but why force yourself to oppose background checks? Oppose gay marriage if Republicans must, but could Republicans at least support civil unions? On all of these issues, the GOP need not compromise on its core policy objectives, but can’t afford to consistently stake out ground so far from the center. That allows Democrats to cast the party and their core beliefs outside of the mainstream, which has already happened on abortion.
This prescription is informed by Bill Clinton’s revitalization of the Democratic Party in 1992. He was ostensibly a “New Democrat,” even though he was pro-choice, supported higher taxes, a universal health care system, gun control, and expanded rights for gays in the military. Rather than abandon core elements of the Democratic agenda, Clinton softened the edges on unreformed welfare, crime, middle class taxes, and said abortion should be “rare,” even if it should remain legal.
The success of heterodox, but conservative Republicans suggests that this formula would be sufficient. Chris Christie is doing great in 2016 presidential polling, and he’s basically followed the approach listed above—although there’s a case that went further than I would advise on gun control. Similarly, Jon Huntsman earned quite a bit of support among moderates for merely saying that he believes in evolution and gay marriage, despite being very conservative on economic issues. Paradoxically, it seems that the GOP’s extremism will make a rebrand even easier, since a candidate can move to the center and still clearly stand on the right.
But Bill Clinton had the benefit of a relatively moderate Democratic primary electorate with a large conservative contingent in the South and Midwest. That allowed him to “soften the edges” and still win a Democratic primary, despite battling serious attacks on his character. In contrast, Jon Huntsman received 739 votes in Iowa and there are questions about whether a popular governor like Chris Christie could win the nomination.
If someone like Huntsman was way too moderate for GOP primary voters, then the GOP rebrand won’t be easy. That makes it even more important that immigration reform passes. Sometimes, allowing issues to disappear can be just as helpful as rebranding. Clinton benefited from the end of the Cold War, which he obviously had nothing to do with. Getting immigration reform off the table would dovetail well with a better economic message, which should appeal to persuadable Hispanic voters. But many of the same forces that couldn’t tolerate “smoothing the edges” seem poised to block immigration reform. And if the GOP can’t “smooth out the edges” and won’t allow Democrats to take issues off the table, like on background checks or immigration, the consequences for 2016 could be fatal.
By: Nate Cohn, The New Republic, July 9, 2013
“Goodbye Rick Perry”: Those Of Us Out In Fake America Will Miss You
Farewell, Rick Perry! We’ll miss you, those of us out in fake America, unless Texas is fake America, because of the whole Republic thing, in which case you will be missed in all the various Americas. Because once you are done as governor of your massive, slightly ridiculous oil-soaked state, you will pretty much be done.
Perry is not going to seek a fourth term as governor of Texas, a high-status, low-authority gig that he has worked at longer than anyone else in history. The next governor will likely be Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott (Stu Rothenberg is keeping the position listed as “Safe Republican”).
Perry isn’t just going to go away, or at least he doesn’t intend to. He is not going to put on a stupid hat and retire to a ranch that was until very recently named something unspeakably awful. He is going to run for president. Because once a sufficient number of people have convinced an egomaniac that he would be a very good president, it’s hard for that egomaniac to let go of that dream, even after a bunch of voters do everything they can to discourage it.
In 2011, we in the rest of America were told to look out for Perry, that he was savvy, a brilliant politician, and that he’d be totally irresistible to the electorate once he made his inevitable decision to run for president. He turned out to be a dunce, completely incompetent at basic tasks like “debating” and “public speaking.” Maybe it was pain meds (but then, who decides it’s a good idea to jump into a national race while you’re on pain meds?), but either way the last presidential campaign was a disaster for the Perry brand. No one in 2016 will be particularly frightened of him, and he also probably won’t have the luxury of running against a field made up entirely of clowns and a front-runner no one in the party actually liked.
He’s amiable, decent-looking, and right-wing enough to suit the modern Republican Party, but he is also a bit of an idiot and nothing about him appeals to anyone outside his state. Republicans aren’t interested in him anymore, even in Texas. Public Policy Polling (a liberal shop, but still) has Hillary Clinton beating Perry 50 to 42 in a potential presidential contest. A University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll showed Texas Republicans preferring Senators Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Rand Paul over their finally outgoing governor. And if they don’t want him there’s no reason to suggest Republicans anywhere else will want him. “Vote for your dumb right-wing dad” won’t work any better in 2016 than it did in 2012.
Still, Perry’s decision to join Texas Republicans in provoking a big fight over abortion access does make a bit of sense in this light: He I guess wants to be 2016′s Rick Santorum, the choice of the fundamentalist set who don’t necessarily like the recent rhetorical ascendency of pseudo-moderation and pseudo-libertarianism in the GOP. Rick Santorum still might want to be the Rick Santorum of 2016, of course, but he also might be too busy making Christian movies. (Though none of the major 2016 Republican front-runners, with the possible exception of Jeb Bush, are remotely “moderate” on abortion access, it should be pointed out.)
It is always a happy day when the political careers of mediocre right-wing hacks like Rick Perry come to an end, even if it is by choice and not a forced resignation following a humiliating scandal or exposure of criminal activity. Texas will probably be better off without Rick Perry, even if the next guy is an asshole (and he is probably going to be an asshole), and Rick Perry will get to see his dream end in tears once more in 2016, at which point his only hope to remain in elected office will be a Congressional seat or something. Though obviously he will also make a great deal of money “consulting” for some awful rich person or another, so it’s not all good news.
By: Alex Pareene, Salon, July 9, 2013
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