CJK's blog

I have a little different mind on the stimulus than Jon Henke. I don't think Obama is planning for people to start blaming his spending spree for causing all the problems that will accompany it. Here's what he's trying to do:

--Obama doesn't really seem to care about the deficit, so why not lavish huge tax cuts on top of his stimulus pie? If the Republicans oppose it they can be painted as mean-spirited and blindingly partisan in compared to the magnaminous Obama.

--If the stimulus somehow works (or the economy recovers anyway) Obama will get the credit for coming up with the entire idea, not the Republicans.

--If it doesn't work, it won't be interpreted as a failure of Keynesian economics. Instead the Obama administration will blame those dastardly Republicans for "watering down" whatever he originally opposed (and such watering down on the spending side is almost assured to occur). We will be told the only way to save the economy is to invest even more money. So the Dems will pass another huge stimulus. By the time the second stimulus takes full effect we'll probably already be out of the recession anyway, and thus Obama will be the hero again.

--The above will be encouraged by the fact that if the stimulus is full-blown bipartisan in nature, the public will take it to mean that the Republican party also believes massive state spending is needed to fix the economy. The question be framed as do we spend more or less? Hmmmmm.....

--The stimulus will advance the union cause and create millions of voters who at least think they owe their jobs to King Barack.

--With regards to the tax hikes, I don't think he'll do it. Oh, he'll surely loot the rich its just that he'd actually probably prefer the massive deficits to raising middle class taxes.

Our empty-suit president-elect's reaction to the Blago scandal reveals a lot about what were going to see for the next four years: total indecision.

He waited until day 2 to issue a no-brainer call for resignation. Then he denied ever having spoken to him even though Axelrod said he did. Whereupon they said Axelrod "misspoke". I guess this means whenever his future press secretary gives completely contradictory information, we will be told that he "misspoke" as well.

Then on Thursday Obama says he'll disclose his staffs contacts with Blago. We still haven't heard anything from the campaign. Now we hear things like: "Asked to voluntarily release copies of any written correspondence between Obama aides and Blagojevich, the Obama aide said that – if there were any such correspondence – the Obama team would determine whether to release it after the review was concluded." I wonder if this is how he'll handle questions on how he can afford his half-trillion spending spree. (Oh, I forgot. He already did that.)

And if he's so certain that his staff wasn't involved in "deal-making" why does he have to spend all this time gathering the facts?

I don't think he has anything to hide, but gosh he sure seems to want everyone to think he does.

One of the things that has struck me over the last seven years is the constant assertion that the Bush foreign policy was being driven by a cabal of neoconservatives, most notably in the case of the Iraq War.

In fact, I would say that the original meaning of "neoconservative" is now dead and has been replaced with whoever opponents of the Iraq War do not like. So if you worked for the Bush administration you are a "neocon" whether you're Robert Gates, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, etc.

Waht reminded me of this was a recent post at the Atlantic by Douthat which asserted that the GOP's extroverted wing was primarily composed of "Wilsonian" neoconservatives while the Dems extroverted "Hamiltonian" wing was more realist in nature. He says:

"At the moment, then, the Hamiltonian shift toward the Democrats leaves the GOP dominated by two factions that both tend to err on the side of hawkishness in any given foreign-policy controversy - and this strikes me as a profoundly unhealthy development... There is, however, plenty of life in the Hamiltonian tendency - despite the fact that many of its practitioners, starting with the buffoonish Chuck Hagel, did not exactly distinguish themselves during the debates over the Iraq War - and the exodus of the Scowcroftians to Obamaland notwithstanding, I still think that the congruence between the Jacksonian views of the GOP base and a Hamiltonian take on the world offers fertile ground for a right-realist revival. It probably won't come from the Hagels and Scowcrofts and their peers, but I'm optimistic that you'll see it in the next right-of-center generation - the twentysomething and thirtysomething conservatives for whom the Iraq War was a formative (and chastening) experience. "

I disagree. The idea that the Iraq War only came about only because of neoconservatives is quite frankly a blantant re-writing of history.

As early as 1991-2 the "realist" the George H.W. Bush administration sought to bring about the end of Saddam Hussein's regime via a military uprising or covert action.

And in 1998 the Senate unanimously approved of the Iraq Liberation Act which stated that the U.S. goal in Iraq was regime change. Later that year Bill Clinton bombed Iraq and stated that the U.S. had no choice but to replace Saddam Hussein's government with one that would abide by international law.

So by 2003 there were in fact many liberal and conservative realists who sincerely believed that military force was the least bad option left. That's why Chuck Hagel, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton agreed to the war in the first place, only to shamefully turn their backs on it when the going got tough.

The only difference between the policies of George W. Bush and Bill Clinton on Iraq was that Bush used ground troops and Clinton didn't.

One of the things I least like about Obama is how his lack of credentials causes us to create visions of how he will govern based on every small detail of what little he has said or done.

Does he have the philosophy of Bill Ayres or Bill Clinton? With Obama you could argue convincingly either way.

With Obama forming a cabinet of Clinton retreads, it is fairly stunning to see virtually every major figure on the right doing a complete 180 and assuming that he will govern from the center. That's not to say that he won't, but rather that these appointments could have different purposes.

To a certain extent, it makes sense for an empty-suit politician like Obama to fall back on Clintonites who at least know what they are doing rather than risk a dysfunctional government.

Also, as this recent Time story points out, "It's precisely because Obama intends to pursue a genuinely progressive foreign policy that he's surrounding himself with people who can guard his right flank at home."

In other words, his appointments may be a means of easing Republican opposition to his policies. This is especially important with regards to foreign affairs because, as the article goes on to state, Democrats still face an embarassing deficit on the question of which party would do better with national security.

Remember, Obama's success had a lot to do with his redefining terms. If he can turn welfare into tax cuts, why can't he turn nationalized healthcare into "public works" to restart the economy, or something ridiculous like that?

Obama also isn't suicidal, as he has shown with not raising taxes until 2011. It says a great deal about him and his party these days when even he knows that the Democrat party line on taxes is BS.

Right now I don't think that Obama will follow his 16 month timetable for Iraq because a) he routinely breaks his promises anyway, b) he could probably safely withdraw troops in 36 months anyway, which would coincide nicely with his re-election timetable, c) he probably doesn't want to be blamed for losing the war provided that the political costs are minimal, and d) none of his advisors would recommend it.

On the other hand some of his stated policies, such as bailing out Detroit and going on a half trillion dollar spending spree are outrageous.

However, if Obama does genuinely govern from the center, it raising some disturbing questions. How does this fit into our plan of coming back in 2010 or 2012? Will we have to move to the left to avoid the wilderness that British Tories have experienced since 1997?

Perhaps the best way to handle Obama will be on a case by case basis. If  he does something "centrist" Republicans should go out of their way to praise him instead of accusing him of hypocrisy. If he does something that looks ripped out of a Paul Krugman column we should fight tooth and nail against it and also offer conservative alternatives.

Lost in all the punditry about the "impressive" Obama victory is how 2008 compares to other elections where one party had served two consecutive terms.

In 2004 Bush won re-election with about 2.5% of the vote. In 2008 Obama won by somewhere around 7.0%, producing a "swing" of 9.5%.

For comparison:

In 1904 Republican Theodore Roosevelt won by 18.83%. In 1908 Republican Taft won again, but only by 8.53%--a swing of 10 points even though Roosevelt was popular.

(1912 was complicated by a three-way race that hurt the Republicans, so direct comparisons with 1908 are impossible.)

In 1916 Democrat Woodrow Wilson won by 3.12%. In 1920, after an unpopular war and an economic recession (sound familiar?) Republican Harding won by 26.17%. The swing amounted to 29.29%.

(Another third party ticket sabotaged a party in 1924, making comparisons with 1928 impossible.)

In 1936 Roosevelt won re-election by 24.26%. He ran for a thrid term in 1940 and won by 9.95%--a swing of 14.31%.

(1944 was a war year and Harry Truman essentially served that term.)

In 1948 Truman was elected by 4.48%. In 1952 Eisenhower beat Stevenson by 10.85%. The swing was 15.33%.

In 1956 Eisenhower was re-elected by 15.40%. In 1960 Kennedy beat Nixon by 0.16%. The swing was 15.56% even though Eisenhower was popular.

In 1964 Johnson crushed Goldwater by 22.58%. In 1968 Richard Nixon barely won by 0.70% but it amounted to a 23.28% swing.

In 1972 Nixon won by 23.15%. In 1976 Carter beat Frod by 2.06% and the swing was 25.21%.

In 1984 Reagan won re-election by 18.22%. In 1988 Bush won a Republican third term by 7.73% but that still amounted to a 10.49% swing in spite of Reagan's popularity.

In 1992 Bush lost to Clinton by 5.56%, marking another 13.29% swing.

In 1996 Clinton was re-elected by 8.51% and in 2000 Gore won the popular vote by 0.51%. The Swing was 8.0% even though most thought the country was going in the right direction.

Barack Obama's 9.5% swing is thus smaller than the 16.5% average swing. In fact, only in 2000 was the swing less than 9.5%--and then not by much.

If we only average the unpopular administrations (1920, 1952, 1968, 1976, 1992), we get a swing of 21.28% on average.

Once again, the question that should be asked is why we didn't lose by more, not why we lost.

According to a new Pew survey, that is. Of course, they don't put that in their actual report, instead you have to go to the complete report and scroll down to page 35 to find out that fully 24% gave press coverage an "F" grade. The previous high was 20% in 2000 after the Florida fiasco. Another 15% gave a "D" grade and 26% said "C".

But there's more. Fully 44% believe that the press did not fairly cover the McCain campaign. This compares with 40% who said the same thing about Bush in 2004 and 35% who said it about Bush in 1992. Even these numbers don't tell the full story though. Just 22% of Republicans thought the press was fair to McCain compared to 40% who thought it was fair to Bush in 2004 (and 67% of Democrats who thought the press was fair to Kerry).

In 1992 73% of Republicans thought Clinton was covered fairly, in 2008 only 48% of them thought Obama was covered fairly.  41% of Republicans thought the press was fair to Bush in 1992.

A lot of commentary has been focusing on the fact that the GOP lost Virginia for the first time since 1964 and North Carolina since 1976. This is treated as absolutely unprecedented, and to a certain extent it is.

But consider the demographics. The last Republican loser, Dole, won Virginia by a tiny 2 point margin while McCain lost it by 5.5. However, in 1996 the Virginia electorate was 81% white and 16% black while in 2008 it was 70% white and 20% black. Dole won white voters 53-39 while McCain won them 60-39--a substantial improvement. The problem was, of course, that the black vote in 2008 was larger and more monolithic than in 1996. The same lesson applies to 1992, where the elder Bush won the state by 4 points while obtaining an identical margin among whites than McCain did.

Similarly, in North Carolina whites were 80% in 1996 and Dole won them by 24 points, carrying the state by 5. McCain did better at 29 points but barely lost the state because whites only constituted 72% in 2008.

The point is that we lost these former Republican strongholds not necessarily because parts of the state have more white liberals, but rather because the white share was lower (and the black share correspondingly higher) than in the past elections we lost. We can look forward to these states being purple for as long as these turnout trends hold up.

Facts did not matter in this election. This election was decided based on how much free stuff the candidates promised to hand out, and we just couldn't compete with Prince Barack.

But I really don't think that we lost as badly as everyone wants to portray it. Obama's edge in the popular vote is going to be less than 7%.  Considering that we have been through four years where every possible bad thing that could happen happened--natural disasters, botched Social Security reform, highest gas prices ever, botched immigration reform, costly wars, recession, the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, Republican scandals, the most unpopular Presidential term in U.S. history, the media functioning as a campaign arm for Prince Barack, a Republican candidate with no message, an election where the Republican candidate was outspent 4:1 and lost every debate by a wide margin--why Obama didn't win in a FDR-like landslide should be the question people ask, not why we lost.

To be sure, though, the exit polling/results indentifies some disturbing trends:

--White voters voted for McCain by the same margin they voted for Bush in 2000. But their percentage of the electorate declined from 81% to 74%. Meanwhile, minorities are even more Democratic than they were when Bush was elected.

This is going to be a huge problem for the GOP in Nevada, where the white vote declined from 77% to 69% in four years--and will continue when Prince Barack signs the amnesty bill. Remember,  Bush only narrowly won Nevada and Prince Barack won it by double digits this time around.

It's also a problem in Florida, where McCain lost because of a huge movement among Hispanics to Obama. Obama won hispanics there 57-42 while Bush won them by double digits in 2004. By contrast, the white vote in 2008 was identical to 2004.

--In Colorado there was a large shift among whites to Obama, who won them despite the fact that Bush carried them by double digits in 2004.

--We lost Indiana and North Carolina. I suspect we lost North Carolina for the same reasons we lost Virginia--more liberal migrants. But I really have no response to Obama winning Indiana other than to note it borders Illinois.

Other observations:

--Obama's four point margin in Ohio was unimpressive considering that Ohio is going through hard economic times and that Bush only won it by 2 points.

--People keep saying that we  need more white working class voters to make up for the more liberal white college graduates. But the loss of white college grads is made up for a gain in minority college grads.

In response to the points raised earlier about Get out the vote:

I mean, I understand the importance of GOTV. But is it really necesary to make an effort as large as 2004?

In 2000/2004, GOTV was important for Bush because (pre-inconvenient truth) Gore and Kerry, while disliked, wern't seen as a urgent threat. Most of the voting was for Bush rather than against his opponents.

This year is fundamentally different than 2004. Pretty much all conservatives are extremely worried about an Obama administration. If Obama's unrestricted far-left agenda pronounced day after day in the news and advertisements doesn't motivate conservatives to the polls, I don't know what would.

In the end, the most important thing about this election is where the soft/undecided vote goes, as opposed to 2004 where it was all about maximizing the partisan base.  If a last minute ad-barrage is what it's going to take to persuade them then it should be done. It could "fall flat" in the end but the unusual circumstance of an unqualified Democratic nominee may demand it.

I have no idea whether or not Obama's thirty minutes of paid propaganda will persuade any undecided swing voters. But let me just say, if after all we've heard about this election, after all the commercials, after all the news coverage, if people are going to make up their mind on the next president based on a partisan ad, then frankly they deserve him.