This is a message we are likely to see from the Republican party as we move into the 2012 election cycle and they seek to unseat Obama.

Read the fascinating article on the Cardinals’ win probability across the 7 game series of the 2011 World Series at Fangraphs. Awesome! D.GOOCH

It began a century ago with the onset of the Progressive movement and the reforms that rested control of the electoral process from political parties and reached its nader with the death of the party machines in the 1970′s and 1980′s…but have we entered a new ear of party decline?

Walter Russell Mead argues that the two political parties are breaking down. The story should be a familliar one after our discussion about political parties and interest groups:

The decay of American political parties continues as the real money and power in politics shifts inexorably away from party organizations to informal and ad hoc groups. The combination of citizen grassroots movements, decentralized party structures and the vast sums of money short-circuiting the official party structures is changing the way politics works. As this story in the New York Times details, the real conversation among Republican-affiliated power brokers now takes place outside party structures.

American political parties are increasingly being reduced to flags of convenience; party organizations and party institutions have little influence over events. That didn’t use to be true. Party leaders and officials once exercised significant power over the choice of nominees, over the careers of aspiring pols, and over patronage. These days, outside Chicago and a handful of other places, we no longer think of party “bosses”.

Meade’s argument is well-taken as far as party organizations go, but he misses the increasing discipline of parties in the legisluature…and those “flags of convenience” can become particularly inconvenient election after election…yet party switching is extremely rare. Why is that? Clearly party commitment still matters…if party organization increasingly does not.

Plutocracy and populism are often thought to be polar opposites. In American politics today they are two sides of the same coin. The same forces that allow insurgent candidates and movements to rise up in our politics also create the conditions that allow donors outsized influence. With a few exceptions, voters today are no longer content to think and vote in blocs; they are less likely to belong to one of the two major parties, are more likely to split their ballots, and they are not easily swayed by endorsements from powerful political figures. That works for two kinds of candidates: insurgency candidates with strong and committed grass roots support, and candidates who can buy the advertising time to make an impression on the voters.

Fair enough. But those candidates still, for the most part, operate within the party structure. As we have seen with the Tea Party movement, which made a conscious choice to pursue political change from within the Republican Party rather than from without.

American politics today occupies a space that is institutionally weak. A candidate with a lot of money (his own or raised from donors) can make an instant name and reputation; a movement that energizes the public can push aside established party figures to anoint its own candidates for public office. President Obama’s victory in the 2008 campaign for the Democratic nomination was a triumph over the pro-Clinton party establishment as surely as the surprising Tea Party victories in GOP senatorial primaries showed the weakness of the Republican establishment.

But is that a bad thing? Even if money increasingly dominates in political choices (and I’m not convinced that isn’t more about the technological revolution rather than a political one), was it any better when old men in smoke-filled backrooms chose who the people could choose from?

The appearance of unconventional figures in politics is one reflection of this trend. Strong party machines tend to produce dull and forgettable candidates. A candidate selected by a party machine might have to tell voters that “I am not a crook;” such a candidate would probably not need to make a television commercial to explain to voters that “I am not a witch.” Populist politicians tend to be more flamboyant; they have to be able to mobilize their followers. From Jesse Ventura to Al Franken and Sarah Palin, we are seeing more politicians whose ability to command attention and mobilize the base counts for more than their ability to rise patiently through the ranks of a party machine.

Yes we have seen some unconventional political figures in the past few decades. But there were quite a few prior to that as well. And the above examples don’t provide strong evidence that a weakened party system produces unconventional politicians. Of the above, Ventura won a 3-way race in Minnseota and only served one term. Al Franken, again Minnesota (what’s with Minnesota?), won a 3-way race and is in his first term. Sarah Palin was a one-term governor and was *selected* by McCain to be the VP nominee. She hasn’t run for anything since. The candidate who had to say she isn’t a witch, lost. So it isn’t at all clear from these examples that the system is producing unconventional politicans…it might be more correct to say it has done a good job of punishing them for their unconventiality.

Anyway, it’s an interesting essay. Read the whole thing. H/T Instapundit.

Wow. Just Wow. Below, the win probability chart…that is the chart that indicates the probability of winning given the game situation (score, men on, outs, inning, etc.). Wow.

Source: FanGraphs

Something very important happened in the Senate on Thursday, or at least it is possible that something very important happened…depending on whether what happened stands the test of time. The key institutional difference between the Senate and the House is the role of the minority in the legislative process. In the House of Representatives, the institution is very much top-down and hierarchical (partly b/c of necessity — size makes floor time a scarce commodity). However, in the Senate every senator is an “island of power.” The minority has a number of powers that make the Senate a supermajoritarian institution. The most significant of these is the filibuster.

However, less well known and relevant to what happened on Thursday is the right of the minority to offer any amendment (no germaneness rule) to a bill proposed by a majority. The absence of a germaneness rule (in the House, all amendments must be “germane” to the bill they are amending…for example an amendment to an agricultural appropriations that contains a subsidy for cotton farmers would be germane while an amendment to prohibit partial-birth abortions would not) in the Senate is one of the reasons individual senators and the minority are so powerful. There is no way to prevent Senators from getting their preferred legislation considered on the floor. This is also why committees aren’t as important in the Senate — in the House committees are much more effective gatekeepers as the bills they report to the floor cannot become the vehicle for any and every interest a member of the House might have.

This brings us to what happened on Thursday. First, let me set the stage politically. President Obama, starting with a joint-session of Congress, has been pushing his jobs bill, the American Jobs Act. Obama has clearly been using it as a bludgeon with which to hit the Republicans in Congress over their collective heads on the campaign trail. Obama’s campaign reelection team has clearly determined that following the Harry Truman historical lesson (run against a “Do Nothing” Republican Congress) is the best path to victory for Obama, given the sagging economy. Part of that has been a rhetorical attack on the Republicans, taking them to task for blocking a full vote on his American Jobs Act in its entirety. While the Republicans would clearly like to break up the bill and only pass the parts that they like (there are a number of ‘poison pills’ in the AJA for Republicans, including tax increases on high income earners), Obama has called on Congress to “pass the bill” now and in full.

There’s a significant problem with this line of attack for President Obama, however. Namely, a number of members of Congress from his own party have expressed skepticism and concern over the AJA…particularly the fact it raises taxes on the cusp of a possible double-dip recession. It’s entirely possible that the AJA, if put up for a vote in the Senate, would be rejected by a bipartisan cross-section of the Senate. That would be a triple blow — refuting the rhetorical argument Obama has been stumping with, dealing Obama a bipartisan defeat of his jobs bill, and eliminating any argument Obama might offer that would place blame for the economy at the foot of a do-nothing Congress.

So on Thursday, the Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell, very cleverly attempted to add, as an amendment, the entire AJA to a bill that addressed recent currency manipulations by China. Reid objected to McConnell’s amendment and the decision went to the chair (occupied by the Democratic Senator from Alaska at the time) and he ruled against Reid on the advice of the Senate parlimentarian. The Hill has the rest of the story:

In a shocking development Thursday evening, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) triggered a rarely used procedural option informally called the “nuclear option” to change the Senate rules.

Reid and 50 members of his caucus voted to change Senate rules unilaterally to prevent Republicans from forcing votes on uncomfortable amendments after the chamber has voted to move to final passage of a bill.

Reid’s coup passed by a vote of 51-48, leaving Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) fuming.

…

Reid’s move strips the minority of the power to force politically-charged procedural votes after the Senate has voted to cut off a potential filibuster and move to a final vote, which the Senate did on the China measure Tuesday morning, 62-38.

This is a significant development. Reid essentially, on the fly, reduced the power of the minority in the Senate. This could have lasting ramifications. While Republicans had, in the past, raised the possibility of invoking the nuclear option (over Bush’s judicial nominations, for example), the then-majority did not follow through with it. Reid did exactly that on Thursday. The reason minority rights have been perserved in the Senate all these years is the shadow of the future: every current majority knows its status is temporary and they will, one day, once again be in the minority. It is especially odd given the strong possibility (even probability) that Republicans will take back the Senate in 2012 (Democrats are defending twice the number of seats in 2012 that Republicans are). Reid appeared to be unsure of whether or not he did the right thing, and I think there’s a strong possibility he will walk this back and change the rules again. If not, the elimination of the post-cloture minority right to offer amendments is another blow to the rights of the minority in the Senate…making it a little less the unique institution it has always been. Stay tuned…

UPDATE: As expected, the Republicans have threatened retaliation. They will use their powers as a minority to slow down business in the Senate…making regular business much more difficult. Reid’s move has backfired…the question is whether or not this unilateral ‘nuclear option’ chance to the rules will survive or will the Senate Dems and Reid back down? Stay tuned…
D.GOOCH

We’ve had alot of movement on the Republican side of things for the 2012 presidential race. Mike Huckabee is still out. Chris Christe is still and now seems to be definately out. And Palin has declared herself out for the 2012 race. Perrry has slumped after some poor debate performances and his opponents have successfully undercut his support by painting him as soft on illegal immigration. Herman Cain, the former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza, has surged in support, winning the straw poll in Florida. Mitt Romney has been the big winner in all of this.

I thought there was a fairly strong possibility that Perry would run away with the nomination (given Romney’s weaknesses with the base and the appeal of a Southern governor with a strong jobs record), but that has not happened. Perry could still win the nomination, but his road is going to be a tough one. There has always been a tendency in the Republican party to nominate the presidential candidate whose “turn” it was (see Dole, Bob 1996; McCain, John 2008), and Romney may be benefiting from that. I also think I may have underestimated how much Romney has improved as a candidate in the three years since his unsuccessful bid for the nomination in 2008. Romney has tightened his message, done his best to armour his Achilles Heel (Romney Care), and handled his critics’ attacks with much greater aplomb in this election season.

This is still a two-man race between Perry and Romney. I think Cain may very well be first in line as the VP choice. Cain doesn’t bring a state with him to the ticket, but VP choices haven’t gone that direction in recent years (see Cheney for Bush, Lieberman for Gore, Palin for McCain, etc.). Cain’s business background, stump skills, and the diversity he bring to a Republican ticket may very well appeal to whomever wins the Republican nomination. At this point I see it as a coin flip between Perry and Romney. And Florida is still the state where I think it will all be decided. We now know there is little chance of a late-entry “savior” candidate to the race. What you see is what you get. And I think it is a pick-em between Romney and Perry. D.GOOCH

Via Megan McCardle. H/T Instapundit.

For the new classes this Fall, I occasionally do a post on the blog that collects a number of interesting and relevant links and comments under the title “Anthology of Interest” (Futurama fans will get the reference). This is the fourth such this year.

The Republican presidential primary process has been proceeding apace and the most significant development of the past month has been the entrance into the race of Texas Governor Rick Perry. Perry, an evangelical conservative, leaped into front runner status. Since then the other Republican challengers have chipped away at him during the debates and Perry’s position has erroded (though he retains front-runner status). Ben Reinhard of the National Journal documents this in noting that Perry’s honeymoon in the Republican primary is over. For Myra Adams, its a political game show. The key upcoming state is Florida, with Romney expected to take New Hampshire and Perry expected to win South Carolina.

While the Obama administration has been relatively scandal free, two emerging scandals may prove to be problematic in the 2012 re-election campaign. The Fast and Furious scandal, where agents of the government had gun sellers sell guns to members of the Mexican drug cartel (ostensibly to gain intel on the hieracrchy of the cartel) is currently under investigation by the House Oversight committee. Representative Issa has already uncovered evidence that guns sold to the Carel through the program were used in crimes, including the murder of a Border Patrol agent. How far up in the administration this goes is an open question, though some has suggested it may implicate current Attorney General, Eric Holder.

The other scandal, which broke in the last few weeks, is the scandal over the upcoming banckrupcy of the solar panel company, Solyndra. NBC provides the basic details of the emerging scandal:

There are two aspects to this particular scandal. As the video notes, the fact President Obama touted Solyndra as part of his Green Energy policy is politically embarrassing and a blow to the notion of “green energy” as a viable fusion of government priorities and business ventures. The more serious issue is the extent to which the administration tried to tilt the field in favor of Solyndra and biased the evaluation of the company as a public investment. The two heads of the company took the Fifth this past week at hearings into the scandal, one of four ongoing investigations into the Solyndra loan. While the NY Times’s Joe Nocera argues this is much ado about nothing and a “phony” scandal, Reason’s Tim Cavanaugh believes there’s no wishing away the Solyndra scandal. Charles Gasparino at the Huffington Post points out that criminality or no, the loan is an example of the broader problem with Obama’s ineffective stimulus. Stay tuned.

Other stuff:

10 Lessons from the Florida Straw Poll.

The Real Clear Politics Poll Average has President Obama’s job approval at 43.3%.

Things aren’t going well in Europe. Greece is on the verge of economic collapse. Tax increases don’t seem likely to help. Mark Steyn wonders at the West’s complacency.

The Palestinians have applied for UN recognition as a state, bypassing the negotiation process with Israel mandated by the U.S. The Security Council is likely to veto the application and there will likely be an effort to cut off funds to the Palestinian Authority in Congress. Winner: Hamas.

6 Arcade Games too Awesome to Get Released in the West.

Thoughts on Television, Truth, and Reality by Peter Wehner. H/T Instapundit.

Oh, and by the way, is everything we think we know about physics, i.e. Einstein’s theory of relativity, wrong? Maybe.

Sigh. The lampooning is on the mark, but will George ever listen? Of course not. Of course not.

Also this.

D.GOOCH

I remember, as a kid, my grandfather talking about how everyone knew where they were and what they were doing on the “day that will live in infamy,” i.e. the attack on Pearl Harbor. And I also remember my dad talking about where he was the day Kennedy was shot in 1963. These moments of national crisis are crystalized in the memories of those who went through them. The closest I had come to such a moment in my own life had been the Challenger explosion in the 80′s, when I was a 5th grade student at Immaculate Conception School in Blytheville, AR.

That all changed on 9/11/01. I had just started in the PhD program at the University of Missouri in Columbia, and I was settling in to a new town and getting to know a new stable of friends. This was the furthest I had lived away from home in my life, so I was already experiencing a feeling of dislocation and aprehension. Graduate study is daunting in and of itself. Years of study and work ahead even if you measure up, which 8 out of 10 graduate students fail to do. I literally did not yet have cable — the cable guy was scheduled to come in later in the week. I had spent a long night doing some reading and had planned on sleeping in the next day. So you can imagine my surprise and consternation when my roommate, the lacross coach at MU, woke me that morning and informed me that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center.

I descended from my room (a tiny room in a duplex on the north side of town…it was probably a little bit bigger than Harry’s room under the staircase on Privit Drive) to the main room downstairs to watch the NBC coverage (by way of antenna) of what I initally believed to have been a tragic accident. We were discussing how a plane could have accidentally veered into the WTC, and we speculated that some catastrophic failure in the plane’s guidance systems had occurred when I saw a glint of metal off to the side of the WTC.

Looking back, it was as if time stopped. In my memory, the plane careening towards WTC 2 was moving in slow motion. It felt as if I could reach out and stop the inevitible from happening. It seemed as if that plane would never reach its horrifying destination. But of course, I could not stop it…and its plunge into that wall of glass and steel thundered home the reality of that moment. And even through the grainy reception on an old-school tube-based 20 inch TV, it was clear that the world had changed. As that plane, looking no bigger than a bird, blew through the building and we watched, dumbstruck, as the movie-esque fireball engulfed the World Trade Center…it was an emotional experience I have difficulty describing. Shock. Awe. Denial. Followed by fear and anger. Who had done this? Who would do this? How could this happen to us? That moment hammered home the undeniable fact that the untouchable and invoiable United States homeland was untouchable and invoiable no more.

The rest of the day was a blur. The towers fell. We learned of the third plane and its destiny with the Pentagon. And initial reports indicated a fourth plane had gone down in Pennsylvania. I went to a local resturant to watch continuing coverage on cable news. On the way, I stopped at Wal-Mart and bought an American flag to hang out of the window of my car. Again it is tough to describe what I was feeling. That overwhelming sense of wanting to *do* something…but being completely impotent to do anything. Not to mention the uncertainty. Was this just the first blow in what was to be armageddon? When would the next attack come? Tonight? Tomorrow? A week from then? The movie Red Dawn, which postulated a Cold War era attack on our homeland by communists, had always seemed surreal. More unreal than science fiction. An attack like that couldn’t really happen. Not to us. And then it did. The world had changed.

The following days were a deluge of terrible bits of news, each more depressing than the next, as reality began to set in. We learned that we had been attacked by Al Qaeda and that the attacks were percipitated by jihadists directed by Osama Bin Laden and a War on Terror would ensue. We knew the enemy. But we did not know what he could or would do next. Small sparkles of hope and joy in survivors found and heroism noted were overwhelmed by the absolute reality of the carnage and the number who had lost their lives. And I realized what it meant to live through an event like Pearl Harbor or the Kennedy assasination. To experience the gamut of emotions of a truly world-changing event. To be there when it all changed and would never be the same again.

My story of 9-11 is but one of millions of simillar stories. We were there when the Towers fell. When the Pentagon was violated. When those heroes on Flight 93 proclaimed “Let’s Roll” and struck the only counter-blow against the terorists the West managed on that day. 9-11 changed my views on the importance of international affairs, on the state of national security, on the threats to our country, and on what must be done to protect it. In many ways all of our politics, foreign and domestic, have been affected and continue to be affected by that day. The Chinese have a saying, a curse directed at your enemies: “May you live in interesting times.” In other words, may you live in a time of uncertainty, upheveal, war, and death. 9-11 was the first moment of the “interesting times” of the War on Terror. A day that will live in infamy. A day I lived through, just ten short years ago, on a beautiful Tuesday morning in September.

Still chokes me up. D.GOOCH

President Obama gave a speech presenting his new jobs program, called the American Jobs Act (AJA), to a joint session of Congress last night. Here is a round-up of the reactions to the speech. The price tag for the bill comes in at about $447 billion.

AP’s fact checkers rate President Obama’s claims that the AJA is paid-for, bipartisan, deficit-neutral and immediately effective as false.

Critics of the president have made much of the fact that Obama repeatedly called for them to “pass the bill” in his speech. The count? See for yourself:

Captain Ed over at Hot Air notes the curious absence of any mention of “energy” in President Obama’s job proposal. Meanwhile, Robert Reich, Clinton’s former Secretary of Labor, gives the speech two cheers and one jeer. Reich believes it was a step in the right direction, but not bold enough.

Elanor Clift, a liberal supporter of the president, argues Obama made a clear and compelling case for his new jobs program. She argues it is a “common sense” mix of bipartisan proposals that amount to a sound program to stimulate the economy.

If President Obama’s speech were only about economics, its proposals would pass easily in both chambers of Congress. Though bigger and bolder than expected, it is still at its core a common-sense mix of ideas that both Democrats and Republicans have supported.

Jay Cost argues that the AJA is Stimulus, part deux.

Much of Obama’s speech from last night was directly imported from other addresses. It was full of his usual tropes – strawmen characterizations of his opponents, a soaring paean to American greatness that only ever mentioned big government, and the typical denunciations of “politics as usual,” implicitly defined as everything that hurts his political prospects in 2012.

John Podhoretz, a critic of the president, agrees and is underwhelmed. Podhoretz argues that Obama’s “jobs” plan is no different from his original stimulus bill in 09, which did nothing to “stimulate” the economy or help with unemployment.

But Obama’s fetishistic invocation of the glory of infrastructure projects is directly related to his unyielding certitude — a certitude unaltered despite the failure of his last stimulus — that the federal government needs to take a lead role in thecountry’s employment crisis by employing people directly itself.

Whatever the merits of Obama’s job proposal, the politics are clear. Given the failure of the first stimulus to actually stimulate the economy and the continued threat of a double-dip recession, Obama’s re-election bid is in serious jeapordy. The below graph, which shows the actual unemployment rate versus the post-stimulus projections of the Obama administration in 09 illustrate why many congressional leaders have either dismissed Obama’s new plan or are highly skeptical of it. Obama’s credibility on the economy has taken a serious hit and it may be too late for him to do anything about it:

One of the long-standing identified regularities in American politics has been party realignment — where every generation or so the party system realigns, the old order is swept away, and the new order (and usually a new majority party) takes its place. While there was much debate on exactly what percipitates realignments (generational change and immigration are the big factors), how to precisely define realignments (changes in the social groups supporting the parties, see Petrocik), and whether the Southern ‘realignment’ counts as a realignment given the mixed electoral results for the Republicans of the 1980′s and 1990′s, that realignments happen in American politics is as close to Durvergar’s Law, one of the few political science ‘laws’ yet identified, that American behavioralists had gotten. However, the post-modern age of politics (1970′s to present) has called into question the notion of realignment (first identified by V.O. Key in his famous article on critical elections) itself.

In 2008, many predicted we had seen the end of the Republican realignment and we’re embarking on a new Democratic realignment. James Carville famously predicted “40 years of Democratic dominance” after the heady victory for Obama and the complete control of the government they had won. Two short years later and Republicans reclaimed the House and are almost certain to reclaim the Senate in 2012. Of course, it was but a few years prior to that where some political scientists, in the wake of the 2002 and 2004 elections, were arguing that Republican control of the House was assured for decades to come given electoral advantages (e.g. redistricting, Southern districts, etc.). In 2006, the Democrats took back both the House and the Senate. And that was, of course, preceded by Gary Jacobson’s famous prediction of perpetual Democratic control of the House in the 1980′s (shortly before the Republican revolution in 1994). The electorate keeps fooling the experts. The branches have cycled between the parties over the last three decades with no one party gaining a sustainable foothold. As I noted in my post on the alienation meme, one good point in that article was the assertion that ‘sustainable’ control of government may have gone the way of the dodo.

Ross Douhat takes up the realignment question in a recent article in the NY Times, taking note of the perpetually crushed dreams of ‘realignment’ over the last few decades and, like I noted, pointing to polarization as a potential explanation as to why realignments may be a thing of the past.

This dream has hovered over national leaders from Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich. But it has loomed larger in the last decade, as our politics have grown more polarized and our country has suffered through a series of dislocations and disasters. Events like 9/11 and the Great Recession have persuaded partisans on both sides that a dramatic realignment is imminent; the breadth of the ideological divide has convinced them that it’s necessary.

Douhat puts a new spin on the realignment story. He argues that realignments have become a partisan goal, and as a consequence we see less compromise and less capacity to handle our looming fiscal crisis in our democratic institutions of government.

The dream of realignment has become the enemy of such compromises. It inspires politicians to claim sweeping mandates from highly contingent victories: think of Dick Cheney insisting on another round of deficit-financed tax cuts in 2003 because “we won the midterm elections” and “this is our due,” or the near-identical rebukes that President Obama delivered to Eric Cantor (“Elections have consequences — and Eric, I won”) and to John McCain (“the election’s over”) during the debates over the stimulus and health care.

The losers, meanwhile, wax intransigent, while hoping for a realignment of their own. After all, why cut a deal today if tomorrow you might overthrow your rivals permanently? Better to just say “no” flat out, as the Bush-era Democrats did with Social Security reform and the Republicans did with health care, and hope that the next election will deliver you the once-in-a-generation victory.

It’s a seductive story, but I think it misses the mark. Parties have always sought out realignments (nay, permanent and perpetual control of the government) and the ‘shadow of the future’ has always influenced the partisan politics of the present. What has changed is not that the prospects of realignment have become more enticing…rather, the parties have polarized. And as a consequence of that polarization, it is rational from both an electoral perspective (their constituencies demand ideological purity), from a campaign perspective (ideological purity draws larger campaign donations), and from a policy perspective (perfering the status quo to grand compromises) for parties to say “no” rather than cooperate and produce middle-solutions.

In the past, the parties were more ideologically diverse and thus bipartisan agreements (giving both parties cover) were much more palatable and more acceptable to the re-election constituencies of the representatives from each party. No more. Now “getting something done,” no matter how well it polls in the abstract, is a dirty word in election politics. Examples abound. TARP cost many Republicans their positions, as the Tea Party primaried them out of their elected positions. Is it such a surprise so many were unwilling to join Obama in some grand bargain? The Democrats steadfastly refused to even make an alternative proposal in 2005, when George Bush tried to take on Social Security. They were no less intransigent in the Debt Ceiling debate. While Douhat has adequately identified the consequence, he has misdiagnosed the cause. It’s not some grand example of the “actor-observer” bias. Rather this is simply the product of political and partisan polarization. Polarization explains why realignments may be unlikely in future elections…and polarization explains why the parties increasingly refuse to compromise. D.GOOCH