Coda to yesterday's political long-form

[drwex]

OK apparently I can't let this pass. The pundits still show up on my radio (I don't watch TV) and make me grind my teeth with their huge helpings of WRONG.

Fact: The Republicans have lost the national popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections. (I'm still opposed to changing to a national popular vote system for the reasons given last time.)

Fact: The Republicans got their asses kicked in state-wide contests (Senate races) up and down the line. The pro-rape guys went down in flames even in states that were heavily Romney-positive. The moderate guys either had to run as independents (Maine) or got their asses handed to them (MA). When your candidates' best strategy is to distance themselves from their supposed party that ought to be a giant warning sign.

If these two facts do not convince you, oh misbegotten sons of fleabags, to stop flapping your stupid gums about "close" elections and "divided electorate" then you are seriously continuing to miss the point. The Republicans and their cronies at places like ALEC and the Chamber of Commerce have done a good job of controlling state legislatures and that lets them redistrict to protect their seats and put more teabag nutballs into the House.

But when all is said and done the party of "not Obama" has ceased to be a useful functioning group that is in touch with anything. America is evolving and the "old white guy" plan is a dwindling relic of the past. Romney deliberately gave up on the Big Tent strategy this time around, and it hurt. Even though he veered like a drunk in a sportscar toward the center once the debates started it was never a full-campaign strategy. Romney won electoral opinion on having a better plan, and he got people to trust him (despite the Etch-a-Sketch Big Lie politics) but in the end people felt (by something like an 8:1 ratio) that Obama was more in touch with their daily needs than Thurston Howell the Carpetbagger. And that's how they voted. If the Republicans can't see that's not a "divided" electorate that's an evolving electorate they're doomed to continue losing large-scale contests.

Comments

[aelf.livejournal.com]

The popular vote for president was very close. What's your explanation for Obama doing just slightly better than Romney for it not being a close election? Or are you suggesting that the pick up of a few Dem seats is what made it not close? I'm sorry, I just don't see the "people really hate the Repubs" that you seem to be stating. I'd love it if another (ha, how about a) conservative party could jump in a void, but I'm not seeing the void. I'm seeing people pretty evenly split.

You wanna see redistricting to protect jobs (and corruption), come to Maryland. We win. And that's the Dems.

Doesn't MA have the same MD problem of being a one-party state and it taking an act of god to get a non-Dem in power? I thought Scott Brown getting elected in the first place was one of those "what? really?" so him losing seems to me to be par for the course. I'm actually surprised there was so little difference between him and Warren. She only got 54 to his 46? That seems small. Maybe MDers are just more dedicated in their single party fanaticism. :)

[drwex]

I don't think the vote was that close. In the final tally I think Silver's right and he'll be up by about 3 points. I expect that a combination of organized disenfranchisement and local events (e.g. Sandy) cost him another point. 3 or 4 points isn't a landslide but it's a solid win, particularly given his lackluster record and difficulty motivating his base. Really I think the Republicans did more to motivate the Democratic base than Obama did.

As far as gerrymandering goes, the Dems are every bit as guilty as the Repubs (and have been in the past). MA has been stupid with it. Though to my knowledge only Republican-authored plans have actually been rejected by courts. Dems manage to slip their plans through, which is at least prima facie evidence that they're less awful.

I'm not familiar with MD local politics so it's hard to compare. I will say that MA has a history of electing (moderate, socially liberal) Republicans particularly to the governorship. This is helped by the local Dem machine putting up truly awful candidates and running craptastic campaigns with startling regularity.

Brown's problem isn't Brown - it's the national party. Likewise Tisei (a local House candidate who is an out gay Republican - how's that for cognitive dissonance). I wouldn't mind voting for them as candidates if they weren't shackled to that national monster. It was actually painful watching Tisei try to explain how he was against Obamacare but not really, and actually didn't mind that his party thought he ought to be shoved back in the closet and denied basic civil rights. If the Republican party wasn't in the midst of a batshit insane ideological purge that would make the Khmer Rouge smile with recognition I would be more willing to believe that independent voices could operate within that framework. But in the present-day reality it's like you can't invite that guy you like to a party because every time you do his date gets drunk, smashes your stuff, and pukes on your carpet.

I commented in someone else's LJ that part of my dream for the future is that people across New England who combine our brand of social liberalism (government OUT of the bedroom) with solid reality-based non-trickle-down fiscal conservatism will put together a realistic alternative party. I'd vote for that. I'm not happy backing people who think corporations OR government ought to have unfettered power (which leaves out the big-L Libertarians) but if I'm forced to choose I'll take folk who are more willing to rein in the moneyed classes.

[aelf.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I'll keep watching the returns. Obama has gone up to 50.5% of the popular vote (according to Google). I guess in order to claim the race wasn't close, I'd need to see Obama getting 60% and Romney getting 40, you know? Or Obama getting something over _barely_ a majority of the people voting. That doesn't scream "dying party vs vibrant party" but rather "people are stuck mostly voting for the lesser of two evils, either side."

I think there are other explanations for Democrat gerrymandering standing than that they're "not as bad." I don't have time to look for court rejected Republican gerrymandering right now, but I'd bet it pales in comparison to the current MD plan (which withstood a court challenge). We can proudly claim to be more gerrymandered than the MA 1812 map that led to the term. Yeah us.

Ah, MD is Democrat-Democrat-Democrat. We only get Republican Governors when the Democrats are Truly Awful (Ehrlich beating Kathleen Kennedy Townsend. Even then it was a shock to the party Dems.).

I think you should rethink your comparison of the Republican party's action and the Khmer Rouge. I get that what the Republicans are doing is offensive, and the continued apparent denial of the (complete, or aspects of) personhood of classes of people is untenable. But it's absolutely not in the same league as the Khmer Rouge & that's an offensive rhetorical move.

Thank you for the conversation.

[drwex]

I'd have to go pretty far back to find a 60/40 popular vote split. Maybe Reagan/Carter? (searches a bit)

OK if you trust this site I picked at random: http://www.usconstitution.net/elections.html
You have to go back to Nixon/McGovern for a 60-40 (really 60/37) split. And we all know how well THAT went.

I see no evidence from this page that a large majority in the popular vote is any indicator of anything. Johnson beat Goldwater 61-38 and then proceeded to plunge us into Vietnam. Before that you have to go back to Roosevelt in 1936. Basically the electorate doesn't landslide that way. Electoral college splits are larger - e.g. Clinton beat Dole in the College by a huge margin despite a much smaller popular-vote win.

I'm not sure what that says about "lesser of two evils." I'm a pretty strong Obama supporter and _I_ don't have a problem admitting he's the lesser of two evils. I just think Romney was a much worse evil.

Sorry about the Khmer Rouge remark. I was trying to think of another political party that expelled its own faithful on a mass basis because they weren't ideologically pure enough and that was the first example that popped into my head. It was particularly startling to me because I thought the Bush I and Bush II-era Republicans had made significant gains with a big-tent strategy (which, admittedly, pissed off the ideologues in the Tea Party realm) and I did not expect the Repubs to do a 180 this time.

[scherzoid.livejournal.com]

By your definition (a 60/40 popular vote split), there have only been four non-close elections in all of U.S. history: Harding 1920, FDR 1936, LBJ 1964, and Nixon 1972.

Obama's margin of victory in 2012 wasn't large by any definition. But it was larger than either of George W. Bush's margins (one of which was negative). It was, however, a very broad victory. I think that's by far the more important metric, given the country's demographic shifts. For the GOP to remain relevant it MUST broaden its appeal, not lurch ever rightward, ceding a wider and wider share of the political spectrum to the Democratic Party.

I've voted for moderate Republicans in the past. And I'd like to be able to do so again, if Grover Norquist and the Tea Party don't succeed in driving them extinct. Or maybe I just did (http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/frame_game/2012/11/obama_the_moderate_republican_what_the_2012_election_should_teach_the_gop.html).

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

I thought Scott Brown getting elected in the first place was one of those "what? really?"

Brown won that one because Coakley was a poor candidate, no personal ground game.
Unfortunately, Capuano didn't have the statewide ground game he needed, as he wasn't well known outside of his district.

Had Cap won the primary, he'd likely have been our Senator, imo.

[drwex]

Cap wasn't the nominee because he's too "street" for the party, which prefers its candidates bland and not loud-mouthed. He might not have started with the name recognition of Coakley (who's apparently reasonably competent at her job and absolutely wooden as a candidate) but if the party had backed him, he would've been well known around the state by election day.

[chienne-folle.livejournal.com]

I'm distressed by how CLOSE the popular vote was. Nearly half of my fellow Americans voted for an empty suit with good hair. Romney has demonstrated that he has no personal principles and no integrity. He's demonstrated that he cares not at all for anyone who earns less than a million dollars a year. He's demonstrated that he has no compassion, no empathy, and no conscience.

The Republican party has demonstrated that it cares only for the rich and is willing to sacrifice the poor, the middle class, the unemployed, and the sick. They've demonstrated that they are willing to let the entire nation go down in flames, rather than compromise. For anyone who isn't extremely rich, voting for a Republican is voting against their economic interests.

Yet the Republican party succeeded in getting nearly half of American voters to vote against their own interests and for a man who isn't worth spit. To me, that makes the Republicans chillingly effective.

I'm thrilled that they weren't quite effective enough to win the election, but geeze, it was WAY closer than it should have been!


My own parents are lifelong Republicans, and they don't quite seem to have noticed that Republicans stopped being Eisenhower a LONG time ago. When W. was nominated, and my father indicated that he was planning to vote for him, I said, "Daddy, how can you vote for a guy who's as dumb as a sack of nails?" And he shrugged and said, "I'm a conservative guy, and he's the conservative candidate."

[drwex]

I realize (and you know as well) that it's easy to fall into the "all right-thinking people should think like this" trap. Romney's a soulless, principal-free carpetbagger, but he's not stupid. Obama assumed that Romney was stupid and got himself trounced in the first debate. Romney also has (had) some very smart and extremely well-funded people behind him.

In the end, people rarely vote for a candidate based on his or her apparent smarts. After watching Bush I'm tempted to say that smarts are completely irrelevant (to winning American votes) but I think it's a matter of how those smarts are deployed. I like to refer back to Jimmy Carter, who was a gifted student all throughout school and one of the first to qualify in the Navy's nuclear engineering program. He was (and is) a lot smarter than people gave him credit for and it didn't do him a damned bit of good.

[chienne-folle.livejournal.com]

I didn't say ROMNEY was stupid. I SAID that I made that "dumb as a sack of nails" comment to my father when he was planning to vote for W., as in George W. Bush.