The World Turned Upside Down

Just when I thought the current climate in Washington had reached a level of partisanship hitherto unimagined, several lawmakers have surprised me.

The Good
Russ Feingold (D-WI)

He’s been off my radar for a while, but just as I had written him off as a pawn of the president, he surprises me. First with his support for the line item veto along with John McCain (R-AZ) and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI). This shows a commitment to slashing pork that periodically makes its way into appropriations bills. An article explaining the importance of this issue in the war on pork can be found here.

In another major move, Feingold has joined with colleague Evan Bayh (D-IN) in opposing President Obama’s omnibus spending bill according to an article found here. As I have written in my previous posts, these omnibus spending bills that Obama is proposing are loaded with pork and bypass much of the traditional process of committee markup. Therefore, these two Democrats deserve much praise for breaking with the popular president on this issue.

The Bad
David Vitter (R-LA)

In a state noted for rising stars within the partly like Governor Bobby Jindal and Congressman Joseph Cao, Vitter and his stupidity simply will not go away. First there was the DC Madam scandal, which has completely undermined any credibility he has on social issues. Now, according to an article found here, Vitter is becoming a hypocrite on spending issues as well, requesting millions of dollars in earmarks in the Obama Omnibus spending bill. The frustration I feel at Vitter is truly beyond description. One of the major attacks that Republicans can mount against Obama is that his appropriations bills intended to stimulate the economy are becoming convoluted Christmas trees of goodies doled out to special interests. With morons like Vitter running around in the party, this line of attack has been undermined. This guy is worse than the other senator from Louisiana, Mary Landrieu (D), who has requested millions of dollars in earmarks as well. Vitter just needs to go away. Maybe somebody like Cao, who doesn’t really have a safe seat in the house, could step up and primary him. Granted Vitter has a great deal of institutional support, but this stain on the party needs to be removed.

So, it seems that for whatever reason, the era of Obama is indeed bringing surprises. Stupid Republicans and Democrats who have seen the light. The world has been turned upside down!

Jindal Goes Vesuvius on Volcano Appropriations

As Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal pointed out during his recent much maligned speech responding to Barack Obama’s faux State of the Nation Address, there is some real garbage in the recent stimulus.  Once again, lawmakers have insisted upon inserting huge amounts of pork into this bill that was supposed to be about job creation and stimulating the economy.

Even worse than the usual dosage of pork that we get from congress, the pork in this bill is especially egregious in that this bill was never properly marked up in committee.  Rather, the Administration rammed a compromise version through congress, refusing to allow even 12 hours for members to review the bill.  The justification for this was the need for “quick” action.  As a result of this threat construction, numerous appropriations in the bill that no one ever read are most likely known to no one but their authors and a few members of leadership.

It was these wasteful and un-justified appropriations that Bobby Jindal was attacking in his recent speech.  Specifically, he targeted funding of certain volcano monitoring programs that the stimulus has apparently felt necessary.  In response, the media has chastised him for daring to question funding for such important programs that save lives when active volcanoes explode.

Admittedly, Jindal could have selected a much better target for his ire, and there are many, to avoid these attacks.  However, the central issue remains.  I seriously doubt that these volcano monitoring programs will significantly increase jobs.  While I’m not an expert, I assume they will primarily require one time installation labor, and perhaps a few individuals to monitor them.  Furthermore, the kinds of people that will be employed through this appropriation are the well-educated elite that are not the class most effected by the recent economic downturn.  No blue-collar, low-income individuals will benefit from this.

In light of this, it seems that the volcano monitoring initiative does not meet the threshold of credibility for inclusion in the stimulus.  While this may well be a worthwhile and even necessary program to fund, there is no reason that it can’t be included in the regular appropriations bill for the Interior Department.  We have known about the danger that volcanoes pose to communities for years.  If this program was so necessary, why hasn’t the money been appropriated before?

In conclusion, the main problem that I see here is procedural.  If we justify circumventing the traditional appropriations process for this non-emergency program and others, we will ultimately find ourselves up to our eyeballs in earmarks as the committee review process is ignored more and more often.  This ought not to be the direction the Democratic Congress wants to go down after prommising to be the most “open” and “ethical” ever only two years ago.

Campaign Strategies Released

The last several weeks have seen both John McCain and Barack Obama rolling out their respective paths to electoral victory in November.  Obama’s path is much easier, as nearly all national polls released since he officially clinched the Democratic nomination earlier this month have shown him with a moderate lead over McCain, one that extends to many swing states as well.  However, upon close analysis of both electoral strategies, I believe some key flaws can easily be found.

 

Perhaps the most poorly formulated is John McCain’s, outlined in a web “briefing” at http://www.johnmccain.com/pathtovictory/.  If this seriously represents the McCain camp’s strategy, than he is clearly in trouble, because it’s totally delusional.  First, the numbers don’t even add up.  It lists 66 electoral votes as “leaning Democrat”, but shows only New Jersey as falling into that category.  More significant is the fact that Virginia and North Carolina are listed as “solid GOP”.  Recent polling demonstrates that this is clearly not the case, with Obama even leading Virginia in some of the most recent polls.  Furthermore, the Obama campaign is clearly focusing on  these two states, along with Georgia, which were targets in a recent add buy.

 

Of the states listed as “tossup”, Pennsylvania, Maine, and Washington are included.  This is not the case.  Obama has something around an 8 point lead in Pennsylvania right now, and at least that in the other two.  McCain is going to have to invest significant amounts of time and money in each of these three states to have a chance at a win, which appears more and more unlikely.  These are but a few examples of the myopic view that McCain seems to be taking towards the electoral map.

 

The problem, of course, with this is that the McCain campaign’s delusions (and presumably the delusions of many supporters) are clouding what will certainly be a difficult election, and possibly precluding any chance he may have of victory.  As the Bush-Rove team demonstrated in 2000 and 2004, elections are won by grassroots organizations and knowledge of the electoral map down to the district level.  If McCain’s strategy team can’t even grasp electoral strategy at the state or in some cases regional level, precinct and district organization must be utter chaos.

 

On the flip side of this coin is Barack Obama, flush with a commanding lead in the polls.  Undoubtedly, if the election were held today, he would score a commanding win.  That said, his campaign strategy includes question marks as well.  As reported in a recent Politico article, http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0608/11320.html, Obama is not content to focus merely on the presidential election, but wishes to influence races down the ticket as well.  To this end, he plans on adopting something of a fifty state strategy for the fall, making concerted efforts to court voters in places like Texas in the hopes of helping Democratic senate and house candidates.

 

Furthermore, in Texas especially, he hopes to lead the Democrats to victory in the state senate and house, securing a narrow Democratic majority.  As the article points out, Texas redistricting will occur this term, and if the Democrats can control the process of redistricting, he feels they can make further gains.

 

While no one would deny that he is the current front runner, his election is not certain.  There is a long time to go until November.  As many commentators have picked up on, this strategy is extremely risky.  If it works, it could go a long way to establishing a lasting Democratic majority in Washington.  But if it stretches Obama too thin for him to remain in front in several key swing states, it could cost him the election.  I think the bottom line here is this: it’s been 8 years since a Democrat held the presidency, and many, many years since one as liberal as Obama held the presidency.  They have some HUGE advantages this election cycle with the sour attitude most voters have towards the Bush administration.  As long as he doesn’t do something increadably stupid, he should win.  But as John Kerry found out, anti-Bush rhetoric alone will not get the job done.  Therefore, the Democrats ought to be cautious, and in this atmosphere, Obama’s strategic decision seems to be at best over-energetic and at worst arrogant.

 

Primary Lessons

Now that the 2008 Presidential Primary season has come to a close for both parties, the media, public, and politicians themselves are turning to analysis of the General Election.  However, before doing so, it seems appropriate to step back and take stock of the things that the primary season has taught us.

 

Beginning in December of 2006, we were told that this primary season would be unlike any other.  First, there was no incumbent president or vice-president running.  Second, the campaign season began earlier than ever before.  Third, the frontloaded primary schedule seemed to indicate that both party’s nominees would be decided by Super Tuesday.  Finally, the quantity of money involved promised to be greater than ever before.  Not knowing what was going to happen, analysts batted around a number of theories about how the primaries would turn out.  Let’s analyze one of them now.

 

Question: With the new, frontloaded primary system, how much should candidates concentrate on the traditional states of Iowa, New Hampshire, and to a lesser extent, South Carolina?

 

Theories:

 

There were a number of these.  Primarily, they can be divided into two camps.  One school of thought held that Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina would take on increasing importance in the abbreviated system.  The other school of thought held that importance would be diffused to the larger states voting on and just before Super Tuesday i.e. Florida, California, New York.

 

When we examine the candidates, we find that they were divided almost in half.  For instance, John Edwards and Mike Huckabee developed early on as one trick ponies, basing their support almost entirely in Iowa.  They were betting that the bounce from an Iowa win would propel them all the way to Super Tuesday.  For Mike Huckabee, this theory seems to have been correct, although not in the way he anticipated.  It wasn’t his win per se that catapulted him.  Rather, it was the increasing media coverage of his campaign that resulted from his rise in the polls there.  Analyzing data from the Real Clear Politics poll averages, we can clearly see that although Huckabee rose first in Iowa, that prompted him to rise in New Hampshire and other states before the actual Iowa Caucuses.  Thus, while the ultimate success of Mike Huckabee is not attributable to the classic Iowa bounce, he ultimately owes his rise to his early success in Iowa.  The ability of Iowa thus to elevate Huckabee from the second to first tier seems to vindicate the early state strategy.  Edwards, on the other hand, was never able to sufficiently expand his base beyond Iowa, and thus was much less successful than Huckabee.

 

Rudy Giuliani is typical of the other school of thought.  He completely abandoned the Iowa caucuses and the several states voting shortly thereafter in favor of a total campaign blitz on Florida, which was where he wanted to make his last stand.  I need not remind readers that this failed utterly.  But why did this fail?  Giuliani was banking on no clear frontrunner emerging from the early primaries.  Best case scenario, each of his four main challengers would have won at least one state by the time Florida voted, leaving a disorganized party with ample room to accommodate a win by him.  To some extent, this seemed to be the case when Huckabee, McCain, and Romney had all won by the time of South Carolina, which was predicted to be a bloodbath.  But here Giuliani miscalculated.

 

Ideally for him, Thompson would have won South Carolina, destroying McCain and Romney’s momentum and completely throwing the race into disarray.  Indeed, Thompson launched a massive bus tour in South Carolina and rose rapidly in the polls in the final days.  But then, the worst possible outcome happened.  On election day, Thompson and Huckabee split the hard core conservative (read anti-McCain) vote.  With Romney abandoning South Carolina in the final days, this left McCain in position to walk away with a narrow victory and the momentum to go on to Florida and unseat Giuliani in his last stand.

 

Conclusion:

 

Had Thompson, or even Huckabee, won South Carolina, Giuliani’s strategy may have worked.  But they didn’t.  Instead, McCain came into Florida with a full head of steam.  Since he was the most ideologically similar candidate to Giuliani, he stole many of his votes there and ultimately prevailed.

 

From this information, we can clearly see that the Huckabee strategy (also practiced by Romney and others) of concentrating on at least one early state was proven superior to the Giuliani strategy.  As sad as Giuliani’s miscalculation is, the only sadder thing is that the Clinton campaign did not learn from it.  After fighting Obama to a standstill on Super Tuesday, she promised to make her next stand in the far off primaries of Ohio and Texas, more than a month away.  Thus, like Giuliani, she failed to contest the next several primaries, several of which (like Wisconsin) were certainly winnable for her.  The result: 10 consecutive post-Super Tuesday wins for Obama, and a delegate lead she would never overcome.  Those who don’t learn from history…

 

 

 

Welcome

Welcome, and thank you for visiting the Solutions Report.  The primary goal of this blog is to provide analysis of developments in American political trends, with forays into international politics as well.  In the short term, I will primarily be concerned with the 2008 US election by analyzing polling trends and related material for both the presidential and congressional races.  This blog will not, for the most part, delve into the arena of policy prescriptions. 

Because of the nature of the material, I feel it is necessary to provide readers with some personal background.  My name is Lucas.  I am a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison studying Political Science and History.  While I will try to be as objective as possible in my commentary on this blog, I feel it is important to disclose my political leanings up front.  I consider myself to be a conservative, with certain very significant libertarian leanings, specifically on economic issues.  I initially supported Fred Thompson in the Republican Primary, and now support John McCain for president.

Regarding my political experience, I have been analyzing the present election substantially for almost a year.  I had a somewhat minor role in canvassing voters for the Republican party during the year following the 2004 election.  Most of my experience, to be honest, is in policy.  I have worked in several positions in the Wisconsin State Legislature over the past 2 ½ years.

If you have any further questions, feel free to post them here.  That said, welcome to the Solutions Report.