Not a bargaining chip

Hilary Rosen, a prominent backer of Hillary Clinton's campaign, on last night's speech:

She had an opportunity to soar and unite. She had a chance to surprise her party and the nation after the day-long denials about expecting any concession and send Obama off on the campaign trail of the general election with the best possible platform. I wrote before how she had a chance for her "Al Gore moment." And if she had done so, the whole country ALL would be talking today about how great she is and give her her due.

Instead she left her supporters empty, Obama's angry, and party leaders trashing her. She said she was stepping back to think about her options. She is waiting to figure out how she would "use" her 18 million voters.

But not my vote. I will enthusiastically support Barack Obama's campaign. Because I am not a bargaining chip. I am a Democrat.

We're both part of the same hypocrisy

From the comments on Ezra Klein's blog:

Let's make no bones about this: it's blackmail. Clinton is trying to pressure Obama. I don't know for what yet, but that's what this is.

I think this is correct. Here is how I would like Obama to respond:

"Senator? You can have my answer now, if you like. My final offer is this: nothing. Not even the retiring of your campaign debt, which I would appreciate if you would put up personally."

Un-menschlike

I know I'm way too close to this and my bias is obvious, but I really feel like Hillary Clinton had a chance to go out with style tonight. She gave a wonderful speech about her campaign and her career, she praised Obama, she praised her supporters and the many people she met during her campaign. There's been a lot of bad blood between the two campaigns, but this seemed like a rich opportunity to patch some of that up. Obama had already clinched the nomination. She had the attention of the nation and had a chance to bow out gracefully and call for the unity of the party.

And instead, she decides not to leave. She hypes her own claims to electability. And she asks people to write in to tell her what to do.

There was a moment for her to be a mensch. That moment is gone.

Parties should think counter-cyclically

That's the message from Andrew Gelman. This may be too high a bar to set for party centered-ness, but it's worth thinking about. Strong party machines in the 19th century often shifted officeholders around from job to job without real regards for what those officeholders wanted.

Anyway, I paste this very thought-provoking message below in its entirety (c/o The Monkey Cage):

One thing I learned in econ class in 11th grade was that government policy should be counter-cyclical (spending more in recessions and cutting back in boom times), but that there’s a lot of pressure to be pro-cyclical, which will tend to exacerbate business cycles. (Except I suppose they didn’t say “exacerbate” in 11th grade.) At a personal level, too, it’s natural to spend more when we have more and cut back when we aren’t doing so well. Every now and then you hear about a “rainy day fund” but my general impression is that these are never big enough to counter the business cycle.

Political parties seem to apply a similar pro-cyclical behavior in their congressional election campaigns. Consider 2008. It’s expected to be a good year for the Democrats, and so now should be the time for them to make some investments in new, young candidates. They should encourage lots of their incumbents to retire, because in 2008, they can win a lot of these districts without needing the incumbency advantage (estimated to be about 10% of the vote, i.e., enough to take you from 50% to 60%). Conversely, this is the time for the Republican Party to hold on to what it has, and to keep all their incumbents in, trying to hold out until 2010 when the pendulum might swing back in their favor. But we don’t see that—actually, something like 30 Republican House members are retiring this year. Republicans retiring, Democrats sticking around—that’s a recipe for big Democratic gains this year. But then in 2010, or 2014, or whatever year it is when the Democrats get wiped out—then a bunch of their incumbents will probably retire, and boy will the Democrats wished they had put in younger incumbents back in 2008 when they had a chance!

One of the difficulties here is that I’m talking about the long-term goals of the parties, but “the parties” are, to a large extent, simply their officeholders. And congressmembers’ incentives can be much different from those of the party as a whole. In particular, it makes sense that an incumbent congressmember will want to quit in a year when he or she would be facing a tough reelection battle, and when the prize for winning is to remain in the minority. Conversely, why step down when you’re facing an easy reelection and the prospect of some juicy committee assignments? So the individual officeholders have an incentive for pro-cyclical behavior, even if it harms their party’s long-term interest.

Beyond the benefits or lack thereof to the individual parties, pro-cyclical behavior would seem to increase the size of political changes, making the swings in congressional representation larger than would be expected simply based on swings in public opinion. Actually, many political scientists would consider this a good thing (an increased “swing ratio”); my point here is that some of this swing is “endogenous” in the sense of arising from pro-cyclical decisions of individual congressmembers deciding whether to run for reelection. It would be interesting to see if this happens with state legislatures as well.

We also see this in the Senate. For example, 84-year-old Frank Lautenberg is running for reelection in New Jersey. This is a Democratic year when the Democrats might do well with just about anybody. (Or maybe not; I don’t really follow New Jersey politics and am just extrapolating from national polls.) In 6 years, they’re going to need to find someone new, and at that point they might wish they had an incumbent already in the slot.

Home stretch

The Democratic race is wrapping up very quickly. The AP was floating stories this morning about Clinton quitting tonight, and then Obama picked up 15 superdelegates today, including Gov. Ritter, Sen. Salazar, and Jimmy Carter. He's now only 27 delegates short of the nomination.

How does this affect voters in the final two contests? If it looks like Hillary concession (or, at least, a suspension of her campaign) is just hours away, do they still vote? Do they switch to her in a bout of underdog sympathy? Do they go with the presumed winner?

The most recent Montana poll put Obama and Clinton at 48 and 44, respectively. ARG also has a recent South Dakota poll putting Hillary ahead of Obama 60-34 there. I guess we can use these as baselines, although I find that South Dakota one rather fishy. Let's wait and see...

UPDATE: Obama has now picked up 18.5 superdelegate votes and is now 13 delegates shy of the nomination. Tonight's the night.

You never see Springsteen and Etheridge in the same room...

Oh, I guess you do.

Man, this is good.

Caucuses and primaries

I've heard a lot of frustration recently over the bizarre local quirks of our presidential nominating system. One of the main sources of frustration is the caucus system. Here's a nice piece by Kathryn Pearson summing up some of the main concerns over caucuses. As she notes, a caucus is essentially for those voters who are

hardy enough to stand in line, lucky enough to have employment that doesn't require them to work between 6:30 and 8 p.m., and with enough resources -- civic and personal -- to get themselves to a caucus and know what to do there. Hardly a representative sample.

I've found, unsurprisingly, that, at least among Democrats, opposition to caucuses is highly correlated with one's support for Hillary Clinton. Following this model, I registered strong support for the caucus system after participating in it, and, shockingly, my preferred candidate did very well there. I rather liked the deliberative nature of it and the community feeling it engendered. As I wrote at the time:

I would say that the rewards outweigh the risks. It's the good sort of social capital that Putnam and Etzioni are always talking about and Normal Rockwell loved to paint, without the bad stuff, like Italian fascism.

Democrats should probably get a little distance from the current race before they start deciding whether caucuses are good or bad.

That said, it's not intuitively obvious ahead of time which candidates will do well in caucuses and which won't. Knowing that the caucus turnout is smaller, more educated, wealthier, and whiter that the primary electorate doesn't necessarily help you predict candidate success. Two years ago, if you knew that the Democratic contest was going to come down to a little known black politician from Chicago and Hillary Clinton, whom would you have guessed would be the caucus favorite? Was there any way to predict that Hillary would somehow be perceived as the gun-totin', beer-drinkin' Scranton girl who doesn't trust them fancy economists, and that her rival, the black Chicago community organizer, would be seen as the East Coast elitist? Also, keep in mind that Hillary Clinton could have done quite a bit better in the caucus states if she'd, you know, campaigned there. One other point: did you notice that the Republican caucuses were largely won by Mitt Romney? Is he really the GOP's Obama?

I get that a lot Democratic presidential nominations come down to an insider favorite vs. an egghead (JFK vs. Stephenson in '60, Humphrey vs. RFK/McCarthy in '68, Mondale vs. Hart in '84, Clinton vs. Brown in '92, Gore vs. Bradley in '00, everyone vs. Dean in '04), and that the egghead usually does somewhat better in the caucuses, even if the insider almost always wins the nomination. But is that a reason for disbanding caucuses?

The real test of any nominating system is not whether it's "fairer" or allows greater participation or is more representative or promotes community or protects the secret ballot or anything else. It's whether it produces better nominees than other nominating systems. Keep in mind that of the six Democratic contests I mentioned above, the insider got nominated every time but only won the general election twice.

So, would getting rid of caucuses produce higher quality nominees?

I have no idea. Your thoughts?