John McCain

I have never understood why people love, or even tolerate, John McCain.  That's not to say that Trump's thuggish attacks are justified.  But on the merits, why think John McCain is good at anything?

I have a suspicion that a group of Dem "dirty tricks" folks posed as Repubs, and tried to get McCain the nomination as a joke. And they are still laughing that it worked.

There is really no other plausible explanation. You can just hear the meeting, after lots of beers:

"Okay, seriously, what idiot can we try to get them to nominate?"

"Jeb Bush?" "No, Bush name is toxic now in 2007. No way they'll go for it."

"I've got it! No, really, I'VE GOT IT! John.....McCain!" (Everybody in room breaks up laughing). "No....the Repubs are stupid, but they aren't THAT stupid."

"Seriously, it's genius. He calls himself a 'war hero,' and nobody in that country club bunch would have the balls to challenge him on his actual policy views. And all the other candidates will split the vote of the conservative voters. It's perfect."

(And so they agreed, and McCain was the nominee). I bet it happened just that way.

The FInal Countdown

In what is becoming a KPC tradtition, we post a link to one of the most self-important, grandiose music videos from a self-important, gandiose decade, the 1980s.

Because this is the "Final Countdown" to what remains the biggest monument to self-importance:  the American election.




There is not much more pompous than the phrase "Swedish Supergroup, Europe!"  But "American election coverage" beats it, hands down.

(I do like the Dragonforce precursor guitar solo about 3:25)

This MIGHT Happen, So We Should Regulate It?

So a guy with a grudge concocts an experiment to show that, in a close election, GOOGLE might swing the outcome. 

(ProTip:  In a close election, anything might swing the outcome.  And we are not talking about a situation where there is an obvious right answer.  The institutions we pick, with a particular form of primaries, restrictions on ads, and voting procedures, all swing the outcome far more.  Elections by their nature are arbitrary, and very nearly random, in terms of discovering some transcendent truth.  So the idea--dear to the naive left--that there is some utopian Archimedean Point to compare elections against is nonsense, from the outset.  Elections in the face of disagreement are at best poorly designed lotteries, and there is no way around that.  The absence of disagreement is called "unanimity," and not even the GOOGLE could mess with that.)

But, this Maxwell wants to swing his Silver Hammer down on the head of GOOGLE, because it might affect elections, and that would distort government.  Why don't people on the left get upset about the myriad real ways that governments really do distort outcomes by restricting ballot access, arresting "terrorists" who in many cases are simply dissidents, and so on?  Even by the standards of the silly left-wing academy, this is pretty silly.

UPDATE:  WEH emails...   When the phone book was a new phenomena business people wanted a name that would appear at the beginning of the phone book directory. Sound familiar to the above? 

Enter 1948 Warner Brothers. Warner Brothers? Yep, who did Wile E. Coyote purchase his merchandise from? Acme Corporation. Why “Acme”? Why “Acme”? Simple! The term “Acme” means best or top and hence many, many, many companies in the early part of the 20th century adopted Acme as part of their name so as to appear early in the phone directory listing e.g. Acme Pest Control, Acme Roofing, etc. The term "Acme" was everywhere associated with business names. Hence "Acme" was more than likely "business" to Chuck Jones, originator of Wile E. Coyote. 

Which begs a question: do you know of any giant conglomerate, super corporation or multi-national known as Acme? Nope! Hence being first in the phone book was nice but it didn’t cause a business to become successful to the extent business people might have thought. Lesson to be learned? Cartoons can and do aid economics.

Electoral College

Richard Posner on why the Electoral College is worth keeping.  Excerpt:

There are five reasons for retaining the Electoral College despite its lack of democratic pedigree; all are practical reasons, not liberal or conservative reasons...[I]f the difference in the popular vote is small, then if the winner of the popular vote were deemed the winner of the presidential election, candidates would have an incentive to seek a recount in any state...[A] solid regional favorite, such as Romney was in the South, has no incentive to campaign heavily in those states...Voters in toss-up states...are likely to be the most thoughtful voters, on average (and for the further reason that they will have received the most information and attention from the candidates), and the most thoughtful voters should be the ones to decide the election...The Electoral College restores some of the weight in the political balance that large states (by population) lose by virtue of the mal-apportionment of the Senate decreed in the Constitution [because] winner-take-all makes a slight increase in the popular vote have a much bigger electoral-vote payoff in a large state than in a small one...The Electoral College avoids the problem of elections in which no candidate receives a majority of the votes cast.

ATSRTWT

Nod to Kevin Lewis

The Problem is NOT That This is Fraud

I'm with Fundman.  The problem is NOT that this is fraud.

The problem is that it's probably an accurate reflection of how people voted.

Wow.

The Blue Blob: The Driftless Area

I did NOT know this. And now you know it!

Excerpt:

 There’s a big blob of counties where Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois come together, which are solid blue [on the Electoral College map].  Why is that?  These are counties with farms and small towns, there are basically no cities of any size.  The biggest city is Madison, population 200,000, which is the big blue county in south central Wisconsin, on the eastern edge of the blob.  I grew up in Madison, but I don’t have a clue as to why those counties further west are blue.  I always assumed western Wisconsin was exactly like north-central and eastern Wisconsin—full of corn and dairy farms, and small towns with one church and 4 bars.  Counties full of people with northern European backgrounds.  Everywhere else in the Midwest the farm areas went for the GOP, except that strange blob that overlays parts of 4 states.  A few of those counties may have small cities with a few manufacturing firms, but look how uniform that blue area is.  There is obviously some difference that explains this, and now I feel like we should have been taught in school that southwestern Wisconsin is really weird.

Or perhaps we were taught in school, and I wasn’t paying enough attention.  There is in fact something weird about southwestern Wisconsin.  The glacier that covered North America during the Ice Age missed this area; indeed it went completely around it, leaving it hillier than normal for the Midwest.  It’s called the “Driftless Area.”  If you grew up on the coasts you’ve never heard of this area, because nobody on either coast finds the American Midwest to be at all interesting. They rather go visit Paris or Bali.

A nod to MAG.

John O: Take This Candidate Seriously!

Was just at ol' Davidson last night, for a talk.  Got to walk past the ol' frat house.

By happy circumstance, got an email from an ol' frat brother, John O.  He writes:

With the national elections looming, I know that some friends don't like to get political emails. I also think it is important to share information if we arrive at informed conclusions, so that our friends may benefit. After all the debates, platform analysis, and political punditry I have made my choice as to the best candidate in the field. Rather than vote according to just one issue, or an ideology, or a party ticket, I am voting for the principles and character of "The Man" who tells it like it is, no holds barred. Here is his campaign video. Take a minute to listen to his timely message.




Interesting.  I had never noticed how much like "I want to be sedated," by the Ramones, this chorus is.  But if I get one more Robo-call from some Romney shill, I may need to be sedated.  Or restrained.

Ecce Chavez

Today is election day in Venezuela. The opposition seems united, its candidate, Henrique Capriles, has run an energetic campaign and made a major comeback in the polls. Chavez has survived his health issues (so far), and the vote is expected to be very close.

While it is certainly fair to denounce the dramatic fall in economic freedom, personal freedom, and impersonal rule of law in Venezuela under Chavez, it is also important to remember that pre-Chavez Venezuela was not exactly a democratic paradise.

There is, after all a reason that Chavez was elected and re-elected and re-elected. People think Venezuela is a socialist dictatorship masquerading as a democracy (I don't think this is true), but pre-Chavez Venezuela was an oligarchy masquerading as a democracy.

While it may take 20 years to undo the damage Chavez has done to the economy and the rule of law, in the long run (40 or 50 years), I believe that Chavismo will prove to have been a net plus for Venezuela.

He broke the oligarchy. He gave voice and hope to millions of effectively disenfranchised people. I don't Venezuela can ever go back to the old ways again.

If I can get all Marxist up in here for a minute, to me something like Chavismo was almost an historical necessity for Venezuela given the abuses of the old regime.

For the big finish, I am going out on a limb and predicting a Capriles victory.

No Presidential Debate has ever "mattered"

If I'm referencing Ezra Klein, it may be a sign of the apocalypse.

On the other hand, if even Ezra Klein can get it right, it can't be too hard, now can it?  The fact is that debates don't matter, and have never mattered.  And, no there is NOT "always a first time."  There COULD be a first time, but I would be surprised.  (On the other hand, I was surprised that the President is so sheltered from disagreement that he was shocked someone would contradict him. Thanks to Fundman for that link.)

Anyway, back to the point.  Here is a graph from a Bob Erikson book (reference here).

Horizontal axis Dem margin before debate; Vertical is Dem margin after debate.  Remember that "important" 1960 debate, where Nixon looked so bad?  Right on the 45 degree line.  The only one where the debate seems to have mattered is 1976, where Ford lost the election by saying dumb stuff about Poland being free and independent.  Meaning that Ford dropped like a rock after....wait.  Carter dropped like a rock.  CARTER dropped, going from +10 to basically even after the debate.  Carter still won, of course.  But it wasn't the debate.  There is no example of a debate mattering.

Until now?  Maybe.  My main man Ezra and I, we doubt it.


 

Early Voting

Article in the NY Daily News about early voting in NC.  Reporter was kind enough to give me a call.

It is interesting to think about how early voting changes things.  Dems have better organization, Reps have better cash on hand.  Early voting has the effect of allowing organization to win.

Why?  Because (1) you can just pester people on the street:  Get on the bus!  Get on the bus!  Vote for us!  Vote for us! (2) people who vote early won't hear the ads in the last two weeks, paid for by the Rep money.

A number of people told me, in 2008, they regretted their votes.  Bev Perdue ran some remarkably racist ads at the very end.  The campaign knew that by then it was too late for the sensible people to take their votes back, and so Bev was free to appeal solely to the wack jobs who were still undecided.

Election Commentary

Some election commentary, on News 14 Carolina.  Here is the video.  My part, if you want to skip to it (or avoid it!) starts at about 7:40

Wow!! Doug Hibbs basically calls the election for Mittens!

Here is the money quote:

"according  to  the  Bread  and  Peace  model  per  capita  real   income  growth  rates  must  average out  at  nearly  6  percent  after  2012:q2  for  Obama  to  have  a   decent  chance  of  re-­‐election."

You can get to the whole paper from here (and obviously a hat tip goes to Brendan).

Beyond this bombshell, the paper is well worth reading as Hibbs excoriates his competitors for using ad-hoc and ex-post dummy variables as well as endogenous approval ratings as explanatory variables in their vote-share equations.

Gary Johnson

Went over to Charlotte with the EYM for some campaigning with Gary Johnson, ex-Gov of NM and now LP candidate for President.

Gary is a genuinely great guy.  We started out with the fun run (the (not) exciting start is in the video above, complete with police protection!).  It was supposed to be 5k, and that would have been nice, since it was unbelievably humid.  But for some reason the marked course was about 6.1k, and there were some tongues hanging out.  Really fun, though.  The EYM was way ahead of me, not surprisingly.

Then a luncheon, which was packed.  Lots of people, lots of excitement.

Then an anti-war rally.  Interesting collection of people.  Gary's speech was terrific, short, on-point, well received.

Later, at the cocktail party, I got a photo of Gov. Johnson and the EYM.

Then, the speech.  A very nice crowd.  All the speeches were good; Barbara Howe did a good job, also. 

Gary Johnson is the best Presidential candidate I have seen in my lifetime, in terms of issues and experience.

Carter Wrenn On NC Dem Money Woes

My good friend Carter Wrenn, longtime political operative, thinker, and trouble-maker, has an interesting view on the current money race in NC.

First, let me show you this.  It may be hard to understand, but Bev Perdue outspent Pat McCrory by a truly huge margin.  None of our local media objected, because that was how it was supposed to be.  Everyone knows that Dems are more popular... 

Now, Carter's observations...

The Democrats’ treasure chest has vanished. Year after year in elections, Democrats like Jim Hunt and Marc Basnight had war chests brimming with cash. Bev Perdue defeated Pat McCrory last election by outspending him by $7 million. But now the Democrats’ larder is empty. Phil Berger’s outraising Martin Nesbit (Basnight’s Senate heir) seventeen to one and Pat McCrory raised a million dollars more than Walter Dalton last quarter.

So, for Democrats, what went wrong?

 

The answer, I think, is that the Dem machine in NC was so corrupt that, once out of power, there was very little actual support for the candidates or the policies.  The Dems lived off theft for more than a century.

 

Now, to be sure, it is not clear that the Repubs will do anything different...  To be fair, the Dems never claimed that they were going to do anything else.  They took money from people who earned it, and gave the money to their friends, whooping and squealing about "the poor! the poor!" in the meantime.  The Repubs say they are going to cut, and then they just end up TAKING their cut.

Ink in England

Article from the Guardian, on Obama's reelection chances.  Reporter was kind enough to give me a call.

Always fun to go up against Larry Sabato, "The Mouth that Bored."

Selection or Accountability in Elections

Democratic Accountability and Retrospective Voting: A Laboratory Experiment
Jonathan Woon
American Journal of Political Science, forthcoming

Abstract:
Understanding the incentives of politicians requires understanding the nature of voting behavior. I conduct a laboratory experiment to investigate whether voters focus on the problem of electoral selection or if they instead focus on electoral sanctioning. If voters are forward-looking but uncertain about politicians’ unobservable characteristics, then it is rational to focus on selection. But doing so undermines democratic accountability because selection renders sanctioning an empty threat. In contrast to rational choice predictions, the experimental results indicate a strong behavioral tendency to use a retrospective voting rule. Additional experiments support the interpretation that retrospective voting is a simple heuristic that voters use to cope with a cognitively difficult inference and decision problem and, in addition, suggest that voters have a preference for accountability. The results pose a challenge for theories of electoral selection and voter learning and suggest new interpretations of empirical studies of economic and retrospective voting.

Que Pasa article on primaries

Chile is considering moving to primaries. I wrote a piece for Que Pasa, a weekly here in Santiago, saying that may not be such a good idea.

If you want the Spanish (edited down to a very short version), it's here.  The slightly longer, English version is here:

Primary elections: Who Needs Them? Michael Munger, Duke University

There are debates in Chile about reforming the process by which parties choose candidates. As a political science professor, frequent expert witness in court, and former candidate myself, I can report on a century of US experience. The short answer is that primaries are little more than poorly designed lotteries. Primaries reward extremism, reduce the accountability of parties, and devalue the brand name that parties depend on to represent the voting public.

For most of US history, the parties were entirely responsible for choosing their own candidates. Since these candidates then had to face each other, and the electorate, in the general election, the parties were obliged to try to balance their own ideological goals with genuine leadership ability and experience in administration. The result was true competition among the party's best, a system that gave us great Presidents such as Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. Of course, the system also often chose weaker leaders, but the point is that the party organization, those who cared about the party, chose the party's standard bearer for the election.

In a primary system, all power is taken out of the hands of the party leadership, and placed into the hands of a fragmented, disorganized group called "the party in the electorate." In most primary elections, turnout is 15% or less, with some votes seeing less than 10% of the eligible electorate. These tend to be the most extreme, most ideological voters, because centrist voters are not interested in primaries. Furthermore, because primary votes often choose between 3, or 5 or even 7 candidates, the results simply reflect random chance. The candidate who happens to be more extreme, or by himself ideologically, will win because all the centrist candidates split the centrist vote. The US system has become increasingly polarized, as extremist voters with ideological motivations have come to dominate the party professionals who are also concerned about electability and leadership.

In one famous example, American Nazi Party leader David Duke decided to run as a Republican in Lousiana. In order to run as a Republican, Mr. Duke needed only to sign a piece of paper. He did not need the permission of "his" party, and in fact the Republicans had no way of stopping him from soiling their party's reputation. Mr. Duke, who routinely wore a full Nazi SS uniform and celebrated the birthday of Adolph Hitler, "won" the 1988 primary for a Louisiana House seat with just 33% of the vote. Many Republicans were forced to work against him supporting other candidates, because they had no control over their own party's candidate.

In a perfect world, a primary system would seem to bring candidate selection and the political process closer to the people. What could be wrong with that? The problem is that, in politics, there are two things that economists call "public good." The first is information: voters don't know much about candidates. The job of parties is to recruit, train, and then put forward the best candidates, the most BLANK leaders. In a primary system, a candidate who is excellent but unknown will never be selected.

The second public good is collective action: the ability to excite voters about the coherent message, and legislative program, of the party. But if the party cannot choose its own candidates, then it cannot possibly present a coherent, attractive program to voters. The party will not even be able to agree among itself, because its own members will represent a confused and incoherent random sample of opinions.

In my work in federal courts in California, Washington, Texas, and Florida, I have written and argued for the position that parties must be able to present a candidate of their choice, and to pursue a legislative program of their choice. Some political scientists go so far as to say that, without responsible parties, democracy itself is impossible. If that is right, and I believe that it is, then a primary system that weakens parties also weakens democracy.

El Mercurio, and News - Observer

In which I go all Boudreaux on news people on two continents.

1. El Mercurio, in Santiago, Chile: Por otra parte, a ocho meses de las presidenciales, esta indecisión republicana podría tener consecuencias. "A medida que Romney avanza hacia la victoria en las primarias, está perdiendo piso en la elección general", advirtió The Washington Post, que resaltó que se le ve "en peor forma en este punto de la campaña" en relación con los últimos aspirantes presidenciales republicanos. Y es que, bajo el argumento de que no ha sido capaz de "noquear" a sus rivales, varios comentaristas han puesto en duda su competitividad ante Obama.

¿Por qué tanta prisa?

Sin embargo, también hay quienes llaman a la calma. "Yo no entiendo por qué los medios dicen que 'Romney no puede cerrar el trato'. Si se compara con 2008, la nominación demócrata no terminó hasta mayo. Romney tiene, en este punto, más delegados de los que tenía Obama en marzo de 2008, pero nadie preguntó entonces '¿por qué Obama no convence al electorado?", indicó Michael Munger, analista de la Duke University.

En términos de estilo, Munger compara el caso de Romney con el del Presidente Sebastián Piñera, "que hace que las cosas funcionen, pero no es muy ideológico". "Esto es una desventaja en las primarias republicanas, donde los extremistas quieren ideología extrema. Pero podría ser una ventaja en la elección general. Quizás tenga problemas para que la gente se entusiasme, pero el desempleo es alto y hay insatisfacción con la actual gestión. Así que podría ser como en Chile, donde Piñera ganó no porque entusiasmara, sino porque a la gente le preocupaba la dirección del país".

Los republicanos vamos a unirnos, porque realmente creemos que Obama debe ser reemplazado.

2. Same theme, letter to News-Observer. Steve Ford must have miss-typed, right? ("Drilling into Democrats' do-over," Jan. 29 column.) He actually said that if Republicans "were comfortable with the current pack of candidates, one would already [be] the nominee-apparent."

In 2008, the Democrats knew nothing about who would be their nominee by January's end. In fact, the primaries of February through April just muddied the waters. Barack Obama was not clearly selected until May. Today, Jan. 31, Mitt Romney is far ahead of Obama in 2008, in terms of elected delegates.

But the Democratic Party showed little "discomfort" in 2008, uniting behind their candidate. Nobody but media types and college professors think primaries should be decided fast and clean. Democracy is messy.

Pauline Kael syndrom

Mr. Overwater sends this interesting historical note, from Charles Murray's blog:

Those famous words of Pauline Kael, “How can Nixon have won? No one I knew voted for him” weren’t quite what she said. Prof. John Pitney at Claremont McKenna sent me the actual quote, from the New York Times of 28 December 1972: “I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don’t know. They’re outside my ken. But sometimes when I’m in a theater I can feel them.” Sort of the same thing, I know, but then I got another email from someone who wrote, “Pauline was a good friend, and was the farthest thing from a smug, unself-aware adherent of dumb liberal cant as you could imagine . . . She undoubtedly viewed Nixon as a sick puppy. But she was no insular, snobbish Margaret Dumont.” I take his assessment at face value, and will henceforth strike “Pauline Kael Syndrome” from my rhetorical arsenal.

Charles is right. That's different enough. Thanks to Mr. Overwater, well played.

But I had the direct experience of what "Pauline Kael syndrome" is taken to mean, at UT-Austin, in 1988.

Sad, Really.

Gotta love Ohio. Not sure poll workers anywhere are any better, on average.

But the fact that they aren't good could be...well, a thing. Like this court case.

In at least one instance, a poll worker appeared to be unable to distinguish between even and odd numbers. (Hr’g Tr. (Hampton) 2-202 to 2-205.) When asked whether the house number 798 was even or odd, the poll worker responded:
A. Odd.
Q. And why do you think that’s odd? I’m sorry. Why do you think her address is an odd address?

A. Because it begins with an odd number.

Q. It starts with an odd number?

A. Yes. Nine is an odd number. Eight’s even.
. . .
Q. . . . So on Election Day, if somebody came in with an address 798 and you had two ranges to choose from, you would choose the odd for them?

A. Yes.

Q. Okay. And is that how you did it for all the ballots that you looked up on Election Day?
A. To determine if they were even – yes.Q. To determine if they were even or odd, you looked at the first digit of the address?

A. No. I looked at the whole address.

Q. And you chose however many – if there were more odds than even numbers, it would be an odd address?
A. Yes.

Nod to Chateau, who KNOWS from odd...