Roadmap to Nowhere

I weighed in a little bit on Twitter today on Paul Krugman's critique of Paul Ryan's "Roadmap to America's Future" plan. It was probably a mistake do that 140 characters at a time, and so here is a (much) longer exposition.

Krugman comes to the conclusion that "The Ryan plan is a fraud that makes no useful contribution to the debate over America’s fiscal future." Some writers, including Ted Gayer at the Tax Policy Center, a thinktank whose work Krugman cited, take issue with the use of the term "fraud". Fraud can mean different things, but usually implies some intentionality: deception on purpose, rather than on accident. I don't know if Ryan's budget plan is deliberately intended to be deceitful: people in Ryan's circle seem to vouch for his seriousness, and there's much to be said for that. With that said, it has had the effect of deceiving some people, and I don't see how it has improved the quality of the budget discussion.

Ryan's budget consists of a series of proposals that would cut spending on entitlement programs in a very serious way, coupled with an equally serious restructuring of the tax code that would have the effect of lowering taxes on most individuals and businesses. On the spending side, one can debate whether or not the cuts that Ryan proposes would be (a) wise and (b) politically tenable, but they would certainly reduce the debt in a very substantial way; nobody really doubts that.

The problem is on the government revenues side, which Ryan's tax cuts would reduce, thereby counteracting the effect of his ambitious spending cuts. I'm not going to spend 200 words qualifying this: yes, tax increases have deleterious effects on productivity, which means that you're giving back some number of pennies on the dollar -- and tax cuts have beneficial ones, thereby making the opposite true. But, given that current levels of taxation are low-ish by modern standards, and that Ryan's budget would make them lower, we are nowhere near the point on the Laffer Curve where tax cuts would have a net positive effect on government revenues. (In the long run, at least: tax cuts are more beneficial during a recession when a multiplier may be in play.)

Where the deceptiveness comes in is in the CBO's scoring of Ryan's proposal, which makes it appear as though Ryan's plan would substantially reduce the debt over current projections. The problem, as a separate Krugman blog post points out, is that the CBO actually only scored half the bill: they gave Ryan credit for the spending cuts, but did not deduct any points for the revenue reductions resulting from his changes to the tax code.

This is for a somewhat peculiar reason. The CBO does not like to model the impacts of tax policy, which is usually in the purview of another agency, the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT). Ryan's office has said that they asked the CBO to score the revenue side of the bill and were rebuffed; I have no reason to doubt this. The problem is in what happened next.

Ryan's office had several options. They could have said: "Screw you, CBO, you work for us." (This is literally true; the CBO is the Congressional Budget Office.) "Score the damned tax cuts." I know nowhere near enough about intra-agency politics to know whether any amount of cajoling, threatening, or persuasion would have made the difference here, nor how much of it Ryan's office attempted.

The second and most obvious alternative would have been ask the JCT for an estimate instead. Ryan's office says that "JCT, however, does not have the capability at this time to provide longer-term revenue estimates". I don't know whether that means that JCT was too busy right at that moment, in which case Ryan was irresponsible not to wait for its workload to lighten up, or whether it means that very-long-term (beyond 10 years) budgetary estimates are not a current operational capability of the JCT.

If the latter, the third option would have been to utilize an estimate provided by nongovernmental agency, ideally one with a reputation for being both de facto non-partisan (not just de jure non-partisan, like the Heritage Foundation). Something like the Tax Policy Center probably qualifies, as would a few other Beltway thinktanks.

But Ryan bypassed this option as well; instead, he decided to wing it. And he winged it by assuming that, in fact, his tax cuts would result in no net decrease in revenues: they'd magically be offset by improved economic growth. Ryan then instructed the CBO to score the bill with this dubious assumption, which it did.

The Tax Policy Center found that Ryan's assumption had in fact been rather favorable to the cause: it had overestimated revenues by a mere 4 trillion dollars in revenues over 10 years -- the equivalent of several health care bills.

This is all there in the CBO's report if you read the fine print. But a lot of people, including Perry Bacon, a very fine reporter for the Washington Post, didn't read the fine print, and instead wrote largely favorable pieces that took the CBO's projections too much at face value and did not adequately notate that they'd really only scored half the bill.

Whether or not Ryan is to be blamed for this probably boils down to whether or not he was smart enough to know that this is how the story was liable to be conveyed. Ryan is smart: smart enough to know that if it the details of the budget slipped past Perry Bacon, they were probably going to slip past a lot of people. On the other hand, this would hardly be the first time that a politician used the idiosyncrasies of CBO scoring to his advantage.

What seems less ambiguous is the second clause of Krugman's conclusion: that Ryan's budget "makes no useful contribution to the debate over America’s fiscal future." If Ryan's goal were to inform the electorate, he could have done one of two things: found another way to get an independent estimate of the revenue effects, or explicitly declaimed that his goal was merely to perform a thought-experiment to see how much spending would have to be reduced before the budget were balanced (this could most easily have achieved by not proposing any changes to tax policy). He elected neither of those options.

Instead, his budget has had the effect of perpetuating the notion that tax cuts would tend to reduce the deficit. That's wrong; they would tend to increase it. Peter Sunderman, in a piece defending Ryan, points out that "forecasting the vagaries of the economy five or 10 years in advance is incredibly difficult"; this is inarguably true, but it is all the more reason to stick to Ochkam's Razory assumptions rather than Ryan's magic realism: you cut taxes, and all else being equal, and the government brings in less money, and the debt increases. (It's also why there is no particular value-add from merely scoring the expenditures side, which is probably easier.) Of course, you theoretically could cut spending enough to afford a tax cut too, but you'd have to cut it more -- a lot more -- than Ryan has proposed: about $400 billion a year more.

To his credit, Ryan has conveyed a willingness to work with alternative assumptions about the revenue side of the bill. The proof, however, will be in the pudding: his spending cuts are already fairly draconian, and now it's his burden to come up with $400 billion per year more.

Or he could admit the obvious: that a responsible long-term budget is one which proposes both to cut spending and to increase taxes. I'm kind of a stick-in-the-mud about this, but I really think it does need to be both as the starting point: it's not like Congress is going to find in its heart to raise taxes more than suggested, or cut spending more than needed, in order to achieve long-run fiscal parity.

This particularly holds if a proposal is conveyed as a "roadmap" -- that is, as a sort of thought-experiment deliberately ignorant of political contingencies -- rather than as a a pragmatic "how-to" guide. Increasingly, I'm coming to the position that the latter is more likely to come from someone outside the two major political parties (perhaps a third-party contender for the Presidency at some point between 2012 and 2020) than anyone within them. It certainly hasn't come from Ryan. What service has he performed by proposing a number of haphazard (and politically difficult) cuts, and still leaving the budget imbalanced?

There's More...

Contract Post

Tennessee Primary Results

With most of the results in for today's Tennessee primary, Bill Haslam has easily won the GOP gubernatorial nomination, winning (at this point) 48% of the vote, with Zach Wamp running second at 29% and Ron Ramsey third at 22%. Internet hero Basil Marceaux is running a little under one-half of one percent, with 3446 votes.

Another easy winner was 9th district Democratic congressman Steve Cohen, who eased past Willie Herenton by a 79-21 margin.

In the red-hot Republican House primaries, trial lawyer Chuck Fleischmann edged out Club-For-Growth backed Robin White in TN-03 by a 30-28 margin; national party favorite Stephen Fincher won half the total vote to overcome a torrent of money from Ron Kirkland (24%) and George Flinn (23%) in TN-08; and in TN-05, David Hall rode a big margin in Cheatham and Wilson Counties to win with 28%, beating Jeff Hartline and CeCe "Mama Grizzly" Heil, both of whom received 23%.

In TN-06, Diane Black appears to have edged out Lou Ann Zelenik by 813 votes, with Jim Tracy just 15 votes behind Zelenik. And in the Democratic primary in the 6th, the best-financed candidate, Bret Carter, appears to have defeated little-known Henry Clay Barry by 232 votes, with much-endorsed Ben Leming back another 115 votes.

WENDESDAY AM UPDATE: The national coverage of the Tennessee primary focused on Haslam's surprisingly easy win; Cohen's crushing of Herenton; Fincher's triumph over heavily funded opponents; Black's defeat of the Mosque-bashing and mudslinging Zelenik; Fleischmann's win over the heavily DC-backed White; and Palin's surrogate loss with Heil.

Looking at some of these contests more closely, Haslam's win was truly statewide. Wamp carried his own congressional district and a couple of scattered counties elsewhere, and Ramsey won three counties in his northeast Tennessee base, but elsewhere it was all Haslam Country. Yes, he won 72% in his home county (Knox), but also 57% in Davidson (Nashville) and 49% in Shelby (Memphis).

Whatever else was going on, Black won in the 6th via geography, heavily carrying Sumner (61%) and Robertson (51%) Counties, while Zelenik and Jim Tracy split their base, Rutherford. In the Democratic primary, Brett Carter won primarily because of a very strong showing (53%) in Sumner county. Henry Clay Barry, who narrowly lost, had not filed a finance report showing any fundraising or expenditures as of mid-July; you have to figure his first spot on the ballot helped him a lot.

In the 8th, Fincher rolled up big margins in the north-central parts of the district, and Flinn's strength was confined to the Memphis suburbs.

It's hard to get a handle on turnout, since the Secretary of State's election site crashed and no returns are posted for uncontested races (e.g., the Democratic gubernatorial nomination) elsewhere. About 725,000 votes were cast in the Republican gubernatorial primary (as compared to 321,000 in 2006) and early voting numbers suggest that perhaps another 250,000-300,000 votes were cast by Democrats in various parts of the state, but that's a guess.

There's More...

Contract Post

Opinions on Gay Rights Vary a Lot by State

Nate writes that gay rights "is certainly unlikely to be pushed into the spotlight by Democrats. Most polls still show at least a plurality of Americans opposed to gay marriage, although the margin is narrowing."

I defer to Nate on questions of campaign strategy, but I would like to point out that much of this politics happens on a state-by-state level, and gay marriage does seem to have majority popularity in some states. Also, the states where gay marriage is most popular are the ones showing the largest change in the past few years. Here's the graph, from Jeff Lax and Justin Phillips:

I posted these graphs on 538 last year (also these, which show that other gay rights issues such as nondiscrimination have overwhelming popular support in most states, and these, which show attitudes by age); the gay marriage trends seemed worth reposting because of their relevance to the present discussion.

There's More...

Contract Post

Kennedy, Olson and the Right Side of History

In the likelihood that Perry v. Schwarzenneger eventually makes its way to the Supreme Court, we know almost for certain that three Justices are going to vote to uphold the lower court's decision that gay marriage bans violate the U.S. Constitution, and three Justices are going to vote to overturn it. (I don't think the votes of Justice Roberts and Future Justice Kagan can absolutely be taken for granted.) The Constitution can obviously be interpreted by reasonable people in different ways.

It's probably also the case, of course, that the likely swing vote on the case -- Justice Anthony Kennedy -- could also read the Constitution in different ways. I don't merely mean that we can't predict his decision: I mean that neither decision would be intellectually dishonest relative to his worldview: they'd both be within the "margin of error", so to speak. Kennedy probably won't think about his decision that way once makes it -- he'll believe that he carefully sliced through the argumentation and derived the "right" answer -- but human beings are infinitely skilled at coming up with post-facto rationalizations for decisions that are essentially arbitrary. In reality, Kennedy is probably capable of "finding" either decision depending on where he goes looking for it.

This might seem like an incredibly obvious point. But I think sometimes when the Court faces a momentous decision, the people who are best qualified to analyze the jurisprudence (i.e. lawyers and legal scholars) probably have a bias toward overestimating the degree of precision intrinsic to their discipline, as experts in most fields undoubtedly do. Even if they are not necessarily trying to analyze the Constitution in a vacuum but instead, trying to interpret it through a particular frame (in this case, Justice Kennedy's), they probably overestimate their ability to make skilled predictions about judicial behavior based on an essentially positivist view of the law.

This is a long-winded articulation of the theory of legal realism: the idea that contingencies external to the law (such as politics, emotion, and incentives) matter when the court reaches decisions, a theory which would certainly seemed to have gained additional currency in the wake of Bush v. Gore (as Jack Balkin explains).

Although I'm not qualified to analyze the merits of Perry v. Schwarzenneger from a legal positivist point of view, I will deign to take a crack at it from a legal realist frame. It seems to me that most of the "intangibles" bear upon Justice Kennedy in ways that favor his finding Constitutional protection for same-sex marriage. For one thing, he'll be 75 or 76 by the time the SCOTUS hears this case, and will probably be thinking about his legacy. Given that, in 50 years' time, American society will almost certainly regard the plaintiff's position (the Constitution does not permit discrimination in marriage on the basis of sexual orientation) as the right one, that legacy would be better served by casting the decisive vote in favor of the plaintiffs.

The other major intangible is the presence of Ted Olson on the plaintiff's council. Olson, generally regarded as a conservative, has teamed with David Boies, his adversary in Bush v. Gore, to advocate for same-sex marriage. And as you can see in the clip above, he makes a very persuasive case for it. Whether or not you can call Olson's a conservative case for gay marriage, I don't quite know. But he certainly makes it seem like anything other than a radical position. In fact, he makes it seem like the necessary and obvious one.

That's what any good advocate should do, of course. But the fact that the advocate in question is someone with the gravitas, conservative pedigree, and historical significance of Olson might make a symbolic difference above and beyond that, and could serve to make Kennedy all the more confident that he were lining up on the right side of history.

There's More...

Contract Post

Tennessee Primary Preview

The next cookie on the primary platter is Tennessee, whose unusual Thursday election features a competitive GOP gubernatorial contest and a host of wild-and-wooly congressional primaries.

These include the nation's most expensive House primary (GOP TN-8), a primary where the Club for Growth accidentally directed readers of a mailer to a phone sex line (GOP TN-3), a primary where a white Jewish incumbent has earned the backing of the Congressional Black Caucus in a campaign against the African-American former mayor of Memphis (Dem TN-9), and a primary where Sarah Palin delved into a crowded GOP field in a staunch Democratic district to endorse her latest "Mama Grizzly" (GOP TN-5). And all that fun doesn't even include America's latest viral video sensation, Republican gubernatorial candidate Basil Marceaux.


First, some basics: Tennessee has open primaries, but is also the rare southern state without a majority-vote (or in North Carolina, a 40%-of-the-vote) requirement for party nominations, which will be a significant factor in a number of crowded primary contests.

Tennessee is also a state with a strong system of in-person early voting, with a state-sanctioned 15-day window that begins twenty days out and ends five days before the actual election. In the last midterm primary in 2006, 43% of the ballots were cast early (2% by mail-in absentee ballot). The official statistics for this year show 14% of registered voters having already cast ballots, which could wind up being about half of the total turnout. A lot of the theatrics in Tennessee races over the last few weeks probably involved efforts to influence early voters.

The Volunteer State has been relatively balanced in state elections (the current governor, term-limited Phil Bredesen is a Democrat; the state senate is controlled by Republicans, and the evenly-balanced House is led by a renegade Republican Speaker elected with the votes of Democrats), but hasn't had a Democratic U.S. Senator since 1994, and has been tilting notably red in recent presidential elections (John McCain won here by a 57-42 margin).

This state also has a strong tradition of regionalism (the three stars on the state flag represent East, Middle, and West Tennessee), which has often been a major factor in statewide political races. In the marquee GOP gubernatorial primary, all three major candidates (Knoxville Mayor Bill Haslam, Chattanooga congressman Zach Wamp, and Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey, from northeast Tennessee) are from the east, which has given a major strategic advantage to Haslam thanks to his superior financial resources, allowing him to appeal to the rest of the state via television ads. By mid-July, Haslam had raised $8.7 million, some of it self-funded (he is from the family which owns the Pilot chain of travel centers). Wamp had raised 3.9 million, and Ramsey weighed in at a bit over two million.

There has only been one public independent poll of this race, by Mason-Dixon in the third week of July, showing Haslam at 36%, Wamp at 25%, and Ramsey at 20%. But the perception all along has been that it's Haslam's race to lose. Both Wamp and Ramsey have sought to challenge Haslam's conservative credentials, mainly by talking about his father's involvement in the last effort to introduce an income tax in Tennessee (still a sore subject in Tennessee Republican politics, since the failed income tax campaign was led by the state's last GOP governor, Don Sundquist), and also accusing him of trying to buy the election with oil-company money.

Wamp, long a darling of the Christian Right (he's a longtime resident of the C Street compound run by the shadowy evangelical conservative group The Fellowship Foundation, made famous by fellow-residents Mark Sanford and John Ensign), has lent his campaign a distinctly religious flavor. But he gained national attention recently by suggesting that Tennessee might have to secede from the Union if Congress does not repeal health reform legislation (he later recanted the secession talk, but still said fighting federal power would be a major focus of his governorship).

Meanwhile, Ron Ramsey (note: Tennessee Lt. Govs. are elected by the state senate, not voters) has heavily focused on his A+ rating from the NRA, holding campaign events at firing ranges. Like Wamp, he received some recent derisive national attention when he waded into a controversy raised by 6th District GOP congressional candidate Lou Ann Zelenik over the construction of a mosque in the middle Tennessee college town of Murfreesboro. In an interview, Ramsey suggested that First Amendment protections might not apply to Muslims because it was arguable that Islam was not a religion, but a "nationality, way of life, or cult."

Down the stretch Wamp has taken to pleading that anti-Haslam conservatives unite behind his candidacy on grounds that Ramsey is unelectable, but right now Haslam is the odds-on favorite. That seems to be the assumption of certain Democratic gubernatorial nominee Mike McWherter (son of popular former governor Ned McWherter, and the last candidate standing after a series of rivals withdrew from the race), who's been taking a few shots at the Knoxville mayor while otherwise concentrating on raising money.

BTW, for all his national notoriety, internet sensation and would-be traffic-stop abolitionist Basil Merceaux is a perennial candidate who won't get many votes beyond the ranks of a few mischievous crossover Democrats.

Tennessee's House primaries are quite a spectacle. In Wamp's heavily-Republican 3d District, the contest has turned into a nasty fight between former state GOP chairman Robin Smith and self-funding attorney Chuck Fleischmann. There's a pretty interesting back-story in this race. Fleischmann's campaign manager is former TN GOP chairman Chip Saltsman, who ran Mike Huckabee's presidential campaign in 2008. Saltsman also ran for RNC chair in 2009, and probably wasn't pleased when Smith endorsed SC's Katon Dawson for the post. In any event, it's been a tough race, enlivened when the Club for Growth sent out a mailer attacking Fleischmann's background as a trial lawyer, and then included a phone number for further information that turned out to be a phone sex service. A third candidate, Bradley County sheriff Tim Gobble, has tried to position himself as an alternative to the combatants, but trails them badly in fundraising. A Club-for-Growth commissioned poll conducted on July 12 showed Smith up over Fleischmann by 22 points.

Two other hot GOP primaries are in the districts of retiring Blue Dogs Democrats Bart Gordon (TN-6) and John Tanner (TN-8). In TN-6, two state senators, both standard-brand conservatives, Diane Black (chairman of the Senate Republican conference) and Jim Tracy, were the presumed front-runners, but then former county commissioner Lou Ann Zelenik threw some of her own wealth into the race and as noted earlier, exploited the Murfreesboro Mosque controversy to get free media. She shares a geographical base with Tracy, and has probably cut into his support; an internal poll released by Black in early July showed Black with 41%, Zelenik with 22%, and Tracy with 20%.

The Democratic primary in the 6th features two young decorated war veterans, Bret Carter and Ben Leming. Carter has a fundraising edge, but Leming's been endorsed by the AFL-CIO and a long list of former state Democratic chairmen. Though the 6th (once represented by Al Gore) has a long history as a Democratic bastion, McCain beat Obama there by 27 points.

In the 8th, the Democratic candidate is veteran state legislator Roy Herron, who dropped out of the governor's race to run for the House when Tanner announced his retirement. The Republican primary was supposed to be dominated by the nationally-recruited farmer and gospel singer Stephen Fincher. But two wealthy self-funded candidates, Shelby County commissioner George Flinn and physician Ron Kirkland, jumped into the race and have turned it into a very expensive slugfest. Fincher's under attack from his rivals for accepting federal farm subsidies over the years. Flinn is an admitted carpetbagger who lives outside the district, and has also been hammered for operating a website (shades of J.D. Hayworth!) encouraging applications for stimulus dollars. A reported $5.2 million--$3 million by Flinn alone--have been spent by the candidates in this primary, not counting $1.3 million spent by Kirkland's brother as an "independent expenditure," making this the most expensive House primary in the country so far.

The Nashville-based 5th district, represented by Blue Dog Jim Cooper, isn't supposed to be competitive (Obama carried the district by 56-43), but no less than eleven Republicans are running for the opportunity to test that hypothesis. It's really difficult to figure out how this primary will turn out. Contractor David Hall has released an internal poll showing him romping over the field, with businessman and home-school activist Jeff Hartline running second and Sarah Palin's pick, attorney CeCe Heil running third. Hall and Hartline are the best-financed candidates; as of mid-July, both had spent over $200,000 with the rest of the field not breaking six digits. But Heil will undoubtedly benefit from the attention provided by Palin. Her other advantage is her clever decision to recast her background in entertainment law as equipping her to be a "constitutional lawyer" who can fight to defend the Constitution in Congress (other Republican attorneys, including the infamous "trial lawyer" running in the 3d District, should pick up on that maneuver). Whoever wins will be an underdog against Cooper.

Finally, in the Memphis-based 9th district, Democratic incumbent Steve Cohen is facing a primary challenge from former Memphis mayor Willie Herenton. Like Cohen's 2008 opponent Nikki Tinker, Herenton is making no bones about his claim that the district requires an African-American to represent it in the House, and as with Tinker, it looks like the racial appeal will backfire. Cohen has been endorsed by President Obama, by his most famous African-American predecessor, Harold Ford, Sr., and was given a campaign contribution by the Congressional Black Caucus. Cohen should win big.

There's More...

Contract Post

Will Gay Marriage, Once Again, Become a Campaign Issue?

In a ruling that had been widely anticipated, Judge Vaughn Walker of the Federal District Court in San Francisco today decided that California's Proposition 8 -- which was narrowly approved by the state's voters in 2008 and amended the state's constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman -- violated the U.S. Constitution on both due process and equal protection grounds, thereby striking it. The decision is eventually expected to be appealed up to the U.S. Supreme Court, where its fate will probably be in the hands of Justice Anthony Kennedy.

One of the distinct features of the 2010 campaign to date has been a relative lack of discussion around gay marriage. There are a variety of reasons for this -- there are no marriage ballot initiatives before the voters this year, for instance, and the country has a whole host of other, more tangible problems to deal with. But can we expect this to change with Judge Walker's ruling today?

The issue is certainly unlikely to be pushed into the spotlight by Democrats. Most polls still show at least a plurality of Americans opposed to gay marriage, although the margin is narrowing. More important, perhaps, is that the fact that President Obama is at least nominally opposed to gay marriage, as were the other two leading Democratic candidates for the Presidency in 2008, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. As I wrote on Twitter, this is a fact that may come to seem remarkable with the passage of time, as most Democrats support same-sex marriage. Nevertheless, given the White House's sluggish pace in working to overturn Don't Ask Don't Tell, a doctrine which is overwhelmingly unpopular, we are exceptionally unlikely to see a change of attitude on a related issue where the polling still cuts against them.

So it will come down, therefore, to what conservatives want to do with the issue: particularly two groups of conservatives, which we might loosely think of as the Tea Party and the Republican Establishment.

Although polling has shown that large majorities of Tea Party identifiers, like most Republicans and conservatives, are opposed to gay marriage, it has largely avoided discussion of the issue. The extent to which this has been a deliberate strategic choice is unclear, as the Tea Party is unusually decentralized. Nevertheless, it is arguably quite smart. The Tea Party has been successful, in part, because it feels fresh and new to many voters, distinguishing itself from Bush-era establishment conservatism and sometimes taking on the auspices of libertarianism. Were the Tea Party to come out strongly against gay marriage, or take explicit positions on other social issues like abortion and marijuana legalization, it would become indistinguishable from movement conservativism circa 2004, and would risk undermining the differentiation in its brand.

For the Republican Establishment, the calculus is somewhat different. They make no bones about being emphatically opposed to gay marriage. But a focus on the issue might look petty in comparison to weightier ones like unemployment, the deficit and health care, all of which are providing them with considerable momentum on their own.

However, the ruling today is potentially a game-changer in that it will allow both groups to frame the issue as one of judicial activism, rather than "family values". This line of attack makes for cogent soundbytes, and it will arguably be quite salient to voters, as Walker overturned a referendum passed by the majority of California's voters a mere 21 months ago. The less equivocal among the Republican Establishment may try to bolster their case by pointing to the fact that Walker himself is gay.

The fact that the issue is now almost certain to come before the Supreme Court also renders it less abstract than usual. Were Barack Obama to have the opportunity to replace a conservative Justice with a liberal one, or an incoming Republican President in 2013 the reverse, that would probably be decisive for the issue, perhaps for many decades.

My best guess is that the Tea Party will largely continue to shirk the issue, but that the Republican Establishment will be fairly happy to engage it. The real battle, however, may come in 2012, when the Supreme Court could be about ready to take up the case. The leading indicator may be the reactions of the major Presidential hopefuls. For instance, will Sarah Palin produce a tweet or Facebook post containing the the phrases "activist judge" or "judicial activism" within the next 24 hours? It may depend on which type of conservatives -- the tea-partiers, or the movement conservatives of the Republican Establishment -- that she ultimately wants to affiliate herself with.

There's More...

Contract Post

UK: Labour Leadership Battle is Brewing

Behind the scenes of the UK general election this spring, another political skirmish was underway. With their electoral campaign deeply endangered by falling poll numbers, several senior Labour MPs, ostensibly in cahoots with some ambitious Labour frontbenchers, launched a bid against then Prime Minister Gordon Brown for the reins of the Party. While the January 'coup' attempt failed, leaving the media to speculate that then Foreign Secretary David Miliband was waiting in the breach to succeed Brown, it became clearer than ever than Brown's days as Labour leader were numbered.

Five days after the May 6th election, Brown did indeed step down, ending a stretch of 25 years as a senior figure within Labour, from his appointment as Shadow Secretary for Trade in 1985 to his 10 years as Chancellor (1997-2007) and 3 final years as Prime Minister. Having lost their first election in four cycles, Labour watched painfully as David Cameron's Tories and Nick Clegg's Liberal Democrats formed the first coalition government since Churchill's multi-party cabinet during World War II.

Wasting little time, the ever-eager David Miliband annouced the day after Brown's resignation that he would stand for the party's leadership election, which will be held in the month preceding the annual Labour Party Conference scheduled for the end of September. After two agonizing days, his brother Ed, the outgoing Energy Secretary, announced that he would challenge the elder Miliband in the leadership contest, ensuring the race would have no shortage of drama.

In the week following, four other candidates announced their intention to run, though the overall slate was reduced to five when the John McDonnell (chair of the left-wing Socialist Campaign Group) deferred to fellow lefty Diane Abbott*, the only non-white candidate and only woman running for the post. Within days of the others, Ed Balls, Gordon Brown's close ally and Secretary of Education and Andy Burnham, Brown's short-lived second Secretary of Health, joined the fray.

As, it seems, with many other electoral processes to determine the internal direction of a political party, the Labour leadership election has all the requisite layers of complexity and opportunities for inside baseball.

In this case, the Labour electorate is split into three parts, which each have one third of the overall vote share.


First there are the Labour party's Members of Parliament, including the House of Commons, the European Parliament and the House of Lords. The second third of the votes come from Labour's party membership, which fluxuates in number from month to month and election to election, ranging from more than 400,000 in 1997 to just under 180,000 in 2007. Finally, there are the members of the Labour Party's several hundred supportive trade unions, along with a few dozen recognized Socialist Societies, which together have about 7 million voting members. This figure is a range because according to recent studies, while there are about 7 million trade union members, at least 1.6 million are not actually covered by collective bargaining agreements ('legacy' unions, if you will). Of these, about 3 million are with unions officially affiliated with the Labour party.

If that were not complex enough, the system uses ranked voting/instant run-off to adjudicate the contest, meaning that weaker candidates are eliminated and their lower preference votes redistributed if no candidate receives a first-preference majority -- something is very likely to occur. As a result, there is talk of candidates offering second preference endorsements to each other in exchange for political favors down the road.

All in all, David Miliband looks to be in the strongest position at the moment, with the highest overall name recognition, thanks to his years as Foreign Secretary, and the tacit support of many parts of the Blair-ite Labour Party establishment. Ed Miliband, dubbed "The Insurgent" by a the well-known left-wing UK magazine The New Statesman, is running the strongest challenger's campaign, using his popularity in the blogosphere and among younger party members to mount a strong campaign. In the last week he blasted an SMS request for volunteers and supporters to Labour party members, netting his campaign more than a thousand new volunteers.

What remains unclear, however, is how much this leadership campaign represents an internal smoky-room affair among the seniormost members of the Labour movement, jockeying amongst themselves for the best spot in the revamped Labour Party, and how much a true bottom-up balloting. While will certainly be a trial balloon process for center-left voters to react to various leadership options, the perception that internal party politics is a relatively closed-door, highly technical process continues to pervade. Particularly as the supposed party of working class, with their most likely winners among the innermost political elites, this is a perception they will have to work to dispell in order win back 10 Downing Street in the next election.

---
Renard Sexton is FiveThirtyEight's international affairs columnist and is based in Geneva, Switzerland. He can be contacted at sexton538@gmail.com

*To be on the ballot for the Labour leadership contest, one must receive a formal nomination from at least 12.5% of the Labour MPs, in this case 33. Because David and Ed Miliband scarfed up so many in short order (in all 81 and 63, respectively), it became impossible for the remaining candidates to all take 33. In the Balls, Burnham and Abbott each received the minimum of 33, after McDonnell left the race.

There's More...

Contract Post

Kansas, Michigan, Missouri Primary Results

In the triad of Midwestern primaries today, the biggest news was probably in Michigan, where labor stalwart Virg Bernero handily defeated House Speaker Andy Dillon for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, while "one tough nerd," former Gateway exec Rick Snyder, defeated self-identified True Conservatives Mike Cox and Peter Hoekstra for the Republican nomination.

Meanwhile, in KS, in the conservative cage match for the Republican Senate nomination, as of this writing Jerry Moran holds a narrow lead over Todd Tiahrt, and is likely to hold on for the win.

In the rich assortment of House primaries, one incumbent, MI Democrat Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick (mother and political victim of former Detroit mayor and now prison inmate Kwame Kilpatrick), has lost to state senator Hansen Clarke.

In the MI gubernatorial primary, Virg Bernero won virtually all of the higher-population Democratic areas, with narrow but consistent wins in the Detroit metro area (Andy Dillon's base), and big margins in labor-dominated counties outside Detroit.

On the Republican side, Hoekstra won in his Western Michigan base, but Snyder won nearly everywhere else, with Cox finishing behind him in their common base region of the Detroit metro area. It's unclear at this point if Snyder's late effort to encourage Democratic crossover votes was a major factor, but it's likely that he won a plurality of the Republican vote anyway.

In the KS GOP Senate race, Moran won his district, and Tiahrt won his, and they are surprisingly close in the vote-rich KC suburban 3d District. But Moran seems to have more voters in his district, and is probably going to pull out the win.

In the MO Senate primary, Roy Blunt destroyed Tea Party activist Chuck Purgason by a 71-13 margin.

Aside from Kilpatrick's loss in MI, Sandy Levin easily held onto his own House seat. Among Republicans, Dan Beneshiak has a narrow lead over Jason Allen in Bart Stupak's old UP-centered district; Club for Growth favorite Justin Amash won handily in the 3d District Western Michigan open seat; in southern Michigan's 7th district, Tim Walberg won a rematch with freshman Democrat Mark Schauer; and in the Detroit-suburb 9th district, Rocky Raczkowski won the nomination to face another freshman Dem, Gary Peters.

In MO, the big GOP House primary was in the 4th District, to choose an opponent for House Armed Services Committee chairman Ike Skelton. Religious Right activist Vicki Hartzler beat front-runner Bill Stouffer 40-30 for the Republican nod.

And in KS's 3d District, a vulnerable Democratic open seat, heavily funded establishment candidate Kevin Yoder beat conservative activist Patricia Lightner by a 45-37 margin, and will face Democrat Stephene Moore, wife of retiring incumbent Dennis Moore, in November.

WEDNESDAY AM UPDATE:

Last night's report focused on contests expected to be competitive in November. But there were several House primaries in Republican-held open seats that are worth mentioning.

In MI-2, Pete Hoekstra's western Michigan district, former state rep. (and former Hoekstra staffer) Bill Huizenga upset ex-NFL player Jay Riemersma by 660 votes. Huizenga appears to have gotten some traction with charges that Riemersma (who outspent the field significantly) violated campaign finance laws.

In MI-3, where Rep. Vern Ehlers is retiring, state rep. Justin Amash, a Club for Growth candidate with significant Tea Party backing, handily defeated former county commissioner Steve Heacock (Elhers' choice) and state senator Bill Hardiman.

In central-western KS-1, where incumbent Jerry Moran is running for the U.S. Senate, state senator Tim Huelskamp used a significant financial advantage (including Club for Growth backing) to comfortably win the nomination over fellow state senator Jim Barnett and realtor Tracey Mann (who gained fame for publicly embracing "birther" views late in the campaign).

In Wichita-based KS-4, where Todd Tiahrt also ran for the Senate, still another Club for Growth endorsee, RNC member Mike Pompeo, beat pro-choice state senator Jean Schodorf and oil executive Wink Hartman, after a contest dominated by Pompeo-Hartman crossfire.

And in MO-7, represented by GOP Senate nominee Roy Blunt, auctioneer and first-time candidate Billy Long, who managed to win endorsements from the state's powerful right-to-life lobby and from Mike Huckabee, defeated state senator Jack Goodman in a crowded field.

A couple of notes on late results: In MI-1, Bart Stupak's seat, the Republican nomination contest is almost certainly headed to a recount, with Dr. Dan Benishek leading state senator Jason Allen by either 1 or 12 votes, depending on which elections report you follow.

And in KS, Jerry Moran did indeed hold on to defeat Todd Tiahrt by a 50-45 margin.

In the comments thread, several readers drew attention to the vote on Proposition C in Missouri, a controversial referendum on a state law that seeks to block implementation of an individual mandate to purchase health insurance, a key element of "ObamaCare." I didn't mention it last night because it was largely a symbolic measure (unless you think the federal courts are going to invalidate the Supremacy Clause), subordinate to separate legal efforts to challenge the constitutionality of health care mandates. As a political matter, the 71% vote for Prop C will get some national attention, but it should be noted that (using the Senate vote as a measure) Republicans dominated Missouri primary turnout by a 2-1 margin.

And in reference to another topic discussed in the comments thread, I'll be making an effort over the next couple of days to assess the crossover vote for Rick Snyder in the MI governor's race.

There's More...

Contract Post

Granite State Update

Along with Ohio and Colorado, New Hampshire became a state emblematic of the Democratic resurgence after 2004. What used to be a contrarian, moderately conservative state dominated by Republicans in very short order flipped decisively to the Democrats: its state legislature, governor, two US House seats and one Senate seat all changing partisan hands in a very short span of two election cycles. Most of you elections junkies will recall that NH was the lone New England state to hold out for George W. Bush in 2000, and had it not America might never have known what a hanging chad is. John Kerry eked out a win in the Granite State in 2004--the only state he won that Al Gore lost--and by 2008 Barack Obama was carrying every NH county as he cruised to a nearly 10-point victory against an opponent who had enjoyed great electoral successes there.

The Granite State has been making electoral headlines again of late, but the story now--just two years after Obama's big victory there, as well as the re-election of fellow Dems including Gov. John Lynch, Rep. Hodes and Rep. Carol Shea-Porter--is whether Democrats can hold onto their recently-obtained power. Both House seats are listed by various prognosticators as toss-up or slightly leaning to one party or the other, for example. But it is Senate matchup between Democrat Paul Hodes (who abandoned his House seat to run) and Republican Kelly Ayotte that attracted national attention when Sarah Palin got involved in the race by endorsing Ayotte.

That endorsement has puzzled some, in part because Ayotte doesn't seem like a Palin-esque Republican in a state that one might suspect an endorsement from the former vice presidential candidate to backfire. Here's an excerpt from David Frum's recent musings on this electoral development, who formulates three possible explanations for why Ayotte, who is a conservative that nevertheless has supported many moderate positions, got Palin's blessing and whether it's good for her or for Palin:

How then did Ayotte gain the Palin endorsement?

Three theories:

1) The “early states” theory. Palin wants to earn favors in early primary states: Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina. In those states she is endorsing likely winners even when (as with Iowa’s Terry Brandstad) that likely winner tilts more to the middle than Palin’s current political identity.

2) The “go with the winner” theory. Palin is seeking to make herself look more powerful within the party by claiming credit for other people’s successes.

3) The “woo women” theory. Palin has endorsed women candidates against men she might have been expected to prefer: eg Carly Fiorina over Chuck DeVore in California. These endorsements enabled and justified Palin’s recent “Mama Grizzlies” ad. By positioning herself as a champion of women in politics, Palin distracts attention from one important weakness of any Palin candidacy: her unpopularity among women voters...

Whatever Palin's motives, the conventional wisdom is that Ayotte's gambit has backfired: That she aligned herself with Palin unnecessarily, and in doing so is caused voters who might otherwise want to lash out at incumbents, or at Democrats, or to send a message to the White House (voting against Hodes would accomplish all of these) to pause and rethink the race.

Enter Dante Scala*, one of the state's--no, nation's--top political scientists on matters electoral. In his GraniteProf blog, Scala compared the two most recent NH Senate polls--one by Public Policy Polling, followed shortly thereafter by one from his UNH colleague Andrew Smith--and concluded:

The new UNH Granite State poll, conducted by my colleague Andrew Smith, provides little support for the notion that Sarah Palin's endorsement last week had some sort of immediate, Kryptonite-like effect on GOP Senate candidate Kelly Ayotte.

But it does hold some measure of good news for Paul Hodes, whose campaign has been anxiously watched by fellow Democrats for signs of life.

As mentioned in an earlier post, Public Policy Polling's survey suggested Hodes was having problems consolidating his base among New Hampshire liberals. UNH shows just the opposite.

Scala concludes that Palin's effect has been to consolidate base support on both sides--liberals to Hodes, conservatives to Ayotte. OK, no surprise there. What's going to be interesting, if future or post-election polling can tease it out, is whether in a state like New Hampshire that's supposedly chock-full of contrarian, non-partisan moderates the introduction of Palin into the race nationalizes it, and if it does, whether doing so helps or hurts a candidate like Kelly Ayotte.

For that reason alone--not to mention the recent swing of New Hampshire from red to blue, and the fact that this is a predominantly white state so there will be no effect from drop-off or return of Obama's minority "surge" voters--this is going to be a great race to watch over the next three months. Buckle up.

*Those of you junkies who are already gearing up for the 2012 primaries should get your hands on a copy of Scala's Stormy Weather, the definitive scholarly book on the New Hampshire primary.

There's More...

Contract Post

Kansas, Michigan, Missouri Primary Preview

Three states (Kansas, Michigan, and Missouri) are holding primaries tomorrow, and aside from marquee gubernatorial contests in both parties in MI, and a close Republican Senate primary in KS, there will be a host of competitive congressional races, mostly on the GOP side, and many for open but relatively safe Republican seats.

In terms of races expected to be competitive in November, the contests to watch are the governor's race in MI, along with the 1st, 3d, 7th, and 9th CDs; the 3d and 4th CDs in KS; and the 4th CD in MO.

Looking at the basics: MI and MO are open primary states, while in Kansas, Republicans have a close primary and Democrats allow independent voters to participate. Michigan's system is unusual in that voters are given ballots with both primary contests included, and decide whether to vote in the Democratic or Republican primary in the privacy of the voting booth (this system also seems to encourage a lot of confusion and spoiled ballots based on the misperception that voters can participate in both primaries).

Turnout is expected to be pretty much (depressingly) normal for midterm primaries: 20-25% in Michigan; 25% in Missouri; 20% in Kansas. In the open primary states, there's considerable uncertainty about the partisan split in turnout, though the higher number of competitive GOP races is likely to boost Republican turnout in both states.

Looking at the big nationally significant races first:

The Michigan gubernatorial contest must be understood in terms of the state's recent Democratic tilt, counterbalanced by voter fatigue with two-term Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm (the state House is also controlled by Democrats, and the Senate by the GOP). Neither Democratic candidate for governor is running as Granholm's protege. But there is a distinct perceived ideological difference between House Speaker Andy Dillon, generally considered a pro-business moderate, and Lansing mayor Virg Bernero, backed by Michigan's powerful labor movement. The recent EPIC/MRA poll shows Bernero surging into a 40-32 lead over Dillon, but with a large undecided vote.

On the Republican side, that same survey indicated a very close three-way race among Attorney General Mike Cox, Congressman Pete Hoekstra, and former Gateway executive Rick Snyder. A fourth candidate, Oakland County sheriff Mike Bouchard, who's gotten a lot of attention as the preferred candidate of rocking right-winger Ted Nugent (whom I saw perform, way back in the day, down in Georgia with the Amboy Dukes), was well back from the pack but theoretically in striking distance.

I've done a separate FiveThirtyEight post on Snyder's campaign and its unusual (this year) appeal to crossover voters, but it's not at all clear whether the "nerdy guy" can win, despite a gusher of self-funded spending. The Cox-Hoekstra-Bouchard competition for the "true conservative" mantle does, in a non-runoff state, create some political real estate for an unapologetic moderate, and if Snyder can get a serious crossover vote, he's the favorite to win.

Meanwhile, over in Kansas, two Republican congressmen, Jerry Moran and Todd Tiahrt, are in a cage-match for the nomination to succeed Sen. Sam Brownback, who is the odds-on favorite for election to the governorship. Moran represents the heavily Republican central-west KS first CD, while Tiahrt represents the slightly more marginal Wichita-based 4th CD. Both candidates are hard-core conservatives by national standards, but despite endorsements from Jim DeMint and Tom Coburn, Moran is fighting the RINO label, and may depend on a strong showing in the relatively moderate Kansas City suburbs to win. Moran has had a decided financial advantage. Tiahrt has been endorsed by Sarah Palin, Tom Tancredo, and major gun rights and anti-abortion groups. A late SUSA poll showed Moran leading 49-39, but with Tiahrt having some momentum.

If you want a good indication of how finely movement conservatives are splitting hairs over the Moran-Tiahrt choice, look at this post from Kathryn Lopez at National Review's The Corner, which examines their anti-abortion views in detail.

The other big statewide primary tomorrow is in MO, where congressman Roy Blunt is the heavy favorite to defeat Tea Party activist Chuck Purgason. Blunt had a comfortable lead in the last public poll back in March, and has since vastly outspent Purgason.

As noted above, there are four Republican House primaries in MI involving competitive districts.

In the 1st (Upper Peninisula based) District, formerly represented by the famous pro-life Democrat Bart Stupak, Republicans are rumbling for the chance to take on designated Democratic Garry McDowell. The two favorites are Tea Party-ish Dr. Dan Beneshiak, who was the putative Republican challenger to Stupak before he got out of the race, and state senator Jason Allen. They both have raised and spent a lot of money, and the results should be close.

In the Western Michigan 3d District, an open seat represented by retiring Republican Rep. Vern Ehlers, Democrats have a strong candidate in Pat Miles. The GOP primary features an African-American Republican elected official, state rep. Bill Hardiman, who is in the middle of a pack including former local elected offical Steve Heacock and Club for Growth favorite Justin Amash. A Michigan polling firm shows Amash leading Haridison 28-23, with Heacock at 17.

In the southern MI 7th district, the Republican defeated by freshman Democratic Rep. Mark Schauer in 2008, Tim Walberg, has been the front-runner for a rematch, but is now facing a tough primary from Brian Rooney, brother of Florida congressman Tom Rooney. Though Rooney has been blasting Walberg for accepting an endorsement from pro-choice Rudy Giuliani, he's generally considered the moderate in the race, and the beneficiary of those who'd like to see a different challenger to Schauer.

And in the Oakland County-based 9th District, where another freshman Democrat, Gary Peters, is running for re-election, there's a red-hot GOP primary involving former state rep. Rocky Raczkowski and former congressional staffer Paul Welday. Rackowski was the early favorite, but is now struggling with bad press over the remarks of Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly at one of his fundraisers, attacking unmarried women who support Barack Obama as self-interested welfare beneficiaries.

In Kansas's suburban 3d District, where Democratic Rep. Dennis Moore is retiring--to be succeeded, he hopes, by his wife, near-certain Democratic nominee Stephene Moore--ten Republicans are running for the nomination, but only two are competitive: front-runner Kevin Yoder, who has spent nearly a million bucks on his campaign, and former state representative Patricia Lightner, who's been endorsed by pro-life organizations and is hoping for a grassroots-led upset.

And in Todd Tiahrt's 4th CD, there is a potentially strong and well-financed Democrat, Raj Goyle, poised to face the winner of a very competitive GOP primary in which three candidates, pro-choice state senator Jean Schodorf and business owners Mike Pompeo and Wink Hartman are in a close three-way race.

Down in Missouri, the big GOP primary is in the 4th District, where ex-state representative Vicky Hartzler and state senator Bill Stouffer are leading a huge field of candidates for the nomination to face Democratic veteran (and House Armed Services Committee chair) Ike Skelton in a red-leaning district. Hartzler is a longtime Christian Right activist, while Stouffer benefits from some GOP establishment support. The two candidates have been bashing each other as insufficiently conservative, while the embattled incumbent raises money.

There are other primaries in safe Republican districts, and I'll report the results tomorrow night. And there's one significant ballot initiative, in MO: Proposition C, which purports to create obstacles to state implementation of national health reform legislation, and is likely to pass thanks to the preponderance of competitive Republican primaries in the Show-Me State.

There's More...

Contract Post